[Videoobzor] from Mobile-review.com: iOS 4 Tweet

We propose to your attention to video the survey of the new operating system of iOS 4 for the cell phones of iPhone, where the user now became accessible [mnogozadachnost], iBooks, mail, folder, wall-papers. About other changes and additions of the renovated operating system read in the article on the site Mobile-review.com, which will leave on June 23.

Labels:

Connected PND Market on the Rise in Western Europe Tweet

TomTom turns to apps to remain competitive.

The increasing popularity of smart phones has spurred the makers of Portable Navigation Devices (PND) to offer connected PNDs, a market that is expected to expand by a factor 12 from 2009 to 2014 in Western Europe, according to iSuppli Corp.
Shipments of PNDs in Western Europe are set to rise to 4.6 million units in 2014, up from 388,000 in 2009.

As smart phones threaten to take a significant amount of the navigation pie, PND makers—such as the Netherlands-based TomTom and Germany’s Navigon—need to change their business model in order to remain relevant. TomTom, in particular, has gone in a new direction with its latest connected PND—the GO 1000 Live. Since the fall of 2008, TomTom has increased the number of connected PNDs in its portfolio and sells them with its own connected services. A year after the initial launch, TomTom expanded the usability of Live services to cover all European markets where these services are offered, not limiting users to connectivity to their home country alone.

Deliver Relevant Content
TomTom sees real-time connected devices as a logical and necessary continuation of the company’s strategy to increase the amount of relevant information delivered to drivers via TomTom devices, integrating the delivery of traffic information as close to real time as possible. To achieve this, TomTom has introduced Traffic Message Channel (TMC) receivers as well as Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) card-enabled receivers for its own HD Traffic information service. Two-way connectivity enables TomTom to expand on its existing services and to deliver content such as fuel prices, weather and safety camera information in real time to devices.

Just the same, smart phones with unlimited data plans as well as a large variety of applications are able to bring the same information to the end user without requiring the purchase of additional hardware or subscriptions. To counter advancements on mobile handset platforms and provide more flexibility for its own platform, TomTom has released its new WebKit-based platform.

The first device to feature the platform is the GO 1000 Live, with more devices and segments slated to receive the technology in the future. While the device brings with it new features like a capacitive touch screen, the importance for TomTom lies in the establishment of the new platform and the surrounding ecosystem.

Potentially Profitable
Although it is too early to make concrete predictions on how the new TomTom platform and ecosystem will fare, iSuppli believes that this is the correct strategy for the company to pursue.

First, TomTom is the market leader in Europe, and this new platform is an innovative differentiator beyond new hardware or software features.

Second, TomTom is providing its Live services across Europe, either for free as with the new device, or as part of the existing subscription models. This allows users to take advantage of connected services away from home—the location where, arguably, users can benefit the most. Furthermore, mobile data roaming remains expensive in Europe, preventing off-board navigation solutions from being an attractive alternative to a dedicated navigation device.

Third, TomTom noted that its new platform is not limited to the PND form factor but also can be used for in-vehicle systems. The platform, along with its surrounding ecosystem, would allow automotive OEM partners like Renault S.A. or Fiat S.p.A. to bring connectivity to the vehicle as part of the TomTom integration.

Lastly, TomTom stated that this new platform will not be used to replace its existing mobile handset application strategy, in which the company has had—and continues to have—relationships with handset makers like HTC Corp. and Apple Inc., software providers like Microsoft Corp., and carriers like Telefonica/O2.

A Clear Differentiator
TomTom’s announcement of a new platform for its connected PNDs is a clear differentiator and an indication that the company is trying to incorporate current trends surrounding mobile applications into its own product line.

While the lack of detailed information could lead to slow development interest, TomTom can present a unique usage case to its customers and offer connected services throughout Europe at a low entry point price—free for one year with the GO 1000 Live.

The platform also can be used to completely change the way users manage PNDs, allowing them to download additional content, manage subscriptions and eventually also update the map data on their device without having to connect to a home PC. In addition, the new platform can be utilized in vehicles, enabling OEMs to integrate connected services via their TomTom partnership.

At the very least, TomTom has shown that it is thinking hard about how the company can change its product portfolio to stay relevant in the mobile navigation space.

Labels:

Eliminating Tangled Cords: Wireless Charging to Join the Mainstream Tweet

Devices to start shipping in some volume this year, but obstacles remain.

Wireless charging is set to gain a small but significant foothold in the marketplace in 2010, offering consumers a viable option to recharge various consumer electronic devices without the need for dedicated power adapters, according to iSuppli Corp.
While a number of serious challenges continue to present barriers to immediate wide adoption, wireless chargers will start shipping in meaningful volume this year and then quickly ramp up as the devices achieve greater market relevance, iSuppli figures show.

