Unfiltered

Throughout 2009, consumers were talking (or Tweeting) the most about:

•  Location-based mobile services/apps
•  Facebook tops 300 million users, even Friendster comes back from the dead – social network still a fad?

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In 2009, these trends stole all the headlines:

•  Cloud and virtualization coming to operator networks – stage 2.1 of the IP revolution
•  DPI and policy intelligence added to the network – stage 2.2 of the IP revolution
•  LTE emerging rapidly, along with converged packet core – stage 2.3 of the IP revolution

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Revenue was harder to come by in 2009, but these business models put a new spin on making money:

•  Charging competitors for preferred access to the network – CDNs, wholesaling of network APIs, quality of service guarantees for over-the-top players
•  Whoever successfully moves Google’s Ad Words ad engine (Google itself; someone new) into the world of mobile advertising
•  Taking advantage of billions of M2M devices plus the possibility of driving mobile penetration among consumers from 80% to 400% (every customer has multiple wireless devices)

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In 2009, everyone but the companies in question (okay, mainly Google and Apple) were talking about:

•  Google buys Sprint.
•  Cisco and/or Google acquiring everybody – both are back on acquisition trail, they say

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These technologies might be as old as the name Telephony, but they just needed a new twist to make it big (Connected Planet, anyone?):

•  Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM), boosting the speed of ol’ DSL
•  SONET as timing-enabling transport for IP/Ethernet
•  The decades-old concept of AIN – Advanced Intelligent Network – actually deployed on today’s IP networks

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These companies, which burst on to the scene in 2009, could steal the scene in 2010:

•  Best Buy – The big-box retailer is making its presence in the wireless world known. It has the potential to give wireless operators a run for their money.
•  Move Networks
•  Root Wireless

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When these products came on the market, everything changed:

•  Google’s turn-by-turn navigation app for Android
•  Google’s Goggles, mobile visual search
•  Swype – It is just now being shipped on the Samsung Omnia II, but it’s definitely the most innovative text input since T9 and touchscreens.

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