Market Buzz
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Ericsson was never going to welcome WiMAX, given its potential cannibalization of the Swedish giant’s strongest market, UMTS/HSPA. It was mellowing towards the technology last year as it sought to diversify its customer base and become less dependent on cellular companies, moving towards multi-network convergence and managed services for its growth. However, last month, it cancelled its WiMAX R&D projects, announcing that it will focus on bringing LTE to market as early as possible in order to satisfy operator calls for a more rapid agenda, and to ensure WiMAX cannot leap into a vacuum caused by a prolonged wait for 3.9G. Since LTE and WiMAX are similar in technology fundamentals, Ericsson could well afford to support R&D on both and create a converged, all-bases-covered approach like Motorola’s and Nortel’s. So Ericsson’s public rejection of 802.16 smacks of politics and spin, aiming to reduce operators’ confidence in WiMAX while raising their hopes of near term LTE, as well as wrong footing WiMAX enthusiasts like Motorola
April 19, 2007
Put yourself in the position of someone in a developing country who earns, say, $200 a month. They want to invest in a mobile subscription, and post-paid contracts are out of the question. So, it has to be prepaid and the biggest single outlay is the handset. No-one wants to spend more than a month’s salary – absolute tops – on a phone, so for many people, this means that the handset should retail for less than $100. This magical $100 figure is the benchmark that has been set by the 3G community in its latest push to increase levels of 3G penetration. A sub-$100 3G handset is seen by many in the industry as a key to unlock the untapped developing world markets. Some handset component areas – notably the battery, screen and memory – are already on a strong downward curve, which follows Moore’s law, so the scope for 3G-related reductions in price is strictly limited. However, chipsets, OS and IPR/licensing fees contribute significantly to handset BOM and there is room for fat-trimming. Nonetheless, in markets such as Brazil and India, low cost 2G and EDGE-enabled 2.5G devices are seen as having far more potential to drive mobile penetration and overall teledensity in the next two years than 3G ever could. Indeed, many developing economies have yet to deploy 3G networks
April 19, 2007
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that a company called Apple will shortly be releasing a mobile phone. And if the proponents are to be believed, in addition to being a really cool handset, it’ll also solve many issues faced by users of present day handsets. Those who have joined the queue of high expectation and hype include the mobile operators.
Cingular’s CEO, Stan Sigman, boasts that the deal with Apple was sealed over two years ago, before a product had ever been seen: such was the confidence that Apple would produce a disruptive product which Cingular simply had to be part of. Though the iPhone appears to do little more for operators than catalyse the speed at which they are relegated to a simple bitpipe, acting as a mere conduit while others enjoy premiums on the device and content ends of the mobile experience operators have been falling over themselves to obtain exclusivity rights to distribute the phone.
The iPhone has the potential to be an unsettling force in the mobile industry, in much the same way the iPod impacted the portable music market, so it make sense to back Apple, rather than be against it. However, operators should be under no illusions of the impact which Apple and the iPhone will have on their business and the speed with which it will consign them to simple connectivity providers.
Whose Brand is it Anyway
Appreciating the intimacy between the consumer and their handset, top operators have spent the past few years investing hugely in extending their brand presence onto the device itself, in many cases sitting equal or sometimes dominant to the handset manufacturer's brand. This battle between operators and the major handset OEMs always had one winner, the operator – after all, they are the OEMs’ biggest customers, each purchasing tens of millions of devices each year. Apple on the other hand takes a purest subtle approach to branding, its understatement exudes an arrogance and sophistication which only a brand like Apple can achieve. While we don’t yet know the level of branding which operators will get on the iPhone, I think it is safe to say that the probability of it getting any presence at all, let alone control over UI theming, is fantastically unlikely.
Compete Inside
Operators have invested heavily is in their content portals. They’ve pieced together complex service delivery platforms and billing systems from a variety of vendors, and inked lofty content deals with some big name media giants. They’ve also experimented with a vast number of programs to achieve a level of interoperability on devices for gaming applications and ringtones. In many ways, iTunes mirrors the operator content portal – the only difference is that iTunes is easy to use, intuitive, offers rich and genuinely sought-after content and doesn’t leave the end user in a near suicidal state at the end of the download experience. It is no secret that Apple’s strategy is to drive sales and market share by marrying its devices with a hugely compelling content experience. Margins may come from devices, but content will fundamentally underpin the hardware business in ultimate symbiosis. It does not take a visionary to foresee Apple soon adding ringtones and gaming media to its already wide portfolio of music, movie and TV downloads. The idea of an iPhone owner using operator’s portal instead of iTunes to manage their mobile content experience is unlikely.
So with minimal opportunities for either branding or content revenues, what exactly are carriers getting from the iPhone? Other than voice and data traffic, not much. No doubt, the exclusivity which Apple seems happy to award its operator partners will generate a level of churn which will provide a short-term boost to revenues, but this could be canceled out by the large handset subsidy which operators are footing. Furthermore, while operators will be able to lock the iPhone to its US network, in several European countries this behavior is illegal, and in others, the operator is obliged to unlock their customer’s handset if requested. Therefore, in Europe at least, there is a potential that the benefits of carrier exclusivity could be greatly diluted. Voice is a commodity product, so the main benefit which an operator can achieve is a boost to the data traffic on their network as iPhone user get into the habit of consuming their iTunes content whilst on the move.
