What can we expect for the fast-moving telecommunications market this year?
There are many predictions. I started looking for information from Twelve 2012 Predictions For The Telecom Industry and Top 12 Hot Design Technologies for 2012 articles. Then I did some more research on what is happening on the field and decided to make my own list of what is expected this year. You can go to the original information sources by clicking the links to see where all this information comes from.
The global telecommunications services market will grow at a 4% rate in 2012 (was 7% in 2011).
Mobile growth does not stop. The number of global mobile subscriptions will pass the 6 billion mark in February. India will pass China to become the world’s largest mobile market in terms of subscriptions.
The mobile handset market will surpass the $200 billion mark. Smartphones are most heavily used by people under 45, and that age group increasingly sees the smartphone or tablet as a portal to Facebook and Twitter, among other social networks. The demand for the chips that generate and process that data in smartphones is increasing (sales of smartphone applications processors surged to $2.2 billion in the third quarter of 2011). Six Companies Want Supremacy On The Smartphones Chip Market! Qualcomm Look Out!
There is lots of competition on mobile OS marker, but I expect that thing continue pretty much as 2011 ended: Android continues to boom, RIM and Microsoft decline. Symbian’s future is uncertain although Symbian started and finished 2011 as the undisputed king of mobile OSs (33.59%). Windows Phone will try to get to market and Leaked Windows Phone Roadmap gives us a peek into the future. Java Micro Edition making a comeback according to the NetApplications report because large number of low-cost feature phones. The real mobile application battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5.Tizen open source project tries to push to mobile Linux market (first version Q1 2012) with ideas from Meego, LiMo and WebOS. Cars and smartphones start to communicate using MirrorLink technology to allow new features.
Mobile campaigns to be hot in 2012 presidential race article tells that though mobile advertising not seen much on the campaign trail, mobile strategy is expected to be important for attracting younger voters. Social networks played an important role in the last U.S. presidential election, but the explosive growth in smartphone usage and the introduction of tablets could make or break the candidates for president in 2012. Expect to see specialized apps to help campaign groupies follow the candidates.
Text messaging has been very profitable business for mobile phone operators and making them lots of money. Text Messaging Is in Decline in Some Countries tell that all signs point to text messaging’s continuing its decline. There has been already decline in Finland, Hong Kong and Australia. The number of text messages sent by cellphone customers in USA is still growing, but that growth is gradually slowing, “SMS erosion” is expected to hit AT&T and Verizon in this year or next years. The fading allure of text messaging is most likely tied to the rise of alternative services, which allow customers to send messages free using a cellphone’s Internet connection.
EU politicians want to ban roaming charges according to Computer Sweden magazine article. If the proposal becomes law in the EU, it takes away slippery roaming charges for mobile data (could happen earliest at summer 2012, but I expect that it will take much more time). Roaming robbery to end – 2015 article tells that the goal is that the mobile roaming fees should be completely abolished the 2015th.
Near Field Communication (NFC) is becoming available in many mobile phones and new flexibility via organic materials can help in implementing NFC. NFC-enabled SIM cards are expected to become a worldwide standard. Electronic wallet in smartphones probably takes a step forward with this. Google, opened the game with Google Wallet service. According to research firm ABI Research estimates that in 2012 NFC phones is growing 24 million to 80 million units. There is still years to wait until mass market on NFC wallets starts. ABI Research estimates that there is 552 million NFC enabled devices at year 2016.
The 4G technology WiMax will see the beginning of its end in Asia. Like operators in other regions, Asian operators will opt for the rival 4G technology LTE instead.
The number of active (installed) PCs worldwide will pass the 2 billion mark. Broadband penetration continues to increase. Broadband penetration of the world’s population will pass the 10% mark globally. IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) penetration of the world’s population will pass the 1% mark. Broadband technologies are fundamentally transforming the way we live. UN wants two-thirds of the world online by 2015.
Today’s Cable Guy, Upgraded and Better-Dressed article tells that the cable guy is becoming sleeker and more sophisticated, just like the televisions and computers he installs. The nearly saturated marketplace means growth for cable companies must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades.
Ethernet displaces proprietary field buses. As Ethernet displaces proprietary field buses to facilitate the operation of the digital factory. Ethernet switches are the ubiquitous building block of any intelligent network. Ethernet has also become the de facto networking technology in industrial automation even in mission-critical local networks. Modern Ethernet switches have added significant new functionality to Ethernet while decreasing port prices. Ethernet for Vehicles also becomes reality largely to serve the expected boom of camera-based applications in cars.
Operators’ growth will increasingly depend on their having a cloud computing strategy, an approach for the high-growth IT service market and a clear value proposition for the enterprise market. Data center technologies will be hot topic. 10GBase-T Technology will become technically and economically feasible interface option on data center servers. 10GBase-T Technology allows you to use RJ45 connectors and unshielded twisted pair cabling to provide 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, and 10Gbps data transmission, while being backward-compatible with prior generations.
40/100 Gbit/s Ethernet will be a hot topic. Carriers and datacenters have been clamoring for the technology to expand their core backbone networks. 2012–A Return to Normalcy and Pragmatic, Power Conscious 100G article mentions that in 2010 and 2011, the industry saw the first real roll-outs of 100G transport solutions based on Coherent Detection and FPGA-based Framers. In 2012 we’ll start to see 100G taking a bigger place in the build out of new and existing networks around the world. The initial deployments of 100G are clearly too costly and too power hungry to be widely deployed as the primary transport technology, so optical transport marketplace will move to much lower power and lower cost Direct Detection optical transport solutions. The average WDM link for 10G is dissipating about 3.5W per optical module, the average WDM link per 100G is dissipating about about 100W.
5 Major Changes Facing the Internet in 2012 article tells that 2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990s. This year the Internet will face or can face several milestones: root servers may have a new operator, new company could operate the .com registry, up to 1000 new top-level domains will start being introduced, additional 10,000 Web sites will support IPv6 and Europe will run out of IPv4 addresses.
No IPv6 Doomsday In 2012. Yes, IPv4 addresses are running out, but a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy won’t be coming in 2012. Of course there’s a chance that panic will ensue when Europe’s RIPE hands out its last IPv4 addresses this summer, but ‘most understand that they can live without having to make any major investments immediately. Despite running out of IPv4 addresses we will be able to continue to use IPv4 techniques (Asia depleted all of its IPv4 address space already April 2011). ISP’s and hosting companies will not run out of IPs. This only means that the price per IP will start to slowly grow. Forward thinking enterprises can spend the year preparing for the new IPv6 protocol (USA is expected run out of addresses next year). Comcast has said it will offer production-quality IPv6 services across its nationwide network in 2012.
