Category: Mobile

Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in his CES keynote this morning highlighted the company’s global role in the mobile world. It’s a role that likely fits Nokia more than any other handset maker — with the world’s largest market share of feature phones, Nokia devices are seemingly everywhere. Kallasvuo also posed to developers a global challenge focused on human progress in developing regions.

Why continue with lower-end devices in this age of the superphone? The complex answer, according to Kallasvuo, boils down to a simple concept: Mobile technology is providing “the will and the means” for human progress in developing areas. And to show how serious Nokia is about such a concept, Kallasvuo announced a million-dollar bounty available to mobile app developers to support it.

Nokia is partnering with “Sesame Street” in a contest dubbed Calling All Innovators, designed to show that developers can “do good business and do good” at the same time. The winner of this Global Economy Venture Challenge will be chosen in June, and will get a million dollars. Kallasvuo made it clear that the money isn’t a gift or a prize — rather, it’s an investment in a winning idea that will improve lives and support upward mobility through technology. And he cited a long list of examples as to what might make a winning app.

Among them were several scenarios in which the simple mobile phone “brings hope and higher living standards” to third world markets. Crop monitoring, pricing, weather tracking and the sending of currency from a handset are promising types of applications for developing areas, according to Kallasvuo. Today, many of these tasks can be done with Nokia Life Tools on a basic phone costing $32 — still a large sum in developing areas, but the investment can pay dividends. Advanced apps like Nokia Tej on a basic handset allow for supply chain orders through mobile phones, removing paperwork and other obstacles in already challenged lands.

 Kallasvuo also delved into how exactly Nokia can implement a ”one size does not fit all” product line. He said that one key element is the “cultural anthropologist approach” taken by Jan Chipchase, a Nokia design engineer who might have more frequent flyer miles than Kallasvuo himeslf. Chipchase’s office is quite literally the entire world — he travels widely to ”learn the context of things that people do everyday.” For example,  in some countries, phones are shared, which has implications for personal information, contacts and preferences. And in areas where illiteracy is prevalent, new input methods must be designed.

Nokia’s global approach is probably most visible through its Ovi services, Kallasvuo said, which aren’t a household name here in the U.S., although the company did announce that Ovi is now open to AT&T devices. Ovi is addressing a challenge, as 75 percent of the population in many regions lack email access — something many of us take for granted on a daily basis. More than 5 million Ovi mail accounts have been set up in its first year, according to Kallasvuo, with China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Chile the biggest adapters so far.

So are you interested in entering Nokia’s million-dollar challenge? If so, submissions will be accepted starting Monday, Feb. 1st. You can review this year’s concept categories here.

Dell is using CES to offer a glimpse of its first tablet, an Android-based gadget with a 5-inch screen that’s a bit bigger than a smartphone but smaller than a netbook. The company is joining a crush of hardware manufacturers and software developers jumping into a white-hot tablet space, creating a buzz that has expanded beyond the tech sector to attract attention from mainstream media outlets such as USA Today and MSNBC.com. But is there really much demand for these little connected devices that aren’t phones?

source: CNET

At CES this week, Microsoft has trotted out an HP-branded tablet, Lenovo has showcased a laptop/tablet hybrid and Motorola has offered a glimpse of an upcoming tablet product, to name just a few of the companies using the Las Vegas show to flash sleek new offerings. In the meantime, Apple is rumored to be readying a tablet as well. And many of the new tablets run Google’s mobile operating system, which– as Google’s Andy Rubin rightly boasts – offers the flexibility to be leveraged on a host of different platforms (and which, as Om noted, could lead to the Androidification of everything).

But while Apple’s iPod touch — which is kind of a mini-tablet — has been a hit, tablet-like devices offered in the past from Microsoft, Fujitsu and others haven’t managed to find much of an audience. That could change in the next few years given the increasing presence of Wi-Fi and the deployment of 4G networks, and we’re likely to see a host of non-phone gadgets gain traction as connectivity comes to a wide variety of consumer electronics devices. But consumers will be asked to shell out at least a few hundred dollars to carry a gadget in addition to their existing phones — some of which function pretty well as mini-computers. Whether there are enough users willing to do so is far from clear.

