Driving Up Usage of FOTA

How to go from 1% to 35% of users updating their mobile phones

By Morten Grauballe
EVP, Marketing
Red Bend Software

Proactively-promoted and customer-targeted FOTA updates can drive 35% of consumers to update the software on their mobile phones. With over 100 million vCurrent Mobile FOTA clients in the market, Red Bend is sharing its experience in how manufacturers and operators can drive up consumer acceptance of FOTA and ensure customer loyalty through refreshed software.

The use of Firmware updating Over-The-Air (FOTA) has replaced service point reflashing as the preferred way to keep software on mobile phones up to date. We estimate that more than 3 million mobile phone consumers have updated their software using Red Bend's vCurrent Mobile. There is, however, a diverse set of approaches to how FOTA is brought to market and promoted to consumers. In turn, the approach taken determines the percentage of consumers willing to update their handsets.

At one end of the spectrum is the "pure customer-pull" model, where the FOTA update is triggered by the user when finding the software update feature in the phone's menu and the user initiates the update himself. Experience shows that around 1% of users will carry out an update based on a pure customer-pull model. This number increases to about 3% by promoting FOTA as a service on customer web sites and during customer support calls. Manufacturers in Europe and operators in the US and Japan are running web portals where FOTA is explained and promoted to the consumer, helping to drive up the usage and thereby customer satisfaction.
Next step on the FOTA-usage ladder is the "promotion-push, customer-pull" model. In this model, a message is pushed to consumers to encourage them to update, but consumers still decide whether or not to perform the update. In Japan, operators have been successful in using SMS as a way of encouraging customers to update their phones. One manufacturer's GSM and 3G handsets provide a time-triggered, pop-up dialog, which asks consumers whether they have tried the software update service. We have seen the "promotion-push, customer-pull" model increase FOTA adoption to as much as 35% of consumers, but achieving this is highly dependent on what benefits are being promoted to consumers that motivate them to perform the update.

Based on our experience in working with manufacturers and operators worldwide, FOTA usage in the 25-35% range can be regularly achieved if consumers are offered new features or functionality as part of the promotion push. If, on the other hand, the software update service is actively marketed to consumers but without any direct, tangible, and visible benefit of updating, the adoption is consistently below 15%.

The final step on the FOTA-usage ladder is "pure push" by the operator or handset manufacturer. With this approach, it is theoretically possible to update 100% of the installed base of mobile phones, as the update file is pushed to the consumer and triggered automatically by the phone. It is, however, an approach which raises concerns around customer privacy and control. There have not been any known examples of this approach to date. Operators and handset manufacturers have indicated that they would be willing to use this approach when dealing with software security holes that could be exploited by malicious applications, but have yet to take this step.

With Red Bend's new Background Update feature, available in version 5 of vCurrent Mobile, FOTA adoption becomes relevant for all users as software updates become a seamless experience.

Finally, it is also worth noting that flat-rate data pricing has an impact on the number of consumers who decide to update their phones. In Japan and the US, where flat-rate data packages are available, this is not an issue. But in Europe, where consumers are still charged per megabyte of data, there are a significant number deciding to cancel the update before it has even started due to concerns about cost. Yet we know that FOTA updates files are quite compact, and therefore the actual charges are minimal.

We all can do more to increase consumer awareness of FOTA and educate them on the benefits of updating the software in their mobile phones. The manufacturers and operators who take the lead will be rewarded with lower customer support costs, higher customer satisfaction, and more brand loyalty.

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