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T-Mobile Hits All Bases with Multiple Widget Stores
| Feb 19, 2009 | Wireless Services - Europe | Show Update
| Analyst: Emma Mohr-McClune
Current Perspective: Neutral
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Moderate |
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Event Summary
February 17, 2009 -- T-Mobile announced the new release of web’n’walk, featuring active widgets. The T-Mobile Widget Gallery, featuring over 100 widgets, will be made available from the web’n’walk landing page from Spring, with launches planned across Austria, Germany, Netherlands and the UK. This will be initially available with smartphone touch-screens, e.g., the MDA Compact IV and MDA Vario IV. T-Mobile has also partnered with Nokia for an early May launch of the generic Ovi Store, and a later integrated marketplace launch during the second half of 2009. The integrated storefront offering will be supported on Series 40 feature phones initially.
Analytical Summary
• Current Perspective: Neutral on T-Mobile’s widget store announcements at MWC this year. As much as T-Mobile now provides the broadest widget store choice, the story for its own T-Mobile Widget Gallery has not improved greatly, and is still weak. In terms of partnership-building, competitors are on the same track; T-Mobile will struggle to retain any kind of USP in this regard.
• Vendor Importance: High to T-Mobile, as widgets, applications and widget storefronts will play a key role in the operator’s mobile Internet strategy this year; a strategy which is increasingly dominated by partnerships with OTTs (Google and Yahoo!) and ‘new players’ such as Nokia. T-Mobile is seeking to position itself as the operator with the best choice of widget storefronts, including the Apple App store, the Android Market and the Ovi Store across key markets, as well as its own Widget Gallery on web’n’walk.
• Market Impact: Moderate on the European mobile media market, as this event merely confirms the evolution of a strategy which T-Mobile laid out some time ago, so no surprises there. The background MWC show emphasis on storefronts underlines the market’s trend towards mobile content self-provision; on-device widgets and applications will eclipse operator-branded mobile portals in 2009.
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