Google’s much-hyped Nexus One has received generally positive reviews as a solid, if modest, improvement on the current lineup of Android phones. That kind of praise would be welcome by most handset manufacturers, of course, which are fighting for market share in an increasingly competitive field. For the Internet search giant, though, the Nexus One marks a very small step toward changing the mobile industry as it exists today. In a new research note on GigaOM Pro (sub. required), I take a look at how the Nexus One reinforces Google’s mobile strategy and reflects broader trends driving the industry toward greater openness. Key topics covered in the report include:

• Google’s vision for the mobile industry
• How federal regulation could play a role
• Which players are most threatened and how to react

Qualcomm said today that when it comes to making its next-generation chips smaller, it will skip a generation. As part of its effort to gain an edge over rival Intel, the wireless chip giant plans to start manufacturing 28-nanometer chips, blowing past the 32-nanometer technology most chipmakers are implementing as cutting edge today — including Intel, which touted such a move just yesterday. Qualcomm is currently making 45-nanometer chips.

At one time, the two ruled different roosts — Intel, the PC industry, and Qualcomm, mobile devices — but as Intel moves down market into phones with its Atom chips (it just showed off a smartphone containing its Moorestown processor) and Qualcomm pushes its ARM-based processors into smartbooks, the two are increasingly fighting one another for business (GigaOM Pro, subscription required).

So what does that have to do with smaller chips? Shrinking a chip makes it smaller, faster, cheaper to manufacture on a per-unit basis, and more energy efficient –all good things when it comes to mobile devices. If Qualcomm can successfully leap ahead of the rest of the industry, its chips will perform better and cost less, giving it a significant advantage.

Qualcomm is teaming up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. to move its chips down the process node, starting around the middle of this year.  Intel has traditionally exploited this advantage to either boost its profits or increase its margin share against its rival AMD. Giving Qualcomm that same ability could make Intel’s already difficult move down market into mobile harder and less profitable.

Lenovo’s LePhone, announced yesterday at CES, is an impressive-looking smartphone that’s expected to come to market later this year. The Android-based handset packs in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor and seems to showcase nearly all the impressive features of Google’s mobile operating system — except any of the Google apps. Which underscores why Android’s amazing flexibility is a double-edged sword.

The handset — which PCMag.com’s Sascha Segan christened the “nemesis” of the Nexus One — is the PC vendor’s first since buying back its phone unit in November. (It will be available initially in China, then the U.S.) And there’s a lot to like about LePhone, which — according to early reviews — has a sleek look and feel much like Google’s new handset, and features a highly customizable version of the OS. But the surprising lack of the Android Market or any other visible Google offering is the latest sign that hardware manufacturers and carriers are increasingly taking the platform and reshaping it as they see fit. That’s a great selling point for Android, of course, but it also could lead to a world where a vast number of Android-based handsets and services compete with one another. And it could be the latest step toward the kind of splintered Android universe that James over at jkOnTheRun warned about months ago.

Image courtesy of Trusted Reviews.

CES, the annual consumer electronics event, officially kicked off today in Las Vegas, with crowds up from last year’s recession-shocked show but still below the go-go years of 2007 and 2008. And while tablets, 3DTV and new Android devices captured most of the headlines heading into the event, they weren’t the only action to be found.

Here are a few early surprises and observations from CES 2010:

Image courtesy CNET

Toshiba Cell TV: Based on the multicore Cell processor developed by Toshiba, IBM and Sony and used in PlayStation 3, the new high-end line of HDTVs from Toshiba has a number of other neat tricks up its sleeve as well. Among them: Upconverting native SD TV content to 1080p HD. While upconversion is old hat in Blu-ray and DVD players, Cell TV is the first commercially available HDTV to upconvert non-packaged media on the fly.  That squealing you hear is coming from cable and satellite operators whose high-def digital tiers just got new competition. Added bonus: Cell TV also upconverts crummy Internet-delivered video.

Image courtesy OhGizmo!

Qualcomm Mirasol display: We’ve seen static mockups before but the unit on display here is a working prototype and it looks great. Unlike E-Ink’s black-and-white e-paper displays, the Mirasol reflective screen can display rich colors. It’s high refresh rate also allows it to support video, all while consuming very little power. Qualcomm says an e-reader with a Mirasol display will be commercially available in the U.S. before the end of the year but wouldn’t identify its partner. Whoever it is will have an opportunity to make a splash with digital newspaper and magazine publishers, who crave graphic capability not available on the Kindle or Nook. Advertisers will love the color and the ability to do click-through ads. A potential game-changer.