Operators start to pay more attention to the business opportunity of “M2M” (machine-to-machine connections). Investment and innovation in M2M (think smart energy meters and fleet trackers for logistics) will follow.
Smart Grid technologies include smart power management and architecture system components are already hot. Smart meter deployment on the rise globally. The global power utilities are the next mega-market moving from analog, standalone systems to digital networked technology. The opportunities are huge in everything from wireless components in smart meters to giant power electronics. First cut of some very basic framework standards have been drafted and lots of works needs to be done (ensure safety!). Forward-looking utilities and such vendors have now put business units and plans in place. IPv6 is seen as a needed technology in implementing Smart Grid communications. IPV6 has become a buzz word for smart grid firms.
You Will See A Ton Of Hype Around “The Internet Of Things” article tells that “The Internet Of Things” is a catchy term revolving around the idea that most everyday objects around us will be equipped with internet-collected electronics, and this will open up new applications. You Will See A Ton Of Hype Around “The Internet Of Things”, and it is hard to say if The Internet Of Things will be a huge business or a passing fad. NXP Semiconductor’s vision of Internet of Things starts with lightbulbs. Wireless sensor networks will get attention. EE Times article Top ten Embedded Internet articles for 2011 gives you links to articles that help you to catch on those topics.
Security issues were talked about lot on 2011 and I expect the discussion will continue actively during year 2012. There are still many existing security issues to fix and new issues will come up all the time.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Five not so obvious ways to extend the battery life on your smartphone
http://news.yahoo.com/five-not-so-obvious-ways-to-extend-the-battery-life-on-your-smartphone.html
While smartphones are taking on many of the features of personal computers, it is not really practical to leave them plugged into a wall throughout the day. This is a problem as apps, navigation services and faster network connections are causing our batteries to run out of juice more quickly than ever.
Thankfully, there are some obvious and not so obvious ways to extend battery life on our phones. Here are five tips worth exploring right away.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boffins demo 2.5 Tbps OAM-modulated light signal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/twisted_wave_works_with_light/
Back in March, a group of Italian and Swedish radio researchers demonstrated that a characteristic of radio waves called orbital angular momentum (OAM) can be used as a multiplexing technique, vastly increasing the theoretical capacity of wireless transmissions.
The original breakthrough was specific to radio waves. It showed that the “spin” (an imprecise term but OAM is difficult to describe) characteristic of the radio wave can be used alongside more familiar amplitude, frequency and phase modulation. Using different OAM characteristics, different transmissions can be recovered at the same frequency over the same path, without interfering with each other.
Now, according to Nature Photonics, the same technique has been applied to optical waves.
The new research, conducted by American scientists from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Tel Aviv and China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, demonstrated a 2.5 Tbps free-space optical transmission using the same technique.
The peak speed was achieved by applying OAM values to eight polarization-multiplexed beams. The demonstrations also showed that OAM can be used with different conventional modulation techniques – both QAM and phase shift keying were used in the experiments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic Wi-Fi roam, signup and billing via SIM card to be tested
Like cellular data but without the cell network
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/27/hotspot_2/
Thirty-seven communications companies around the world have signed up to trial Hotspot 2 Wi-Fi roaming – and billing – using commercially available routers later this year, it has been announced. Hotspot 2 tech allows a mobile handset (or tablet, or ereader) to automatically detect, connect to and register with a Wi-Fi base station.
The trials are being run by the Wireless Broadband Alliance and based around Next Generation Hotspots (NGH) which are capable of authenticating users via the SIM (in a smartphone) or stored credentials (for laptops and tablets), ensuring instant connectivity without having to muck about with usernames or passwords. The alliance has just announced that further trials will take place in Q4 this year, following earlier tests in Q1. This second round of trials follows on from the proof-of-technology and will test remote authentication techniques allowing networks who don’t even have networks to offer network connectivity.
Telefonica and Orange are interested in reducing the burden on their cellular infrastructure
joining the impressive roster of mobile operators are BT, BSkyB, Boingo, Oi Wi-Fi, Time Warner Cable and Skype among others – all companies who’d like to offer billable connectivity to their customers without being reliant on the cellular networks.
Hotspot 2 kit lets a device negotiate a connection without involving the user, so one’s handset can link up to a Wi-Fi location automatically, just as it does to a cellular connection today. The link is verified by one’s home network, which bills by time/data/flat fee as specified in one’s contract (most likely a flat fee, but other options exist). Once the connection has been established, the data is routed locally onto the public internet, in contrast to cellular data connections which are always routed back to the home network before emerging into the raw internet.
The connections and data routing have already been demonstrated, and the GMSA has been drafted in to help the companies involved negotiate roaming agreements,
The GSM standard uses a shared, secret, key unique to each user with one copy no the SIM and one within the home network.
Devicescape offers software which uses a series of bodges to achieve much the same user experience without needing new routers or networks, piggybacking on the free Wi-Fi already offered in numerous public spaces. Intel recently said Devicescape’s tech would be incorporated into Ultrabooks and Bouygues Telecom has launched an Android app (B-WiFi) which uses Devicescape to connect customer handsets to Wi-Fi wherever it’s available.
Devicescape’s solution isn’t as operator-friendly, and it’s notable that Devicescape is also taking part in the Hotspot 2 trials
Tomi Engdahl says:
High Definition Video Clogs Corporate Networks
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/corporatevideo/
If you could somehow peek inside the pipes of your typical corporate network, you’d see a whole heck of a lot of streaming video and P2P filesharing.
That’s what network scanning company Palo Alto Networks discovered when it took a look at more than 2,000 corporate networks between November 2011 and May of this year.
In the past six months, the amount of bandwidth used by streaming video software has quadrupled
P2P filesharing traffic is up seven-fold, he says
“It’s a massive increase within the companies that are using them,”
More people are sharing and watching high-definition video.
This trend isn’t likely to abate, either, as new high-definition screens like the iPad and MacBook Pro’s Retina Display make high quality video even more appealing.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Comcast pays $800,000 to U.S. for hiding stand-alone broadband
http://gigaom.com/2012/06/27/comcast-pays-800000-to-u-s-for-hiding-stand-alone-broadband/
The Federal Communications Commission has settled with Comcast over charges that the cable company made it hard for consumers to find stand-alone broadband packages that don’t cost an arm and leg. As part of the settlement Comcast paid the U.S. Treasury $800,000 and the FCC extended the length of time Comcast had to provide such a service.
