Number 43, 15 December 2008

In this issue

· High speed wireless race begins

· Smaller iPhone for the holiday?

· RIM acquiring and hiring

· Taking a break

· Masthead

High speed wireless race begins

In spite of the fact that Sprint/Clearwire has been rolling out a 4G wireless WiMAX network for over a year now, the media has condescended to acknowledge that there is a race beginning for 4G dominance. The event that inspired media to recognize this was a Verizon Wireless announcement last week that they would step up the development of their 4G network based on long term evolution (LTE). Dick Lynch, Verizon Chief Technology Officer, announced at an industry conference in San Francisco that Verizon would roll out its LTE network in 2009, months before their original plan. Since Sprint/Clearwire was the only player in the 4G space up to this announcement, it took a second player in the game to make it a race, or fight, whichever sport you prefer to knock off for your analogy. But it bore all the signs of a slip of the tongue as Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson was quick to point out that they were not releasing any additional information beyond what Lynch had said at the conference. That leaves it unclear as to what extent Verizon will rollout LTE next year. Charles Golvin, an analyst for Forrester Research said, “Does that mean one tower? One tiny cluster in a town somewhere? There's a lot being made of this, but I'm not sure what the clarity is around how widespread that deployment will be.” Since the LTE standard has not been finalized, it is unclear whether Verizon will roll out a test network or a commercial network. http://tinyurl.com/gomo102

Sprint, in the meantime, made it clear that it was looking at the release of an Android-based smartphone in the next year. “We believe in the vision for Android, so we want to see it get bigger and get healthy,” Kevin Packingham, Sprint’s vice president of products and devices, said yesterday in an interview. “We can, when the timing’s right, pull the trigger.” http://tinyurl.com/gomo103

What does it take for the timing to be “right?” It is worth noting that Google is a billion dollar partner with Sprint in Clearwire. With an anticipated dozen or more markets slated to be operational with Clearwire WiMAX in the next few months, you could lay money on the idea that the timing would include the convergence of the Android phone with WiMAX broadband access and enough mobile WiMAX markets open to make it worthwhile. Sprint is still the third largest carrier in the U.S. and bringing its 4G investment into reality with more than mobile internet devices (MIDs) would be a huge step into the front the high speed wireless race. If you want to place money on that bet, Sprint stock was trading at under $2.50 per share last week, having lost some 80% of its value in the past year.

Smaller iPhone for the holiday?

The nation's top retailer, Walmart, is officially tight-lipped about the buzz that its shelves could be hosting a $99 4GB iPhone by the end of the month. But mobile device experts have plenty to say, and it's all good. Published reports in the New York Post and Mercury News quoted Walmart employees at various stores nationwide claiming that a 4GB iPhone will arrive before December 30th. One report said Walmart was attempting a pre-Christmas launch. If the stories pan out, the smaller storage version of the iPhone could also be a way for Apple to boost its iPod market share, which is starting to slide. The music device is viewed as the gateway product into Apple's computing device portfolio, according to a recent industry report from Pipe Jaffray, and its declining growth is a concern. http://tinyurl.com/gomo104

It sounds reasonable. Apple product portfolios have followed a pretty standard procedure in the past and, as Steve Jobs says, you only have to hit one homerun, over and over again. If you want to predict what Apple will do with the iPhone, just look at the development of the iPod. Sell the standard model and one a bit lower so people can get in on the ground floor. Drop the lower memory model and add a higher one. Come back with a miniature version with lower memory. Bring out two or three more styles over the following years that have all the same software and functionality with moderately different designs. Always work on convincing people that they need more storage to keep ever more media. You can just about bet on iPhone, iPhone Nano (smaller, non-touch screen, no browser), and iPhone Mini (keypad with small standard-size screen and few if any connected features except iTunes – oh yes, and in 5 colors). Last of all you’ll get an iPhone Netbook on which a capacitive touchscreen actually makes sense. It will usher in a new generation of iMac touchscreen computers. There you have it and you heard it here first.