For product-specific wireless charging, solutions are projected to reach 3.6 million units in 2010, up from a mere 200,000 units last year. From then on, the numbers will rise by extraordinary leaps and bounds: to 31.0 million units in 2011, 101.8 million in 2012, 174.2 million in 2013 and 234.9 million at the end of the forecast period in 2014. Growth is also projected for aftermarket wireless charging at a massive five-year Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 133.4 percent—which will add another $2.9 billion to overall revenue by 2014. Product-specific solutions consist of a charger as well as a so-called “skin” or receiver sold for specific devices, while aftermarket solutions consist of universal chargers and various skins that can be utilized with multiple consumer electronics.

Given the projected growth, wireless charging devices will find their way into an increasing array of applications, including mobile phones, portable media players, digital still cameras and mobile PCs. Among these, mobile phones will contribute the largest share of revenue to wireless charging—not only because of the large volume of mobile devices expected to benefit from the technology, but also because of participation by name brands in manufacturing the device, providing much needed market recognition in the process.

Participants, Technologies, and Applications Scramble for Power
Of the four current wireless charging technologies in place today, magnetic inductive is the most widely adopted by nodes in the value chain.

Based on the principle of electromagnetic induction, in which current generated from the induced magnetic field in the receiver coil is used to charge devices, the technology enjoys wide support from semiconductor vendors, device manufacturers, accessories makers as well as retailers. The most successful proponent of magnetic induction is Powermat, a Michigan-based company founded in 2009 that also owned 62 percent share of the wireless charging market in 2009—the largest slice in the industry.

Other wireless charging technologies include conductive, developed by the company WildCharge and currently licensed to Procter and Gamble’s Duracell; near-field magnetic resistance, championed by wireless telecom giant Qualcomm as well as Intel Corp.; and far-field magnetic resonance, a technology that has raised safety as well as health concerns and for which no commercial products are available for the time being.

While most companies are thought not to be ready with any commercial products until sometime this year, several high-profile manufacturers are examining the feasibility of producing wireless charging solutions. The companies include Texas Instruments and ST-Ericsson from the semiconductor side; Nokia Corp. and Research In Motion Ltd. from the device manufacturer side; and Logitech International S.A.. and Case-Mate from the accessory manufacturer side.

Barriers Remain to Wide Adoption
Although wireless charging is poised for growth in 2010 and the years to come, it will take several years for manufacturers to fully implement wireless charging in their devices, iSuppli believes. In particular, manufacturers will need to consider how to integrate wireless charging into the design of printed circuit boards, and significant adoption of wireless charging technology will be needed to drive down costs.

One way to spur adoption by the market is for the wireless charging industry to adopt a common standard that would ensure interoperability among solutions being developed. At present, all commercial solutions are based on proprietary technology, and the skin made by one company, for example, will not work with the charger pad of another company.

Until the industry finds a standard to follow, the wireless charging industry will be fragmented, iSuppli believes, and consumers will hesitate to adopt any solution that could be compromised by the rival companies. However, an open, standardized system will create a healthier competitive environment and prompt manufacturers to join forces—which will enhance consumer awareness and lead to adoption in the markets.

Labels:

Nokia Reorganizes to Embrace Interoperable Multidevice Products Tweet

Restructuring positions the company for the next phase of the wireless market.

Finland-based Nokia Corp. recently underwent a restructuring that provides the company with a foundation to move its business to the next level of wireless communications, according to iSuppli Corp.

The restructuring, which segments Nokia into the three main business units of Mobile Solutions, Mobile Phones and Markets, will allow the telecommunications giant to create a portfolio of interoperable, multidevice products that use a common operating system.

Nokia’s new business segments will focus on a number of areas, including mobile computing, smart phones and the company’s Ovi Internet service for its Mobile Solutions unit; low-end and feature phones for its Mobile Phones unit; and sales and marketing, supply chain and procurement for its Markets unit.

The end-goal for Nokia is to defend its mobile handset and smart phone market share lead as well as develop its mobilized devices portfolio in response to paradigm shifts in its core markets. Nokia for the last two years has led both the smart phone and overall handset market with more than 30 percent share every quarter. And by restructuring for the future, it hopes to address and fend off intense competition from companies making similar moves to this interoperable product mix.

The Art of Interoperability
With these business units in place, along with a recent Intel Corp. partnership earlier this year, iSuppli expects Nokia to develop devices beyond smart phones—possibly their own tablet device—that will help build upon the strategy of offering multiple devices based on a common operating system—in this case, Meego.

