Mobile data increased very much last year. I expect the growth to continue. If operators do not invest enough to their network and/or find suitable charging schemes the network can become more congested than before.
4G mobile device speeds becomes the new standard. As competition move to that end, there will be fast growth there. Shipments of ’4G’ LTE devices, that is handsets, dongles and tablets, reached almost 103 million units in 2012, according to figures published by ABI Research. It interesting that almost 95% of the devices shipped went to North America and the Asia-Pacific.
3G will become the low-cost option for those who think 4G option is too expensive. What is interesting to note is that not everyone who upgraded to an LTE-capable device last year took out an LTE subscription; in fact, only around half of LTE device owners also have an LTE subscription.
The shift to 4G can take many more than year to fully happen even in USA. ABI expects the rate at which 3G subscribers with LTE handsets upgrade to LTE connections will gather pace over the next two years. And even longer in Europe. Carriers should not be panicking. And 3G will live and expand besides 4G for quite a long time. For many of those living outside cities, 3G internet connections are still hard to come by.
Apple and Samsung will continue to make money this year as well as people rate Apple and Samsung more highly than ever. Accountant Deloitte predicts that Smartphone sales to hit 1bn a year for first time in 2013.
Samsung is currently the world’s leading seller of phones and televisions. Those leaders should be careful because competition is getting harder all the time. Samsung boss has given warning on this to employees. Remember what what happened to Nokia.
Android will dominate smart phone market even stronger than before. Digitimes Research: Android phones to account for 70% of global smartphone market in 2013.
Windows Phone 8 situation is a question mark. Digitimes predicts that Shipments of Windows Phones, including 7.x and 8.x models, will grow 150% on year to 52.5 million units in 2013 for a 6.1% share. There is one big force against Windows Phone: Google does not bother doing services for Windows Phone 8, Google’s sync changes are going to screw Gmail users on Windows Phone and there are issues with YouTube. Does Windows Phone even have a chance without Google? For active Google service users the changes are pretty that they get this phone.
Competition on smart phones gets harder. It seems that smart phone business have evolved to point where even relatively small companies can start to make their own phones. Forbes sees that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, will all introduce branded mobile phones.
Patent battles are far from over. We will see many new patent fights on smart phones and tablets.
Mobile phones still cause other devices to become redundant. Tietoviikko tells that last year mobile phone made redundant the following devices: small screen smart phones (4 inch or more now), music buying as individual tracks or discs, navigators (smart phone can do that) and a separate pocket size camera. Let’s see what becomes redundant this year.
Many things happens on Linux on mobile devices. Ubuntu now fits in your phone. Firefox OS phones from ZTE will come to some markets. ZTE plans to make Open webOS phone. Meego is not dead, it resurrects with new names: Samsung will release Tizen based phones. Jolla will release Sailfish phones.
Cars become more and more mobile communications devices. Car of the future is M2M-ready. Think a future car as a big smart phone moving on wheels.
Nokia seemed to be getting better on the end of 2012, but 2013 does not look too good for Nokia. Especially on smart phones if you believe Tomi T Ahonen analysis Picture Tells it Better – first in series of Nokia Strategy Analysis diagrams, how Nokia smartphone sales collapsed. Even if shipment of Windows Phone 8 devices increase as Digitimes predicts the year will be hard for Nokia. Tristan Louis expects in Forbes magazine that Nokia abandons the mobile business in 2013. I think that will happen this year, at least for whole mobile business. I have understood that basic phone and feature phone phone business part of Nokia is quite good condition. The problems are on smart phones. I expect that Windows Phone 8 will not sell as well as Nokia hopes.
Because Nokia is reducing number of workers in Finland, there are other companies that try to use the situation: Two new Finnish mobile startups and Samsung opens a research center in Espoo Finland.
Finnish mobile gaming industry has been doing well on 2012. Rovio has been growing for years on the success of Angry Birds that does not show slowing down. Supercell had also huge success. I expect those businesses to grow this year. Maybe some new Finnish mobiel game company finds their own recipe for success.
Late addition: Wireless charging of mobile devices is get getting some popularity. Wireless charging for Qi technology is becoming the industry standard as Nokia, HTC and some other companies use that. There is a competing AW4P wireless charging standard pushed by Samsung ja Qualcomm. Toyota’s car will get wireless mobile phone charger, and other car manufacturers might follow that if buyers start to want them. Wireless charge option has already been surprisingly common variety of devices: Nokia Lumia 920, Nexus 4, HT, etc. We have to wait for some time for situation to stabilize before we see public charging points in cafeterias.
1,261 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia is a smartphone manufacturers ‘valley of death’
Nokia has yet economies of scale in the production of the feature phone, smartphone manufacturer, but it passes through the valley of death, write the company analysis Índeres Nordnet morning report.
Samsung and Apple vacuum in Q4 smartphone market gains.
Medium-sized manufacturers were in hard position in Q4.
Inderes invests in medium-sized manufacturers, “the valley of death,” which means that, first, they are not able to compete with Samsung and Apple’s economies of scale, and on the other hand against the fast-growing Chinese Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo, as well as new low-cost manufacturers increase the pressure on prices.
Android manufacturers, Sony, LG and HTC’s position seems to be weak, but it also makes it difficult transition to Nokia and Blackberry strategy.
“We consider the current position of the long-term unsustainable and we expect the situation to lapse and price competition and consolidation through,” Inderes write.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/nokia+on+alypuhelinvalmistajien+quotkuolemanlaaksossaquot/a883509?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02032013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
South Korean LG’s Optimus last week to present the G-Pro phone has a feature that allows data to questioning the device remotely.
