Opera: Mini leads cross-platform charge

Norwegian browser maker Opera Software says it wants to be platform agnostic and enable all devices to communicate with one another.
"Opera started off as a PC browser developer but we [later] decided to move our browser core to other devices as well," James Wei, Opera's Asia-Pacific president, said Monday during a meeting with local media. "Opera wants to be platform independent."
The company, he said, has since extended the reach of its browser to devices such as mobile phones, games devices, in-flight entertainment systems and television.
According to Wei, the mobile platform is leading the way, where over 35.6 million people used Opera Mini in September 2009, up 11.5 percent from the previous month and 150 percent the year before.
Asked whether Opera will be focusing mainly on the mobile platform, he said the browser was built for desktops, too.
"Opera was not a latecomer to the browser scene but Internet Explorer (IE) became more popular due to Microsoft Windows," he added, noting that Microsoft ships its Web browser together with their Windows operating system.
"We've always been fighting with Microsoft [regarding the browser-OS bundle], but the good news [is that] people in Europe now get to choose which [PC] browser they want," said Wei.
The European Commission concluded in January that Microsoft was violating antitrust laws by not including other browsers along with Windows operating systems. In the next five years, PC users in Europe running IE as their default browser will receive a ballot screen that allows them to download and install other browsers.
Opera's communications manager Peko Wong also noted that Opera's market share in countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, "exceeds Microsoft's IE". She explained that most users in these markets have slow network connection and are on dial-up connection. For them, Opera presents an easier download because the browser is supported by Opera Turbo, a compression engine that compresses data to speed up data transfer and reduce the amount of data that needs to be downloaded, Wong said.
Executives here also reiterated the company's vision of the next Internet wave, Web 3.0, where "devices can start talking to each other". Key to its plans is a new browser-based collaboration service and platform the company calls, Opera Unite, which that turns the device into a Web server. This, the company said, will enable users to access and share files and data, including images and music, without the need for "third-party servers"

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Freescale aims Android at embedded kit

Freescale Semiconductor has begun taking orders for a Power Architecture development platform for Android-based products, opening a new category of embedded devices to Google's open-source mobile operating system.
Freescale's MPC8536-ADK product combines the company's MPC8536E PowerQUICC III processor with a Power Architecture implementation of the Android OS developed by Mentor Graphics, Freescale said on Tuesday.
The port was begun by Linux development firm Embedded Alley, which was acquired by Mentor in July. Power Architecture is a broad term describing similar Risc architectures used in chips from IBM, Freescale, Tundra and others, overseen by the Power.org governing body.
According to Freescale, the port means Android can be used to run new types of embedded devices. The MPC8536E PowerQUICC III is an embedded chip aimed at the industrial, networking, storage and media equipment markets.
Possible products that can be addressed by the new development platform include multifunction printers, industrial equipment and touchscreen interfaces for system controls, the company said.

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S'pore workers job-hunting, IT professionals in high demand

Despite the depressed market conditions and increased unemployment rates in Singapore, IT talent is still hard to come by, according to an employment trends survey by human resource (HR) and recruitment firm, Randstad.
This comes as Singapore's Ministry of Manpower's (MoM) latest preliminary statistics show unemployment rose to 3.4 percent in the third quarter of 2009.
According to the Randstad survey, more than half, or 55 percent, of employers believe that there is still a shortage of talent available to them in their industries.
Karin Clarke, Randstad's regional director, said focusing on the unemployment rate "can be misleading".
"While the overall unemployment rate may be near a four-year high, some sectors continue to find it tough to find talent, with employers in IT and financial services, in particular, looking to hire and finding it hard to secure the people they want," Clarke said in a statement.
However, the MoM report also showed that the number of people getting employed increased by 15,400, with significant increases in the services and construction industries. Commenting on the report, Clarke said these figures suggest that many Singaporeans who wanted to change their jobs over the last year "opted for job security and held back".
But with dissatisfaction at their workplace and "positive indicators pointing toward a gradual recovery" as push factors, employers might find it difficult to retain workers.
"As the recovery gathers pace, [employers] will need to focus on ensuring staff are happy, motivated and receiving competitive remuneration and benefits, to prevent them looking for new jobs," said Clarke.

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Smaller APAC telcos innovate to compete

Tier two and three mobile operators in the Asia-Pacific region are banking on innovative services to grow their subscriber base, according to an industry player, who says Singapore operators can do more in this respect.
Tan Choon Seng, Asia-Pacific vice president of sales and co-head at Convergys Singapore, told ZDNet Asia in an interview smaller telcos in the region have been quicker to implement new customer services to stay competitive.
Referring to Indonesia's PT Hutchison as an example, Tan said the operator has demonstrated agility in offering subscribers different services compared to competitors. For example, it offers loyalty schemes to new customers "before they even [activate] their SIM cards". The objective is to upgrade customers in pre-paid segments into longer term subscribers, he said. Convergys is an operations support systems/business support systems (OSS/BSS) provider.
As a result of such efforts, Hutchison's subscriber base jumped from 200 to 7 million within two years after the Indonesian arm of Hutchison Telecom was set up, he said. "Smaller operators need to act and think differently," Tan said.
Singapore's operators, on the other hand, as players in a saturated developed market, are not driven by such aggressive growth aspirations, he said, but noted the need for these companies to still consider new services to offer.
"Operators here can do a better job" of implementing more innovative tools, such as consolidated billing, he added. While such features may "seem minor", they offer a way to differentiate from the competition and the impact on the operator's business is cumulative, Tan said.
Jean-Herve Jenn, executive vice president of client development at Convergys, added that service staples such as product catalogs, still require a refresh to keep up with new trends. Triple-play operators, in particular, need the ability to offer more "sophisticated bundles", compared to operators offering "single products", he said.
Operators can also find new ways to slice up the market and provide more targeted offers, said Jenn. The "rudimentary" segmentation of enterprise and consumer customer bases could be further partitioned by age, he said. This, for instance, will allow service providers to push specific bundles to elderly consumers requiring home-surveillance products, creating more market opportunity, he added.
For Convergys, today, the market potential is in the migration from voice to data revenues, said Jenn. Operators looking to ride the data wave are seeking new data billing modules to augment their backend systems, he said.
ARPU balancing act
But, for operators, it is not simply a matter of tacking new services. Telcos face the dilemma of wanting to stay ahead of the game while predicting what users want, said Robert Lento, Convergys' president of information management.
The telco industry is one where it is "difficult to see a clear path forward", Lento said, adding that operators have to invest in introducing new value-added services "because you assume the competition will", while at the same time, hope the investment will pay off.
He said a new bundled service may lower average revenue per user (ARPU), but serve to attract more subscribers overall. Carriers have to see if the drop in ARPU can be justified by the growth in subscribers--a task more daunting in saturated markets that have little room to grow, he explained. He noted that operators in mature markets are typically more cautious, compared to their peers in emerging markets.
"The profitability of a carrier in the United States may not be any greater than the profitability of a carrier in Indonesia. They just find different ways to do business," he said.

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