RIM – acquiring and hiring

Bad financial news and criticism over the release of the Storm didn’t stop RIM from making aggressive moves in the market this month. Research In Motion Ltd.'s hostile bid for Canadian security firm Certicom Corp. could make the BlackBerry a safer choice for enterprise customers, particularly within the public sector, industry analysts said Thursday. The Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry maker made its all-cash offer on Wednesday for Mississauga, Ontario-based Certicom after reporting lower-than-expected third-quarter earnings. Certicom's board rejected the bid and in a statement said that other parties were also looking at acquiring the firm. RIM's own public statements revealed the company has been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate with Certicom since February of last year. http://tinyurl.com/gomo105

In a friendlier offer, RIM also moved to acquire content provider Chalk Media Corp. RIM offered to buy Chalk Media, developer of a platform that delivers content including video to BlackBerry users, for $23 million Canadian ($18 million U.S.). As part of the agreement, RIM has loaned Chalk $2 million Canadian, which will provide working capital to the company until the deal goes through. Chalk's Mobile chalkboard allows enterprises to push content out to BlackBerry users, who could be employees or customers. The content, which Chalk calls "pushcasts," can include text, graphics, video and audio. Chalkboard lets administrators track usage of the content, which can be encrypted and prevented from being forwarded or copied. http://tinyurl.com/gomo106

The move shows the growing importance of applications in the smartphone space. Users have been able to buy third-party applications for years from places like Handango, but the experience could be a bit cumbersome, and the mobile programs did not always catch on with much of the mainstream. But Apple's introduction of the App Store has brought mobile apps to the forefront in the smartphone market. The user interface and simple integration with iTunes made it simple for iPhone and iPod Touch users to search, buy, and download apps, and the service has been an undeniable success for customers and developers. RIM is also planning to launch its own online storefront for mobile apps in March 2009. Unlike Apple, RIM's store could be more focused on enterprise apps which makes the Chalk acquisition a natural fit. Organizations that have deployed BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Professional Software are expected to retain control of what applications can be downloaded to BlackBerry smartphones within their corporate deployments. http://tinyurl.com/gomo107

While many companies are slashing employees at an unprecedented rate, Research In Motion Ltd. has more than 1,250 positions it needs filled. The BlackBerry maker is bucking a trend that saw Canada shed over 71,000 jobs last month -- the largest monthly decline since 1982 -- by maintaining a highly vibrant and active hiring regime. The jobs are spread across the world, from Australia to the United States, with the vast majority located in the company's Waterloo, Ont. headquarters within its R&D and product development departments. "For the past three or four years, RIM has done the same thing companies like Nokia [Corp.] are doing now with a fraction of the workforce," said a company insider who declined to be named. "Right now, for every engineer who is promoted, RIM is hiring two or three to replace them. Probably in a few more years RIM could do some restructuring but not now." http://tinyurl.com/gomo108

Taking a break

The editor will be on a year-end vacation the next two weeks and Going Mobile (for the first time since its inception) will not be published during that break. However, I’ll resume on January 5 with a two-part issue. Part one will be a review of the past year and the big happenings as I saw them. Part two will be unadulterated prognostication. I’ll tell you what I think will happen in the industry in the coming 12 months. You can check back in 2010 to see if I’m anywhere near on track. If nothing else, it should be worth a chuckle.

Masthead

This is issue #43 of Going Mobile. The stories that I refer to are all among the 300+ publicly published articles I scan each week, but the commentary is entirely my own and does not represent the views, opinions, or official position of Microsoft or the Windows Mobile management team or any of the sites or companies referenced herein. You can refer stories to me or make other comments below. I'd like to make this better each week.

In this issue

• iPhone tops Windows Mobile sales
• At last: something to blame my forgetfulness on
• I-mate builds touch-interface Windows Mobile phone
• Twitter grows up
• Strange phones
• Masthead

iPhone tops Windows Mobile sales

It was a rough week for Microsoft as research results for the 3rd quarter from Gartner indicated that the success of the Apple iPhone 3G propelled the Mac OS X past Windows Mobile for the number three spot in smartphone operating systems. Overall, the smartphone market did not do well in the economic crunch, recording its weakest year-on-year increase since the numbers have been tracked. The smartphone market grew 11.5% from a year ago recording 36.5 million units in the third quarter.

Apple, however, saw iPhone sales soar more than 320% to 4.7 million units, making the company the third biggest seller of smartphones and smartphone operating systems. Sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile, on the other hand, fell 3% to 4.1 million units. Gartner expects fourth-place Microsoft to feel even more competitive pressure in the future not just from Apple, but from open source initiatives like Android and Symbian Foundation, which are expected to challenge Windows Mobile's licensing model. In addition, the user interface on the Microsoft OS is falling behind competitors' UIs, particularly in the consumer market, Gartner said. 

Nokia experienced a similar fall in sales, but with 42.4% market share, the drop was scarcely noticed. RIM surged 81% in the third quarter and remained in second place. http://tinyurl.com/69zwxm

While Windows Mobile chases iPhone experiences, Nokia has advanced in Microsoft’s home space, selling operating systems. AT&T hopes to standardize on a single operating system for AT&T-branded smart phones as part of a "dramatic consolidation" of its mobile platforms over the next few years, a company executive said today.