Feature name on Me Chat. It answers the questions that have been sent from another phone via text message. LG: According to Me chat is supposed to help when the user has forgotten the phone such as a home or business.
You can ask for contact information of people numbers, device location, received calls, and calendar information.
To obtain the information the user is given previously registered with a user name and password information. There is five minute time time frame per session, after which the feature closes.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/unohditko+puolisosi+numeron+laheta+omalle+kannykallesi+tekstari/a883329?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02032013&
My comment: Nothing technically fancy or specifically new in this feature. Now just someone put it into product. Hopefully it is securely implemented, because this potentially can have many security issues…
Tomi Engdahl says:
MWC: Smartphones will never be the same again
Column Massively screened tablet phones might have changed the industry
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2251630/mwc-smartphones-will-never-be-the-same-again
Tomi Engdahl says:
MWC: Mobile World Congress 2013 full coverage roundup
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2250527/mwc-mobile-world-congress-2013-full-coverage-roundup
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox OS is repeating the mistakes of others and hoping for a different outcome
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/01/firefox-os-is-repeating-the-mistakes-of-others/
I feel bad for Mozilla, I really do. Competitors and the march of time are closing in quicker than it can raise its defenses. Her crown jewel, Firefox, is feeling the squeeze as Chrome encroaches on its hard-won territory and mobile offensives have proven largely fruitless. This leaves Mozilla in an awkward position: that of out-of-touch industry stalwart. Being late to the mobile game and Apple’s reluctance to open up iOS to third-party browsers has left the company boxed in.
Mozilla has responded by borrowing a page from the Google (Chrome)book: build an operating system that is essentially nothing more than a browser. Firefox OS is yet another mobile platform built entirely on HTML5 that treats websites as apps. In fact, websites are the “apps” — there is no such thing as native code.
American consumers may be more demanding than those in the emerging markets that Mozilla is targeting, but the wireless infrastructure in South Asia and Africa is nowhere near as robust as it is in the Western world. This poses significant problems for the fledgling OS since it relies on constant connectivity to deliver information. Sure, some services can cache data locally for offline use, but that’s a feature of HTML5 that has yet to be widely embraced by devs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The age of the brag is over: why Facebook might be losing teens
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/1/4049592/the-age-of-the-brag-is-over-why-facebook-might-be-losing-teens
“I’m leaving because a Forbes writer asked his son’s best friend Todd if Facebook was still cool and the friend said no, and plus none of HIS friends think so either, even Leila who used to love it, and this journalism made me reconsider the long-term viability of the company.”
When Branch co-founder Josh Miller asked his fifteen-year-old sister what was hot, she said Facebook had gone cold. “She tries to visit Facebook as infrequently as possible,”
“I think it has less to do with kids consciously looking for ‘the next big thing’ than Facebook just no longer being a space that serves them,”
At some point, adding these details, like hundreds of photos from a recent vacation and status updates about your new job amounted to bragging — force-feeding Facebook friends information they didn’t ask for. What was once cool was now uncool. Worse yet, it started to feel like work.
New apps, new identities
Teens have turned to sites like Tumblr and apps like Snapchat and Instagram to communicate. “Tumblr is mainly my obsession as of now,” says 15-year-old Collin Wisniewski. “It just seems more intimate and its not really a place of bragging, but more of a place of sharing.” “Does this sound familiar?” asks Adam Rifkin in a TechCrunch column. “Teenagers, amusing images, sharing only with trusted friends? In some ways, Tumblr is actually Facebook 2.0!” he writes. Some data suggests that Tumblr may have already eclipsed Facebook as the most popular social network among 13-25 year-olds.
Ultimately, the day of the overshare may have passed, and bragging online isn’t as fun as it used to be. “I think that kids just don’t care anymore,” Bois wrote. “They have gotten over the idea of knowing everybody’s life and everybody knowing their lives!” Fortunately for Facebook, it has become adept at reshaping itself whenever a new tech trend emerges, like peer-to-peer messaging.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jolla Wants To Build A Foursquare Phone, A Facebook Phone — Whatever It Takes To Wake Smartphones From Their Android Slumber
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/03/jolla-ceo-interview/
The sales pitch Jolla is taking to carriers and consumers is that Android has become too dominant and is commodifying the industry, while Apple’s platform is too closed and controlled. Jolla’s MeeGo-based Sailfish OS exists to offer choice, to bring something different to an industry it argues is stagnating under the Android + iOS duopoly.
“At the moment there’s not a lot of choices for consumers in the mobile space. There’s not a great deal of innovation,” Dillon tells TechCrunch. “I think that you have this duopoly with basically two operating systems and essentially two manufacturers. There’s a lot of manufacturers in the Android space but Samsung [dominates].
The first Jolla-branded handset will be launched in time to capture the Christmas and Chinese New Year market, according to Dillon – making Q3 a likely timeframe, although “second half” is all he will be nailed down to. “We’re starting in China, then we’re going to Finland, then we’re going to penetrate into Europe,” he says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Job posting confirms Holidays target for next major Windows Phone release
http://wmpoweruser.com/job-posting-confirms-holidays-target-for-next-major-windows-phone-release/
According to Mary Jo Foley Windows Phone Blue will come after the Windows 8 release, which according to rumours is set to be released this summer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile World Congress is Mean Girls, and NFC isn’t going to happen
And I don’t want to pay for stuff by QR code, either.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2013/02/mobile-world-congress-is-mean-girls-and-nfc-isnt-going-to-happen/
The 2004 film Mean Girls is a modern-day masterpiece, and I have been thinking about it constantly at Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week, because everywhere I turn, I feel that technology companies are channeling the spirit of Gretchen Wieners.
