Once upon a time, the fall CTIA event was called “CTIA Wireless IT & Internet” in the days that wireless data meant pretty much just public safety, field service, transportation and some other sporadic enterprise uses.  With the launch of consumer data services in the early 2000’s, CTIA sought to capitalize and changed the show to “CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment,” which is where it stands today.  Over the past several years, consumer data services such as mobile content and multimedia have been the focus of the show, but last week’s CTIA in San Diego may signal a return to its legacy of enterprise mobility.  A modest show floor displayed much less of the flash of mobile entertainment and allowed some humbler corners focused on mobile healthcare and M2M to stand out.  Of course, it probably helped that the event was held in the backyard of Qualcomm, a company that has been aggressively backing both the mobile healthcare and M2M sectors.

This trend, if it continues, signals a new direction for the CTIA, the tradeshow, and perhaps the industry itself: the realization that the mobility revolution will not occur only within the confines of traditional wireless carrier services and business models, but by spreading wireless innovation into new industries and completely new business models.  Healthcare is showing vital signs of being a potential new frontier for wireless, and it was evident with the mix of both small, innovative start-ups showing their wares, and larger market players talking about the sector (Qualcomm, Verizon Wireless) enough to give it legitimacy.  M2M continues to be a hot topic amongst vendors and service providers: Verizon Wireless’ Open Development Initiative and joint venture with Qualcomm (nPhase) is just one example of how large players are finally getting behind the market. 

As for the show itself, CTIA indicated roughly 15,000 attendees which was in line with last year’s fall showing.  The event has suffered from an identity crisis in the past few years, with the larger spring show stealing much of the multi-media and entertainment focus away as those services become more mainstream for carriers.  It would be beneficial for CTIA and the industry if the fall event continues down the path of exploring the new avenues for wireless technology.  This could include an increased focus on different vertical markets, perhaps next year expanding more forcefully into areas such as Utilities (think SmartGrid), Education, and Automotive/Transportation.  As a longtime analyst covering enterprise mobility, its encouraging to see the “IT” part of the show coming back into relevance.  Let’s hope the trend continues into next year, and CTIA keeps up the push to expand what wireless and mobility means across multiple sectors of the economy.

Day 1 of CTIA Wireless has passed here in Las Vegas, and dawn breaks on Day 2 for the groggy-headed masses. While attendance has been slightly subdued by the economic recession, the tenor arising from keynote statements, press releases and meetings suggests that the outlook for the industry remains enthusiastic overall.

It’s true that the foot-traffic on the show floor appears lighter, but yours truly is just coming up for air after a long day of back-to-back meetings, dinners and assorted evening festivities. Some highlights observed from Day 1:

- Apps everywhere. RIM used day 1 as a platform to officially launch its application store, Blackberry App World. The app store launches with around 500 applications, and it will be interesting to see how quickly RIM can ramp up to compete on a similar scale as Apple. Verizon Wireless announced that it will participate in the Joint Innovation Lab created by China Mobile, Softbank and Vodafone to promote the development of–you guessed it–mobile applications. And just this morning, AT&T announced its “Apps Beta” program in which developers can post applications in beta form for users to test and provide feedback prior to full-scale launch. Getting a feeling there’s an “apps” fetish taking hold among the industry?

- Resurrections. Even without a booth on the show floor or an official launch date, Palm continues to generate buzz with the awaited Pre. The device was on display in carefully controlled and orchestrated demos in an invite-only Sprint VIP lounge. This was the first time I had the opportunity to view the device in person, and the up-close-and-personal demo left me with the impression that it will live up to all the hype. Palm needed a home run with this device–it may get a grand slam. Speaking of Sprint, they are going to put all their weight behind the Palm Pre launch. They need this success as much as Palm. And finally, from the resurrection theme, we have Good Technology. Just a few short weeks after their acquisition by Visto, Good was out doing briefings at CTIA. An impressive feat in and of itself. More impressive is that Visto feels enough confidence in Good’s reputation and technology that they are rebranding the company and all related products with the Good brand and logo. This makes it crystal clear that the Good acquisition was not just an IPR play for Visto, but a strategic move designed to re-ignite its charge on the mobile messaging market. Good for Good.

