The carrier’s role in updating software and firmware on the handset has always been a clear one in the US: The operator sells a select portfolio of handsets to its customers; the operator maintains the customer relationship; and the operator pushes software updates to its customers' handsets when necessary. But as the mobile world moves to open source operating systems, open networks and third-party application retail models, that traditional value chain is evolving. The operator isn’t always the one selling the software or the handset or controlling the customer relationship and therefore no longer the sole party responsible for maintaining the handset.

No one is seeing evidence of this more than Red Bend Software, the world leader in firmware over-the-air (FOTA) platforms with more than 60% of the market, according to Ovum. Traditionally Red Bend sold its solutions only to operators and handset vendors, but as more and more companies stake their claim to the handset, interest in FOTA is broadening, said Morten Grauballe, executive vice president for mobile software management at Red Bend.

“In the old model, you had devices that were monolithic, and operators were provided this natural value chain where OEMs provided updates through the operator,” Grauballe said. Handsets are becoming immensely more complex, he said, no longer requiring just the occasional update of a vendor’s proprietary firmware. Mobile operating systems such as Android, the iPhone OS and the revamped Symbian are proliferating, and new versions of their software are often available before the devices they control are even sold, Grauballe said. And it’s not just the operating system that requires regular maintenance: user interfaces need tweaking, media players need new codecs, and individual apps need patches. Each and every one of those fixes can come from a separate independent software provider, and—in the case of modular operating systems—a single fix may need to be sent from multiple sources, Grauballe said.

Red Bend and other mobile software management companies solved part of the problem, through the development of software component over-the-air (SCOTA) update technologies, but the logistics side of the equation is still being worked out, Grauballe said. Some software vendors have taken an approach similar to that used by handset vendors in Europe, where operators don’t directly control the handset retail channel. There, a client on the device occasionally searches for software updates and prompts the phone owner to pull that software down over the network. In the case of application developers, they embed similar ‘pull’ clients into their software. A good example is the iPhone: every time the iPhone app store is accessed it searches for software updates of individual applications, which it then prompts the iPhone owner to download.

Updates can also be event-triggered, Grauballe said. “Say a consumer needs a particular codec for their media player to watch a particular video,” he said. “By streaming the video, the phone could automatically download the codec.” In three or four years, Grauballe believes phones will be smart enough to fix themselves with the user being none-the-wiser. Until then, though, the industry is being forced to cope with more awkward manual pulling methods.

That’s where the operator comes in, Grauballe said. Ultimately they alone have the power to truly push updates to the phone by virtue of controlling their networks. The key is giving them the incentive to do so. Considering that many of the newest application and devices aren’t coming from an operators’ traditional retail channels and the sheer toll that billions of updates can take on their networks, they’ll need to be compensated, Grauballe said.

Ultimately handling third-party updates could be a tremendous opportunity for operators worried that their networks will become dumb pipes. By seamlessly handling the regular maintenance of increasingly complex devices, they can reinsert themselves into the value chain. An operator, for instance, could offer to its customers a smartphone maintenance plan, in which it aggregates all of the various updates and patches for a device and its applications on a daily basis and seamlessly pushed them to its customer’s handsets, Grauballe said. Another option would be a revenue-sharing plan or per-update fee operators charge to application developers and distributors. Operators may not be able to make money from independent application sales, but they could make money maintaining the apps once they’re sold, Grauballe said.