The cable provider was ordered by the agency to provide access to “a reasonably priced broadband option to consumers who do not receive their cable service from the company”
FCC also said Comcast would have to provide the stand-alone reasonable broadband-only package for another year — until February 21, 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Down Goes RIM: BlackBerry 10 Delayed Until 2013, 5K Jobs Cut
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/down-goes-rim-blackberry-10-delayed-until-2013-5000-job-cuts/
It’s all losses and delays for Research In Motion (RIM), the struggling mobile company best known for its once-popular BlackBerry devices. RIM lost $518 million in the last three months and has announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs and delay its BlackBerry 10 platform until 2013, according to the company’s first-quarter earnings report released Thursday.
BlackBerry 10 is now expected to launch in Q1 of 2013.
the company announced that it will cut 5,000 jobs globally by the end of fiscal 2013.
“The Company expects the next several quarters to continue to be very challenging for its business based on the increasing competitive environment, lower handset volumes, potential financial and other impacts from the delay of BlackBerry 10,” RIM said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TeliaSonera charges soon Skype calls in Sweden
TeliaSonera Sweden will start to charge for mobile phone Skype calls.
TeliaSonera has experimented with a new pricing model in Spain, where guests were given a six euros to use 100 megabytes of data from a mobile phone IP telephony, or mVoIP calls. This amounts to about 5-10 hours of internet telephony.
In Finland, Skype and other wireless mVoIP phone calls so far do not get an additional cost.
- Such a model has not been on the table, Sonera’s communications director Timo Saxén says.
Saxén however, adds that the operators have to develop new pricing models due to the increased amount of data.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/teknologia/2012/06/29/teliasonera-laskuttaa-pian-ruotsalaisten-skype-puheluista/201232469/7?rss=8
Tomi Engdahl says:
The technology and strategy consultant Chetan Sharma in the United States illustrates the change in operators’ revenue structure diagram . Traditional voice revenues have declined and mobile revenues will increase.
Sharma forecast that operators in the United States after one year will get half of their revenue for mobile data, and half of the traditional operator services.
US Mobile Data Market Update Q1 2012
http://www.chetansharma.com/USmarketupdateQ12012.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does RIM’s “Huge Loss” Signal Wider Handset Market Deterioration?
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/06/29/0041241/does-rims-huge-loss-signal-wider-handset-market-deterioration
“RIM was expected to deliver a nightmarish, -30% year-on-year revenue decline into the May quarter — the company issued its latest profit warning just four weeks ago. Yet it ended up missing the lowered consensus estimate by 10%,”
“apart from Apple and Samsung, is the handset industry drifting into serious trouble?””
Does RIM shocker imply wider handset market deterioration?
http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/28/rim-q1-2013-earnings-handset-industry-implications/
But the size of the F1Q13 sales miss raises another question: apart from Apple and Samsung, is the handset industry drifting into serious trouble?
Last week, HTC shocked many by announcing it is pulling out from Brazil, by far the most important market in Latin America.
Earlier in June, Nokia surprised many by announcing it is pulling out of certain smaller markets, stopping Meltemi development and closing its Salo production facilities.
The industry knows these three vendors are in trouble. But despite lowered expectations, all three have delivered warnings that still managed to surprise Wall Street over the past six weeks. Now RIM managed to stun investors again.
Is it possible that the handset market is now weakening so rapidly that vendors and Wall Street simply cannot keep up?
Are handset sales volumes deteriorating so rapidly into the summer that even the extra cautious April guidance from the weaker vendors left them far behind the curve?
Obviously, the biggest question mark is Europe. Retail sales volume in markets from Spain to Netherlands have started collapsing at a more than -8% annualized pace. How that impacts handset sales is not clear.
We have some weeks to go before the full picture of the 2Q12 handset sales trends is revealed. The early signs are fairly grim. Back in 2000 when the phone industry was blindsided by a sudden volume decline, the first warnings came from the weaker names: Siemens, Philips, Ericsson and Alcatel. None of them produce mobile phones anymore.
But back in 2000, the handset market was still supported by underlying subscriber growth. In the next cyclical downturn, the sub growth in advanced markets will be close to zero.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Just Shafted Its Most Important Smartphone Partner, Nokia
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-just-shafted-its-most-important-smartphone-partner-nokia-2012-6
Nokia has gone from the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer to a company on the edge of disaster.
This Wednesday, Microsoft made Nokia’s problems much worse.
Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8, the next version of its mobile platform. As part of the announcement, Microsoft admitted that no current Windows Phones will be upgradeable to the new platform.
Microsoft had to announce the break eventually — developers need time to create apps for the new platform, and rumors of a platform break had been circulating since February anyway.
But in doing so, Microsoft just killed the market for Windows Phones for the next three to six months. No customer will buy one today knowing that it will be outdated and not upgradeable in months.
So Nokia’s smartphone sales, already small, will probably grind to a halt until Windows Phone 8 is out.
In all likelihood, Nokia smartphone sales in Q3 will approach zero. The only question is if Nokia’s other products will generate enough cash to keep the company afloat.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exclusive: Microsoft tie-up, network sale among RIM options: sources
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-rim-options-idUSBRE85S04J20120629
Research In Motion Ltd’s board is under mounting pressure to consider unpalatable options such as selling its network business or forming an alliance with Microsoft Corp after the Blackberry maker again delayed the release of its next-generation smartphones, said three sources familiar with the situation.
RIM said the launch of BlackBerry 10 mobile devices has been postponed to early 2013
The latest setback has increased pressure on RIM’s board to more seriously explore other options
One of these options is for RIM to abandon its own operating system and adopt Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8.
Microsoft could also be interested in RIM’s wireless patents, the sources said.
RIM and Microsoft declined to comment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Medicine Meets Mobile
“In my mind, technology has saved my life.” Bill Gurtin, patient
http://spark.qualcomm.com/episode/medicine-meets-mobile
Doctors May Soon Be Able to Predict Your Future Health
http://spark.qualcomm.com/blog/doctors-may-soon-be-able-predict-your-future-health
According to research from the folks at MIT, Columbia, and the University of Washington, our lives might be extended –- or even saved– thanks to supercomputers capable of running predictive algorithms.
It works like this: when a doctor throws a patient’s medical history into a large data pool of patients, patterns and rules emerge based on the large sample. These rules can be used to make future medical predictions.
In March of this year, Watson signed up for duty with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) to help oncologists diagnose and treat cancer.
The “Pocket Doctor” Reality: Imagining the Future of Healthcare
http://spark.qualcomm.com/salon/%E2%80%9Cpocket-doctor%E2%80%9D-reality-imagining-future-healthcare
Lots of people talk about the future, but what does it truly look like for the average person? One person with a completely clear vision is Peter Diamandis, doctor, entrepreneur, and founder of the X PRIZE Foundation. One area in particular that Diamandis believes is ripe for reinvention is healthcare.
