‘This can change the world’ – CloudMosa on its game plan for cloud-based smartphones

Last month Vodacom South Africa launched a type of souped-up feature phone powered by the cloud, which allows for smartphone functionality such as video streaming on a device selling for US$13.93.

The software that makes it possible is called Cloud Phone – which its website describes as a ‘revolutionary technology’ that uses cloud computing to ‘transform the most basic traditional feature phones into smart devices.’

Essentially, you take a low-spec 4G feature phone which acts as a thin client leaning on the cloud to run the apps its internal hardware wouldn’t have the grunt for.

The firm behind it is called CloudMosa, which is headquartered in Cupertino, California – very close to Apple’s Campus, we’re told. But the two firms have a very different approach to smartphones. We caught up with Shioupyn Shen, Founder and CEO of CloudMosa, to find out what the company’s ambitions are.

“Cloud Phone uses cloud technologies to offload heavy lifting of processing and storage from the device itself. This architecture approach allows us to provide a rich, responsive experience and bring users the apps they want,” said Shen. “We created Cloud Phone to address digital inclusion and created new business opportunities across the mobile ecosystem in the process.

“Digital inclusion requires A), connectivity and B), affordable devices with compelling applications. Connectivity has improved, but the real challenge lies in the access to affordable devices for those with limited income. We call this the B) gap, which we aim to tackle for the billions of people worldwide that still lack crucial access to the internet and app ecosystem.

“This solution is set to usher in a new era of affordable connectivity and huge opportunities for growth and innovation for telecom carriers, phone manufacturers and content providers in the transition from 2G to 4G, 5G and beyond.”

Cloud Phone first appeared in India last year through a pilot with handset manufacturer HMD, and enabled feature phones are now also available in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Philippines and Pakistan. “Turns out that the poorer the country, Cloud Phone is even more attractive. And South Africa may be a little bit too rich, but there is still a large audience there,” explains Shen.  

In terms of what a feature phone loaded with Cloud Phone is capable of, and what its limitations are in comparison to one of the latest iPhones Apple designs up the road from CloudMosa, Shen says:

“First of all, Cloud Phone is a sexy name. A more technical name would [be] a virtual phone. So we have a virtual phone running on our cloud server, your physical phone is simply used to tap into the virtual phone. Whatever happens to the virtual phone, you can see it on your physical phone, and you can also interact with the virtual phone. So what we do is effectively give you a much more powerful feature phone where the CPU is fast, plenty of memory, the network is fast, and there is no storage constraint.

“So if you really look at a virtual phone versus a physical phone, we basically say that they have the same face. When you look at that, it's identical – the screen we cannot change, but we change the brain. The brain is totally different. The virtual phone’s brain could be 100 times more powerful than a feature phone’s brain. We basically say that we can be a brain surgeon to give the feature phone a brand new brain, but we are not plastic surgeons that can give them a better face.”

The business goals right now seem to be primarily about upgrading the experience for those already using non-touch screen 4G feature phones in poorer regions But when asked if in the future the technology could evolve to the point where you don’t need a high-end smartphone with powerful internal components, Shen said:  

“Absolutely. Let me give you an example. We are working with manufacturers that provide a touchscreen feature phone. It’s a pretty big touchscreen, and when you use it, if we don't tell you, you do not even know that this is not a smartphone. What we like to call it [is] a smart feature phone, but it's different from KaiOS smart feature phone. KaiOS smart feature phone is feature phone functionality at a smartphone price, but for our smart feature phone [it is] smartphone functionality at [a] feature phone price.

“It is under $20… you can have a phone similar to your smartphone, probably not the biggest smartphone, but it is like the iPhone 8 kind of style… and you cannot tell the difference. Everything just works. And so this would be a truly killer device. Our feature phones are making the brain very smart, but we couldn't change the face, so the UI and interactivity are still limited by the feature phone. But the moment we have a new face – a pretty face with a super smart brain, that would totally change how people look at the smartphone.

“That touchscreen based digital phone costs $20 – it's about the price of iPhone charger. Think about this, which one gives you more technology for your $20? And when you compare the price point, you would truly appreciate that this can change the world, and we will never need to show off a better phone anymore. We will let everyone, rich or poor, have similar accessibility. So sometimes I say that a fork is a fork. Rich people and poor people, they may use a fork costing 100 times [the] difference, but the fork is a fork. That's no real difference.”

We’re told that the product launch timeline for this Cloud Phone enabled touchscreen device it is not firm yet. How such a product ends up being executed of course is crucial, and plenty of people simply like having state-of-the-art gadgetry in their pocket.

But in theory, were this or a concept like it to take off, it might have the potential to act as something of a disruptive force on the smartphone device market in certain regions, in terms of blurring the perceived lines between higher-end and lower-end handsets. To this point, Shen concluded:

“Yes, I do believe so, we do have that potential. But at this moment in time, we are focusing on so called digital inclusion. We want to address what happens to those 1.5 billion people who are currently using feature phones. We basically say that you do not need to spend a penny more – exactly the same phone, with our software, you can access rich internet, and if you are willing to spend a little bit more with the touchscreen based official phone, you will not be treated as second class citizen, you are as first class as everybody else.”