Image courtesy mydigitallife.info

Netflix is now a utility: Netflix has been embedding its streaming app on CE devices for a year or more. But it’s clear from the devices on display here that the app has become de rigueur on anything with an Ethernet port. Virtually every connected TV, Blu-ray player and broadband-enabled set-top box here has it.

Image courtesy coated.com

Cisco vs. Skype: LG and Panasonic showed an embedded Skype app on WiFi-connected HDTVs, bringing video calling into the living room. But something of a VoIP TV format war may be brewing between Skype and Cisco, which demoed its TelePresence videoconferencing platform for the home. All of a sudden there are two ways of doing video calling from your couch, and HDTV makers will have to decide which to embed.

Streaming video: 3D is supposed to be the big video story here but some of the most interesting announcements have been about streaming plain old 2D video to HDTVs and other connected devices. Announcements by Vudu, DivX and Rovi suggest an explosion coming in embedded streaming applications and streaming video channels coming to connected devices. Forget widgets — full UIs and streaming video program guides are becoming the new standard.

Editor’s Update: Also at CES, AT&T announced that it will be launching five Android handsets in the first half of 2010, as well as two handsets based on Palm’s WebOS.

At jkOnTheRun, you can also read about new wireless charging developments at CES, The new Palm Pre Plus and Pixi phones–exclusive to Verizon, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer’s keynote address, Samsung’s ebook device,  HTC’s new phones, and HP’s new netbooks and notebooks.

Google’s Nexus One phone has a lot going for it, although it isn’t an iPhone killer just yet. In the meantime, however, questions are emerging as to whether or not Google is going to be truly open with its Android OS strategy. Yesterday, on a videocast, Chris DiBona, Google’s influential open source program manager, provided some insight into the company’s approach.

On an episode of the weekly “CrankyGeeks” videocast that I was on, we asked DiBona whether when it comes to the Nexus One, Google is maintaining a level playing field with other phone competitors, particularly regarding its Android OS strategy. (GigaOm Pro, subscription req’d.)

To clarify, the Nexus One phone runs version 2.1 of Android, and DiBona confirmed that it’s currently the only phone to do so. That fact has given rise to many reports that Motorola, for one, is angry that the Droid phone runs the older version 2.0 of Android. We asked DiBona if the move is similar to Microsoft delivering one version of Windows to HP, and another to Dell. We also asked him whether developers really want to build applications for multiple versions of Android. He responded:

“In defense of the platform, [Android] 2.1 is going to be available to everybody. It’s going to be open-sourced as well. [The Nexus One] is the first phone shipping with 2.1. We gave Motorola a huge heads-up. Motorola has been in this business for a long time. The versions are really close. The differences between them are live wallpaper, a couple of other small features, and a couple of small apps. Those are all getting sent to the Droid.”

As to what he thinks would happen if Microsoft delivered different versions of Windows to HP and Dell, “Microsoft has a certain level of monopoly power that we don’t,” DiBona said. “We were very much the underdog in operating systems. HTC can ship Android with their Sense UI. Some Samsung phones have their own flavor of the UI. This can be a little hard on developers sometimes, and they have to adapt.”

It’s crucial that going forward Google preserves a level playing field with Android, hardware manufacturers and developers–some of whom are already miffed that there isn’t an SDK for the new version of Android. (It’s also crucial that it does so with its new web store.) My sense is that Google is mostly going to do that, but the key word is mostly. I don’t doubt that the latest and greatest versions of Android will appear on Google’s phones first — and many people in the open source community will cry foul about that — but I also clearly heard DiBona maintain that Google is very focused on developers.

He noted that Google has to have a certain number of phones out in the field to really swing a big stick with the developer community, saying, “This is going to sound really cynical, but the thing that matters is how many Android phones we ship. There is a linear relationship between the number of phones we ship and the number of developers we get. We have about a fifteenth of the penetration of the iPhone, and about a tenth of the apps.”