Working with the Qualcomm Foundation, Diamandis wants to challenge people to create a real-life Star Trek Tricorder mobile sensor with which he hopes to launch an entirely new approach to healthcare– ultimately fixing what he calls a “broken” system. But will it work?
Tomi Engdahl says:
South Carolina passes bill against municipal broadband
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/south-carolina-passes-bill-against-municipal-broadband/
Broadband policy analysts decry pressure from AT&T and a conservative group.
South Carolina has become the latest state in the union to pass a state-level bill that effectively makes it difficult, if not impossible, for municipalities to create their own publicly owned Internet service provider that could compete with private corporations.
“It’s not an absolute ban, but it makes it pretty tough,” Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, a digital advocacy group, told Ars on Thursday.
Oddly, the bill also defines broadband as being “not less than one hundred ninety kilobits per second,” which is pretty laughable by any measure.
Lobbying from AT&T and conservative policy groups
Dampier and others also allege that the bill was crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative think-tank that lobbies local, state, and federal representatives to push for bills and craft ideal draft legislation that are conducive to its values. On its website, ALEC says that cities should not be allowed to create broadband utilities in competition with private corporations.
“The South Carolina bill is the typical reactionary knee-jerk response from the late telecom companies who can only compete by eliminating any hint of competition, rather than compete by offering a better product or service,” wrote Craig Settles, a broadband industry analyst, in an e-mail to Ars on Thursday. “Unfortunately, as long as they wield truckloads of money and state legislators are willing to suck up that money, consumers and local businesses will have to continue fighting.”
Other industry watchers note that similar battles are being fought in other regions of the United States.
“States have different ways to achieve the same end—discourage, delay, or derail public broadband initiatives,” wrote Jim Baller, a telecom lawyer based in Washington, DC
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Tomi says:
Amazon.com Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a smartphone, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting that the Internet retail giant, which sells the Kindle Fire tablet computers, is considering broadening its mobile-device offerings.
Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303567704577519800332392724-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMTExNDEyWj.html
Tomi says:
Meego is not dead?
Jolla Mobile – a company without even a website yet – hopes to be Meego’s resurrection. In the last couple of days it’s emerged that much of the team inside Nokia’s MeeGo’s development has left to created actual new smartphones based for the platform.
CEO Plans Two Smartphones Already
Can Jolla Become MeeGo’s Saviour?
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/10/can-jolla-become-meegos-saviour-ceo-plans-two-smartphones-already/
Tomi says:
In mobile design, failure is inevitable, says Path’s Dave Morin
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/10/path-ceo-dave-morin-speaks-on-design-and-bringing-the-future-to-the-world/
“True simplicity takes a lot of time. And in mobile that’s especially true.”
“The way you should think about mobile is that your first version’s probably going to fail,” Morin says.
“If I learned one thing working at Facebook: If users are trying to use your app in a certain way, get out of their way and let them.”
Tomi says:
Employees Work Extra Hours on Mobile Email, Calls
http://www.cio.com/article/709782/Employees_Work_Extra_Hours_on_Mobile_Email_Calls?taxonomyId=3061
Nearly every worker has used a mobile device to answer calls and emails outside of the work day when at home or at a social gathering. Still, how commonplace is the practice?
A new survey of 1,000 U.S. workers found an average of seven extra hours a week — almost another full day of work — are spent answering calls and email on a mobile device outside of the regular work week.
At that rate, workers are spending nearly 30 hours more a month, or 360 extra hours a year on calls and emails, according to the poll commissioned by Good Technology, a mobile device management software maker.
Nearly half of those surveyed said they feel they have no choice but to put in the mobile overtime to meet customer demands. Half said they do such work in bed.
The survey also found that 68% of workers check their work email before 8 a.m., and that 40% still check work email after 10 p.m.
the findings show that secure access to corporate email and mobile apps has become a “must have” instead of a “nice to have” for nearly all companies.
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Tomi says:
Samsung’s Q2 smartphone shipments nearly twice those of Apple, say research firms
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9229712/Samsung_39_s_Q2_smartphone_shipments_nearly_twice_those_of_Apple_say_research_firms
The smartphone market grew 32 percent year-over-year in the quarter to reach 146 million units, said Strategy Analytics
Samsung and Apple together captured over half the global market
Samsung shipped 50.5 million units in the quarter for a market share of 34.6 percent, while Apple shipped 26 million units for a 17.8 percent market share
Samsung’s shipment of smartphones was more than double its shipment of 20.2 million smartphones in the same quarter last year.
Samsung reported Friday in Seoul that its sales were up 21 percent primarily because of a strong performance by its mobile phones business.
Samsung shipped nearly twice the number of smartphones as Apple during the second quarter, as potential buyers of Apple’s phones and operators hold off purchases in anticipation of a rumored new iPhone 5 by October, research firm Strategy Analytics said late Thursday.
The quarter-over-quarter shipment decline for Apple came six months after it unveiled its latest iPhone, and is not unusual as iPhone shipment volume is highest in the first two quarters after its release, IDC said.
The growth of Samsung and Apple has come partly at the expense of Nokia which trailed behind with shipments of 10.2 million smartphones, for a market share of 7.0 percent.
Nokia’s feature phone volumes showed single-digit annual growth, helped by its expanding portfolio of dual-SIM and Asha models for emerging markets, but its global handset shipments continued to decline, though at a lesser rate of 5 percent year-on-year.
Tomi says:
Don’t tweet if you want TV, London fans told
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/29/us-oly-twitter-day-idUSBRE86S0OB20120729
(Reuters) – Sports fans attending the London Olympics were told on Sunday to avoid non-urgent text messages and tweets during events because overloading of data networks was affecting television coverage.
An explosion in the use of mobile phones to access the Internet and take and send photos and video has made London 2012 the first true “social media Games”, but also put pressure on the networks. The host broadcaster, the BBC, is enabling fans to see many events live on their smartphones.
Mobile operators and infrastructure companies had said they expected to be able to meet the extra demand.
The IOC spokesman said it appeared the problem lay with oversubscription on one particular network, and talks had taken place in an attempt to share more of the data. “It’s a network issue, and it is that which we are working on,” he said.
Official 2012 Olympic communications services provider BT, Vodafone and O2, owned by Spain’s Telefonica, said they had not seen any network problems.
BT says it has provided four times the network capacity of the 2008 Beijing Games to meet the increased demand, laying enough cable to stretch between London and New York.
Tomi says:
Every two years alternating summer and winter Olympic Games will increase network capacity in the world right to the limit. The London Games in IT systems and communication links are the hardest challenge in front of the modern Olympic movement throughout the 116-year history.
Social media breakthrough addition to London’s World Cup seems to come from the applications of the Olympic Games. More and more people follow racing events in many different devices.
