Apple and Google are clear winners in mobile Internet

THERE WAS HEATED DEBATE at the Open Mobile Summit in London on Wednesday over Apple, Google and the future of the mobile Internet.

Setting the tone early on, Hank Skorny from Real Networks said he thinks that Apple and Google are "running away with the mobile Internet".

Apple has turned AT&T into a "dump pipe" for its device and its PR spin has managed to generate a lot of unease with Adobe's Flash product, Skorny added. A show of hands at the event found that, despite the concerns of Steve Jobs, hardly any audience member found Flash to be a problem.

Skorny also said that Apple's application environment is highly controlled and that the firm is creating a walled garden into which operators can't penetrate.

Olaf Swantee, head of France Telecom's personal communications service agreed somewhat, saying that regulators need to be concerned with the mobile manufacturers as well as the operators, although he conceded that Apple and Google's success is mostly due to the compelling products they have created for consumers.

Deutsche Telekom technology chief Oliver Baujard argued that operators should be thankful to the likes of Apple for creating a whole new revenue stream for operators and a breed of customers that spend plenty of money and can be kept loyal with incentives.

However, several audience members argued strongly that operators do not do enough for their customers, treating them poorly despite their loyalty and charging far too much for mobile data rates.

While the representatives from France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom admitted more could be done to keep customers happy, they defended their stance on mobile data. They argued that operators have to set levels of usage to stop users from consuming too much data, by downloading movies for example, and therefore affecting the quality of service delivered to other users that use lower volumes of data.

The rise in data traffic that applications are causing was also touched on, with Andrew Gilbert from Qualcomm arguing that more needs to be done to encourage developers to create efficient applications that won't use a lot of data.

This received broad agreement, as well as Gilbert's assertion that the Ipad, and devices like the Ipad that other manufacturers will create, will prove highly popular.

"A million sales already of the Ipad prove it's not a flash in the pan," he said, punning unintentionally. µ