As part of the Plastics clique, Gretchen tried desperately to make fetch the Next Big Thing.
Stop trying to make “NFC” happen. It’s not going to happen.
Or at least, not the way they want it to happen.
Actually getting NFC to work was annoying. I know that hackers and security researchers like to demonstrate reading NFC and RFID chips from many feet away, but the NFC scanners used at the MWC entrance gates were very conservative. You had to put the phone’s NFC chip in exactly the right spot or they wouldn’t let you in, and that’s more annoying than it should be, because I don’t actually know where the NFC chip is in the phones I have. So I ended up scrubbing the phone over the reader for a few seconds like a chump each time I wanted to get in.
Of course, a more systematic approach to using the gates, slowly sliding the phone over the reader until it worked, would have let me figure out where the chip was, but when you’re being watched by an impatient security person, there’s no time to be systematic. Scrubbing like a chump it is.
Once past the gate, NFC reared its head elsewhere. Dotted around the walkways between exhibition halls were posters with links to useful conference information like maps, agendas, and so on. Each link was not a URL, but an NFC tag. Waggle the phone at the tag and it would launch a browser pointing to the right URL.
A year or two ago, we’d have done the same thing with QR codes.
In fact, the NFC tags remind me of QR codes a lot. Just as nobody uses QR codes
The traditionally advocated uses for NFC have been to replace RFID chips in travel cards
The problem with these replacements is a simple one, however. Smartphone batteries run out. They do so with alarming regularity, and they do so at inopportune moments. I don’t care what phone you say you have, and I don’t care if you say it doesn’t happen to you, because it does. You end up staying out late, or you leave your charger at home by accident, or you just plain use the phone too much during the day, and then when you need the phone to work, it doesn’t because it’s out of juice.
The phone running out of power is bad enough when it means you don’t have maps and directions. That’s annoying. But even worse is the battery going flat when you need the phone for mass transit or paying for stuff.
And yet that’s precisely the value proposition that NFC offers: go out for a night on the town and get stranded with no money, no subway ride home. The only way to be safe is to take your credit card and travel card with you anyway, and if you’re doing that? Well you don’t exactly need NFC then, do you?
Technically, NFC applications can be designed to work even when the phone is dead, using the SIM card for secure storage.
In practice, plenty doesn’t, either because it uses interactive authentication and network connectivity (such as Google Wallet) or because the developer wanted to maximize compatibility (such as the MWC application).
Always keen to back a winner, MasterCard announced at MWC that it was going to start supporting QR codes for payments too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does Google mean what it says?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57572265-71/does-google-mean-what-it-says/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
This week, one senior Google exec declared that smartphones are “emasculating,” while another said there was no need for physical stores. Yet Google makes smartphones and has pop-up stores. Confusing?
In business, meaning what you say is unnecessary. It can also have consequences.
It needed its products to be felt and not merely seen on a screen.
Not at all, soothed Rubin. These days, people just need to talk to their friends and read reviews before they spend thousands of dollars on a gadget.
I have a feeling that by “people” Rubin might mean “people who work here at Google who have little time to go to a physical store.”
He might also mean “engineers who buy things according to specs, rather than anything human like touch, feel, or smell.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
LG notches 10M worldwide sales of LTE-enabled smartphones
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57572239-94/lg-notches-10m-worldwide-sales-of-lte-enabled-smartphones/
The South Korean handset maker achieves the milestone even as it loses market share.
The milestone comes a little more than six months after the company announced it had surpassed 5 million sales of LTE-enabled phones.
“Aggressive pushing forward with 4G LTE technology allows LG [to] satisfy the needs of consumers and is a huge factor in our growing success in global LTE smartphone sales,” LG CEO Jong-seok Park said in statement. “Having established ourselves as a major industry player, we will continue to expand our footprint in the global LTE market with a wider range of differentiated, high quality LTE smartphones.”
LG said it hopes to double its LTE smartphone market presence in 2013 as LTE smartphone shipment growth is expected to triple. Market researcher Strategy Analytics said in December that its data indicated global LTE smartphone shipments would hit 275 million this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Data Revenue in U.S. and U.K. to Surpass Voice Revenue by 2014
http://allthingsd.com/20130225/mobile-data-revenue-in-us-and-uk-to-surpass-voice-revenue-by-2014/?refcat=news
There are about 1.6 billion mobile broadband connections today. Five years from now, there will be more than three times that many — 5.1 billion — and they’ll be generating a ton of revenue for the companies that provide them.
That’s the word from the GSMA, which cited those metrics in the Mobile Economy 2013 report it released this morning as Mobile World Congress kicked off in Barcelona.
According to the GSMA, worldwide mobile operator data revenue will exceed that of voice by 2017. And in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. it will do so even more quickly — perhaps as soon as 2014. Argentina’s data revenue will exceed voice this year.
Tomi says:
Pricey Apps, Dated Software Might Stop the Drive to the ‘Connected Car’
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-28/pricey-apps-dated-software-may-stop-the-connected-car?campaign_id=bw.taboola.hp
Automakers, not smartphone and tablet manufacturers, stole the spotlight at Mobile World Congress this week with a series of pronouncements about the future of the “connected car.”
There’s a lot riding on the bet that consumers want car tech that functions like a smartphone and offers safety and diagnostic features. By 2015, 20 percent of all new vehicle sales will be what the industry calls connected cars, according to the telecoms trade group GSMA, which could provide a much needed boost for a foundering industry.
