Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming powerful driving forces of business transformation. The technologies to connect devices for monitoring and managing things have inspired many startups to explore the immense possibilities in the IoT industry.
According to Mckinsey 2015 report, the potential economic value of the IoT is estimated to be US$11.1 trillion per year in 2025. Although the value of improved health monitoring and consumer electronics could reach $1.1 trillion per year by 2025, the firm said that business-to-business (B2B) applications will create more value than purely consumer applications. While wristbands, fitness trackers and smart watches attract the most attention and can create significant values in past few years, the report suggested that the B2B business can generate nearly 70 percent of potential value enabled by IoT technologies. In other word, the B2B sector deserves more investment and resources.
Enterprises do not want to slow down the pace of adopting IoT solution. however IoT technology such as cloud infrastructure, Hadoop, Big Data analytics schemes, open source software tools and etc are not easy tasks for enterprises. Some IT experts even worried that the required resources and technology will not be available for most of enterprises. That explains why only 21% of enterprises implement or test IoT solutions. Enterprises need more help from IoT technology providers.
Founded in 2011, General Mobile Corporation, or called GMobi, is in response to the huge demand for mobile device industry and provide value-add services to assist enterprises to build up all content and allow developers to expand to the target markets with its unique PaaS(Platform as a Service) technologies. The company is aiming in emerging market including India, Russia, Middle East and south East Asia countries.
Paul Wu, CEO of GMobi, talked about PaaS services in the interview with DIGITIMES. Prior to GMobi, Paul worked for developing internet platform for smartphones at MediaTek and Foxconn. His years of experiences in China allowed him to build up mobile service ecosystem with several China big online rivals. The cooperated project with Nokia in the early time, Paul highlighted, provided a great opportunity to deeply looking into the Indian mobile phone market. The strategy to go to Indian market is the clear goal for GMobi when starting developing global business.
GMobi's Firmware Over-The-Air and Mobile Care technologies managing 160 millions devices in the world
Today, GMobi solutions provide an end-to-end, customized, firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating service for Android mobile devices. Currently, the GMobi enabled software management services are being used by OEM including smartphones, tablets, smart watches and wristbands, such as Micromax, Cherry, Advan, FLY, Intex and etc There are three key advantages as to why GMobi can leverage its previous mobile experiences to connected car industry:
First of all, Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA). As Android operating system demands continue to grow, especially in emerging markets, through GMobi FOTA turnkey services, OEMs can always provide software updates to users with new OS versions, latest features and bugs fixed. The OTA solutions reduce customer services cost, fix any software issues, provide most up to date features in just a minute.It plays a pivotal role to increase brand loyalty and to build a corporate image for OEMS.
The second is the Mobile Care. This is a unique software virtualization technologies applying to mobile devices to help OEMs to remotely manage the client mobile devices. GMobi Mobile Care include better software migration, increased device security and isolation, faster time to market, enhanced device performance, and cost savings. The Mobile Care solution bundles several reporting systems to generate statistics to track OTA status, bugs fixing, software version control and customer feedbacks.
The third is GMobi's proven PaaS cloud platform currently managing 160 million devices and the volume continuous to grow. This is the strength building upon over-the-air software and firmware upgrading services in the smartphones, smart TVs and wearable markets. GMobi has a very strong presence in OTA service in the world, Paul proudly pointed out.
Consumers in emerging markets have high expectations from local brands to offer innovative mobile devices, which is why OEMs choose GMobi solutions. It is reliable, flexible and proven services to handle versatile requirements from highly competitive and rapid changing markets.
Successful in India, the GMobi first way to success
The Indian market has immense potential of smartphone business. It is the second most populous country in the world but lower penetration rate of mobile phones. In emerging markets, local OEMs are taking away market share from the world leading mobile phone brands such as Samsung. These local OEMs are successful because they know how to create competitive pricing, customize user experiences and offer the same features as other international brands, said Paul. He was determine to enter India market and initiated the cooperated projects with Micromax in 2011.