- And finally, a splash for Skype. At a show with no real huge announcements, Skype has gotten perhaps the most attention for its development of a client for iPhone. Skype has always been a disruptor, and this announcement certainly isn’t an exception. This begins to raise the question of how much control operators can exert over device partners, and specifically the applications developed, launched and sold via their application stores. Regarding applications: be careful what you wish for.

Back to the show…

For those of you Elsewhere (not to be confused with YG’s mantra of Anywhere), the Boston area was hit overnight by a March (in like a Lion) Nor’easter, dumping 8+ inches, with the heaviest stuff coinciding with the morning rush. Canton Public Schools informed us last night that my daughter would have a snow day, ensuring that at least one parent would be working from home.

Being an enterprise mobility guy myself, and of course always having my analyst hat on, this got me thinking about how mobile technologies have allowed enterprises to become Anywhere and claw back some previously unproductive time from Mother Nature. I’m sure many executives and HR departments had to make the decision this morning: are we open or closed? Do we tell workers to come in, stay home, or use their own judgment? This probably occurs far less than say 10 years ago, because of the increasing flexibility of knowledge workers to work from any location. Home broadband, Wifi, 3G, VPNs, IM, mobile email, VoIP, all allow us to create a semblance of the office in our homes, if we ourselves, or our companies, have invested in these various technologies.  Technology itself cannot prevent people from goofing off, but at least the tools are available.

As for Yankee Group, no email or voice mail went out. It was business as usual and employees were left to make their own decisions. But, of course, being so forward looking, YG is more Anywhere than others. Conference calls and meetings went on as planned, with some hearty souls making it into less crowded conference rooms and others perhaps dialing in comfy from their dens with a cup of hot cocoa (and in their PJs?).  As for me, I emailed my boss this morning to tell him I’d be working at home; not because I fall into the non-hearty category, believe me, but a midday doctor appointment threw another variable into the mix (I composed most of this on my BlackBerry from the waiting room, FYI). My boss probably could have cared less since he was in Paris at an event, a fact I had forgotten until I saw his status update on Facebook (consumerization is a topic for another blog post).

Snow days are certainly another thing for businesses to consider when thinking about the Anywhere worker and the tools and technologies to support them. Can we measure the productivity benefits of snow day working? I’m sure a talented analyst could use some historical weather data to build a complex model and provide us with some answers. And the Old Farmers Almanac might be a good source to build a forecast. But beyond snow days, this got me thinking about business continuity. Surely New Englanders can handle a heap of snow (we can, can’t we?). But what about more serious events that threaten business continuity – natural disasters, 9/11-like terrorist events. After Sept 11, there was a tremendous amount of discussion about business continuity. Are there plans in place?

So for those warming up to the fire after shoveling out or just watching (and perhaps enjoying) our misery on the Weather Channel from a warmer and drier place, its time to start pulling together those Anywhere plans. That means mobile and remote working technologies, a primer which can be found in our May 2008 Report, Enterprise Guide to the Strategic Mobile Knowledge Worker. Now that it’s after 5pm it’s ok to go out and make a snowman. 

Today’s announcement by Visto to acquire Good Technology is the latest sad chapter for both Good and Motorola, which acquired the mobile email provider just two years ago for over $400 million.  For Motorola  it represents another failed attempt at integrating a potentially complementary technology to re-invent its ailing handset business.  For Good Technology, its analgous to the baseball slugger who showed early promise, only to fade into obscurity after it was traded to a bigger and better team.  At this point, the parting of ways is best for both sides.  And while terms were undisclosed, it’s likely a cheap(er) acquisition for Visto, that surprisingly scrappy survivor in the wireless email market.

For those of you who haven’t followed the mobile email market as painfully closely as I have for the past 8+ years, Good Technology was once a legitimate threat to RIM Blackberry in enterprise email.  The company was the first real behind-the-firewall wireless email server option for companies looking to deploy mobile email to devices other than Blackberries.  Good hitched its wagon (perhaps too closely) to Handspring’s, and then Palm’s Treo, which if we can all remember back a few years, was the first “It” device for integrated voice and data.  With the rise of Windows Mobile OS and Active Sync, and the faltering of Palm to evolve Treo, Good’s value proposition began to rapidly fade, along with its fortunes. 