Even automakers and mobile operators have their doubts. “A car is a car,” says Nathalie Leboucher, head of Smart Cities program, at the French mobile operator Orange (FTE). “It is not a smartphone on wheels.”
Before the connected car becomes a success, the industry will have to solve five big problems:
Dated software. Don’t be fooled by that new car smell. The in-dash operating system of the most sophisticated new cars runs on a “software kernel” that is at least five years old
Reliability is important—and boring. Swapping out your car’s OS every 18 months for a new one is not a business carmakers want to be in.
Roaming? Or no roaming? International roaming agreements among countries are still a patchwork, concede mobile operators and automakers.
The $15 app. If you’ve already racked up a big iPhone or Android apps bill, you’ll love what automakers are charging for their apps.
Who really wants another contract?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Verizon considering LTE-only phones in 2014 in push to lower subsidies
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/4/4065044/verizon-to-sell-lte-only-phones-in-2014-in-push-to-lower-subsidies
Soon after Verizon transitions to Voice over LTE for ordinary telephone calls around the end of the year, it could start selling phones without CDMA chipsets, reducing costs and associated subsidies, said the company’s CFO Fran Shammo. At Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet, and Telecom conference, Shammo spoke about how a switch to “pure LTE” phones beginning in late 2014 could reduce subsidies over the next two to three years.
“We will ultimately get to voice over LTE, probably end of this year, beginning of next year. Then if you look out into late 2014 then you start to think of things like, okay, so now I can start to take the CDMA chip out of the phone and just have a pure LTE handset. That also starts to reduce subsidies. So over the next two to three years I think we will start to see subsidies come down.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
OpenCL drivers discovered on Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 devices
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6804/opencl-drivers-discovered-on-nexus-4-and-nexus-10-devices
Companies such as AMD, Intel and Nvidia have been shipping OpenCL drivers on the desktop for some time now. On the mobile side, vendors such as ARM, Imagination, Qualcomm, Samsung and TI have been promising OpenCL on mobile and often show off demos using OpenCL. Drivers from vendors such as ARM, Qualcomm and Imagination have also passed official conformance tests, certifying that they do have working drivers in at least development firmwares.
However, none of the vendors have publically announced whether or not they are already shipping OpenCL in stock firmware on any device.
Google has also always maintained that Renderscript Compute, and not OpenCL, is the official parallel computing API for Android.
However, recently we have seen several stories that OpenCL drivers are in fact present on both Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 stock firmware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC: Smartphone shipments to overtake feature phones worldwide in 2013
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/04/idc-smartphone-shipments-to-overtake-feature-phones-worldwide-in-2013/
In 2013, the total number of smartphones shipped around the globe will surpass feature phones for the first time ever, according to a new forecast published by the International Data Corporation (IDC) today.
The IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker expects 918.6 million smartphones to be sent out over the course of this year, equal to 50.1 percent of total mobile phones shipped by vendors.
The IDC says it has based its predictions in part on the falling price of smartphones, as well as better availability and consumer interest worldwide. Combined with the roll-out of 4G networks, the IDC predicts that 1.5 billion smartphones will be shipped globally by the end of 2017, equal to more than two-thirds of total mobile phone shipments that year.
China is expected to come out on top over the next nine months, with 301.2 million smartphones shipped to retailers throughout the country. That works out at a 32.8 percent global market share, more than double that in the US (15 percent).
Tomi Engdahl says:
An update on TweetDeck
http://tweetdeck.posterous.com/an-update-on-tweetdeck
To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless charging is enabled with a number of standards. Dutch NXP has developed a charging station, which allows you to use both the general mobile phone charging standards (as well as one rare third standard).
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/video+yritys+kehitti+langattoman+laturin+joka+tukee+useita+standardeja/a884345?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-05032013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Capital makes a big bet on Android with investment in Bluestacks (exclusive)
Primarily, Intel wants to make sure that BlueStacks’ software is optimized for its chips. The investment could also be a major help for Intel’s smartphones, like the Europe-only Motorola Razr i, which run its x86-based mobile processors instead of the ARM-based processors that power most other Android phones. Intel claims its mobile chips can run 95 percent of Android apps due to the chip architecture difference with its phones.
“Intel has an extremely powerful PC ecosystem, and they are looking to move into mobile in a big way,” said John Gargiulo, the vice president of marketing and business development at Bluestacks in an interview with VentureBeat. “There are more and more Intel chips on Android phones, so I think the alignment is clear.”
“Consumers expect to have similar experiences across all devices, and that includes having access to the same popular apps,”
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/05/intel-capital-invests-in-bluestacks-makes-a-big-bet-on-android-exclusive/#UV17iAvubg5qUkx0.99
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Adds Android Support To Windows Azure Mobile Services
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/05/microsoft-adds-android-support-to-windows-azure-mobile-services/
Last year, Microsoft launched Azure Mobile Services, a cloud backend for mobile applications. But at the time, it only supported Windows 8, and the team then added iOS and Windows Phone 8 support a short while later. Starting today, Android users can also connect their apps to Azure Mobile Services and use the platform to store their structured data, use its user authentication tools and send out push notifications.
The Android SDK is now available on GitHub and as Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie notes, the team welcomes community contributions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung-Sharp Deal Could Reshape Tech Alliances
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/03/06/samsung-sharp-deal-could-reshape-tech-alliances/
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics is in talks to invest about $107 million in struggling Japanese electronics firm Sharp Corp., a deal that not only highlights Korea’s ascendancy over Japan as a global electronics giant, but could well reshape alliances in the competitive industry.