Of course, the irony is that, with the first generation iPhone not supporting 3G, users are unlikely to make wide use of 3G network. Nonetheless, 3G version is not far off, on both sides of the Atlantic, many operators’ unlimited 3G data plans are priced at around $40 a month, but this will be too expensive for most iPhone users and many would instead resort to syncing their handset through their PC or over Wi-Fi. The reality is that, if an operator wants their iPhone customers to make wide use of cellular data, they will have to price the service more attractively.
Finally when exclusivity runs out iPhone user will be attracted to operators which can offer the cheapest data packages since there is unlikely be anything else the operator can offer which will improve or differentiate the iPhone experience. Operators will be judged on their ability to act as an effective bitpipe. Operators face a tough question and can burn their hands if they’re not careful with the iPhone’s hype.
April 19, 2007
Belkin has launched its much promised wireless USB hub, making it one of the earliest commercially available UWB product. UWB has been around for almost seven years, without any tangible product on the market the wait for UWB has been long. However, this quite remarkable gestation was also prolonged by National regulators still the key culprits were some of the largest industry players Freescale and the WiMedia alliance.
With the release of Belkin’s hub, the Great UWB Wait appears to have now ended and wireless USB products (based on UWB) such as PCs, cameras and mobile phones are expected to hit the market this year, using a dongle attachment to send and receive wireless USB data. Wireless USB is a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless version of USB and is based on the WiMedia Alliance's UWB. Wireless USB employs Micro-scheduled Management Command (MMC) for Wireless USB hub discovery, intention notification, power management and data transmission scheduling. To enable easy migration from wired USB, the wireless USB specification is defined in terms of high speed host-to-host connection.
Belkin’s cable-free four-port USB Hub enables PCs up to 30 feet away to access storage, printers, cameras and other stationary USB devices connected to the hub and comes with a USB-based UWB dongle for communication between the PC and the hub. The Belkin hub is priced at USD 200 and runs on a UWB chipset from Wisair. Belkin resorted to Wisair after its original silicon partner, Freescale, pulled out of the game.
Freescale and the WiMedia alliance have fought fiercely over the choice of technologies to be adopted. Freescale supported direct sequence UWB while a rival group supported the multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) flavour.
The endgame is that WiMedia UWB, promoted by Freescale’s rivals, has been selected by the Bluetooth SIG and the USB Implementers Forum as the foundation radio for their high-speed wireless specifications. Freescale left the forum last April to concentrate its UWB efforts on its own version of wireless USB 2.0, called Cable-Free USB.
UWB, with its primary vehicle wireless USB, can offer data rates up to a maximum of 480 Mbps over a distance of 30 m. UWB transmits information spread over a large width of radio spectrum (>500 MHz), generating radio energy at specific time instants. USB-UWB combo can treaten Bluetooth and significantly dented the Wi-Fi market, not just because of UWB’s higher data rate, but also because of the huge power efficiency of wireless USB (10 times more efficient than Wi-Fi and 50 to 70 times more efficient than Bluetooth). However the tangle between key proponents impeded this from become reality.
While UWB received the thumbs-up from the FCC two years ago, the technology finally got the go-ahead from the European Commission 's Radio Spectrum Committee last December: the committee granting a positive regulatory opinion, thereby paving the way for its adoption in the EU, as early as February 2007.
The approval has not been unanimous though, with France and some Scandinavian countries opposing it, although it is believed that the resolution was able to garner the required 70% member approval “comfortably”. If the approvals from Ofcom, the FCC and TELEC (the Japanese regulatory authority) are anything to go by, UWB will operate between 3.1-10.6GHz in the US, 6-10GHz in the UK and 7-10GHz in Japan. Hopefully, this disparity in bands will not disrupt the global harmonization of UWB-based products.
Last November, Wisair also partnered with Y-E Data in Japan for production of a similar four-port UWB hub, named YD-300. Intel, a major participant in WiMedia, has unveiled its Wireless UWB Link 1480 media access controller (MAC) silicon, a host solution targeted at third party physical (PHY) layer chips. Developed in partnership with Alereon, the 1480 supports concurrent IP streaming via both the WiMedia Network (WiNET) standard and certified Wireless USB traffic. Additionally, the 1480 dynamically splits the traffic between IP and Wireless USB in any proportion. It is for the IP capabilities that the Link 1480 is also used in the Belkin wireless USB hub.
In September 2006, Tzero Technologies and Analog Devices announced that they would be creating standards-based wireless High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) solutions for HDTVs, DVD players, set-top boxes and game systems with the same QoS as that of wired connections. Gafen has launched an HDMI extender based on this solution. The extender, costing $499, works out to be extremely cost effective when compared to costs and complexities of wired counterparts.
Staccato Communications is working with SK Telecom to employ UWB on handsets, the ultimate in convergence, transforming the phone into a virtual computing platform. This is to be expected of SK Telecom, who has always pioneered the enrichment of mobile phone applications such as Location Based Services by integrating GPS into the phone.
Staccato has already branded this new phenomenon as Personal Area Social Network (PASN), with probable use-cases for the technology envisaged as: handset-to-PC networking using wireless USB for file synchronization, printing and backing up data, or employing a larger display such as a PC monitor or as a TV to manage mobile phone functions. Handset-to-hub communications will emulate the Wi-Fi hotspots, providing wireless Internet access to phones in specific coverage areas. More importantly, handset-to-handset communication, enabling richer personal interaction, will be the key attraction for mobile phone UWB. These phones are expected to role out in 2007, and will support Certified Wireless USB as well as WiMedia Network (WiNET) protocol adaptation layer for interoperability with other TCP/IP services.
