Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENCODE (EfficieNtly manage COntent across Devices lifEtyme)

Teaser

According to several studies, roughly 44% of the global population owns a phone and consumers in mature markets upgrade their smartphones every 18 to 20 months on average. This has several consequences:1. Consumers face every few months the hassle of migrating their data to a...

Summary

According to several studies, roughly 44% of the global population owns a phone and consumers in mature markets upgrade their smartphones every 18 to 20 months on average. This has several consequences:

1. Consumers face every few months the hassle of migrating their data to a new device: across OS, or even within the same OS, there is not a quick and efficient system that ensures all data are instantly moved to the new device and securely deleted from the old one;
2. Consumers often pay for diagnostic of devices where no fault is found. The downtime is disruptive, expensive and involve shipments to and from repair hubs that all add up to the environment impact of the device. Moreover, due to the hassle of getting the phone repaired, some people prefer upgrading to a new phone, further contributing to the creation of more e-waste;
3. When upgrading to a new phone, consumers leave in their drawers millions of unused phones, often because there is not a safe way to erase data/unlock and thus resell these still fully functional devices. A consequence of this is that tons of rare and precious metals that could be recycled for further use in electronics are never fed back to the manufacturing cycle.

Moreover, the resell of 18 or 24 old devices represents a market opportunity for both private owners and professional resellers. Our company has developed certified and OS-agnostic tools that tackle data migration, diagnostics and data erasure. These tools are offered as SaaS (Software as a Service) to B2C customers who then offer such services to end users. The overarching goal of the project is to boost the company to become the standard tool for the lifecycle management of personal devices.

Work performed

The first year of the project concentrated on these areas:

1. The product development target was to review road map against customer feedback and create world class user experience for new products. The main target was to plan and develop Diagnostics and Verify OnTheFly products to the alpha and beta phase. Additionally, new test cases were created for new mobile phone application used in Diagnostics OnTheFly. When new products are created and customer base is globally growing there is need for scaling the reporting tools and IT infrastructure according. These activities were completed in phase one. Customer support and deployment development were started in phase one and those are continuing in 2nd phase. As well localization based on market needs is ongoing still on 2nd phase. There were several languages added in phase one.

2. Another important task was development of business plan. Project started with market research in USA, where target was to identify customer base, competitor status and model to enter to the market. There were several different kinds of business models analysed, originally target was to start own local entity. At the end of the day the partnering model was chosen to be less risky and cost efficient model. Piceasoft published partner agreement with WhiteCanyon Software in December 2018. At the same time, European pricing models were updated as well business model was reviewed. At the second half of the first year the business model and plan for USA were updated, as well as pricing model and local product packaging were reviewed.

3. Dissemination activities in Europe and communication actions were ongoing. The main activities were road shows, fairs, visiting the customers. All these activities and dissemination in USA will be completed in 2nd phase.
There were no delays in schedules in phase one.

Final results

The need for easy data transfer and fast analyse of phone condition is still valid for end users. At the same time the need to analyse trade in used phones with fair price has been rapidly grown for end users.

For operators and retailers, the customer satisfaction is main driver, they can also speed up processes and reduce costs. It also very important to create new revenue paths with fast growing trade in market. The very same is valid for resellers, they can improve the efficiency and safety in trade in.

In addition to the second-hand devices market, Piceasoft caters to customers like operators and retail resellers for new devices. These customers want to extend and improve the customer satisfaction to ensure a positive customer lifetime value (CLV, a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer). Customer lifetime value depends directly from customer satisfaction

Piceasoft operators and retailers customers are therefore ready to invest resources in offering complementary services that can increase the value perceived by their customers (end users). Operators, for instance, are currently updating their service portfolios and taking content switch to a new device as a strategic part of it.

The trade in market growth is much faster than new phone sales, the smart phone sales are not growing anymore yearly. The “used smartphone” is already the fourth biggest “brand” after Apple, Samsung and Huawei.
Piceasoft new products for Trade-In are speeding up the development of trade in business market. Those are easy to use tools and when used tools are also providing transparency for trade in process.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.piceasoft.com/encode/.