Samsung’s potential involvement in the Japanese company could help Sharp reduce its dependence on Apple.
Samsung’s bid to turn Sharp, once a major competitor, into an ally, shows how serious it is in winning a global battle with Apple for dominance in the lucrative market for mobile devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why I switched from iPhone to Android
http://www.techhive.com/article/2030042/why-i-switched-from-iphone-to-android.html
Things have changed
Here’s what changed: Android got great. The OS got great, and the hardware got great. One of the sweet benefits of being a tech columnist is that I get to try out every significant new phone for a month or so. Time after time last year, I’d pack up and send back another flagship Android phone, switch back to my iPhone exclusively, and spend the following few weeks missing a great feature of the Android phone’s hardware or OS that I’d come to rely on during my testing.
And so, by the end of the year, the idea of continuing to use an iPhone exclusively, or even as my primary phone, was no longer appealing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ZTE to build smartphones with Intel’s new ‘Clover Trail+’ Atom
‘First we conquer Austria, then the world’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/06/zte_to_build_smartphones_based_on_new_intel_atom/
Chinese handset-maker ZTE has announced a “strategic collaboration” with Intel with the goal of creating a phone built around Chipzilla’s new Atom Z2580 processor.
“The collaboration with Intel is an important part of ZTE’s strategy for product development,” the company wrote in its announcement, “both in terms of time-to-market and in providing customers’ with a great handset experience.”
A smartphone based on the Atom Z2580 won’t be the first Atom-powered handset produced by ZTE’s mobile devices division. It currently offers the ZTE Grand X In, which features a 4.3-inch display with a QHD (960-by-540 pixel) resolution, running Android 4.0 aka “Ice Cream Sandwich”, and based on the single-core, 1.6GHz member of Intel’s Medfield series.
That phone, ZTE claims, was “one of the best-selling smartphones in Austria during 2012″ – which, from The Reg point of view, is not exactly a stunning tale of success.
Dora Topham says:
Addendum: it is stopping Play now around the 2 minute mark online.
tomi says:
IR time-of-flight proximity sensor opens up new smartphone user interactions
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4408137/IR-time-of-flight-proximity-sensor-opens-up-new-smartphone-user-interactions
Tomi Engdahl says:
Android ‘splits’ into the Good and the lovechild of Bad and Ugly
Top-end kit world away from crippled cheap cousins, warns analyst
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/07/android_worser/
Android was everywhere at Mobile World Congress last week – there seems to be no stopping Google’s mobile operating that’s now almost as ubiquitous as a colour display. But the success hides the platform’s problems, insists one analyst.
Former Nomura analyst Richard Windsor paints a picture of increasing fragmentation creating a clear dividing line down the middle – with one half of the split populated by shoddy low-end devices that look good but “barely work”.
“Android will separate into a high and a low end with the two having less and less to do with each other”
Gingerbread, the code-name for Android version 2.3.x, runs on 45 per cent of Android-powered devices even though it’s at least two years old, but surprisingly, Windsor predicts this share may actually increase.
What makes a low-end Android gadget such a crappy experience? The cheapo hardware can’t keep up with the demands of the software, we’re told. Android is already fragmenting into Google-branded and non-Google-branded worlds, particularly in China.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windsor is bullish about the prospects for the operating system’s rivals
However, Windows Phone is merely a cog in the larger Microsoft machine, and the Windows world is now pretty fragmented itself. The Redmond giant botched its bold Metro-everywhere strategy, which was supposed to bludgeon a new software “ecosystem” into existence by allowing a developer to write code once, safe in the knowledge the application would run across fondleslabs, Windows 8 desktops, and Windows Phone
Instead, they have to maintain two or three codebases. This wasn’t supposed to happen. For a developer with limited resources, iOS and Android are quite enough of a headache already.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/07/android_worser/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartwatches: The next big thing or this year’s fad?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57572937-94/smartwatches-the-next-big-thing-or-this-years-fad/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
commentary: A computer on the wrist has so far had a lukewarm reception from bleeding-edge buyers and reviewers. Sounds like just about every other major new product.
If the smartwatch is going to be the next revolution in consumer electronics, it will need to balance those two very different needs.
Last week, The New York Times’ David Pogue wrote a roundup of smartwatches, with a conclusion that could best be summarized as “Meh, not yet.”
Pundits wonder if smartwatches are essentially a peripheral device to your smartphone, and consumers scratch their heads as to why exactly they’d need this sort of device.
Nevertheless, the negative reaction to the tech industry’s buzz du jour sounds an awful lot like the lukewarm reaction to early smartphones, the negative reaction to early MP3 players, and even to tablets.
There’s a saying in Silicon Valley: We overestimate what can happen in 3 years and underestimate what we can do in 10, and somewhere in the middle we’ll probably find the truth about smartwatches. Researchers at the analyst firm ABI predicted last month that the market for wearable-computing products will grow from 52 million units shipping this year to 485 million units shipped by 2018. Smartwatches would be part of the total.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Malware-flingers can pwn your mobile with OVER-THE-AIR updates
German Fed-sponsored boffins: They have ways of hearing you talk
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/07/baseband_processor_mobile_hack_threat/
Vulnerabilities in the baseband processors of a wide range of mobile phones may allow attackers to inject malicious code, monitor calls, and extract confidential data stored on the device, according to recent research from mobile security experts.
A three-year research project by GSMK CryptoPhone has discovered that certain baseband processors – AKA phone modems – in smartphones can be manipulated by over-the-air updates without requiring any physical access to the victim’s phone.