In 2007 more UWB devices will reach the market, initially leveraging USB dongles to provide connectivity, followed by full integration within PCs, peripherals and consumer electronics devices: mirroring the roll out pattern observed during the early days of Bluetooth and then Wi-Fi. While both these technologies today enjoy wide penetration, it remains to be seen how UWB will stand against such competition.
April 19, 2007
Japan's KDDI said on Sunday it aims to offer a cellphone service in the United States using a network operated by Sprint Nextel.
KDDI, the second-biggest mobile phone operator in Japan after NTT DoCoMo, aims to cater to mainly Japanese customers in the United States, a spokesman said.
Tokyo-based KDDI will offer services using CDMA standard, developed by Qualcomm, and adopted by U.S. carriers such as Verizon and Sprint Nextel. That is different to the W-CDMA standard of technology popular in Europe and Asia.
Japanese operators have been eyeing new sources of revenue abroad as they expect slower subscriber growth in the saturated home market.
In 2001, DoCoMo invested about $10 billion in AT&T at the height of the Internet and telecom bubble, but later ended up booking huge losses from stakes in overseas operators.
Tokyo-based DoCoMo has since shifted its strategy to holding minority stakes in Asian carriers to expand in international roaming and help procure handsets more cheaply.
The Asahi newspaper said KDDI aimed for a full U.S. roll-out by the middle of this month, offering phones made by makers such as Sanyo Electric under the KDDI Mobile brand.
April 15, 2007
Mobile application provider CallWave launched the beta version of its Free Text Messaging gadget for Google Desktop, a desktop-based application that allows mobile consumers to send text messages to anyone straight from their desktop.
CallWave's desktop text messaging gadget will run in the "Communication" section of Google Desktop and will allow users to view a list of contacts as well as select the person they would like to text. Google Desktop allows users to create their own personal homepage and with the "add stuff" link users can add gadgets to their personalized page.
A CallWave company official said that with consumers having difficulty text messaging using a mobile phone, its text messaging gadget will make it easier for users to contact members straight from their own PC.
"One of the largest barriers to text message usage is that it is difficult to text on a cell phone's small interface," said Kelly Delany, vice president of corporate marketing at CallWave, based in Santa Barbara, Calif.
"CallWave developed its text messaging gadget to simplify everyday communication activities—using the desktop to manage tasks that are difficult to do on a mobile phone."
Replies to messages can be sent to the users' handset or e-mail, depending on what their personal settings are and in the near future, users will also be given access to their stored messages stored in a searchable archive, which can be accessed from the users' personal Web page.
CallWave's new Free Text Messaging gadget also supports CallWave's existing services such as CallWave Vtxt, a voice-to-text transcription service that integrates voice and text into an archive that can be accessed from a personal Web page.
"The Web 2.0 channel is growing at an explosive rate and distributing a free, easy-to-use text messaging gadget via this channel has the potential to make text as pervasive as voice," Delany said.
During the beta, users will also be able to send unlimited messages from the United States and Canada.
The gadget is available now in beta form and is free to use.
April 15, 2007
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. will be very selective in choosing new markets for its mobile phones and will not take on handset leader Nokia in the cheapest models, Samsung Chief Executive Yun Jong-yong said in an interview published on Sunday.
"Nokia is very strong as a maker of cheap phones. We cannot compete against it in those (models). That's why we are very choosy," Yun told Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat. He said the South Korean group, the world's third-largest maker of mobile handsets, only chose markets and customer segments where it believed it could succeed. Focusing on cheap phones would not fit its brand image, but with 60-70 percent of future mobile handset sales forecast to be in developing markets, Samsung could not ignore them, he said.
"We aim in these countries for high low-end products," he told the paper, referring to "luxury versions" of cheap phones. Finnish-based Nokia and Motorola of the United States benefit from economies of scale by making large quantities of each model, Yun said, but Samsung had the advantage of making its own screens and memories, so did not lose profits to subcontractors, he said. Samsung reported on Friday that it sold 34.8 million mobile phones in the first quarter, helped by stronger sales of lower-end models in China and other new markets. Its mobile phone margins rose to 13 percent from a revised 7 percent in the fourth quarter, though average selling prices fell by 8 percent.
April 15, 2007
Sun Microsystems announced today that it is acquiring the assets of SavaJe Technologies and will reveal further details at its JavaOne conference next month. SavaJe's claim to fame is its Java-based embedded operating system, which was shown running in a mobile phone at JavaOne last May.
SavaJe touts its Java-based mobile phone OS as being built from the kernel up for Java, but not "Java on bare metal," since a small multi-tasking, multi-threaded kernel manages the hardware resources and sits below the JVM. The deal could potentially place Sun -- whose Java technology resides in hundreds of millions of mobile phones already -- squarely in competition with the major mobile phone OS players: Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux.
April 15, 2007
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Business & Technology Trends
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Engineers at Harvard and BBN Technologies are working on a project that will cover the city of Cambridge, MA, with wireless-sensor nodes mounted to telephone poles that could allow researchers to see the specific locations and times of day when pollution peaks. The researchers could also track the city's weather with more precision and help test new wireless technology for better Wi-Fi. The network, called CitySense, will be an open test bed on which anyone can run experiments, says Matt Welsh, a professor of computer science at Harvard.