In asking a couple of other Nexus One-related questions of DiBona, I mentioned that the phone seems to have extremely good battery life, to which he said he thinks the Droid’s is actually longer. I also asked him about widespread criticism of the fact that Google’s phone allows only 190MB of its local storage to store apps.

He said the solution is to store apps on an SD card, but he also noted that Apple doesn’t have app-related advantages over the Nexus One in every single department. “[Apple has] an advantage in the apps department, except for apps that run in the background,” he said. “I can start Pandora on [the Nexus One] and run it in the background. I can start all the location apps, and they run in the background.”

You can watch the whole discussion on the phone here (it’s the first 5-minute segment in the videocast).

Investors are betting that Nokia shares will gain 14 percent over the next several weeks, according to a BusinessWeek piece this morning. But even Columbo would have a hard time finding evidence for such an upswing.

The bullish options traders believe Nokia can begin to right a ship that has dramatically tilted in recent months. The company in October posted a brutal quarter and a surprise loss of $832 million due largely to write-offs in its Nokia Siemens Networks unit. Its presence in the U.S. market continues to wane and, as the BusinessWeek piece notes, Fitch Rankings cut Nokia’s credit ranking three weeks ago.

So why the hopeful wagering? From the story:

“Investors are betting that Nokia can’t continue to get things wrong,” said Michael Yoshikami, chief investment strategist at YCMNet Advisors in Walnut Creek, Calif… “The iPhone has been a wake-up call for them and they are starting to show that they understand the market has changed.”

That’s pretty flimsy logic, though, and there’s little to demonstrate that Nokia finally gets it. True, the company has made some smart, recent moves like halving its smartphone lineup, bringing Ovi to AT&T, and vowing to give Symbian a much-needed makeover. But it’s not like the market is getting any easier: In addition to the continued success of the iPhone and the hit Droid, Google’s Nexus One just came to market and Palm appears ready to launch the Pre with both AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the coming months. There are still reasons to be somewhat bullish on N0kia as the handset market rebounds this year, of course, but betting on a 14 percent bump in value by Feb. 19 seems baseless.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Hamner_Fotos.

Forgive my schoolgirl crush on faster mobile broadband, but after Alcatel-Lucent  said today that in conjunction with LG Electronics it had completed the first uninterrupted data handoff between a CDMA network and an LTE network, I got really excited as that means that by the end of this year, about a third of the U.S. population will have access to mobile broadband speeds that make streaming video onto a handset a good experience. And thanks to Verizon and Metro PCS, that means LTE is in sight!

Getting the handoff between the two networks right is a big deal as it prevents VoIP calls or data requests from dropping once out of the LTE network’s range. Alcatel-Lucent’s news affects Verizon in the U.S., which has said it plans to offer LTE to areas totaling some 100 million people before the end of this year and everywhere it has 3G by the end of 2013.

And while it’s been telling people that they will surf at speeds between 5 Mbps and 12 Mbps down and 2 Mbps and 5 Mbps up on LTE, yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Verizon showed off an LG data card that was delivering 100 Mbps down and up to 50 Mbps up. All I’m waiting for is pricing details and a deployment near me. For those holding out for MetroPCS’s service, it doesn’t plan to begin deploying LTE until late 2010, but it says it will launch with handsets this year, while Verizon has said it will have handsets in 2011.

The last few weeks have been dominated by speculation over two things: the Google Phone and the Apple tablet. One is now a reality. The other is still a myth. And beyond this twin-headed meme, attention has been paid to little else. Forgotten is the fact that BlackBerry is still outselling its rivals and its brand-new 9700 Bold (with touchpad) is arguably the best device the Canadian company has ever made. Also forgotten in the Google vs. Apple battle is a little company called Palm.

Palm Pre

Yesterday, I stopped using my Nexus One and resumed using my BlackBerry Bold. (Which explains why I’m once again returning emails and text messages in a timely manner.) I also looked again at the Palm Pre, which had been sitting at the bottom of the drawer, gathering dust. I couldn’t remember exactly why I had stopped using it — though it helped that AT&T’s mobile chief, Ralph de la Vega, today confirmed that Ma Bell was going to start selling the Pre and its younger brother, the Pixi, in 2010.