Paul knew Micromax Informatics since he was still at MediaTek. At that time, Micromax started its business as a distributor for Nokia mobile phones. When Mediatek introduced all ranges of chipsets which provide turnkey solutions to many local mobile phone brands, Micromax took the opportunity and became an OEM itself and slowly build up its leading position in the local market
Like any new players that started their business, Micromax suffered from the Time-To-Market pressure, it needs to establish a rigid production schedule with suppliers just to be able to deliver products with very short lead time. Mostly, there was no enough time to test all software features . GMobi's FOTA solution provides in time support to help Micromax to shorten its time to market and software development cycles to win the market share and strong presence in India market.
There is a story to show how GMobi leverage its unique technical strength to support Micromax solving the local constrains on interoperability and Internet infrastructure. The full version of Android operating system takes about 1 gigabyte file size. In India, the internet connection speed varied by regions and Telecoms ranged from 2G to 4G LTE protocols. The 1 gigabyte sized OTA could not be transmitted in a 2G network. GMobi fixed this problem by reducing software package size and include only the patches files. GMobi R&D teams introduced tools to build OTA files only by incremental codes between different Android OS. The technology removed common build file and provided a cleaner build file, which is much smaller than the original full version. GMobi OTA technology reduced the transfer file sizes from gigabyte to megabyte and delivered equally benefits to all mobile devices that connect to GMobi platform.
With the confidence of Indian market development, Micromax push APP stores and other mobile advertising services to ramp up the profits from smartphone market. Both mobile advertising and payment are important services that help Micromax to gain financial incomes. These two features allowing users to make in app purchase, make payment via text messages and mobile wallets or subscribe certain services that are pushed to their phones.. The paymen will added to the monthly phone bill or deducted from a pre-paid balance used by mobile phone operators, It is a very good solution consider the credit card penetration rate is still very low in India. Each transaction contribute to both GMobi and OEM's revenue. There are 40 million smartphones connected to GMobi platform. The growth is promising.
Other than our successful business engagement with local mobile brands, GMobi also have substantial development in connected devices such as Smart TVs, wearables and POS. Meanwhile, Paul also mentioned that more robots coming to factories. China manufacturers will significantly accelerate their use of robots over the next few years as expected to dramatically boost productivity and took advantage of low-cost manufacturing against payroll growth of labors. The robots also require software upgrade. There will be more business opportunities for GMobi.
GMobi delivers a superior OTA service targeting the automotive market with Trend Micro IoT security technologies
Global automotive companies are more aware of the importance of a software-driven user experience inside the cars. The infotainment, navigation, telematics, and rear-seat entertainment systems become high-end embedded systems with which new features can be added through constant software updates. This will be a perfect place for developing OTA services. Carmakers are looking into OTA technologies can add functions for new entertainment and safety services throughout the car's lifetime. When combining software upgrade and automotive-grade systems, a proper secured separation should be put in place to prevent any malware or misbehaved applications from gaining access to the car's functionality. This is why cyber security playing an important role for Car OTA services.
GMobi is in collaboration with Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cyber security solutions to provide layered data security to protect information on mobile devices, endpoints, gateways, servers and cloud platforms. Trend Micro offers IoT security SDKs (Software Development Kit) to provide the full visibility of risk assessment. The combined strength of both parties will enable global car manufacturers and mobile device suppliers to enhance service offerings, reduce development costs, and explore mobile application opportunities under a secured networking environment and keeping the systems securely isolated.
Paul highlighted, GMobi's gaol is to provide OTA service for car manufacturers starting in 2018. GMobi has hosted several ongoing projects to kickoff and explore the business opportunities with European and Japanese car manufacturers. Frankly speaking, although some car components and system are too critical to be compromised and it will take time for car manufacturers to put OTA solutions in place for those parts, but in some it is a chance for infotainment system such as navigation, multimedia, and climate control to automatically upgrade through GMobi OTA services. OTA services for infotainment system can save up over hundreds dollars cost in one car, and ultimately tens of millions dollars in total savings per year.
GMobi is one of the top 3 OTA service providers in the world. GMobi will take the opportunity to leap into the new industry. With the essential foundation gaining from the smartphone markets and experience to host more than 160 million devices, GMobi is planning to expand into car OTA services with the support of all employees and a strong determination to win. OTA service is an unavoidable trend, but the market demands and customers expectations are also moving GMobi forward. GMobi will soon become a leading supplier for comprehensive and full-featured OTA solution in automotive industry.
Paul Wu, CEO of GMobi