The plan is to install 100 general-purpose nodes onto the streetlights of Cambridge, drawing power from the city's infrastructure. Already there are five installed on Harvard's campus and five at BBN's facilities. Each node will be relatively large--about the size of a Mac Mini computer. A node will include a PC that runs the Linux operating system and a couple of gigabytes of flash memory as a hard drive. And instead of using a common low-power wireless-sensor protocol called Zigbee, CitySense nodes will use standard Wi-Fi radios; two radios will be in each node, one for management and control of the network, and the other for experiments. And, Welsh says, virtually any type of sensor will be able to connect to the nodes. A first batch of sensors will collect weather data such as rainfall, wind speed, and barometric pressure. Another set of sensors will measure pollution such as the amount of particles in the air. Researchers could use the weather data to understand how temperature or wind speed vary throughout the city, and doctors could use the pollution data to advise patients with asthma to stay away from certain areas at certain times of day. Eventually, more sensors could be incorporated: for example, motion sensors could measure traffic flow, and light sensors scattered throughout the city could monitor parking spaces; the data would be uploaded to the CitySense network. "With something like CitySense," Welsh says, "we're going to be able to blanket the city with sensors and get a much more complete sense of what's going on."
Welsh expects that CitySense will, in addition to collecting and transmitting sensor data, be employed by computer scientists to test new network software and protocols, which could be used to help make Wi-Fi connections more robust. Currently, the only way to test new wireless protocols, says Welsh, is to run them on a computer simulation. But CitySense could be thought of as "an open laboratory," he says, where researchers can upload and run their programs, collect data, and write papers.
The payoff of having an openly available wireless network like CitySense could be great, says Thomas Little, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University. "The existence of a wireless backbone like CitySense becomes an enormous asset," he says. "There are very interesting opportunities to exploit," he adds, including business opportunities. He envisions being able to integrate all sorts of sensors into the CitySense backbone, such as those that track the position of public transportation--which could help people know when the next bus is coming--and even video cameras that could monitor anything from traffic to urban wildlife.
April 16, 2007
What good is a stolen phone that's been blacklisted from networks, and the nefarious individuals formerly responsible for flashing them back into use have been scared off by the threat of five years' jail time? Not much good at all, we say, and a new study suggests that the UK's new laws fighting phone theft may be extraordinarily effective. On request from the government, the country's big five operators have started blocking stolen phones -- often within hours, and a full 80 percent within two days. Add in the fact that a new law taking effect this week makes handset reprogramming (to circumvent blacklisting) punishable by five years in the pokey and limitless fines, and we suspect a lot of these small-time criminals are going to be looking for new lines of work.
April 16, 2007
3G will never be economical as a broadband solution.Five years is a long time to wait and now that 3G wireless is here, you'd think we'd be grateful. Not a chance of that! We want its successor on schedule, please.
April 15, 2007
By 2010, Linux will overtake Symbian in the market for advanced mobile phone OSes. Linux currently claims 30+ percent of the market, while Symbian has less than half of the market and remaining with Microsoft.
SavaJe touts its Java-based mobile phone OS as being built from the kernel up for Java, but not "Java on bare metal," since a small multi-tasking, multi-threaded kernel manages the hardware resources and sits below the JVM. The deal could potentially place Sun -- whose Java technology resides in hundreds of millions of mobile phones already -- squarely in competition with the major mobile phone OS players: Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux.
Symbian is currently ahead of Linux and Linux over Windows on mobile phones, even if phone-enabled PDAs are counted.
2007 will see the beginning of Symbian's decline in share, as the combined market penetration of Windows, Linux, and native Java begin to erode developer and vendor support for Symbian.
April 15, 2007
The embedded market overall has continued to explode this quarter as was the case during past few years. New technologies, alliances, and market trends have combined to push the pace of innovation to fever pitch. Topping the list of hot embedded areas has to be mobile phones.
Replacement business defines mobile competition according to low cost and/or feature differentiation, both arguably areas where Linux shines. Linux has fared especially well in high-end "smartphones," where it claimed 30 percent of the market.
April 15, 2007
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Cutting Edge
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Researchers at the University of Utah have found a way to control terahertz radiation with more precision than ever before, potentially laying the foundation for a new breed of wireless devices that can take advantage of the previously untapped frequencies. Although still years from commercialization, routers and receivers that use terahertz radiation--which technically ranges from about 100 gigahertz to 10 terahertz--could eventually pack more data onto airwaves, speeding up wireless Internet links a thousand times, says Ajay Nahata, a professor of electrical and computer engineering who led the research.
Nahata and his team designed a perforated stainless steel film that is able to selectively allow certain terahertz frequencies to pass through and cancel out others. In effect, the researchers have built a simple terahertz filter, a potential precursor to terahertz communication devices.
Most wireless gadgets use radiation in the microwave frequency; Wi-Fi, for instance, operates at 2.4 gigahertz. At this frequency, technologies such as radiation sources, detectors, and modulators (devices that encode data on the waves) are well established. But currently, efficient terahertz sources and detectors are still being developed, and "there are effectively no real devices to manipulate those frequencies," says Nahata. "Because of this, terahertz is the gap in the electromagnetic spectrum. We're making new devices so terahertz can be useful."
