TIM and Polymer Vision’s new Cellular-Book (mighty creative name) is a very interesting device: 5 inch foldout “newspaper†display, 4 GBs of storage, cellular connectivity, 10 day “usage time†and access to e-mail, RSS feeds, LBS, music downloads, audio books and more. Besides all that, upgrades are also on the way including a color screen and video capabilities. Faster connectivity and a better UI are probably also coming soon. If interested, I would read the full press release and check out this cool demo.
One of the interesting points to note about this product, however, is that it, along with the rest of the “e-paper†movement, is being largely shunned by the industry right now, yet there is a lot happening on form factor and screen utilization. As we all know, along with the iPhone came many questions, among them being How are we going to interact with our phones in the future and what sort of displays will they have? Apple’s take on this was a 3.5 inch multi-touch display, but there is no consensus in the industry that that is for sure the right approach. This TIM/Polymer Vision device can be taken as not only a reason to finally take your girlfriend to Venice but more so a reminder that there is still a lot of definition that must be done over what and how we interact with our mobile devices. That includes new and possibly even currently unconventional technologies such as a laser keyboard and camera movement detection for input. As for display, who knows. This sort of OLED and e-paper in general still has a long way to go by all means but it definitely has its chances. It works well in the sun, allows for long battery life and should not be discounted.
A blog post by Simeon Simeonov, a VC and blogger, has been well covered in all the usual places this past week. Although it lacks any serious novelty, it’s a good compilation of a lot of known facts
and an interesting shot at guessing what Google’s most famous vaporware looks like. Things to note that are not covered are Eric Schmidt’s comment on cell phones being free, him being on Apple’s board, Google’s existing forays into mobile search, their US mobile portal’s recent changes (has anyone else noticed them because I haven’t heard much about it), their click to call ads, the new
integration with German BWM navigation systems, (mentioned but barley) previous Orange Google Phone speculation (mostly hyperbolic as seen here) among more. This is definitely something to keep a close eye on because just as many doubted the iPhone, you can never be too sure what who will do next.
A few weeks ago I made the prediction that mobile phones would capture a defining moment in the 08-election cycle. Well, thanks to Nokia’s announcement at 3GSM of their new partnership with YouTube, I am a step closer to being correct.
Nokia handset users will now be able to easily view YouTube content on their phones. YouTube will be rolling out a mobile site that pre-edit clips and encodes them in the H.264 compression format for compatibility with Nokia’s new Nokia Video Center application software. The Nokia N95 device will be the first sold with the Nokia Video Center software pre-installed, with a download version also available for selected S60 devices. Consumers may also view YouTube content via the Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map.
“We are thrilled to be giving users easy access to entertaining YouTube videos anytime and anywhere. By partnering with an industry leader like Nokia, we’re able to bring YouTube videos to mobile phone users worldwide,” said Steve Chen, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer for YouTube.
Yesterday marked the first day of the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. CES features the latest products and technologies encompassing more than 30 product categories including digital imaging, home networking, IPTV, mobile electronics, gaming and more. My trusty NPR morning program, Morning Edition, reported that “mobility†was on the big topic of the year and most manufactures showing offered some product related to it.
Mobility, that’s the big news this year. All of the manufactures are hawking devices and technologies to allow consumers to access whatever they want wherever they want it. And one of the most talked about technologies was announced by at an event by Samsung yesterday. It was so packed that people were turned away. Samsung introduced what is called as A-VSB, which one executive said would obliterate the couch potato. And what it is a combination of a chip in various devices and an extra signal that can be sent out by television stations. And it will allow viewers to watch television on a laptop, maybe on their cell phone, and even in a moving car or train. It is completely new. It is not connected to cell technology or the Internet. It is what Samsung hopes will be the new standard for broadcast digital TV.
To me, mobility is the next step in the natural progression of technological developments. You see signs of it everywhere: 219.4 million people in the US own mobile phones (this includes my non-tech friendly father), Google offers users spreadsheet and document applications over the internet (anytime, anyplace, any computer), and seeing someone watching Desperate Housewives on their iPod is not too uncommon on the train in the morning.
Lets face it, people are on the go more; We just don’t have time to sit in one place and do one thing at a time, so of course our technology will reflect that.
Interesting article in Forbes on Six Innovations That Will Change Your Life. I wont rehash the article only to say that if you are interested in such subjects as m-commerce (maying by stiff with your phone), social networking and issues of presence, the mobile web, ubiquitous media, health supplements for your mobile phone and or GPS then check it out.
The blogosphere is buzzing with news about how Alltel Wireless the owner/operator of the nation’s largest wireless network has just announced the signing of a deal with satellite radio broadcaster XM Radio to create “XM Radio Mobile”.
The thinking is the newly created entity, XM Radio Mobile will initially bring 20 channels of satellite content to a variety of compatible handsets for $7.99 per month. XM will push out data to include the song title, artist and album. Genres in the initial release are likely to include music from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, Top 20 Hits, Alternative Rock, Hip-Hop/R&B, Indie Rock, Blues, Country, Latin and more.
