Unified messaging heads for consumers

BARCELONA--This is the year unified messaging goes to the consumer, but success here will require such services to be deployed on existing handsets, according to industry players at this week's Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, Spain.

The unified communications market garnered a significant amount of media attention last year, with new services launched by the likes of IBM and Cisco Systems, and more recently, BT.

Unified communication tools brings together voice, video and data communications and a multitude of applications, to allow employees to communicate more conveniently with a range of endpoint devices.

While most industry developments in recent years have centered around the enterprise space, vendors now say the technology is ready to hit consumers and mainstream adoption.

According to Rauno Toivonen, Nokia's director of product marketing for voice and enterprise solutions, mainstream adoption will take off this year and 2009.

Toivonen said in an interview: "Typically, people believe it takes about 10 years from the development of a technology before it hits mainstream on the adoption curve. That time is now for unified messaging."

He added that the main driver for consumer adoption is, ironically, the enterprise.

Enterprise demand for unified communications has already laid the infrastructure and provision of services that are easily ported over to the consumer space, he said.

In addition, business users who have grown accustomed to the experience of being perpetually connected through one contact number, are beginning to demand the same for life outside of work, said Toivonen.

"The business user is also the consumer," he said.

Urban Gillstrom, vice president of Ericsson's enterprise division, agrees. In an interview with ZDNet Asia, he said: "People are both consumers and business users."

The only difference is that service providers and operators have to realize businesses have different priorities from consumers, said Gillstrom. Enterprises are motivated by the cost savings from cutting down mobile airtime, and service providers have to concentrate on providing security measures such as firewalls.

Success in the consumer space, on the other hand, requires unified messaging to be deployed on existing handsets, including 2G ones.

Gillstrom said: "While unified communications have typically been [deployed] for smartphones, consumers demand the same presence information from a regular phone."

This is entirely feasible, said Edmond Osstyn, Alcatel-Lucent convergence business group spokesperson. Unified messsaging is "not just for broadband" because the actual messaging service is not data intensive, Osstyn explained, speaking to ZDNet Asia at the company's booth at Mobile World Congress.

"China has plenty of narrowband customers," he said, adding that deployment on 2G handsets will ensure takeup for the larger emerging markets.

However, Nokia's Toivonen said an additional factor is necessary for mainstream adoption--more palatable fixed broadband data plans from mobile operators.

He noted that more affordable flat-rate data plans will directly and positively impact customer adoption, and that it is up to mobile operators to price their plans correctly. "This may affect voice plan revenues, but customers will demand it and if smaller entry-level players offer cheaper plans, the bigger operators will have to follow suit," said Toivonen.

Alcatel-Lucent's Osstyn is more confident of operators' ability to monetize consumer unified communications. Rather than yielding value directly from generating revenue off data plans, he believes that operators can benefit from customer information and behavior.

"The model [on which] to make money from unified messaging is different. Unified messaging providers are tapping on the strength of the community" because they have an inside track to customer contacts, which are useful for generating an advertising-based model, said Osstyn.

He likens the model to those that offer users free services and then resell the customer information to advertisers.

Victoria Ho of ZDNet Asia reported from Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, Spain.