The benefits of terahertz communication could be great. A typical modulator for a 2.4-gigahertz signal can only encode information at far lower frequencies--at about 50 megahertz. But a 2.4-terahertz wave oscillates a thousand times faster than a 2.4 gigahertz signal, and correspondingly, if terahertz modulators could be made, the modulated signal would also be a thousand times faster, says Nahata. These terahertz waves would be most useful for relatively short-range communication such as within a room, he says, because over greater distances, the signal dies off.
April 16, 2007
Recently, Intel announced a research project that made geeks jump with glee: the first programmable "terascale" supercomputer on a chip. The company demonstrated a single chip with 80 cores, or processors, and showed that these cores could be programmed to crunch numbers at the rate of a trillion operations per second, a measure known as a teraflop. The chip is about the size of a large postage stamp, but it has the same calculation speed as a supercomputer that, in 1996, took up about 2,000 square feet and drew about 1,000 times more power.
This research chip is one of Intel's first steps toward massively multicore technology, says Nitin Borkar, engineering manager and lab project head at Intel. The goal, he says, is to use this chip to test techniques that could make massively multicore technology faster, more energy efficient, and, most daunting, easy to program. These techniques will be "funneled into future products" that could appear, if all goes well, within five to ten years.
But nearly all engineers in the computing industry agree that making consumer computers with hundreds of cores won't be easy. In fact, many aren't even sure that it can be done. The most glaring challenge will be to find a way to completely overhaul software so that applications can take advantage of numerous cores. This includes teaching software developers how to write code for multicore machines--a task known as parallel programming--and developing new tools that allow them to code accurately and efficiently.
Researchers and visionaries are already thinking about how these supercomputer chips can best be used. Intel thinks that recognition, mining, and synthesis (RMS) applications will be key. Put together, these technologies could allow real-time language translation via cell phones, real-time video search by spoken phrase or image, and better recommendation systems for shopping, meal planning, and even health care.
April 16, 2007
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Company Watch
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Airspan Networks, Inc., announced that it has entered into Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement dated July 28, 2006, with Oak Investment Partners XI, Limited Partnership under which the Company intends to sell to Oak.
For iPass customers, the agreement means they can now access more than 60,000 available hotspots in 160 countries. In Australia, Telstra Wireless Hotspot is the country's leading provider of secure and reliable wireless broadband internet access ensuring iPass customers have the access they need while travelling 'Down Under'.
It should come as no surprise to investors that Sprint will announce a 4G strategy within the coming weeks (company indicated that technology choice would be announced in August). It also has been widely speculated that its 2.5GHz would be used for WiMAX, with Motorola the likely winner over Qualcomm's Flarion group. We see little near-term impact on Qualcomm given that infrastructure chip and licensing revenue represent an estimated 5-10% of revenue and Sprint indicated that its 4G activities would impact OIBDA by only 5% in 2008.
Alvarion Ltd. Announced the deployment of a citywide wireless broadband network in the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming to support the communication needs of multiple public safety and public works departments. The fixed and mobile network employs Alvarion's BreezeACCESS 4900, operating in 4.9 GHz for multipoint backhaul, and its BreezeACCESS 900, operating in 900 MHz to give city workers mobile access in their vehicles, including connecting their Wi-Fi enabled personal digital assistants (PDAs)
Nokia has a long history with WiMAX and OFDM-based technologies, with significant research and development and intellectual property dedicated to these technologies. As a founding and current member of the WiMAX Forum, Nokia has remained involved in the standardization process and is committed to promoting a multiradio platform that includes WiMAX.
Wirelessmapping.com</A> announces the availability of a wireless customer pre-qualification system. This is designed for fixed wireless and WIMAX operators and their quest to answer the questions "Do we offer service at this address?" and "Can we determine this without having to send a truck out to check for signal?"
A global strategic marketing force of over 10,000 individuals will now represent both the AdCalls virtual phone dialer and Wi-Fi TV , an interactive Internet TV web provider. AdCalls, the world innovator and leader in ad-sponsored VoIP, and Wi-Fi TV Inc. announced that they have signed a new Strategic Relationship.
AudioCodes announced the successful completion of its previously announced acquisition of Netrake Corporation, a leading provider of Session Border Controllers (SBC) and Security Gateway solutions. SBCs enable connectivity, policies and security for real-time sessions such as VoIP and video when traversing IP to IP networks. Security Gateways enable secure real-time sessions across wifi, broadband and wireless networks in Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) deployments.
SR Telecom Inc. announced that it has received new orders from Telefonica of Spain for U.S.$5.5 million of symmetryONE base stations and subscriber stations. Through its partnership with Siemens in Spain, SR Telecom has now received orders from Telefonica for 110 base stations and over 10,000 subscriber stations this year alone. The total value of these orders is over U.S.$10 million and all of these orders will be delivered in 2006.
WildPackets Inc. announced a significant upgrade to OmniSpectrum, a mobile spectrum analysis solution. OmniSpectrum enables IT engineers to measure RF interference jeopardizing WLAN performance and to identify and locate the sources of that interference. RF interference remains a hidden threat to most enterprise WLANs, creating network congestion and causing network connections to drop suddenly. Without spectrum analysis, IT organizations have no way of measuring interference or identifying the sources of interference
AnchorFree, the world's largest free Wi-Fi network & community, consisting of more than 10,000 wireless "hotspots" in over 2,400 cities across the U.S. and worldwide, announced the availability of its new wiPod solution which allows users to download lists of hotspot locations to their Apple iPods.