The type of portfolio that Nokia plans to develop is a new paradigm emerging in the mobile devices arena, aimed at providing both mobile computing and smart phone devices that are based on the same software/ development platform. In effect, this opens the way for consumers to potentially interact with services, content and applications seamlessly across multiple devices.

The actual reorganization of Nokia won’t directly impact the mobile handset industry as a whole, but presumably will help the company to focus on interoperable devices for both the mobile computing and the mobile handset space. Perhaps, more importantly, this reorganization will enable Nokia to address similar capabilities by companies such as Apple Inc. and Hewlett-Packard/Palm to realize seamless, fully mobile connectivity and content consumption. As this is the next step in the evolution of the wireless communications market, Nokia is positioning itself to take advantage of the new paradigm.

Labels:

Wireless Infrastructure Spending in Europe to Inch Up Slightly in 2010 Tweet

Carriers will continue looking for revenue models to tap heavy data usage

Capital expenditures on wireless infrastructure will rise marginally in 2010 among mobile carriers in Europe in keeping with the prevailing caution of the times, according to iSuppli Corp., even as carriers search for viable revenue-generating models to grapple with the explosive growth of data traffic on their networks.
Capital spending on wireless infrastructure is projected to reach $10.74 billion in 2010, up 3.7 percent from $10.35 billion last year. Spending on wireless infrastructure is a key component of overall wireless capital expenditures—considered an important metric in determining the health of the industry. Other areas of wireless capital spending include expenditures for software upgrades and maintenance, as well as capital spending on site procurements.

While slight, the growth anticipated for this year nevertheless represents a turnaround from the 19.6 percent decline in infrastrucuture spending recorded during 2009, when levels plunged in the wake of the global economic recession. The increased carrier outlay also makes Europe the only other area in the world, along with the region known as MEA (the Middle East and Africa), that will record higher capital expenditures on wireless infrastructure this year, iSuppli figures show. In comparison, declines in carrier spending are expected in North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

With the expected recovery of carrier spending in the region, Europe’s share of global infrastructure capital expenditures will account for 29.6 percent of the world total—second only to that of Asia-Pacific at 45.8 percent and well ahead of North America at 16.3 percent. In particular, the share of North America has steadily declined in the last five years, and the area will continue to face serious challenges related to the wireless infrastructure subscriber base given the approaching saturation of the market.

Capital spending on wireless infrastructure in Europe will continue to grow during the next four years—most rapidly in 2011 at an estimated 11.7 percent, up to $12.00 billion. Figure 2 shows capital spending levels among European carriers for wireless infrastructure from 2009 to 2014.

Coping with Tremendous Data Traffic
A major driver toward continued investments in technology enhancements among European carriers is the expected strong growth of data revenues in the years to come, iSuppli believes.

To support faster data transmission rates, carriers will invest in the upgrading of current 3G networks to 3.5G technologies such as HSPA+, HSDPA and HSUPA. Carriers are not likely to deploy successor 4G LTE networks until at least 2013, iSuppli believes.

The move to upgrade wireless technologies on the continent could help ease some of the problems, especially those related to data usage, currently engulfing carrier networks. Driven by the consumer adoption of smart phones, the appetite has grown among users for high-bandwidth mobile data services, such as mobile video and web surfing, accounting for the tremendous increase of data traffic on wireless networks. As a result, wireless carriers in Europe—like their counterparts in North America—are working hard to find viable business models that could capitalize on the heavy data usage in their networks in order to increase revenues.

In the United Kingdom, 3UK has begun to limit broadband traffic on overloaded cells not only by throttling data-hungry peer-to-peer applications but also by restricting video streaming to 400 kilobytes per second for every customer. In addition, the carrier has announced its intent to offer differential levels of service with varying tariff structures in order to align revenue alongside bandwidth utilization. Such ways to prioritize traffic among European carriers have met with strong disapproval, however, from telecom regulatory authorities who wish to implement net neutrality—the network paradigm that argues for data on the Internet to be moved impartially without consideration to content, source or destination.

In addition to network upgrades, European carriers are looking at network-sharing arrangements in efforts to reduce capital spending.

By the end of October 2009, the network-sharing venture between British-based Vodafone Group plc and Orange, a brand used by France Telecom, was fully operational with more than 100 sites live or under construction. The venture, also known as Cornerstone, is part of a larger deal between Spanish-based Telefonica S.A. and Vodafone to jointly deploy infrastructure in Spain, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom to cut costs over 10 years and save hundreds of millions of euros.