“In the past Olympic Games, the media performed well statically, when the communication was distributed to newspapers, radio and television. New communication technology is much more interactive. Mobile devices and social media have increased their interaction, and the races will be monitored more and more in real time”, in 31 countries to network and communications services provider Acme Packet Marketing Marianne Budnick explains.
Veltin indicate that up to 40 per cent of those attending races will keep up with events up to date with two or more of the device.
Multi-device users, half of the tablets are viewing video over the Internet, either live or deferred coverage.
Acme Packet expects that all the video packages for an aggregate of the world’s mobile traffic will increase 211 per cent of the normal level of the London Games a little over two weeks.
Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Jon Olstik advises companies to take precautions to ensure that its information networks congestion at the Olympic traffic during peak periods.
U.S. security authorities are warning businesses of various phishing and malware penetration in the next few weeks.
“The best defense against a conventional monitor the amount of information flows. If it exceeded all of a sudden brisk, network managers can react quickly to change,” McCain said.
Data Networks of capacity limits, evidence was found on Sunday, when Olympic games organizers urged the public to avoid unnecessary text messaging is a network of community services and the use of mobile phones. Reuters reported that the mobile phone network congestion hampered television.
Source: http://m.tietoviikko.fi/Uutiset/Lontoo+venytt%C3%A4%C3%A4+tietoverkkokapasiteetin+%C3%A4%C3%A4rirajoille
Tomi says:
Olympics put mobile communications technology to the test
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19004151
Telecoms firms say their networks will cope with the strain of the hundreds of thousands of spectators, workers and athletes using mobile devices across London’s Olympic Park in East London.
Thirty mobile phone masts have been fitted across the 500 acre (2,000,000 square metre) site, 14 of them for inside stadiums and other buildings.
The nine venues on site can hold more than 160,000 spectators at any one time.
Twenty thousand members of the media are expected, and the Olympic village houses about 17,500 athletes and officials. They will be joined by thousands more workers and security staff.
To relieve strain on 3G data services BT has installed about 1,000 wi-fi hotspots.
Subscribers to BT broadband, O2 mobile and Tesco Mobile will be offered free access. Vodafone, Three, Everything Everywhere and other subscribers will have to buy vouchers
BT says it expects to be able to handle peak traffic of 1.7 gigabits per second
Communications regulator Ofcom has licensed about 20,000 frequencies to allow:
Broadcasters to use wireless cameras, microphones and talkback systems
Olympic organisers to use wireless timing and scoring equipment
Olympic officials, team members, support staff and emergency services to have reliable communication systems.
To secure capacity it borrowed spectrum from the Ministry of Defence and has used frequencies freed up by the switch-off of analogue TV signals.
Spectators are forbidden from bringing in Mifi devices or using their tablets and phones to create personal wi-fi hotspots to connect other devices.
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Tomi says:
Shopping-related applications are very popular. Nearly half of smartphone owners (45 million) use the shopping applications in the United States, shows the research company Nielsen in the report.
Ebay Mobile had 13.2 million users.
Amazon Mobile had 12.1 million users.
Third, the most popular shopping application was a bid service Groupon in.
Smartphone users opened the shopping application an average of 17 times per month.
Source:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/jo+kymmenet+miljoonat+hakevat+rahasaastoja+sovelluksilla/a826947?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-07082012&
Tomi says:
The American operator AT & T closes the GSM mobile phone networks by 2017. The company said that last week the U.S. securities authorities in its declaration .
AT&T will transition customers on a market-by-market basis from Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) networks (referred to as 2G networks) to more advanced 3G and 4G networks.
AT&T expects to fully discontinue service on 2G networks by approximately January 1, 2017.
Still about 12 percent of AT & T’s postpaid customers use 2G phones that can only use GSM network. As of June 30, 2012, AT&T served 105.2 million wireless subscribers.
Sources:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/atampt+luopuu+gsmverkosta/a827195?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-08082012&
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=113088&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDA3MzI3MTctMTItMDAwMDczL3htbA%3d%3d
Tomi says:
Burner Delivers Instant Privacy to the iPhone
New Service Makes It Easy to Create, Share, and Destroy Phone Numbers
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/burner-delivers-instant-privacy-to-the-iphone-1688624.htm
Have you ever given someone your phone number and wish you hadn’t? Now there’s an app for that: Burner, created by Ad Hoc Labs and launching publicly today on the iOS platform, issues disposable phone numbers at the touch of a button. Burner is available in the iTunes App Store at http://itunes.com/apps/adhoclabsinc/burner, for $1.99.
Burner works by bridging calls from your mobile phone to the person you’re talking to. Your Burner number displays as your caller ID, so your real phone remains private.
Burner is ideal for dating, buying and selling online, posting via social media, and many more use cases. Simply give the number to anyone you like, keep it active for as long as you like, then burn it when you’re through.
“Phone numbers are part of an old network that is getting dumber, in relative terms, by the day,” says Cohn. “You give out your number, and it’s all or nothing; it’s out there forever. And in the era of Facebook and social networking, we know the phone can be a lot smarter. Burner is the first piece of this vision.”
Tomi says:
US Adoption of 10 Mbps+ Broadband Nearly Doubles In a Year
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/08/09/1922245/us-adoption-of-10-mbps-broadband-nearly-doubles-in-a-year
“The latest Akamai State of the Internet report pegs U.S. adoption of High Broadband, that is broadband with access of 10 Mbps at 15 percent. While that number may not seem high, it’s 95 percent higher than it was this time last year.”
Tomi says:
Global internet speeds creep back up in 2012, US lags behind South Korea, others
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/9/3230626/akamai-global-internet-speed
Akamai reports that the average global internet connection speed in the first quarter of this year was 2.6Mbps — the same is was three quarters earlier
South Korea continues to rank first with a speed of 15.6Mbps
Tomi says:
Finland is the world’s tenth-fastest Internet connections, says the IT company Akamai report
The average data transfer rate Internet connections in Finland this year’s January-March was 6.9 megabits per second (Mbps).
World’s fastest land is in South Korea, where the average data transfer rate is 15.7 Mbps.
The second place Japan at 10.9 Mbps.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/data/2012/08/10/suomen-nettinopeudet-nousivat-maailman-karkikymmenikkoon/201235359/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Verizon Wants to Put 4G Wireless in Your Car
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=246354&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
The smartphone-in-the-car movement picked up more momentum recently, as Verizon Wireless announced that it is teaming with automakers to bring fourth-generation (4G) wireless technology to in-vehicle phones.
Verizon said it is joining BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, and Toyota in the 4G Venture Forum for Connected Cars, a consortium that will use open standards to deliver 4G telematics. “It’s about bringing more capabilities into the vehicle,” Paul Macchia, a Verizon spokesman, told us. “You can do more with 4G LTE than you can with other networks.”