MobilePro Corp. (OTC Bulletin Board: MOBL) announced that it has signed a definitive contract with the City of Longmont, Colo. to design, deploy and operate a mesh wireless network in the community. The Longmont area has one of the highest concentrations of software-related jobs in the nation.
"Wi-Fi TV, Inc. wants a million eyes to see Internet TV and a million ears to hear the digital sound quality of FREE ad-supported VoIP phone calls. AdCalls, with over 1 million AdCalls VoIP phone dialers downloaded and over 10,000 individuals in its Team AdCalls sales organization, is launching the 'Million Eyes and Ears' campaign to bring that kind of exposure," said Alex Kanakaris, Chairman, Wi-Fi TV, Inc.
Unicon is developing and manufacturing unmatched user-friendly, MGizmo portable devices which provide users of various electronic USB enabled-gadgets with an opportunity to show, share, copy, download, and upload all kinds of multimedia files directly and over the Internet. The mission of MGizmo by Unicon is to free people from the necessity of using personal computers (PC's) as an intermediary between their digital entertainment and portable storage devices.
According to Google, it is supporting local Wi-Fi access in order to overcome legal roadblocks imposed by telephone and cable TV providers and clear the way for broadband businesses. It said an increase in the use of its search and advertising services is identified where broadband use expands and expects to gain economic benefits by offering wireless access around town and in homes, schools and offices.
The Wireless City is looking at citywide networking in a new way. As municipal wireless networks (MWN) are being considered in almost every major city in the United States, the Irvine, California-based The Wireless City Group, LLC is pioneering new methods that MWNs can be utilized for city development, community identity and as a collaboration and revenue generating vehicle.
Firetide announced the successful deployment of its wireless mesh network at the National Stadium in Singapore. The wireless network, provided by Singaporean distributor D-Synergy and installed by Internet Service Provider iCELL Network, served as a wireless infrastructure for the National Day Parade celebration at the stadium allowing video surveillance cameras and Wi-Fi access points to be deployed without cabling.
MobilePro Corp. (OTC Bulletin Board: MOBL) announced that it has signed a definitive contract with the City of Longmont, Colo. to design, deploy and operate a mesh wireless network in the community. The Longmont area has one of the highest concentrations of software-related jobs in the nation.
Fortress is working with Nortel Government Solutions, a systems integrator, in the exercise. The Fortress/Nortel architecture being used in the demonstration integrates Wi-Fi and WiMAX transmissions with high assurance security. This solution enables the quick establishment of secure communications - offering immediate "on demand" voice, video and data capabilities - that provide the dependability and versatility required to communicate in various situations.
Japan's largest wireless mesh network covering 100 cities and 50 million people is being assembled by NTT. NTT West, a subsidiary of NTT, awarded a contract for the network to US vendor Strix, whose Access/One Network Outdoor Wireless System and Indoor Wireless System will be deployed. NTT West will deliver broadband wireless voice, video, and data services primarily to corporate enterprise and municipalities in Japan. In addition, the Strix solution will be used for public safety and emergency services and related applications. Strix claims to be the only wireless mesh vendor that supports the 802.11j protocol, which operates in the 4.9 to 5.0 GHz frequency. 802.11j addresses the need for a high-performance mesh solution for use throughout Japan, where 802.11a is prohibited outdoors.
Alvarion Ltd. announced that WiMAX Telecom AG has again selected its BreezeMAX 3500 expanding its WiMAX networks in Austria and Slovakia. Upon acquiring its nationwide 3.5 GHz license last year, WiMAX Telecom first began building its WiMAX network with Alvarion's BreezeMAX and now plans to deploy more than 10,000 additional BreezeMAX PRO CPEs by the end of 2006.
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Hot Research
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Europe's CEPT cleared the path for the roll-out of UMTS900 early this year and has adopted a decision to allow deployment of UMTS in the spectrum bands formerly reserved for GSM. All that now remains is for the 47 member states to implement the decision into their national radio-frequency plans, a process that has already begun in some countries including France, Netherlands, Finland and Portugal.
In Finland Elisa has already made a data call over its commercial network in November 2006, in collaboration with Nokia and Option Wireless. It looks likely to begin sharing site infrastructure currently used to support GSM900 by mid 2007.
R4B believes that Finland will lead the way in rolling out UMTS900 followed by France, as predicted in R4B's new research report The Future of UMTS900 - Europe, which explore the roadmap for in-band migration in Europe.
The research further forecasts that users will initially be able to access UMTS900 via datacards inserted into laptops, and believes operators could begin to take delivery of datacards supporting UMTS900 by late second quarter of 2007. However handsets for UMTS900 are not expected to reach market before late fourth quarter of 2007, with volume shipments not expected until mid of 2008.
April 19, 2007
Mobile handset and network technology are now mature and has now evolved to a point where true mobile multimedia access is possible. R4B predicts that by 2014, more than 65% of all mobile subscribers worldwide will use mobile browsing, a trend it sees developing with new operator offerings and increased inclination towards services. Despite this, messaging will continue to dominate the overall revenues for the market, generating a little less than half the total revenue in 2014 (from 65% in 2006-07).
Despite falling average revenues per user (ARPU) for mobile operators, the mobile content and services market will continue to grow dramatically as services and applications reach maturity and new services begin to gain traction, according to R4B. Although advanced mobile content and services have been slow to take off, but with the ever increasing relationship that endusers have with their mobile phones and rise in time spend by them sending and reading messages, downloading playing games and multimedia clips and organizing personal lives using the phone's address book, clock, alarm and calendar function is clear indication of what is instore for the future.
The arrival of the mobile web on the mobile handset over in 2007 and beyond will see users embracing the same content they take for granted on their PCs. Operators need to ensure they are firmly locked into this value chain or risk missing out on what will be an enormous market by 2014. The second edition of R4B's "Future of Mobile Content and Services, Outlook 2007-2014" predicts that the mobile web will herald dramatic growth in revenues in the mobile content and services market.
Several technologies, such as mobile music, have been available for a number of years but the increased availability of high-speed data networks (such as 3G and HSDPA) is giving further appeal to these services. With better access, services and applications users are likely to warm to other data services. The mobile web or WAP is a prime example, it failed to take off when it was first launched, but five years on, more and more users have become comfortable with accessing news or other information on their mobile phones.
Further the report report investigates a number of areas which will see growth in the next five years and reveals that the introduction of a whole host of new players into the value chain presents new opportunities for growth in the mobile content and services market.
User-Generated Content, the big story of the Internet in 2005 and 2006, will continue and will extend to the mobile space as new applications begin to extend communities to users on the move, and provide further means for mobile users to contribute content whilst on the move. R4B forecasts that the user-generated and communities will be worth US$20 billion by 2014.
The mobile entertainment space will see significant innovation and development. Mobile music will be a major contributor to the revenues achieved in the mobile entertainment market in the next 5 years, although its overall share of the market will fall from 40% in 2006 to 30% in 2014 as new forms of entertainment such as mobile TV and video services begin to gain consumer interest. Games, gambling, personalization and adult content will all see significant growth, as the overall mobile entertainment market grows from US$19 billion in 2006 to US$50 billion + in 2014.
The migration to the mobile web will open up the M-Commerce market to new players while payments for digital content 'on-portal' continue to function.R4B estimates that the worldwide market for m-commerce will reach US$1 billion in 2014, coming mostly from the Asia-Pacific and Scandinavia region.
Mobile TV will continue to be the focus of much excitement from mobile operators as broadcast services using a range of different technologies are rolled out across Europe. The issues of advertising and pricing which will be critical to the success of the service.
April 19, 2007
The mobile entertainment space will see significant innovation and development. Mobile music will be a major contributor to the revenues achieved in the mobile entertainment market in the next 5 years, although its overall share of the market will fall from 40% in 2006 to 30% in 2014 as new forms of entertainment such as mobile TV and video services begin to gain consumer interest. Games, gambling, personalization and adult content will all see significant growth, as the overall mobile entertainment market will grow from US$19 billion in 2006 to US$50 billion + in revenues worldwide in 2014.
The mobile entertainment market according to R4B, publisher of the new report, "Future of Mobile Entertainment, Outlook 2007-2014" will come largely from music services such as ringtones, full track downloads and ringback tones. While music and images dominate the market and will continue to generate the highest proportion of revenues seen in the mobile entertainment industry, mobile TV and video service revenue are set to grow exponentially over the next seven years, growing from US$170 million to more than US$2.5 billion in 2014 operators are seeing more and more people take out subscription packages that allow them to watch TV services on the move, and this is reflected by the phenomenal growth this segment will see.
With changing technology and consumers becoming more aware of what their handsets are capable of, and what services are being offered, ringtones and wallpapers, mainstays of the mobile entertainment, are becoming less important as consumers upgrade to more advanced handsets which support a wide array of entertainment features, from 3D games to broadcast TV to high quality music playback. Mobile games and mobile video, which together represent only one-quarter of mobile entertainment revenues today, will account for more than half of the mobile entertainment market's growth over seven years' time.
April 19, 2007
Mobile application and software markets have seen tremendous changes in past decade. The mobile software market has grown into a landscape of hundreds of vendors with complex functionality, lines of partnership and competition across software products. The world of handset operating systems though a bit slow to take off has changed dramatically in last couple of years emerging as a new competitive landscape of handset operating systems, user interface frameworks and application execution environments.
A new research report from R4B, The Future of Next Generation Mobile Operating Systems, covers in detail this highly technical area providing future trends and size of the market as well as bursts some of the common longstanding mis-perceptions. According to the report the demand for handset operating system and platforms is consolidating, while there is an increase in the complexity with not only manufacturers, but also enterprises and mobile operators making a choice of platform.
The mobile operating system market which was dominated by Symbian exclusively till 2003, with minuscule share of Microsoft Windows and even smaller or negligible share of Linux, is all set to see shuffle at the top by end of 2007. R4B as per their new research report The Future of Next Generation Mobile Operating Systems, believes that Symbian which is currently ahead of Linux and Linux over Windows on mobile phones, even if phone-enabled PDAs are counted will see the beginning of decline in share, as the combined market penetration of Windows, Linux, and native Java begin to erode developer and vendor support for Symbian. R4B believe that 2006 was a turning point in the history of Linux as a mobile phone platform, not only due to Motorola's recent commitment, but also the wealth of products and support services from a growing commercial community.
The research further forecasts that in longer term, Linux-based platforms will prevail over many of today's credible contestants and by 2010, Linux will overtake Symbian in the market for advanced mobile phone operating system. Linux currently claims 30+ percent of the market, while Symbian has less than half of the market and remaining with Microsoft. The Future of Next Generation Mobile Operating Systems also examines the myth and reality behind Linux for mobile phones, including the false start and continued efforts around J2ME, suggesting that it is a flexible OS and not an open OS, which the industry really requires and Linux is capable of providing.
