Telecoms trends in 2011

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 18 January 2011 14:01

Opinion and Analysis

Industry analyst Ovum has released a list of its predictions of the top telecoms trends for 2011.

Ovum's trends are shown in italics, followed by this writer's observations.

Windows Phone 7 will upset the status quo in the smartphone market by becoming the fastest-growing smartphone platform.

Given that we're talking about growth from an effectively zero base in 2010, it would be extremely bad news for Microsoft if Windows Phone 7 isn't the fastest growing platform in 2011.

Android will overtake the iPhone as the favourite with mobile developers by end of the year.

'Favourite' is an interesting choice of words as it is capable of different interpretations. Best set of development tools? Most familiar APIs? Most generous sales terms? Biggest user base? Greatest propensity to pay for software? (There's a point: does the buyer of a $199 Android handset have more money left to buy apps than the purchaser of a $719 iPhone, or did they have less money to start with?) The numerically largest set of developers? The market with the biggest revenue?

Cloud services will move from early adopter to the early mainstream stage and will have an impact on key emerging telco services.

It's hard to argue with the first part, but what we really need is for telcos to stay out of the way and concentrate on providing fast, reliable and affordable connections. Choosing a cloud service provider should be completely independent of choosing a carrier.

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