Irish call on global clients

Mobile companies at the 3GSM technology event in Barcelona will showcase their expertise and innovative services to crack the international market, writes John Collins.

Later this month, 18 Irish companies will exhibit under the Enterprise Ireland banner at the world's largest event for the mobile telecommunications industry - the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. It's further evidence of the expertise that this State has built up in the wireless sector with a healthy mix of indigenous companies selling to major operators and service providers around the globe.

Of course, the long shadow of pioneering Irish company Aldiscon hangs over the current crop of companies. In the late 1980s the company spotted the potential of the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard for mobile phones and produced one of the first products that enabled GSM operators to offer a basic texting service to customers.

By the time Aldiscon was sold to Logica in 1997 for £57 million sterling, it was racking up annual sales of over IR£30 million and more than 100 operators worldwide were using its software.

Of the companies travelling to Barcelona, Accuris has the most direct lineage back to Aldiscon, with former Aldiscon chief executive Larry Quinn chairman of the board, while chief executive Aidan Dillon headed up engineering at Aldiscon.

But executives at many of the other 17 companies, including Anam chief executive Gerry McKenna, Cibenix vice-president of product management Andrew Robertson and Openmind Networks chief executive Alex Duncan, also cut their teeth at Aldiscon and subsequently Logica. They also picked up valuable knowledge about how the industry works and, more importantly, how operators go about buying software.

Over two days recently, all 18 companies were gathered together by Enterprise Ireland to tell their stories to a group of international media and to debate some of the issues facing them and the mobile phone industry.

The term mobile phone is a misnomer. The companies are all focused on the non-phone capabilities of the devices in our pockets such as the ability to act as payment mechanisms, mobile televisions or internet access devices.

The elephant in the corner of the room that no one likes to acknowledge is that the vast majority of mobile operators' data revenues still come from SMS text messaging rather than the slew of new services they continue to introduce. One presenting company estimated that Vodafone has 200 services, of which most subscribers are blissfully unaware.

A number of the Enterprise Ireland client companies provide software to increase usage of operators' mobile data services such as music downloads, streaming video, news services and games. Changing Worlds uses artificial intelligence technology to analyse the customer's profile held by the operator and the history of their usage to produce a personalised version of the portal that highlights the services most likely to be of interest to them.

Cibenix adopts a different approach and creates an offline portal on the subscriber's handset. "If you can't get subscribers to come to the portal, then why not bring the portal to the device," says Andrew Robertson, claiming that customers have seen increases in revenues of up to 400-500 per cent by implementing their "on-device portal".

Xiam's MPOS (mobile point of sale) software allows operators to promote mobile content and services to subscribers. Trust5 takes a cue from the "Web 2.0" movement for its MIME (mobile internet made easy) product, which provides mobile search, directory and community services that users would be familiar with from Google and MySpace.

While the Irish Software Association continues to lobby the Government to buy from Irish software companies, thus creating a local market for the indigenous industry and a useful reference for international sales, technology companies in the mobile space don't seem to have problems selling locally.

Changing Worlds brought along a representative of Vodafone Ireland, the company's first client in the mobile space. According to Vincent Ryan, executive vice-president for sales and marketing with Changing Worlds, the championing of the ClixSmart product by Vodafone Ireland led to lucrative deals with other Vodafone companies.

Many other software firms also referenced the importance of winning their first contracts with O2 Ireland or Vodafone Ireland.

Enterprise Ireland's head of software and services, Jennifer Condon, says 3GSM is the largest annual event the agency invests in and the stand on which the firms will exhibit is important to help brand Irish expertise in this area.

The State agency estimates there are 70 Irish software and service companies selling into the global telecommunications industry. Although most of those companies have been trading for less than five years, they had a combined turnover of approximately €200 million in 2005.

While all the attendees welcomed the support of Enterprise Ireland, they admitted it could be tough for young Irish companies to break into the large telcos.

Evanna Kearins, director of marketing communications with Valista, which numbers Japan's mobile internet giant NTT DoCoMo among its clients, says it requires a partner or system integrator to make the introduction.

Louis Corrigan, chief technical officer of Accuris, says if you have a "me-too product that is just trying to displace someone like Logica CMG, then it's a hard sell.

"Even if you have a good innovative product, you have to fight for it - it's not easy to get the operators' attention."

Although mobile data usage remains frustratingly low for operators, particularly given the billions they invested in winning 3G licences and building the high-speed networks, it doesn't stop them from investing even more to implement services and drive up their usage. All the predictions and feedback from the presenting companies are that mobile data services will finally take off in the next couple of years.

At 3GSM, Irish companies will use the international platform to announce significant deals with major telcos. As already reported in The Irish Times, Mobile Aware has won two significant deals with Denis O'Brien's Digicel and Saudi Telecom which will be announced in Barcelona.

While the Aldiscon effect may have helped open some doors for those deals, you can be sure that, in the highly competitive world of international mobile telecommunications, the business will have to be won on merit alone.

Further information on the Irish companies attending 3GSM can be found at www.3gsmireland.com