This new research report from R4B presents mobile phone operating system value chain, investigates active players and elaborate upon the techno-commercial trends and aspects of this cutting edge technology segment. Report also discuss in detail key layers of the handset operating system software stack while it explains the importance of application execution environments (AEEs) and UI frameworks, which several specialist vendors are producing as standalone products. R4B predicts that mobile operating system market will see a lot of dynamism leading to segmentation of market into various niche markets by 2014.
The Future of Next Generation Mobile Operating Systems reviews various software vendors and products( for example Access Linux Platform, Adobe Flash Lite, GTK+, MiniGUI, Mizi Prizm, MontaVista Mobilinux, Nokia S60, Obigo Suite, Openwave MIDAS, Qualcomm BREW, SavaJe, Symbian OS, Trolltech Qtopia and Windows Mobile) which R4B believe to be major players in these respective neiche mobile operating system market, including those offering full end-to-end operating systems to providers of UI frameworks, AEEs and OS kernels. Reviews provide product background, positioning, technology and summaries the company's strategy moving forward.
R4B see several trends emerging within the mobile software market in next seven years, key among them are Software flexibility versus that openness will be critical for successful operating systems, as the value moves towards middleware and upper software layers, so the core OS technology may get commoditize, technology verticalization is gradually taking place, with vendors merging or partnering to offer out-of-the-box pre-integrated software stacks.
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Editorial
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R4B's analysts believe the WiMAX Market will be worth anywhere from $3 billion by 2009 and $3.4 billion annual opportunity for fixed and portable wireless broadband equipment is foreseen by 2010.
Today’s communications systems are inherently flexible, allowing for a mix and match relationship between components. This flexibility provides an opportunity for the convergence of established communications systems and the creation of new services. With international telecom equipment market valued at more than $300 billion, growing at approximately 15 percent a year, it is faster than the most of the other industries.
Mobile and wireless technologies have without doubt created a stranglehold on Telecom Empire globally. There would be more than 3 billion mobile subscribers in the world by 2010, a more than double of current subscriber levels and more than half of the global population.
In past few years, not only wireless and mobile but broadband technologies also have grown rapidly. There are close to 150 million broadband subscribers today, while there were close to 130 million broadband subscribers worldwide at the end of 2004, a 30% growth from 2003.
High-speed broadband access will be a principal driver of telecom equipment revenue in the next four years, helped by increased government support and a stronger economic environment. The broadband access revenue will triple between 2004 and 2008, from $33 billion to $101 billion.
The momentum of broadband wireless is starting to build. Second-generation products which eradicate major obstacles of previous failed products, including line-of-sight problems and expensive truck have reversed this trend.
Thanks to technological advances and the emergence of WiMAX, broadband wireless is picking up steam. Technological advancements are one key reason that broadband wireless access (BWA) infrastructure has taken off in recent years. The emerging WiMAX standard will probably play a role in making wireless broadband access more ubiquitous than anything else before it.
Regardless of WiMAX, the BWA industry is growing rapidly. Wireless broadband growth driven by increased broadband take-up and fixed/mobile convergence (mobile telephony seen as a substitute for fixed telephony) is expected to expand globally at a very healthy 27% CAGR between now and 2008 with 10 million BWA customers worldwide by 2008.
BWA infrastructure revenue are expected to reach $5 billion in 2005, revenue from spending on BWA capital expenditures will reach an estimated $22.3 billion in 2005, climbing to $29.3 billion by 2008, a 7.1 percent compound annual gain.
Spending on services in support of the BWA infrastructure (including Wi-Fi and WiMAX), such as basic services and support (e.g., field maintenance and repair), professional services, and depot repair and logistics rose 13.6 percent in 2004, rebounding from the 31.8 percent drop in 2003 associated with the drop in wireless infrastructure spending.
Broadband wireless has evolved from an obscure acronym to the next big thing thanks to proponent (Intel, Fujitsu etc.) marketing machine and the formidable progress made by the WiMAX forum, growing membership to the extent that WiMAX is now synonymous with broadband wireless.
With large volumes, chipsets could sell for as little as $20 and other WiMAX components could benefit from these mass volumes as well. We expect the cost reduction impact to be mostly on the CPE at an average selling price less than $100 and WiMAX will capture 36 percent of the total broadband wireless market by 2008.
Base station costs are more complex due to the variety of types and scale. However base stations are less of a factor in the economic equation for operator deployments.
R4B's analysts believe the WiMAX Market will be worth anywhere from $3 billion by 2009 and $3.4 billion annual opportunity for fixed and portable wireless broadband equipment is foreseen by 2010. 3.5 GHz band will account for 50% of that multi-billion dollar market by the end of the decade.
Wi-Fi, which includes wireless standards 802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g, represents a small but quickly growing component of wireless communications services. Spending on Wi-Fi equipment rose 31.8 percent in 2004 to $4.35 billion. Maintaining the trend spending on Wi-Fi infrastructure equipment is expected to total $7 billion in 2008, a 12.6 compound annual increase.
Spending on Wi-Fi services is expected to reach $45 million in 2005 higher than $21 million in 2004 and will continue to climb at a 100 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to $335 million by 2008.
Wireless MarketHawk, April 2007 Issue
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