The mobile operator believes smart phones will make up the largest portion of devices connecting to its network by about 2014, and it wants to avoid the fragmentation of platforms that has made it hard to develop mobile applications, said Roger Smith, director of next generation services, data product realization at AT&T. Speaking at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco, he said Symbian is "a very credible and likely candidate" to become that one operating system. http://tinyurl.com/gomo09c

Apparently AT&T is either not counting on a continued iPhone hegemony, or simply doesn’t think of it as a smartphone.

While the unveiling of the N97 touch-screen smartphone garnered most of the attention at Nokia World this week, Nokia also announced it had completed the acquisition of Symbian. Nokia was already a 48% stakeholder in Symbian, but in June the cell phone manufacturer said it would purchase the remaining shares for $410 million and move the market-leading Symbian mobile operating system into the open source environment under a royalty-free Eclipse Public License. http://tinyurl.com/gomo09d

At last: something to  blame my forgetfulness on…

­Can radiation from cell phones affect the memory? Yes, if you are a rat – according to the results of experiments at the Division of Neurosurgery, Lund University, in Sweden. Henrietta Nittby studied rats that were exposed to mobile phone radiation for two hours a week for more than a year. These rats had poorer results on a memory test than rats that had not been exposed to radiation.

The memory test consisted of releasing the rats in a box with four objects mounted in it. These objects were different on the two occasions, and the placement of the objects was different from one time to the other.

The actual test trial was the third occasion. This time the rats encountered two of the objects from the first and two of the objects from the second occasion. The control rats spent more time exploring the objects from the first occasion, which were more interesting since the rats had not seen them for some time. The experiment rats, on the other hand, evinced less pronounced differences in interest. http://tinyurl.com/gomo09e

I won’t be convinced until they show me the rats can’t find their car keys.

I-mate builds touch interface on Windows Mobile

­Microsoft Mobile based smartphone vendor, i-mate has launched Go, a new user interface for i-mate handsets. With the tap or slide of a finger, i-mate Go navigates through the full suite of Windows Mobile tools. Users can customise the interface adding their own icons for one touch access to the things they use every day from emails, notes and text messages to pictures, the internet or music.

i-mate Go is available as a free download for the Ultimate 9502, Ultimate 8502, Ultimate 8150, Ultimate 6150, and JAMA 101. The Go interface is powered by VITO Winterface.

The company also announced Windows Mobile 6.1 availability for the i-mate Ultimate range, commencing with the i-mate Ultimate 9502 and Ultimate 8502. Windows Mobile 6.1 will be available for the Ultimate 8150 and Ultimate 6150 very shortly. http://tinyurl.com/gomo09f

Twitter grows up

Twitter stepped into the spotlight this week, not only as a charity organizer and possible advertising goldmine during the holidays, but as a legitimate news aggregator.

Lots of tech blogs have been touting Twitter's potential since its inception, but on-the-ground reports from the Mumbai terror attacks put the idea in motion. In some cases, Twitterers were able to be on the scene long before TV and newspaper reporters could get there.

CNN reports that an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates. http://tinyurl.com/gomo100

Strange phones

Lacking any real ground-breaking phones to get excited about, I’ll leave you with the Nova Scotia promotional site that advertises the do-everything Pomegranate Mobile Phone. I wish I had the industrial designers who worked on this product on my team! The punchline: You may not able to get a phone that does everything, but there is a place that has everything—Nova Scotia. http://tinyurl.com/gomo101

Masthead

This is issue #42 of Going Mobile. The stories that I refer to are all among the 300+ publicly published articles I scan each week, but the commentary is entirely my own and does not represent the views, opinions, or official position of Microsoft or the Windows Mobile management team or any of the sites or companies referenced herein. You can refer stories to me or make other comments below. I'd like to make this better each week.

In this issue

• Mobile messaging set for growth in slow economy
• Businesses see smartphone use growing
• Is it too late for Palm?
• Stephen Hawking to join RIM-backed scientific institute
• Mobile Web remains a mystery to most
• Masthead

Mobile messaging set for growth in slow economy

Despite the fact that the global economy is slowing down, mobile messaging growth will continue. According to data from ABI Research’s recent report, mobile messaging services revenues will grow from $151 billion in 2008 to greater than $212 billion globally by 2013.

Mobile messaging ARPUs are 85%+ of all handset data services revenues regardless of region and will remain so for many years. This fact will push all mobile messaging suppliers to work cooperatively to serve customers well and propel all parties (operators, device OEMs, content providers and middleware vendors) through these rough economic waters, according to ABI’s principal analyst Dan Shey.