According to ARM, a modern smartphone will contain somewhere between eight and 14 ARM processors, one of which will be the application processor (running Android or iOS or whatever), while another will be the processor for the baseband stack.
GSMK Cryptophone said that code execution on the base processor can be a springboard for attacks on a phone’s main CPU.
“Access from the main CPU (and OS) to the baseband processor is typically only via a serial port that accepts AT commands, even though there are various methods to start code on the baseband processor from the main CPU (one example is a known bug in the AT+XAPP command),” Rupp explained.
“Just like on PCs, modern (smart)phone designs are based on a shared memory architecture,” Rupp told El Reg.
“All the techniques found on currently shipping baseband processors that we have looked into have issues or are only partially implemented.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Internet Snacking’ Coming to GM Vehicles
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1395&doc_id=259961&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
In the auto industry’s biggest move yet towards connected cars, General Motors plans to install wireless 4G data modems on millions of its future vehicles, enabling them to serve as Internet hotspots.
The plan, announced at last week’s 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, calls for the giant automaker to embed 4G LTE technology in vehicles across all its brands, starting with Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC in North America, and Opel/Vauxhall in Europe. The hotspot technology could bring new levels of connectivity to many of the six million vehicles GM builds each year — some as soon as next year.
“You’ll be able to get in the back seat with your iPad, go to your hotspot, and do anything that you could do on any other hotspot,” Greg Ross, director of business development for GM’s Connected Consumer Group, told Design News. “You could do voice calls or you could surf the Internet and watch Netflix in the backseat.”
Although technical details are still scarce, GM said last week that it’s teaming with AT&T Inc. to equip most of its 2015 models with 4G LTE broadband, a global standard for high-speed data communication in mobile phones.
“Let me be clear about one thing,” GM vice chairman Steve Girsky said in a prepared statement at the Mobile World Congress. “The technology will be built in, not brought in. And it won’t be phone dependent, either. It doesn’t matter what type of smartphone you have.”
GM foresees the technology as a high-tech extension of its existing OnStar telematics system, which has been offered in GM vehicles for 17 years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablets Now Taking A Greater Global Share Of Web Page Views Than Smartphones, According To Adobe’s Digital Index
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/tablets-vs-smartphones-page-views/
The proportion of web traffic coming from tablets has pushed past smartphones for the first time, according to Adobe’s latest Digital Index which has tracked more than 100 billion visits to 1,000+ websites worldwide, between June 2007 to date, to compare which device types are driving the most page views.
Adobe attributes the rise of tablet page views to how well-suited the form factor is for web browsing, with the most obvious attribute being tablets’ larger screen size vs smartphones (albeit, that gap is closing as some tablets shrink and some smartphones swell). On average, Adobe found that Internet users view 70 per cent more pages per visit when browsing with a tablet compared to a smartphone — so tablet users are doing more leisurely (and presumably leisure time) browsing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nordea: Windows Phone’s market share in double digits in late 2013
- We can see that Windows Phonesta has already become the third ecosystem and it has surpassed RIM in all major markets, Nordea’s report is written.
Nordea points out that the WP’s market share increased to 5-6 percent in the UK, Germany, France and other European key markets, although the new Windows Phone 8 devices can not fully be marketed.
WP Italy’s share is already 14 per cent.
Nokia dominates the Windows Phone ecosystem with nearly 80 percent market share.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/mobiili/2013/03/08/nordea-windows-phonen-markkinaosuus-kaksinumeroiseksi-loppuvuodesta/20133630/66?rss=6
Nokia Lumia sales growth means that the license fees go up after this year bigger than Microsoft’s paid support.
Nokia will pay Microsoft for about 500 million higher license fees for Windows Phone operating system, as Microsoft will pay Nokia platform to support the marketing and development of the current contract period, Nokia estimates in recent years in the 20-F report of the U.S. financial authorities.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/bisnes/2013/03/08/lumia-myynnin-yllattava-rekyylivaikutus–jattimaksut-microsoftille/20133628/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kovio gets help convincing world to buy into printed NFC
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/kovio/
NFC, as endorsed by the NFC Forum, includes passive tags which respond with a short chunk of text which can contain a URL, but those cost between 10 and 15 pence a time.
printed tags which Kovio likes to call “NFC Barcodes” and can be churned out using ink-jet-like printing at a third of the cost of traditional tags, but still aren’t part of the official “N Mark” standard endorsed by the NFC Forum.
Kovio’s tags, on the other hand, will only respond with a number – but they cost a third the price.
Also, given the majority of URL tags point to a programmable short code, the difference in utility is little more than academic even if the compatibility problem remains.
NFC is having a tough enough time without trying to expand the standard yet again, which means Kovio is experiencing a few problems.
At the annual operator junket, Mobile World Congress, NFC was everywhere but sadly almost all the tags we found were just storing URLs – so could easily have been replicated with QR Codes or indeed Kovio’s NFC Barcodes. NFC itself is capable of so much more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow: Vending Machines Undergo a Complete Overhaul
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=260083
For decades, vending technology seemingly changed little from an ancient Egyptian device that dispensed holy water at the drop of coin. Until recently, many modern-day machines still followed the same principle: Deposit your money and a mechanism releases your candy bar, soda, or bag of chips.
Now, however, consumers are beginning to experience a flurry of innovations that are transforming the face of vending technology
With a growing array of cashless payment options and cloud-based telemetry systems that transfer data on machine operations and customer buying habits to vending operators and marketers, vending technology is set to undergo transformations that were unimaginable even decades ago.
Mobile computing will expand payment options in vending machines.
telematics is a particularly fascinating segment.
Mobile computing will also change the way consumers will interact with vending machines. It’s already happening at the retail level, where Starbucks customers with prepaid accounts now have an iPhone app that lets them buy products by scanning a barcode displayed on their smartphones.
Starbucks publically reports that customers using this mobile app tend to spend more, with a much faster transaction time than cash or credit. There’s no reason why that wireless method couldn’t be applied to vending machine purchases.
Similarly, new generations of cellphones will contain near-field communications (NFC) chips that will allow consumers to wave or “bump” their phone in front of a vending machine to make a purchase, rather than using cash, credit, or debit cards. The Google Wallet mobile app already lets consumers tap their smartphones on an NFC terminal at checkout and pay with a designated credit or debit card.
Among other advancements, engineers are already working on technologies that will enable vending machines to identity the voice, face, or gestures of the customer standing in front of it.
Tomi says:
SXSW: How Mobile Devices Are Changing Africa
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/sxsw-how-mobile-devices-are-changing-africa/
From micro-payments to education, mobile-device platforms are transforming how Africans work and live.
Mobile phones are kicking off a revolution in Africa, with everyone from farmers to villagers relying on apps to make electronic payments, check on expiration dates for medicine, and predict future storms or the best prices for produce. In a SXSW session titled “The $100bn Mobile Bullet Train Called Africa” (which would also be a pretty good name for one of the indie films playing at this massive convention), Tech4Africa founder Gareth Knight explained the contours of this revolution.
According to Shapshak, more kids in Africa have access to the Internet than consistent electricity. Nobody owns a PC or can access a fixed-line telephone, so mobile phones are a conduit for everything from email to news to making payments via SMS.
mobile devices are disrupting traditional markets
Many of the mobile devices used in Africa aren’t cutting-edge, and SMS-based platforms are a necessity when it comes to sharing information. “SMS is so fantastic because it gets to every device everywhere,” Shapshak said. “SMS has a 100 percent read rate; you read every SMS you get.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yoshida in China: Beijing’s misguided Android worry
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4408407/Yoshida-in-China–Beijing-s-misguided-Android-worry
One thing for certain about China is that nothing is certain. Things change in China–sometimes very quickly.
It remains to be seen if this rule applies to Android’s current stronghold on the Chinese smartphone market. However, if a white paper recently posted by the research arm of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is any indication, it’s clear that China’s government agency harbors deep uneasiness about its nation’s industry becoming too dependent on Android operating system, controlled by Google.
So, what’s the beef?
“While the Android system is open-source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google,” the white paper said.
The paper further alleged that Google discriminated against some Chinese companies developing their operating systems by delaying the sharing of codes. Google also used commercial agreements to restrain the development of these companies’ mobile devices, it added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Testing HDMI and MHL interfaces
http://www.eetimes.com/design/test-and-measurement/4409597/Testing-HDMI-and-MHL-RohdeSchwarz
Today’s set-top boxes, tablet PCs and smartphones are equipped with analog or digital video interfaces such as the high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) and the mobile high-definition link (MHL).
Mobile high-definition link
Mobile high-definition link is a new standard closely related to HDMI. This new interface technology is most common in smartphones. It allows content such as Internet-streamed media, movies and user-created video to be output to TV screens in HD resolution. MHL runs on the micro-USB port now included in many mobile devices. MHL consortium founders Nokia, Samsung, Silicon Image, Sony and Toshiba point to the new technology’s following benefits for mobile applications:
• The micro-USB port can be used to transmit uncompressed HD video and audio.
• Mobile devices can charge while playing media.
• Eliminating the need for a separate audio/video port – combined with micro-USB’s small size – enables manufacturers to produce even smaller smartphones.
The USB port is used to exchange data with a personal computer as usual. However, if the built-in MHL transmitter chip detects that it is connected to an MHL enabled sink or MHL to HDMI converter, it switches automatically to MHL transmission mode. In this case, the MHL transmitter sends the audiovisual data across the micro-USB connection.
Like HDMI, MHL has an additional pin for transmitting control signals. This is for the MHL control bus (CBUS), which performs various tasks: It detects whether an MHL enabled sink or source is connected, and it transmits data relating to the encryption of audiovisual data.
Both HDMI and MHL transmit the visible video signal in TMDS frames and the audio and meta data (e.g. InfoFrames) in the blanking intervals (HSync and VSync).
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T: Ban on unlocking phones won’t affect our customers
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57573331-94/at-t-ban-on-unlocking-phones-wont-affect-our-customers/
The telecom giant says it will unlock phones for customers with accounts that have been active for 60 days, are in good standing with no unpaid balance, and have honored their service agreement.
Tomi says:
Of course Google made a talking shoe for SXSW 2013 (video)
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/9/4083928/google-made-a-talking-shoe-for-sxsw-2013-video
t’s not intended to be a consumer product — the project comes out of Google’s Art, Copy, & Code initiative, whose tagline is “Advertising Re-imagined.” With an Arduino board, some key sensors (pedometer, gyroscope, etc.), and a bit of snarky code, the shoe tracks how active you are and will respond accordingly with either faint praise or biting sarcasm.
Tomi says:
Phonegap Application Development
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/phonegap-application-development
Tomi says:
Samsung tops China’s smartphone market in 2012
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/techscience/2013/03/10/34/0601000000AEN20130310001800320F.HTML
Samsung Electronics sold 30.06 million smartphones in China last year, up from 10.90 million units a year earlier, garnering a 17.7 percent market share
Chinese tech firm Lenovo emerged as the No. 2 smartphone seller with a market share of 13.2 percent last year
Apple Inc. followed with 11 percent, trailed by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. with 9.9 percent and Chinese manufacturer Coolpad with 9.7 percent
Tomi says:
Android Malware, believe the hype.
