Dashwire

The emerging trend from software companies focused on open mobile operating systems is to capture network value from the phone address book, with cloud offerings accessible from the PC web and mobile phone. The address book on the phone has traditionally been a place to input and access contacts and phone numbers for dialing while on the go. It wasn’t a destination, but a useful resource that once accessed, would allow a user to launch a communication channel. With the growth of social networks, it was realized that the mobile phone address book was perhaps more accurately described as a user’s real social network, and there was huge opportunity to monetize that if you could build out the largest mobile social graph. 

Windows Live gets credit for being one of the first in the market to integrate presence and link to photos from within the native address book application on a mobile phone, but Jaiku was the first to make popular. The Jaiku experience brought in presence and required a user to access from a separate, connected address book application on the phone.  Many people believe the Jaiku acquisition by Google was to get its own version of Twitter for a fraction of the cost, but I wouldn’t dismiss the power of the mobile network address book  and how Google could leverage as it looks to further enhance Android and its cloud services in v2 and v3. Even Jaiku founder, Jyri Engeström, may be signaling that is the case. 

ZYB, a company purchased by Vodafone in May of 2008 for approximately $50M USD, has been focused on building out a network address book accessible from the PC web and mobile phone client based on mapping contact relationships from a phone. 

With the iPhone, it’s amazing to look at how the Facebook and Yahoo OneConnect applications can actually replace the native address book on the phone, while leveraging the network they have built online for users. Instead of simply finding a phone number and address within the contact card, you can see status, recent photos, and access all native communication function directly from within these cloud-based address books, or mobile social networks. 

The Android operating system from Google is perhaps the most obvious signal from any of the giant software companies that they want a relationship with the consumer on the phone and online through cloud services on the PC web. The initial setup of the T-Mobile G1 requires a user to input a Google username and password to sync with Google contacts, calendar and gmail. Once that point is crossed, the customer relationship is with Google, not the operator, and what was commonly referred to in the 1990s with the rise of the internet vis-a-vis brick-and-mortar, as “disintermediation” is now being applied to the mobile industry with the rise of open operating systems. 

There is no doubt that Google, Microsoft, and Apple recognize the strategic importance of disintermediation value that connected services offer, particularly around  the mobile phone address book and PC online services that can be built around it, but in the traditional mobile phone industry, surprisingly there are only three companies who have publicly indicated they are serious about this market. The first is Vodafone with the acquisition of ZYB. The second is Nokia, with its OVI services. Two weeks ago at Nokia World, Niklas Savander, the day 2 keynote speaker said that Nokia had the opportunity to build the world’s largest social graph based on the volume of phones (about 450M annually) and average of 100 contacts per phone. The third is RIM, who is talking a seemingly opposite approach to help the operators reduce its exposure to disintermediation. 

As the Economist noted last week in an article on Nokia’s OVI strategy, the connected services market is finally taking off. Companies without a strategy will be left unable to differentiate their phones & networks, suffer the challenges of disintermediation, and surrender the billions in revenue that this market will create as software innovators like Dashwire power the new generation of connected consumer, social and business services across open mobile operating systems.