Verizon is going to start supporting the Pre as well. With Sprint already in the bag, it seems like Palm finally has the ability to address a big enough market. Of course, it also means the company can no longer claim it doesn’t have enough carrier partners. Helping it get to this point was the fact Palm’s main investor, Elevation Partners, has kept the faith.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Elevation co-founder Fred Anderson called its investment in the company a “marathon,” and said his firm “hasn’t taken money off the table because we see a huge market opportunity here.” Elevation has invested a total of $460 million in Palm since 2007 and has seen the stock grow threefold in 2009 alone. I admire these guys for keeping the faith.

After coming off my 10-day Nexus One stint, I realized that barring the iPhone OS, webOS, which powers Palm’s devices, is perhaps the most complete and polished operating environment available. It’s also far more elegant and seamless than either Nokia’s Maemo or Google’s Android. I guess that’s one of the reasons why there’s ongoing speculation that someone — Dell, Nokia or Microsoft — will buy Palm.

Maybe — and maybe not! In the meantime, the big question is: Can the company stage a comeback? I have not been shy about my feelings as to Palm’s increasing irrelevance, antagonizing Palm fans in the process. There were four basic challenges that were facing the company, in my opinion:

1. A weak brand.

2. A weak balance sheet.

3. Deep-pocketed competitors, including one with a massive customer base.

4. Being late to the market, thus giving it a weak app store.

What I liked about Palm:

1. Its developer community.

2. webOS.

3. Vertical integration of its hardware and software à la Apple.

Palm Pixi

Palm has had to face the challenges I outlined last year and has continued to struggle. And should the Palm fanboys get upset by that assessment, here is the company’s latest quarterly performance: In the second quarter of its fiscal 2010 period, the company shipped 787,000 smartphones, in line with what Wall Street was expecting — and down 5 percent from what it shipped during the first quarter of fiscal 2010. Which means that five months after it was launched, the Pre is already beginning to lose steam. And don’t forget that also during that fiscal 2010 second quarter, the company put the ultra-cheap Pixi on the market.

That’s why I still think the odds are against Palm. Still, I would give the company a one-in-five chance of being relevant in two years — as long as it does three things:

First, it needs to make its hardware less complex. It took playing around with the Pre again to remember why I had hated the device in the first place. While the team had done a good job of coming out with an attractive product — Droid makes it look like a work of art — the device’s user experience was stuck in a previous era, as evidenced by the multiple input options (keyboard/touch) and multiple buttons. So in fact, what I hated was Palm’s Handspring legacy. What the company needs to do is go back to the drawing board and come out with a simpler touchphone: no keyboards, no buttons, nothing.

Second, it needs to get its app ecosystem going. The single biggest asset Palm has is webOS. As such, it needs to drive home its web-friendliness amongst developers. And in order to do that, all Palm has to do is look at its past — it had developers and apps long before apps were the new black. It needs to get the number of apps up from its woeful 800 to a more respectable number — say, 10,000. It should start by looking at the top 1,000 apps on the iPhone App Store and get them onto webOS. And if it means actually paying developers to keep supporting the platform, so be it. The good news is that the company knows this. Investor Anderson told Bloomberg: “We have to establish a very strong developer ecosystem…a critical mass of very high-quality third-party applications.”

Third, it needs to get over its Apple complex. CEO Jon Rubenstein and other Apple alums who walk the hallways of Palm need to get over their fixation with Apple and Steve Jobs. You guys are not Steve and your company isn’t Apple. What you are is Palm, a once-iconic PDA maker with decent developer support and a brand that is as hip as Fred Perry. The good news is that Fred Perry is hot again. And seriously guys, stop taking media relationship tips from Apple. It is virtually impossible to even get anyone from your company on the phone anymore, including your CEO. That elusiveness doesn’t work for a company that’s having a tough time getting market traction, doesn’t have the story or the products. You needs to get the media on your side, which means talking to the folks who live and breathe this smartphone stuff.

These tips aside, the company needs to show more urgency or it will continue to lose relevance in this high-stakes war.

Related posts:

Palm Should Go All In With Its Pre Marketing

Palm to Developers: We Love You, We Want You.

Spring in feature photo image courtesy image courtesy of Flickr user oskay.