…or “Just how much Android malware is there anyway?”
http://countermeasures.trendmicro.eu/android-malware-believe-the-hype/
The security industry has an embarrassing problem. For several years it became a matter of course for the big names in security to warn annually that ‘next year’ was to be the year of mobile malware. “Look out“, we said, “mobile malware, it’s coming…“; but it never did. It remained elusively over the threat horizon.
In reality, every year since Cabir in 2004 we have saw appearances and developments in mobile malware (originally for Symbian, J2ME and Windows CE) but it simply never reached critical mass or moved beyond the mischievous.
Now that the problem is well and truly here
We have thus far analysed more than 2 million apps
293,091 Apps classified as outright malicious and a further 150,203 classified as high risk.
Of those 293,091 malicious apps, 68,740 were sourced directly from Google Play.
22% of apps were found to inappropriately leak user data, over the network, SMS or telephone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teen smartphone ownership skyrockets in U.S.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57573990-94/teen-smartphone-ownership-skyrockets-in-u.s/
A new Pew survey shows that 37 percent of all teenagers own a smartphone, and for many of them it’s their main way to access the Internet.
The old stereotype that teens love using telephones still holds true even in the digital age.
“The nature of teens’ Internet use has transformed dramatically — from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel releases Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 dev code, adds dual-boot option for Windows 8
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/12/intel-android-jelly-bean-4-2-2-dev-code/
Intel’s in the tricky position of playing Android iteration catch-up — but it’s getting better at it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eye-Tracking Tech Will Be Open to iPhones and Other Devices
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/eye-tracking-tech-will-be-open-to-iphones-others/
Samsung Electronics won’t be the only company that gets a fancy eye-tracking feature. A start-up company called uMoove, which has been developing this type of technology for three years, says it will offer eye- and head-tracking to anyone, including device makers like Apple and software developers who make mobile apps.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google confirms Project Glass will support prescriptions ‘later this year,’ but not in its Explorer Edition
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/12/google-confirms-project-glass-will-support-prescriptions-later-this-year-but-not-in-its-explorer-edition/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aggressive Mobility Plans Bring Risks, But the Rewards Are High
http://www.cio.com/article/729902/Aggressive_Mobility_Plans_Bring_Risks_But_the_Rewards_Are_High?page=2&taxonomyId=600003
Companies that are aggressively adopting mobility are experiencing far more incidents than their more cautious counterparts, but they are also reaping far greater rewards thanks to mobile, according to a new study.
Innovators Pay Higher Costs, Reap Greater Rewards
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the innovators are paying a price for their proactive adoption of mobile technologies. Innovators averaged twice as many mobile incidents in 2012—including lost devices and data breaches that led to regulatory fines and lost revenue. Traditionals had a median of 12 mobility incidents in 2012, compared with a median of 25 incidents among innovators. But on the flip side, innovators reported far more benefits from their adoption of mobility, including:
Increased productivity, speed and agility
Improvements in brand value, customer happiness and overall competitiveness
Happier employees and improved recruiting and retention rates
Innovators are also experiencing nearly 50 percent higher revenue growth than traditionals (44 percent vs. 30 percent). As a result, 64 percent of innovators say the benefits of mobility outweigh the risks, while 74 percent of traditionals feel the risks outweigh the benefits.
“Everyone seems to be getting benefits from going mobile,” Duckering says. “We’re really talking about degrees. More aggressive adoption of mobile seems to be resulting in more aggressive results.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opto 22 Develops Tool to Build Mobile Automation, Monitoring & Control Interfaces
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=260175
Automation and control system provider Opto 22 is readying the release of a new tool that will allow engineers to build and deploy mobile, web-based automation, monitoring, and control interfaces for a variety of device platforms regardless of OS, the company said.
Opto 22 has dubbed Groov, set to be released in April, a “human device interface” (HDI) rather than a human machine interface (HMI) because it “takes the regular HMI in a different direction: toward the tablet, smartphone, and other mobile devices that have become part of our home and professional lives,” the company wrote in an email to Design News.
The idea behind the tool is to build mobile interfaces that — like smartphone interfaces — are more intuitive to how a person works, thinks, and uses a mobile device.
It uses a web browser in which engineers can simply drag and drop a gadget, such as a gauge or button, onto the screen and choose a data tag for information from Opto 22’s SNAP PAC control system. The tool is based on open standard interfaces so the interfaces will run on any devices that use a web browser, the company said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Car infotainment to expand after soft growth in 2013
http://www.eetimes.com/design/automotive-design/4409761/Car-infotainment-to-expand-after-soft-growth-in-2013?Ecosystem=communications-design
Despite a muted economic environment, automotive infotainment is expected to experience strong growth in the foreseeable future as customers clamor for built-in connectivity and telematics in cars, according to IHS iSuppli.
Car infotainment semiconductor revenue is set to reach $6.67 billion in 2013. IHS said growth this year will be slower than last year’s approximately 4 percent increase, but solid expansion returns next year and beyond, with revenue growth of 3 to 7 percent each year during the next five years. By 2018, IHS said it expects automotive infotainment semiconductor revenue worldwide will represent $8.54 billion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
White House backs legalizing cellphone unlocking
Dylan McGrath
The Obama administration has voiced its support for a campaign to strike down a law that makes unlocking a cellphone punishable by fines and jail time.
More info: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4408365/White-House-backs-legalizing-cell-phone-unlocking?Ecosystem=communications-design