In another instance of network sharing, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom announced an agreement to combine their U.K. mobile operations in a 50-50 joint venture. The move was formally completed in the first quarter of this year.

Such cases illustrate the pressing need among carriers everywhere in the developed world to find a profitable business model that would monetize data traffic, given the steadily declining revenues derived from subscriber plans alone in the face of near-saturated wireless markets.

Wireless penetration in Europe, for instance, exceeded 100 percent at the end of 2009—averaging 125 percent throughout the area and even topping that figure in Greece, Italy and Denmark—mainly because customers subscribe to the services of multiple carriers to avoid high roaming charges.

Labels:

Huawei and Nucleus Connect successfully host inaugural Next Gen NBN Summit in Singapore Tweet

Huawei, a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications network solutions for operators around the world and Nucleus Connect Pte. Ltd. (Nucleus Connect), Singapore' s Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN) Operating Company (OpCo) today successfully hosted the inaugural Next Gen NBN Summit in Singapore, which attracted over 200 attendees from 100 operators and industry players worldwide.

Themed "To Enrich Life through the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network", the one-day summit was jointly organized by Nucleus Connect and Huawei in response to rising interests on Next Gen NBN' s deployment and operation worldwide. Nucleus Connect is the official Next Gen NBN Operating Company appointed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore to build, design and operate the active infrastructure of the Next Gen NBN in Singapore.

At the summit, Mr David Storrie said, "We have put in a world-class infrastructure that will be able to meet any future surge in the demand for bandwidth services within Singapore for a long time. The commercial roll out of the Next Gen NBN enabled by Nucleus Connect will play a significant role in fulfilling the Singapore's vision of transforming the nation into a truly networked knowledge-based society by 2015."

On 6 May 2010, Nucleus Connect also launched its two Central Offices which house highly advanced optical network equipment that will empower the Next Gen NBN based on Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) and Optical Ethernet (OE) access technologies. Strategically located at the East and North of Singapore at Tai Seng Drive and Yishun respectively, they also house a state of the art Operations and Business support system (OSS/BSS) that will function as the heartbeat of the Next Gen NBN.

The launch of Nucleus Connect' s Central Offices underscores its commitment to enable Retail Service Providers (RSPs) to develop their service offerings more quickly, so that they are able to offer a wide range of services to the end-users from the second half of this year. For a start, co-location, patching and interoperability testing services are now made immediately available to the prospective RSPs.

In his opening speech, Huawei Global Marketing Vice President Mr. Kevin Zhang said that national broadband initiatives were booming across the globe and will transform the telecom landscape, opening up opportunities in both developed and emerging markets. "A national broadband initiative must satisfy bandwidth-hungry applications, such as video conferencing, home surveillance, streaming video, and HDTV. Based on similar projects around the world, Huawei' s research indicates that 30 to 100Mbps is the inevitable short-term minimum range. Singapore' s iN2015 project, for example, requires 100Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink speeds in 2010," said Mr. Zhang.

Mr. Zhang also stated that public and private sector collaboration is essential for national broadband success, given the variety of stakeholders that span government, operators, vendors, and service providers. "Network planning, implementation, and operation require a complete and mature eco-system. Experience indicates that operators with the strong backing of partner vendor are a major force in implementing the national broadband initiative, by helping governments draft blueprints, investing in line with government policy, maintaining networks, and delivering services," he added.

About Nucleus Connect Pte. Ltd.

Incorporated on 14 April 2009, Nucleus Connect is responsible for designing, building and operating the active infrastructure of Singapore's Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN). Nucleus Connect will offer comprehensive and flexible services that will help Retail Service Providers select and deliver broadband connectivity services to their target markets quickly and seamlessly, bringing a more enriching experience to the end-users. Visit www.nucleusconnect.com for more information.

Labels:

Digitimes Research: China handset makers focus on overseas markets Tweet

Shipments by China-based handset makers are projected to reach 380 million units in 2010, of which ZTE, Hwawei Technologies and TCL will account for 75 million units, 41 million units and 15 million units, respectively, according to Digitimes Research.

Overseas markets represent the majority of the three companies' shipments. In 2009, Hwawei shipped 70% of its handsets overseas, and up to 92.2% of TCL's shipments in the first quarter of 2010 were for foreign markets.

ZTE has been active in cooperation with telecom carriers with customized handset offerings, especially in emerging countries. Hwawei has invested US$500 million in manufacturing and research and development facilities in India, its largest market.

Overseas handset sales in 2009 for TCL grew 198.8% from a year ago. The company is opening up the Asia-Pacific market via the ODM business model, and has received orders from Motorola since the fourth quarter of 2009.

source

Labels: