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Mobile Computing may force us to rethink our operating definition of a web browser.

For a while folks have been wrestling with the debate of browsers vs native apps for mobile. Browsers are wonderful because they make few assumptions about the underlying hardware (aside from guessing at screen resolution and which browsers a handset may support).

The trouble with browsers is that they miss out on all of the rich hardware and other physical features a mobile device is capable of. What we need are common application layers/frameworks (basically an uber-browser) that can do both.

You shouldn’t blame the browsers of today, they come from a desktop world. What’s worse they come from an 80s/90s desktop world that assumes every terminal is just an immovable terminal of static screen, with few likely peripherals other than a mouse and a keyboard. Even on the desktop world we rely on extra software layers above the browser like flash and silverlight to do anything fun but hardware-dependent like capturing or streaming video and audio. To your usual xHTML standard, the hardware layer, the physical environment is completely unimportant.

The trouble with mobile is that is shatters this assumption. Almost *everything* that is uniquely interesting about a mobile platform, by default, outside the traditional document model of the browser.

The interesting thing about mobiles is that they exist and operate out in the real world. Meanwhile every year, these same devices are becoming increasingly aware and able to interact with this real world. Unlike desktops, mobiles move around, they know where they are, they’re stuffed full of sensors for orientation, movement, touch, they are capable of vision, of hearing, they can (in theory) directly sense each other and communicate through a set of radios with ranges from a few centimeters to a few kilometers.

So how will mobile web-apps avail themselves of these features? How do we build a stack that cleanly and easily interfaces physical presence with virtual. What’s needed is a consistent cross platform set of tools that enables a run-almost-anywhere webap to connect on end to the cloud with AJAX and on the other hand just as easily to the hardware features of it’s platform. Existing apps like google’s mobile maps, safari’s gesture recognition, or NFC contactless applications just feel like early signals of what should be possible.

It used to be the web browser was thought of as your machine’s exciting portal into the virtual world of cyberspace. Today’s more interesting challenge is: how to give cyberspace a portal back into the real world surrounding you and your mobile machine. Anything less is not really mobile computing at all.

There is an underlying big idea here. is that our devices should be / could be / will be, the billion mobile roofing nails that connect and anchor the virtual world to the real world. That seems like a hell of a concept. Who is out there working on it?

A stay-the-course quarter for Telus’ wireless division, which announced (audio | transcript) a 10% increase in overall revenue on slightly lower net additions (88,000 as opposed to 91,000 in first quarter 2007), offset by a stronger share of post-paid additions (82% vs. 67% in the quarter) and a 53% surge in wireless data revenue.

The net result of all this was essentially flat ARPU in the quarter at $61.88, down slightly from $62.03 in the first quarter last year.

Capital expenditures were also down 42% on the year, perhaps reflecting President and CEO Darren Entwhistle’s preference, expressed during the Q4 2007 analyst call, to “sweat the heck out of” the telco’s sizeable EVDO Rev-A investment and wring maximum ROI from it before contemplating other investments in the network (he was responding specifically to an analyst question about whether Telus was contemplating building a GSM overlay on its CDMA network).

In the area of network expansion, the evidence is that at least for now, the telco’s attention is elsewhere: even though Telus’ potential participation in the wireless spectrum auction is not reflected in capital expenditures, $230 million (in the form of letters of credit) has been deposited with Industry Canada for the upcoming advanced wireless services (AWS) auction.

And speaking of not putting all your eggs in one basket, Telus execs were underwhelmed by the recently announced Sprint/Clearwire deal to launch a new WiMax mobile broadband network in the US. Telus VP and CFO Robert McFarlane’s take on the deal was that it more likely signalled Sprint’s trouble in making a viable go of the business than any groundshifting mass-market move towards WiMax, all the more since LTE looks increasingly to be the “overwhelming choice” of carriers globally (whether CDMA or GSM).

The “what-to-look-for” item next quarter? Impact on earnings from Koodo. Even though Telus execs reaffirmed earnings guidance for 2008 (including any effect from Koodo), it remains to be seen how the launch of the discount brand will affect financials, especially cost per acquisition (which was down 27% from last year) and post-paid ARPU. See our take on the discount brand here.

Is this a savvy business move that will lead to the premiumization of the Telus brand, or is the telco dipping its toe in the MVNO deadpool? My guess is that eschewing risky content creation and licensing deals, as well as “artificial features like TV on your mobile phone“, probably makes good business sense. But since Koodo launched only a few days before the end of the first quarter, we’ll have to wait and see.

Jevon has been following this one for a week or two and has all the news over at StartupNorth.ca New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada.

These are exciting times for mobile developers in canda. Between this fund, other VC and Angels in the mobile space, and a number of Federal and Provincial funds/programs out there, there is a lot of backing available for mobile developers.

What do you want to build? or what’s the killer blackberry app you’ve been waiting for?

No earnings call on Wednesday for BCE. In the leadup to the upcoming leveraged buy-out by a consortium headed by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, execs at Canada’s incumbent integrated telco decided after Q2 2007 to forego the traditional quarterly analyst call, sticking instead to a media release/shareholder report combo.

On the wireless side, a few salient points:

• Net activations for the quarter (gross activations minus churn) at 34,000 were roughly triple the number reported last year at the end of the same quarter, with 82% of net adds opting for post-paid rate plans.
• Blended ARPU (ie. pre- and post-paid, which includes a 50% share of Virgin Mobile’s ARPU) advanced by a modest $0.74 to $52.32 on the strength of feature-rich smartphones and high gross activations, but post-paid ARPU remained unchanged year-over-year from the $64 reported in Q1 2007.
• Overall, operating revenues from the wireless division were up nearly 9% from last year (voice and data ARPU are not broken out separately).

Notable by its absence was any significant mention of the Inukshuk network or any planned strategic initiatives for the WiMax network. Not surprisingly perhaps, a powerpoint posted on March 3, 2008 (at the end but dating from the kickoff of BCE’s FY 07) lists a number of Bell’s strategic priorities for 2007: expanding the company’s fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) footprint and “invest[ing] in wireless”, with wireless performance for the year primarily driven by an expanded handset lineup and distribution channel, as well as growth in data consumption.

It seems likely, then – especially in an atmosphere of cost reduction – that the bulk of future capital expenditures will likely be devoted to expanding the company’s EVDO and FTTN capacities, rather than to expanding the WiMax footprint.

We will have a big announcement late night on Sunday. Ouuuh. The excitement.

Closest guess gets a… certificate for a sunday at Dairy Queen or McDonald’s. Your choice.

Sol Trujillo, CEO of Telstra, one of the largest service providers in Australia recently gave an interview on BusinessWeek, highlighting the success they have experienced with Data services, with 80% growth in data revenues! (not including SMS traffic, with 20% growth). So why should anyone in Canada be interested in an Australian network? For one reason, a number within the Rogers fold think there are many similarities between the two nations – geographic, economic and telecom fundamentals (?). So maybe there are a few lessons we need to learn and emulate to achieve similar success in data penetration and usage.

What is interesting to highlight are the reasons for the growth that Telstra has experienced:

• Infrastructure Investment in rolling out a technically superior network, with data rates reaching 14Mbps!
• Application: relevant and practical, that the consumer may actually be interested in. For instance, promoting data applications in outbacks where farmers can monitor their stock/land/crop through video riding off of the network. Given the large tracts of agricultural land with a small population, remote sensing and monitoring is a compelling application.
• Affordable rates : Is it a coincidence that the high data usage and growth being experienced are in some way stimulated by lower data rates? I would like to guess so. Compare the 5cents/Kb in Canada (Rogers) to the .025Cents/Kb offered by Telstra. And this includes “tethered” usage, currently charged at a premium by Rogers.
• Open Access : going beyind the walled-garden approach excercised by operators here to a free reign model. The motto being – give the customers the content they want and are looking for, rather then sandboxing them into content they dont. The success of the internet was not built on portals.

But the most important reasoning of all – believing that a strong business model for mobile data exists and taking the leap to provide consumer centric offerings. The right business model is certainly not an easy thing to build or come across, but it does exist as proven by Telstra. Maybe we need to send some of our folks down-under to do a study …..

I may have given Rogers a hard time about confusing pricing earlier, but they hardly deserve all of the blame. Bell didn’t want to let me go in to the weekend disappointed, so they delivered a treat right to my mailbox after lunch. This isn’t wireless, but you know where they got their inspiration from.

While you were still getting used to your 80GB bandwidth cap, Bell has a special treat on your Home DSL connection.

Lets have a look!

$73.95 per month for Cable TV, Home Phone AND Basic Internet. Not bad is it?

Lets take a look at the fine print. There is a lot of it, so how bad can it be?

Oh no! Got me! 2GB per month. How much will extra GB cost? They won’t say, just “extra”

So there you have it. Bell is introducing 2GB usages caps on Home Internet, and you pay-per-use after that. This isn’t 3G, or EVDO,. no. This is DSL.

So, for a special WirelessNorth prize, lets have an essay contest. What would you do with your 2GB of internet per month? Check your email? Perhaps online banking a couple times a week? Most creative response gets a prize. (must be picked up in Toronto, no 3-year contracts required. Promise)

I made the trek out to the Rogers Headquarters this morning to cover the launch of the Nokia N95. I was sent in place of Tom because he is gone to sail a boat around the Carribean. Tough life.

I had secretly hoped that Rogers would unveil some sort of new pricing scheme, something that would be a preview of the monthly pricing for the upcoming iPhone. No such luck.

The N95, which was first released in March of 2007 (just over a year ago), is a fine phone. Everyone I know who has had one in the past year has loved it. In typical Nokia style, it is very hacker friendly as it runs Symbian, and you can install everything from games to your own webserver on it.

It is no secert: The N95 is a killer phone that looks great and we all wish we could have. It easily rivals the iPhone in everything except popularity, although the 10 million N-Series phones Nokia sold last quarter isn’t so bad.

When the phone is available next week, it will come with a 3-year contract as a bonus when you buy a 20$ a month add-on pack on top of any voice plan you want. Under the typical Vision plans you can get Video Streaming, Audio Streaming and a slew of other Vision features. The executives I spoke to weren’t terribly clear about how the plan would stack, but this is what I was able to gather.

1. Pick any voice plan
2. Add on a 20$ a month pack that includes
   • Unlimited Email (restricted to Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc,. no POP)
   • 2500 SMS Messages
   • “A couple hundred MMSs”
   • Unlimited Web Browsing
   • Free 3-year contract
3. If you want to use GPS, you can either pay for Rogers Telenav product or you can use Nokia Maps, but data is pay-per-use for the non-Rogers application. The executive I spoke to quoted that the pay-per-use data would be at 1.5c/kb.
4. On a 3-year contract, most of the Vision features get included.
5. If you don’t want the 20$ addon pack mentioned above, you can just get the 7$/month unlimited web-browsing addon.
6. The phone will be priced at $399 on a 3-year contract

So, it didn’t happen. I didn’t get my revolution in pricing. They didn’t say “60$ a month for 1000 minutes and unlimited data usage on the device”, instead I was left more confused than ever. This application is pay-per-use, but this one is a flat fee. Application X is free, but you pay for its Data. Unlimited Email is included, but you can only use specific providers.

The list goes on. You are all used to it, we all think it is normal. I, however, have been helping my mother shop for a phone the last few weeks, and I can tell you that most people still can’t navigate these options.

By simplifying plan pricing, Rogers, Bell or Telus could make it much easier for people to buy new devices and, most likely, start using more and more services. As it is, pricing is still very unclear and has not improved in years. I am not complaining about actual data rates here, I am complaining about the daunting pricing structures.

The question is: Has Rogers twisted Apple’s arm and will they offer similarily confusing options for the iPhone? Will the Canadian iPhone come with Exchange support, undercutting the lucrative corporate email market that Rogers, Telus and Bell all specifically protect (by limited what email accounts you can get email from on cheaper plans), and will all applications fall in a single, large (or unlimited) data bucket the way pricing has been set for the iPhone all over the world, or will billing be segmented by Application. Will rogers try to put iPhone users on to their Telenav product, and charge per-use for the iPhone’s built in maps application?

The answer should be an obvious “No”. Of course Apple will demand a similar pricing scheme for the iPhone in Canada as they have negotiated in other countries. I hope that is the case, but if so, it really seems odd that Nokia is getting such a bad deal, so close to the launch of the iPhone.

My guess is that this discombobulated pricing is the result of internal politics. The Vision plans seem to come from a different group than other applications and options, and I imagine the same could be said for Blackberry and other Smartphone plans. Consolidated and clearer pricing may require not just a new vision for Rogers, but serious organzational changes.

As reported here and elsewhere, Rogers released strong Q1 earnings on Tuesday, which were largely overshadowed by the announcement of the upcoming launch of the iPhone in Canada. A few impressions after listening through the conference call (audio | transcript) and reading the news release:

Bullish on mobile broadband, but voice may stagnate.

Data revenues are up a blistering 47% from last year, but Rogers concedes that the current growth rate in voice ARPU – currently hovering between 3 and 4 percent – will be difficult to maintain in coming years.

Retention spending down.

After successfully migrating its customers away from older TDMA handsets and having weathered the introduction of local number portability without too much churn, it looks like Rogers is scaling back on the inducements and focusing on the bottom line.

W(h)ither Inukshuk?

The pre-WiMax network, jointly developed by Bell and Rogers, announced the expansion of its coverage area, now to 152 cities. But Rogers’ investment in the network fell 80%, from $5M in Q1-2007 to $1M this year. Meanwhile, LTE (aka 3.5G) HSPA now covers around 60% of the Canadian population, with 7.2 Mbps mobile broadband speeds available in the 25 largest cities in Canada, executives said during the conference call. While the company’s “overarching bet” is on the HSPA flavour of mobile broadband (followed by LTE deployment), executives said they saw a strategic advantage to having a presence in the pre-WiMax market segment, even if that segment has a “smaller future”.

No worries about Bell and/or Telus rolling out a competing GSM network.

Call it the rumour that refuses to go away, but the arrival of the iPhone could tip the balance for Bell and Telus, who have long been rumoured to be mulling the addition of an HSDPA overlay onto their CDMA/EVDO networks, if not an outright conversion to GSM/HSPA, as recently happened in Australia. The conversion would make all the more sense for Bell since, as telecommunications provider to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, it would find itself in the embarrassing position of seeing the lion’s share of the roaming revenue from the event flow to its rival.

Next up: Telus reports earnings on May 8.

(Disclosure: the author does not own any Rogers securities or funds that hold them)

OZ and Wellington Financial announced today that they closed a 10M venture financing round for the mobile company. OZ is a 5 year old mobile “consumer messaging” company headquartered in Montreal

OZ builds cross-device client applications for mobiles that allow operators and device makers to package up popular messaging and social services (like IM, flickr, myspace) through a slick app that runs natively on the a variety of devices.

That OZ were able to raise 10M in debt financing speaks to traction the company has been earning with their industry partners and to the confidence of Wellington in their future revenue streams. That 10M and the fact the fact that are able to create such value as essentialy a middle-ware services also speaks to the capital intensive nature and ongoing challenge of translating any kind of online experience across the heavily fragmented world of devices.

It seems to us that a number Canadian successful stories in mobile, like OZ, are often are not widely recognized. Canadian mobile entrepreneurs have a tendency to be B2B stories, quietly making money selling through or to the traditional carrier value chain. Not many Canadian mobile consumer brands come to mind. Even RIM who everybody knows does sell only through carrier partners.

Very recently however, the possibility of a real Canadian mobile content market is starting to emerge with new entrants, more open smart(er) phones and data rates beginning to approach sanity. WirelessNorth.ca is interested to see if the balance in strategy shifts. Will the likes of OZ, or Viigo, and/or the next wave of mobile entrepreneurs continue to focus on making or powering the carrier deck. Or will they step in to the limelight in their own right?