Semantic Business

Company Profile: IYOUIT

Company: IYOUIT
URL: http://www.iyouit.eu/portal/
HQ: Munich, Germany
Products (Primary): IYOUIT
Survey Respondents: Matthias Wagner
Vendor Category: R&D Project

Employees: --
Revenue: --
Installed base: --

Primary Offering:

The only reason IYOUIT isn’t a runaway global success is because it’s still a research project supported by NTT DOCOMO and the Telematica Instituut.

IYOUIT is a very deliberate effort to explore the use of Semantic Web (SW) technology in mobile environments. IYOUIT integrates a wide range of services such as GPS location, location-based points of interest, picture sharing, local weather, messaging, and more. Some of these data are user generated, while other data are generated automatically, and the application goes even further by connecting to services like Flickr and Twitter. Furthermore, the rich mobile experience is complemented by a Web site (https://www.iyouit.eu/portal/) that displays real time updates from IYOUIT users around the world.

The IYOUIT client is made to run on mobile phones that use the S60 operating system, which means just about any high end phone made by Nokia, LG, or Samsung, along with a few models made by Lenovo and Panasonic. The client is lightweight and its interaction with the network has been tuned to minimize the amount of data passed back and forth. This decision was made deliberately to reduce the impact on subscription plans that charge based on device throughput. Processing demands at the device level have been calibrated to reduce overhead while reasoning, ontology management, and processing-intensive functions occur on the network.

Launched June, 2008, IYOUIT’s user base is still small as these things go – in December, 2008 the project has roughly 1,000 users distributed across 50 countries, with most users concentrated in Europe.

Key Differentiators:

When you’re one of a kind, it’s difficult to contrast with existing products, but some fundamental (and remarkable) qualities include the fact that this application works, it’s available for download right now, it genuinely uses SW technology and it’s made for mobile devices. IYOUIT seamlessly combines the mobile experience with context based enhancements delivered by the network and users can even set “triggers” to be alerted when specified conditions are met, e.g., while you’re at your favorite coffee shop you can be alerted when one of your IYOUIT buddies arrives.

Six/Twelve Month Plans:

As a research project, IYOUIT serves as a learning environment and isn’t necessarily tied to commercial delivery schedules. Nonetheless, the team behind IYOUIT certainly has plans and one that could be discussed is the creation of a developer connection. If this effort succeeds, it’s easy to imagine the creation of more applications and in turn, growth in the user base. In fact, the IYOUIT team is counting on open participation and they’re looking forward to new discoveries.

Analysis:

IYOUIT is much more than an intriguing mobile SW application, so let’s broaden our context (fitting, isn’t it?).

• While the application is presently geared for relatively high-end phones, all those phones use the S60 operating system originally created by Nokia.
• Presently, Nokia holds about 40% of the global mobile device market and even if this figure is adjusted to reflect just the higher end of Nokia’s product line, that’s still a lot of phones.
• Samsung, LG, and others combine to increase the potential user base even further.
• Nokia has a history of SW research and development that dates back to roughly 1996 and equally, the company has a long history of participating in the open source community.
• Nokia’s recent SW research seems to focus on the creation of application development tools (http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/), which would play into the promise of IYOUIT very nicely.
• Nokia’s stated corporate strategy is based on its device business, mobile content, and network infrastructure. Offerings like IYOUIT could be a big win for NTT DOCOMO, Nokia, and just about anyone else who can get involved.
• NTT DOCOMO is based in Japan and while it’s a cliché at this point, the Asian countries are probably still well ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to developing, deploying, and using mobile technology.

Put these factors together and IYOUIT begins to look like the tip of an iceberg – one that will mean big wins for NTT DOCOMO and other global companies and likely, big wins for innovative startups that create valuable products and services for an environment that’s increasingly ready-made to receive them. Wow!

Bet On Nokia & S60, Not Google & Android

The excitement of Android's launch has died down a bit so this seems like a good time to cast Google's entry against Nokia. Sounds like an unfair contest right? After all, one is a giant in its industry, a leader in R&D and technical innovation, with a long history of support for the developer/open source community, not to mention a globally recognized brand. I'm referring to Nokia, in case you were wondering. I'm not ignoring Apple and the iPhone, but I don't get the impression they're pressing as hard to shape a play that stretches from fundamental infrastructure up to the end user experience - which I do believe has crossed the minds of people at Google & Nokia.

Both companies have money, talent, recognition, and deep commercial relationships. Nokia probably has the lead in governmental relationships due to the highly regulated nature of the telecom industry. Google's got search so solidly nailed it's scary. With Android, Google is moving onto Nokia's turf. In the meantime, Nokia's plans appear to call for an increasing emphasis on Web services and certainly mobile content, as demonstrated by its launch of Ovi and its own music store (maybe Nokia's taking a shot at Apple, after all). 

I won't dwell on the increasing sophistication of mobile devices or that they'll become a prominent means of Internet access (or even primary for some people), instead, I'll focus on the evolution we're seeing on the WWW toward the SW. Since the SW is simply an extension of the WWW, it's safe to assume that wherever the Web can be reached, the Semantic Web can be reached as well - it's all due to HTTP after all.

Here's where the respective paths of these companies begin to diverge. Google's demonstrated its schizophrenic approach to the SW pretty clearly, as I explored in this post. It seems they're quietly exploring the fringes of the SW, but they're probably expending just as much effort in denying the existence of these activities. I haven't looked through any of Android's documentation for SW references, but since I haven't found any elsewhere, it's possible that there simply aren't any.

On the other hand, Nokia's involvement in the Semantic Web goes back to at least to 1997, when Ora Lassila wrote a brief note titled "Introduction to RDF Metadata," likely when he was a visiting fellow at W3C. Ora's gone on to play an influential role within Nokia, promoting the SW all along the way. Others within the company have followed suit so that now there's a raft of internal SW projects here and here (they're not all SW projects, but a good number are). So, given the complexity of mobile environments, the differences in platforms, operating systems, regulatory environments, etc., it seems like SW technology might be well suited to service composition and delivery, provisioning issues generally, and offloading processing requirements from the handset.

Oh, did I forget to mention that Nokia acquired Navteq over the summer? Frankly, I don't think there's enough of a difference between Google Maps, Navteq, Yahoo! Maps, or others to really make a difference. But the point is that by purchasing Navteq, Nokia no longer needs to rely on Google and it no longer needs to divulge any information regarding how location based services might be developed and deployed. That's knowledge Google will have to acquire on its own. Since I've already indicated in my earlier post about Google that there's no evidence they're recruiting people with expertise in RDF, OWL, ontologies, SPARQL, graphs, triples, etc., it doesn't look to me like they're going to catch up any time soon. As a matter of fact, now that Google's cutting its workforce , I'm guessing the company's appetite for innovation may slow down, meaning that if they want to catch up in any contest with Nokia, they're going to be sucking serious wind.

Diversifying away from a reliance on search makes all the sense in the world to me. But can a mobile operating system succeed on its own without its very own fleet of handsets, infrastructure, content beyond maps, software development in what I believe will be a key technology, and deep experience in global telecom regulation? I don't know, but it's not a bet I would take.