But Good’s wireless email platform was still sound, and with Motorola sensing competitors such as RIM targeting the consumer market with lower-end integrated devices (e.g. the Blackberry Pearl) that came ready with consumer email a few easy set-up clicks away, the Motorola-Good marriage appeared to make some sense.  In fact, it could have worked: Good Technology first found itself positioned within Moto’s mobile handset group. The natural synergy would have had Motorola embed a Good mobile email client on every handset that shipped, allowing the company to leverage the Good NOC to deliver consumer email to compete with RIM.  But timing was bad, as Motorola’s sales slipped drastically after the success of Razor, and Good was shifted into Motorola’s Enterprise group. There, in theory, the enterprise email platform could be sold as a software option for Motorola’s (and the former Symbol) ruggedized devices.  It wasn’t a strong fit, however, as the value-proposition for mobile email wasn’t nearly as compelling among the vertical segments and mobile worker categories for which Moto’s enterprise devices were designed.  A late re-positioning of the Good technology assets as a mobile security and device management platform never had a chance to flourish before today’s sale to Visto.

And Visto?  So far the company has fallen far short of its vision to create a mass-market white-label email solution for both consumers and businesses.  However, Visto has been a survivor, largely through aggressive technology acquisitions and patent litigation.  Winding the way-back machine to look at a wireless email report I wrote in February 2003, it’s interesting to see the companies listed: Visto, ViAir, SEVEN, RIM, Wireless Knowledge, JP Mobile, Synchrologic, Pumatech.  Heard of any of these? Synchrologic and Pumatech became Intellisync (now Nokia), and the rest with the exception of RIM and SEVEN are dead or acquired.   Visto has used its capital to continuously acquire mobile email technology assets, and more importantly, patents, which it continues to aggressively defend.  The question of course, is whether Visto will eventually succeed as a mobile email software company or as an IP shop. 

The sale of Good was no surprise given Motorola’s financial position. The acquisition is good for Visto, and good/bad for Moto. And maybe bad for IBM: in this May 2008 research note I recommended that a Good Technology acquisition could be a solid fit for them.  But it appears IBM has missed another chance at a cheap acquisition to bolster its mobile email positioning for its Lotus suite.

It’s officially Day One here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and it’s hard to describe a “trend” to the event this early in the show.  This is my third time attending the event, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that enterprise mobility related announcements are generally few and far between at MWC.  No matter, the event is an important bellweather for the wireless industry and the consumerization of the enterprise means whatever is promoted and discussed at MWC will ultimately have an impact on the Anywhere Enterprise.

Among Nokia’s new device announcements early in the event were two “E-Series” devices, designed to enhance Nokia’s device category focused on business and mobile professional user needs.  Nokia was a late challenger to Blackberry in the business-class smartphone category. It’s E-Series (“E” for Enterprise) was lacking from the start in what RIM figured out what was indeed relevant in the enterprise device category: the cool factor.  In 2008 Nokia re-focused its business mobility strategy away from an end-to-end play to focusing on what it does best: making better, hipper, smaller, user-friendly devices.  Nokia’s business mobility strategy is now summed up nicely in three parts:

1. Create a winning device portfolio
2. Establish solution partnerships (with key enterprise players such as Microsoft and IBM)
3. Build the operator go-to-market channel

It appears that the focus is working, since the new E-55 and E-75 devices announced today clearly fall into category number 1.  Shaking the legacy of large, bulky QWERTY devices that began with the E61 and the brick-like Nokia Communicators, these two devices provide QWERTY access for business users in slim, lightweight form-factors.  The E-55 presents its QWERTY in a Blackberry Pearl-esque two-letters per button scheme.  The E-75 might be the real winner, though.  It resurrects the old flip open Nokia Communicator concept with a much more pocket friendly slider form factor which hides the full QWERTY below a normal candybar face.  Both devices pack the business-user requirements that Nokia consistently delivers in E-Series: Wifi, GPS, long battery life, and messaging/email compatibility with MSFT’s Active Sync and IBM’s Lotus Traveler. And both also add all of the Nokia consumer-friendly features, such as Ovi capability, etc (can you say Consumerization, again?).

Will these devices vault Nokia to the top of the enterprise mobility pyramid?  Not likely, as Blackberry and Windows Mobile still have plenty of legs.  However, the Finns can sell devices: Nokia reported 10 million E-Series devices sold in 2008.  If Nokia continues that pace, they will be a serious factor in business mobility.  The new additions to the E-Series protfolio shows that the new business mobility strategy has helped Nokia focus on what it does best.  And as we’ve seen from many examples in the past, form-factor and cool matter, even with them stodgy old business users.