To distinguish itself from the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC), the 4G Venture Forum will direct part of its efforts at phones that are hardwired into the vehicle. Analysts told us that, by taking aim at hardwired phone services, the forum will bring change to a segment that has lagged in its use of the latest generations of wireless technology.
“GM OnStar, Toyota, Chrysler, and Mercedes are using mostly either 2.5G or 3G modules,” said Mark Boyadjis, senior analyst for IHS Automotive. “No one has 2G in their pockets anymore, but most of these vehicles are still running 2G.”
Verizon’s announcement is another sign that smartphone technology is on an irreversible march into the vehicle. On June 1, Verizon said it would purchase Hughes Telematics Inc. for $612 million. The move was seen as an effort to bring the services of the home and office into the so-called connected car. In September 2011, the CCC put a slightly different spin on that concept by forming a team of auto companies, cellphone makers, and electronics manufacturers to create an open standard for the use of handheld phones brought into the vehicle by their owners. The MirrorLink standard could enable consumers to plug their smartphones and MP3 players into dashboards without worrying about compatibility. The CCC includes GM, Toyota, Honda, Nokia, Samsung, Delphi, LG Electronics, and many others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cable Trumps DSL, Fiber Trumps Cable?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/other/4391886/Cable-Trumps-DSL–Fiber-Trumps-Cable-?cid=Newsletter+-+EDN+Today
DSL to cable as the primary (and for most folks, exclusive) broadband provider. You might think that broadband-plus-video services bundles would provide price motivation for the transition, but as Malik’s August 1 piece also points out, this doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV all saw video services subscription decreases in the most recent quarter
More seeming evidence that the migration away from cable television isn’t indicative of a broader pay-TV-discard (i.e. “cable-cutting”) trend comes from AllThingsD, which notes that the combination of fiber-delivered television services growth and typical Q2 turmoil caused by seasonal home sales (and consequent customer moves from one residence to another) near-exactly compensate for the cable television business loss. To that point, you might think that the telecoms would welcome potential DSL service business loss, due to the opportunity to up-sell customers on fiber services instead. According to Ars Technica, in fact, Verizon exactly fits that description. However, the retention promotion AT&T offered me suggests that it’s not following the same up-sell strategy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Motorola Set for Big Cuts as Google Reinvents It
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/technology/motorola-to-cut-20-of-work-force-part-of-sweeping-change.html?_r=2&smid=tw-share
Motorola Mobility, the ailing cellphone maker that Google bought in May, told employees Sunday that it would lay off 20 percent of its work force and close a third of its 94 offices worldwide.
The cuts are the first step in Google’s plan to reinvent Motorola, which has fallen far behind its biggest competitors, Apple and Samsung, and to shore up its Android mobile business and expand beyond search and software into the manufacture of hardware.
Though Google bought Motorola partly because of its more than 17,000 patents, which can help defend against challenges to the Android operating system, it also planned to use Motorola to make its own, better smartphones and tablets.
One-third of the 4,000 jobs lost will be in the United States. The company plans to leave unprofitable markets, stop making low-end devices and focus on a few cellphones instead of dozens, said Dennis Woodside, Motorola’s new chief executive, in a rare interview.
“We’re excited about the smartphone business,”
“The Google business is built on a wired model, and as the world moves to a pretty much completely wireless model over time, it’s really going to be important for Google to understand everything about the mobile consumer.”
“Ninety percent of the profits in the smartphone space are going to Apple and Samsung, and everyone else from Motorola to RIM to LG to Nokia are picking up the scraps of that 10 percent,” said Charlie Kindel, a former manager at Microsoft who writes about the mobile industry. “There’s no real sign that’s changing anytime soon.”
It was not always this way. Motorola executives like to talk about its glory days.
Competitors like Sony, LG and HTC will be watching closely to see how the Motorola-Google relationship develops, especially whether Motorola receives special treatment from Google. Like Motorola, they use the Android mobile operating system, for which Google receives no payment.
And, people familiar with the companies say, Google could decide to follow Apple’s lead and build a phone from silicon to software, perhaps by creating a separate operating system for Motorola that other phone makers cannot use.
In the meantime, Motorola’s cellphone expertise has already been useful.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet usage expansion: Network neutrality is necessary to keep the trend going
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4390813/Internet-usage-expansion–Network-neutrality-is-necessary-to-keep-the-trend-going-?cid=EDNToday
Overall growth is dramatic, reaching more than 1 zettabyte/year by the middle of this decade. And it’s accompanied by a steady packet-percentage shift from wired to wireless connections.
These trends are critical to keeping the networking and other technology treadmills smoothly running, both in terms of encouraging new hardware and software purchases and upgrades of existing gear.
Eventually, the “pipe” will be at full capacity, though, and an expansion of its bandwidth potential will be necessary to encourage further usage increases. Fortunately, Cisco’s prognostication also suggests that this expansion will in fact occur
But even if this bandwidth potential increase comes to pass, fiscal factors may compel users to give it a ‘pass’. I’m speaking here of the increasingly egregious monthly bandwidth caps, overage charges, dynamic bandwidth “throttles” and other factors that ISPs are instituting, supposedly as a means of optimizing network capacity.
Network neutrality neutering by an ISP is frequently positioned as a means of “punishing” a supposed small percentage of customers who consume a disproportionately high percentage of the total available network resources. But instead, it largely accomplishes the following ISP-friendly but customer-antagonistic outcomes instead:
• Delaying if not completely foregoing costly-to-ISP network upgrades
• Maximizing per-customer extracted revenue and profits
• Prioritizing packets representing the ISP’s own VoIP, streaming movie delivery and other services versus OTT (over-the-top) service alternatives from other companies (I’m looking at you, Comcast, for example), and
• Restricting access to services whose information provided is deemed politically or otherwise unpalatable to the ISP’s shareholders and other interested parties.
I’m not opposed to heavy-use customers paying more… this is the same way that an electric, gas, water or other utility service operates. But public utilities receive regular regulatory scrutiny, to ensure that their actions are serving the common good, versus simply lining the owners’ wallets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet data usage: Up, up, and away, and ‘going mobile,’ as The Who might say
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/other/4390743/Internet-data-usage–Up–up–and-away–and–going-mobile–as-The-Who-might-say?cid=EDNToday
In a recent write-up, I discussed how traditional POTS telephony was rapidly becoming irrelevant, due in part to a wired transition to VoIP telephony and in part to an exclusive reliance on wireless cellular connections. And I noted that in the latter case, legacy cellular voice connections are even being supplanted by audio-only and audio-plus-video cellular data services such as Skype and Apple’s FaceTime.