Also important is the trend that involves more and more customers who see mobile messaging services as a more efficient way to communicate than voice services. http://tinyurl.com/gomo095

Businesses see smartphone use growing

Businesses are planning to boost the deployment of smart phones during the next three years, while laptop deployments will slow dramatically, according to survey of 340 companies in the U.S. and Western Europe.

The survey of small and large businesses by Northboro, Mass.-based J. Gold Associates, projected that the use of smart phones in corporate settings will double over the next three years. The survey found that the number of smart-phone devices will grow about 30% in the next year and will have doubled over three years.

The use of business applications on smart phones is also projected to grow, by 71% over one year and 196% over three years. http://tinyurl.com/gomo096

Mobile network operators in developed regions should prepare for a tenfold increase in wireless network traffic by 2015, as data traffic rapidly overtakes voice, according to the latest report entitled Wireless network traffic 2008-2015: forecasts and analysis from Analysys Mason, the premier advisers on telecoms, IT and digital media. Total wireless network traffic from cellular users in developed regions is set to increase substantially, driven by, improved cellular devices (such as USB modems and smartphones); widespread deployment of advanced 3G technologies and femtocells; affordable pricing (particularly for traffic-intensive services); more indoor usage of cellular devices; and increasing size of items of Web content. “While developed regions will account for just 25% of the cellular user population by 2015, they will generate 65% of total global wireless network traffic”, according to Dr Mark Heath, the report’s co-author. “This is due to a higher proportion of advanced handsets and the earlier deployment of more advanced cellular technologies, such as LTE, which have higher throughput.” http://tinyurl.com/gomo099

Is it too late for Palm?

Faced with strong competition from Apple and Research In Motion, as well as economic headwinds, Palm has decided to lay off some workers.

Valleywag reported that the layoffs could involve as many as 10 percent of the company's 1,050 employees. A Palm representative confirmed that layoffs were taking place but did not comment on exactly how many people were affected.

"There have been some layoffs as a result of challenges facing our company and the industry, and we're restructuring our worldwide operations to better position ourselves for profitability and long-term growth," said Lynn Fox, a Palm spokeswoman. She declined to comment on exactly where the cuts would come, but she said Palm has decided to "focus our efforts more effectively." http://tinyurl.com/gomo097

Carmi Levy, a telecom and mobile analyst, told InternetNews.com he thinks a bankruptcy filing could be looming for the troubled smartphone maker if it doesn't find a potential sale. [Korean handset maker] "HTC, which has strong engineering credentials but no brand, could benefit from having Palm's brand," Levy said. If Palm pushes forward for a turnaround Mawston believes it'll take more than just an innovative handset.

"Palm lacks differentiation, it lacks the global scale of Nokia, the wow design of Apple, the operator-customization of HTC and the sticky e-mail service of Blackberry," Mawston said, adding that at the very least Palm needs to push out a flagship product pronto. http://tinyurl.com/gomo098

Stephen Hawking to join RIM-backed scientific institute

­Legendary scientist Prof. Stephen Hawking has been appointed to the post of Distinguished Research Chair at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI). The institute was founded by Mike Lazaridis, founder and Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the ubiquitous BlackBerry phone.

Prof. Hawking will conduct regular stays at PI in coming years, beginning in the summer of ’09, and says, "I am honoured to accept the first Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute. The Institute's twin focus, on quantum theory and gravity, is very close to my heart and central to explaining the origin of the Universe. I look forward to building a growing partnership between PI and our Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, at Cambridge. Our research endeavour is global, and by combining forces I believe we will reap rich rewards." http://tinyurl.com/gomo09a

Mobile Web remains a mystery to most

The mobile information superhighway is in need of some serious maintenance. That’s the take-away from a new Yankee Group evaluation of 32 consumer-facing mobile Web sites. The market research firm scored the sites on a scale of one to 100, grading them on 25 criteria including effectiveness, design and ease of use. The top score was an unimpressive 67. The average score? Just 54.

“I would make the argument that today’s mobile Web is very similar to where the World Wide Web was in 1994, 1995,” said Carl Howe, director of Yankee Group’s Anywhere Consumer research group, during a Webinar presenting his findings. “If we think of mobile Web sites the way we look at an average seventh-grade class, everyone so far, unfortunately, is failing.” http://tinyurl.com/gomo09b

Masthead

This is issue #41 of Going Mobile. The stories that I refer to are all among the 300+ publicly published articles I scan each week, but the commentary is entirely my own and does not represent the views, opinions, or official position of Microsoft or the Windows Mobile management team or any of the sites or companies referenced herein. You can refer stories to me or make other comments below. I'd like to make this better each week.