The nation’s two largest carriers are using this week’s CES stage to push their machine-to-machine (M2M) offerings in a big way as operators increasingly look to the space as a source of new revenues. Verizon Wireless is teaming with 4Home, a home control services provider, to demonstrate 4G services such as residential monitoring, home health and media management, showcasing ways consumers can use their phones to keep tabs on the home front. The offerings will be powered by Verizon’s LTE network, which will be deployed in 25 to 30 U.S. markets by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, AT&T today launched a site designed to help manufacturers of emerging devices bring their AT&T-connected wares to market more quickly. The carrier hopes to expedite the deployment of connected consumer devices such as e-readers and digital photo frames as well as potential residential apps like meter-reading and security.

The two efforts underscore the importance of M2M revenues for carriers, which are facing eroding margins from voice and network-congestion problems from consumer mobile data services. The technology exists to support many such offerings today, and bandwidth for M2M services will ramp up dramatically as 4G networks come online in the next few years. The carriers face a major challenge in building complicated new business models to leverage the space — a home health service, for instance, might require a revenue-share agreement between the health care provider, the equipment manufacturer and the network operator. But as cellular moves far beyond phones into a host of devices, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the home will be a crucial component of M2M revenues as 4G networks are deployed.

Image courtesy of Flickr user DeclanTM.

Dell today said it will team with AT&T to enter the U.S. market with an Android-based smartphone. But the longtime computer vendor could face challenges in making any headway on its home turf.

Dell expanded into mobile two months ago with the Mini 3, an Android-based gadget available in China and Brazil. While the companies offered few details, the new AT&T phone will be a version of the Mini 3 and is expected to debut in the next several months.

The move will mark the first Android phone for AT&T, which will be the last tier-one carrier to offer Google’s smartphone operating system. Dell, meanwhile, adds to an impressive list of carrier customers that also includes Vodafone and China Mobile.

But Dell faces an uphill battle as it comes to market in the U.S. It will be tough to draw attention to the Mini 3 among an ever-increasing number of Android handsets, and taking the spotlight away from Google’s new Nexus One and — to a lesser extent — Motorola’s Droid from Verizon Wireless won’t be easy. Perhaps its biggest challenge, though, will be drawing data-hungry customers to AT&T’s network, which has struggled to handle the congestion of iPhone users. The Mini 3 will not only have to be a compelling device, it will have to be heavily promoted if AT&T and Dell are going to lure users away from the competition — because a good product alone isn’t enough to secure market share in the space, as Palm can tell you.

Image courtesy of Dell’s official Flickr page.

Marvell Technology said today that it’s figured out a way to deliver the first-ever quad-core ARM-based application processor for cell phones and other mobile devices. More cores equals more performance, of course, and Marvell says its quad-core ARM chips will deliver “gigahertz-plus” performance.

Currently Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset is the leader in ARM-based processors for phones, with 1 Ghz of performance. In terms of having identical processors working on the same computing problem, sometimes called symmetric multicore processing, there aren’t any chips doing symmetric multicore processing running in today’s phones. Rather most cell-phone applications processors have multiple cores, with one handling computing, another doing graphics and another taking on multimedia. Marvell’s quad-core would deliver four CPUs — or four times that of today’s applications processors.

That’s more than today’s cell phones need to run properly, but if gimmicky features like animated wallpaper, as well as useful ones like running multiple apps, take off, they’ll become essential. Plus, if today’s tablet hype actually results in user adoption, quad-core performance makes a lot of sense for those machines. I’m waiting to hear back as to how long it may be before we see quad-core ARM chips in real-world devices, or even if Marvell is starting to manufacture them. One way or another, I like where the company is headed.

Amazon today announced that it will start selling a global wireless version of Kindle DX (the 9.7-inch display version) in more than 100 countries for about $489 a pop starting Jan. 19. Just like the Kindle global edition, Amazon is using GSM technologies — GPRS, EDGE and 3G — to power its global WhisperNet, which allows you to download books for free.

It’s a smart move, especially for those of us who travel internationally a lot and sometimes want to buy a book on the spur of the moment. What do you guys think? Time for me to upgrade from my first edition Kindle?

(Related reports from GigaOM Pro: Evolution of the e-Book Market & How Barnes & Noble Can Avoid Getting Netflixed.)