As Ars Technica’s coverage notes, “In 2011, Wi-Fi accounted for 40% of all traffic, while cellular data accounted for 2%, with the remainder coming from traditional fixed traffic. … By 2016, Wi-Fi will account for 51% of all traffic and cellular will quintuple, moving up to 10%.” Keep in mind that Cisco’s report tallies only the initial connection from a client to the network; if a laptop links up to a router over wireless 802.11, but the router connects to the Internet over wired DSL or cable, the packets aren’t double-counted; it’s a Wi-Fi “vote.”
Admittedly, some fixed clients otherwise capable of being wired-connected via CAT5e (or MoCA or powerline, for that matter), such as desktop computers, are instead tethered over Wi-Fi solely for convenience reasons.
I strongly suspect it’s a safe bet that anything cellular data-connected to the Internet is a portable device (laptop, netbook, tablet, cell phone, Ebook reader, etc).
Tomi Engdahl says:
For the first time, more people in the US own a smartphone than a regular talk and text devices, according to a new report from Chetan Sharma Consulting. Smartphone penetration exceeded 50 percent in the second quarter, making the feature phone a shrinking minority among US mobile users.
While contract dumb-phone users are upgrading to iPhones and Android devices, the biggest boom appears to be in the prepaid segment.
Sharma also found that all of those new smartphones subscribers aren’t necessarily turning into big money makers for the carriers. Revenues from new subscribers fell below 5 percent in the second quarter. That means operators can no longer count on adding new customers to make their profits. Instead, they’ll have to upsell their current subscribers on new services and pricing structures
Source:
http://gigaom.com/mobile/carrier-data-confirms-it-half-of-us-now-owns-a-smartphone/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The coming wireless spectrum apocalypse and how it hits you
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57488596-94/the-coming-wireless-spectrum-apocalypse-and-how-it-hits-you/
Small carriers are worried about getting snuffed by the deep pockets of AT&T and Verizon Wireless, and they want help. What judges and regulators decide to do could impact your wallet for years to come.
Can you imagine what would happen if the industry giants further solidified their hold on the market by hoarding even more spectrum? Bad things, those underdogs would assure you, starting with higher costs for consumers and fewer innovations. And that, they say, is why regulators and judges need to intercede.
“We are at a critical time in the evolution of the wireless industry,” said Kathleen Ham, vice president of federal regulatory affairs for T-Mobile, in an interview with CNET. “And as we transition to 4G LTE, spectrum is a key part of the strategy and survival of every carrier. And it’s the duty of the regulators to ensure that we don’t end up with a market of spectrum haves and have-nots.”
Getting your hands on spectrum doesn’t mean you’re on easy street. Even carriers that have spectrum they want to use can still be muscled out of the market when AT&T and Verizon throw their weight around.
Even though AT&T and Verizon are bundling in unlimited voice and text messaging with the new share packages, consumers are still paying more and receiving less data than they were allotted under the previous plans.
“What wireless customers really want is worry-free plans,” said Harry Thomas, director of segment marketing for T-Mobile. “They don’t want to have to do a lot of calculations to figure out if someone is going to go over their monthly data limit due to excessive usage.”
“The option that does not exist is to allow the formation of a monopoly or a duopoly,” he added, “and assume it will then act in the best interest of everyone else.”
Tomi says:
Market research firm Gartner, the mobile phone market declined between April and June for the second quarter in a row. Gartner estimates that consumers are waiting for new models, or delayed purchases because of economic uncertainty.
The mobile phone market shrunk the company estimates that 2 percent a year earlier. In winter, the major manufacturers have increased however, Samsung’s sales grew by almost a third. Nokia’s phone sales on the other hand fell by 15 percent.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/teknologia/gartner_kuluttajat_pihtaavat_kannykkahankintoja
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC Delivered 2.8PB On Busiest Olympics Day, Reaching 700Gb/s As Wiggo Won Gold
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/08/14/229241/bbc-delivered-28pb-on-busiest-olympics-day-reaching-700gbs-as-wiggo-won-gold
“The BBC has revealed that on the busiest day of its London 2012 Olympics coverage it delivered 2.8 petabytes worth of content, peaking when Bradley Wiggins won gold, where it shifted 700Gb/s. It has also said that over a 24-hour period on the busiest Olympic days it had more traffic to bbc.co.uk than it did for the entire BBC coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2010 games. They revealed they had 106 million requests for BBC Olympic video content, which included 12 million requests for video on mobile devices across the whole of the Games.”
The story of the digital Olympics: streams, browsers, most watched, four screens
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olympics_reach_stream_stats.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
RIM Said to Draw Interest From IBM on Enterprise Services
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-09/rim-said-to-draw-interest-from-ibm-over-enterprise-services-unit.html
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM)’s enterprise-services unit, seen as the company’s most valuable asset, has attracted interest from International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), two people familiar with the situation said.
The business may be valued at $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion depending on the mix of assets included, according to Berenberg Bank.
No party has shown interest in buying all of RIM or the division that makes its phones, and the Canadian company is inclined to wait for the rollout of BlackBerry 10 phones in early 2013 before making any decisions on a sale, the person said.
“If they were to offload this, they are offloading their jewel,”
The fees RIM charged mobile carriers for subscriber access to its network generated revenue of $4.1 billion last year. RIM has $2.2 billion in cash and investments and little debt. If the enterprise-services division is worth about $2 billion, it would suggest the company’s mobile-phone business has little value to investors.
RIM, once the world’s leading smartphone maker, is racing to get the BlackBerry 10 lineup ready for its debut early next year, aiming to regain market share lost to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung and Apple dominate the smart phone market.
Nokia and less-smart phone manufacturers are more and more clearly offside.
Wharton School professors who argue that the popularity of the battle for consumers is even more question operating systems and ecosystems, the battle, which is also reflected in other technological areas as smart phones.
This in turn will drive device manufacturers increasingly under pressure due to the screen resolution and the number of processors can no longer compete as a few years ago.
Professor David Hsu says that equipment manufacturers should change their business models so that they could develop their own advertising revenues, or be able to bill the software manufacturers that they will bring their applications to their phones.
Source: http://m.tietoviikko.fi/Uutiset/Whartonin+professorit%3A+Nokian%2C+RIM%3An+ja+HTC%3An+tilanne+k%C3%A4y+yh%C3%A4+ahtaammaksi
Tomi Engdahl says:
LG hits 5 million LTE smartphones sold
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57493386-94/lg-hits-5-million-lte-smartphones-sold/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
As deployment of 4G LTE networks increases, LG Electronics is reaping the benefits.
The South Korean handset maker announced this evening it had sold 5 million LTE smartphones worldwide, with 1 million of the handsets sold in July alone.
The company said that more than 10 LG LTE smartphones are available in countries where LTE service is available, including U.S., Japan, and select markets in Europe and Asia.
“Sales of global LTE smartphones are expected to increase ten-fold this year from last year,” Jong-seok Park, CEO of LG Mobile Communications, said in a statement.
According to recent numbers from Gartner, LG was No. 5 in total smartphone sales, grabbing a 3.4 percent marketshare in the second quarter of 2012
Tomi Engdahl says:
PlayStation Mobile still aims to take on iOS, Android games
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-57493034-251/playstation-mobile-still-aims-to-take-on-ios-android-games/
Despite Sony’s focus on mobile games via the PlayStation Vita, there’s been a second, parallel path in the mobile game front taken via PlayStation Suite.
PlayStation Mobile aims to take small-scale gaming to a wider variety of devices: Sony Xperia phones and tablets, select Android devices, and the PlayStation Vita. These games will download on all formats and be cross-compatible, in an attempt to build an ecosystem that can extend beyond traditional handheld game systems like the Vita into phones and tablets.
Shown on-screen at the Gamescom presser were an undefined assortment of titles, most resembling the type of indie games you can already find on iOS and Android. That’s the real question: can PlayStation Mobile bridge a gap between old-school gaming franchises and new-school mobile smartphones and tablets, or will PlayStation Mobile continue to be a spin-off from the rest of the AAA handheld gaming content?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Phone Sales Decline 2.3% in Q2; Are Apple and Samsung Doomed?
http://www.benzinga.com/news/12/08/2830682/mobile-phone-sales-decline-2-3-in-q2-are-apple-and-samsung-doomed
Gartner has released a new report announcing that worldwide mobile phone sales declined 2.3 percent in the second quarter of the year, presenting a new challenge to device manufacturers as they prepare for the fall shopping season.
Despite the decline, the tech industry still sold 419 million units during the period. According to Gartner, smartphone sales grew 42.7 percent and accounted for 36.7 percent of total mobile phone sales.
Gartner blames the decline on user anticipation for these new smartphones. With so much promise behind every product Apple plans to release, consumers lose interest in last year’s models — including the iPhone 4S or the original Galaxy Note. Why spend $200 on a new smartphone today if a newer and more exciting iteration is going on sale tomorrow?
This very logic helps and hurts the smartphone industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Real-world testing of Wi-Fi hotspots
http://www.eetimes.com/design/microwave-rf-design/4394000/Real-world-testing-of-Wi-Fi-hotspots?Ecosystem=communications-design
For years, coffee shops, airports and hotels have offered Wi-Fi hotspots to entice clientele. But as consumer connectivity expectations have grown, so to has the proliferation of Wi-Fi hotspots into every facet of our daily lives, including barber shops, corner pubs, fast-food restaurants, bookstores, car dealerships, department stores, and more. Today’s mobile Internet travels with everyone, and it has redefined what it means to “be connected.” But it wasn’t always this easy.
Connectivity is so important to consumers, that it’s not uncommon for them to select a destination or method of transport based on the cost and quality of Wi-Fi Internet access. It is also not uncommon for them to select one coffee shop over another based on high-speed Internet access.
Ease of Use is a Feature
Hotspots use the 802.11 open authentication method, meaning no authentication process at Layer 2 – at all. The customer’s client device (laptop, iPad, smartphone, etc.) joins the hotspot’s SSID, and is forwarded to the DHCP service, and the client device receives an IP address, default gateway and DNS. This, in its purest form, is hotspot connectivity.
At this point the client is now ready to access the Internet. One option is to just allow direct access. This is the easiest of all systems. It causes no difficulty with devices, because there is no user interaction.
However, most hotspot providers opt for a captive portal solution – whereby any attempt by the client device to either load a browser-based Internet session, check e-mail, etc., will all be redirected to an HTTP web page. By capturing all possible outbound ports, the customer’s experience is changed from what they would get at home.
On this captive portal page, the customer can choose to accept the terms of service, and/or pay for Internet usage. The use of a captive portal makes accessing the Internet via a hotspot quite difficult for devices that do not have native web browsing capabilities. The more “hoops” a customer has to go through, the lower their valuation of the hotspot service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The development has come to a halt in smartphones. Rather, it comes to “small development”. This is what is Idean director Mikko-Pekka Hanski , and he is not the only one. So far, the smartphone will take us to his view, more attention than that the right help.
According to Idean fresh Finnish mobile market survey, services market value of SMS-based has not been lowered in recent years in Finland.
Apple ‘s, Google ‘s, Nokia and Microsoft in app stores’ combined net sales in our country last year, four million euros. The most popular applications were games category.
This update of the hit iPhone events are 5 and 8-Windows phones coming to the market. Are they bringing big steps in the development of smart phone? Not necessarily, even if consumers get excited about them.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/blogit/uutiskommentti/kvasialykas+mobiilimaailma/a828924?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-15082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999
http://andrewchen.co/2012/08/15/mobile-app-startups-are-failing-like-its-1999/
The long cycle times for developing mobile apps have led to startup failures that look more like 1999 – it’s like we’ve forgotten all the agile and rapid iteration stuff that we learned over the last 10 years. Stop the madness!
Between 2002-2009, we learned a lot of great ways to work quickly, deploy code a few times a week, and get very iterative about proving out your product.
How things work today
Then, with the arrival of the big smartphone platforms, we’ve reverted. It looks like 1999 but instead of launching, we submit into the iOS App Store.
It looks like this instead:
Raise funding with an idea and impressive founders
Spend 6 months building up a product
Submit to the app store and launch with much PR fanfare
Fail to hit product/market fit
Relaunch with version 2.0, 6 months later
Add Facebook Open Graph
Try buying installs with Tapjoy, FreeAppADay, etc.
Repeat until you run out of money
Not much different, unfortunately.
How can we stop the madness? What can do we do to combine the agility we learned in the past decade with the requirements of the App Store?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile phone market is in fact the last two years occurred in a peculiar turn. Practically all of the Android phone manufacturers have stopped telling its sales figures.
Most absurd example is the ZTE , which in its own press release will tell you how many phones it has sold – according to IDC. The company’s own sales figures can not be bothered to tell.
How reliable are the IDC, Gartner and other research companies in the figures? This is difficult to give an answer.
It is possible that the public information available on Android phones sales can be somewhat off the reality. Research companies telling from the figures seem to be accurate, but as long as the companies themselves do not tell their figures, no one knows for sure.
Android sales figures are in fact only spray. All agree that Android is a smartphone leader. You should be interpreted with some caution on calculations of how big it really is.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/ovatko+androidpuhelimien+myyntimaarat+tuulesta+temmattuja/a829467?s=u&wtm=tivi-16082012