Microsoft just made a really interesting announcement about a new mobile technology / service called OneApp. OneApp comes from Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential (UP) group which looks at the needs of the billions of people who aren’t at the top of the social pyramid earning lots of money in mature markets.
OneApp is both a platform and a service. It’s a small-footprint resident Java ME application that can run on mid range and low end handsets. Architecturally the system uses a mixture of resident code and cloud services, and is optimised for low data rate connections such as GPRS. The initial launch will be in conjunction with a South African operator and will include services such as IM, games, dating, adverts, news, microblogging, social networking and a mobile wallet. Developer SDKs are promised by year-end allowing third parties to extend the service portfolio.
In my view this is a smart move. Up to now Microsoft’s mobile efforts have been focussed on the tiny population of privileged people with smartphones, but this opens up a channel to billions more subscribers. Emerging markets are, in their way, as important as mature markets. If you can get $1 a month from a billion users it’s a good business. OneApp is starting in a small way in a single country, but it’s a foundation that could be replicated in many other regions. It could also serve as a platform for Microsoft to deliver a wide range of new mobile services such as m-payment or mobile search using Bing. OneApp is also a solution that lets Microsoft compete with Nokia’s emerging markets initiative Life Tools. This looks like the first step in a more ambitious strategy, because there’s lots of work still to do. OneApp needs more services, an active third party developer ecosystem, deployment in more regions, localisation into many languages and so on.
If the UP group’s OneApp gets Microsoft into the pockets of hundreds of millions of individuals it will be far more influential than anything the Windows Mobile team ever did.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Jeff Mowatt // Aug 25, 2009 at 5:08 am
This seems to be congruent with the Creative Capitalism principles that Bill Gates outlined at Davos in 2008. This is something we wrote back then, on the concept of business directed toward people that traditional capitalism would not reach.
http://www.p-ced.com/info/se/
2 OneApp - Microsoft services for emerging markets | dating-service // Aug 25, 2009 at 6:19 am
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3 Ray Valdes // Aug 25, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Good info and analysis, Nick.
One App is an interesting idea. It appears Microsoft has extended the architectural approach used in other contexts by Citrix, Opera Mini and the Bitstream Thunderhawk browser (and going further back to Xwindows). All of these represent a distributed approach to graphical applications, with an approach that combines server-side processing of application logic and partial rendering of presentation on service, which is complemented by client-side rendering of the display-list (and capturing user interaction). What gets sent over the wire is a compressed representation of the screen which can be processed by a small-footprint client. In Microsoft’s case this is based on a J2ME client (I wonder how the UP group was able to negotiate the internal politics for that decision). Bitstream Thunderhawk has both a J2ME client as well as a Symbian S60 native client.
One point of difference from earlier approaches is that Microsoft will open up the server-side processing to developers, in addition to delivering an initial application portfolio for jump-starting the user experience.
This distributed rendering is a good idea for resource-constrained devices, especially those with limited connectivity. This is a departure from Microsoft’s usual approach, and I agree it could have more impact than anything it does with Windows Mobile. Other platform and system vendors could do what Microsoft is doing, but would not have equivalent brand and developer resources to execute. More recently, Opera has moved in a peer-to-peer direction with Opera Unite, and could perhaps shift to server-side approach as well.
4 Microsoft targets low-spec handsets - MOBILE.BLORGE // Aug 26, 2009 at 2:56 pm
[...] a credible business model in OneApp, some analysts appear to be over-hyping the idea. Nick Jones of Gartner notes that “If you can get $1 a month from a billion users it’s a good business.” Hopefully [...]
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