But to tell you the truth it exactly the future capabilities of cell phones and network infrastructures such as 3G EV-DO and HSDPA not to mention 4G innovations such Wimax and city-wide and municipal Wifi that I think may make an infrastructure like pay for satellite radio irrelevant in the near future.
Don’t get me wrong. I get the convenience of having all the technology on one device. But as more and more handsets are dual mode wifi and network friendly and as such things as Wimax and or municipal wifi become a reality I am betting that the often overlooked services like commercial free home grown or professional internet radio (which is big in social networking worlds like Second Life) will be more widely used and available. I can also see certain networks make deals with Internet radio stations (or a company that owns a bunch) to have them on the deck or as a premium service.
In other-words wifi and wimax will become the new way to stream commercial free or just plain old free radio. This will also cause a boom in the home-grown radio market where anyone can have their own radio station. Hey I am just looking to the future here.
It will also become an easier way to distribute podcasts.
I see that satellite radio sees this to and that is probably why this deal was made. And there is no question that Alltel XM users will use it, for now. The question is whether they will in the future if IP radio streaming to mobile handsets ever makes it off the ground, which I predict it will.
Yep, its that time again. Here are some interesting links from around the web that you should definitely pocket
TODAY MOpocket is 1 Month Old!
SMS / MMS
Group Orgy by SMS/MMS? Happy Shagging! A teenage phenomena.
And, on that note, is it that surprising to find out that 3G Users Text More?
MOBILE MARKETING
The Pondering Primate has an excellent post on what exactly the The Physical World Connection is and the future difficulties that surround its inevitable adoption.
MobiTv teams up with IPWireless to co-develop solutions that enable operators to migrate subscribers in high-usage areas to IPWireless’ new TDtv technology.
Apple may take a bite out of palm? As both a palm and Mac user I don’t know how I should feel about this. I guess my gut reaction should make me kind of happy
… from Oliver Starr on the difference between Mobile web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0
Whereas Mobile Web 2.0 is all about the advanced capabilities associated with a specific subset of systems within a mobile device and particularly centered around some kind of web enabled interface Mobile 2.0 is more about the entirety of the device and its myriad and highly differentiated possibilities for interaction with the end user. In a nutshell, Mobile 2.0 is the superset of life altering functionality conveyed by a functioning mobile phone to that phone’s owner.
Mobile 2.0 is not device dependent. There is no measuring stick of functionality that is a determinant as to whether or not a mobile phone is or is not a Mobile 2.0 device. All functioning phones today are Mobile 2.0. It isn’t what the phone does, so much as what is being done with the phone that has lead us to Mobile 2.0.[read more]
About one month ago the Malaysian network provider NasionCom launched its Mobile VoIP service called Nasion. And the mobile VoIP revolution began. I blogged about it here. But my blog was still only 10 days old then so I doubt that that many people read it. But at the end of the post I said “It is my prediction here at MOpocket that mobile VoIP will be the future standard in the mobile industry (even here in the US).” And I still believe that.
The importance concerning the convergence of Voip, WiFi and the cell-phone was made apparent to me during various conversations I had with Oliver Starr during the Politics-to-Go seminar hosted by IPDI in D.C this past September.
While handsets with Wifi capabilities were, at the time, just beginning to be manufactured seriously, the seamless integration between a call on a cell-phone via a network to a Wifi VoIP connection was not yet a reality (Oliver posted an article back when he was on the Wireless-Weblog about a Nokia technology that successfully did this, but I cant find it any longer). Meanwhile, a company called Convergin announced two days ago that it has enabled the first cellular / Wifi handoff without service level charges or interruptions. [PDF]. Oliver stressed to me the importance that such a technology will have on mobile telephony.
The WifI VoIP phenomena will, as Oliver points out, free the cell phone manufactures (as well as a plethora of 3rd party vendors and consumers) “from the dominion of the carriers.” As Oliver, in his usual eloquent style, puts it:
As it stands today, a cell phone without a network is basically a paperweight with a built in clock. As a result the carriers have been able to make or break handset manufacturers, dictating model features (like bluetooth or no), what kind of subsidy they offered also had a profound impact upon the consumer’s choice as well.
Think of the mobile as analagous to an automobile, the carriers build the roads. For the most part, cars aren’t terribly useful in the absence of roads, but wifi is like putting wings on that car and with services like UMA technology the handset manufacturers can actually deliver some fairly spectacular functionality without [a] true dial-tone ever being delivered to the phone.
Later on, Oliver even imagines a world in which “handset manufacturers put UMA controllers in their own core networks and further imagines what would happen they embedded routing right into every handset they make. This would allow a company like Nokia to displace the carriers themselves directly by distributing UMA handsets and running UMA over their core network. They already do this internally to some degree. Oliver sees a huge opportunity here for the carriers to be undercut, describing WiFi enabled mobile phones as “the ultimate corporate Trojan horse…get the carriers to distribute millions of phones all which have a dormant feature that could drive traffic right off the carrier network and straight to that of the device manufacturer itself” or, as Oliver also points out, to Google’s municipal WiFi project.
I only bring this up because there has been a lot of talk, recently, about EQO Communications (pronounced “echo”) Mobile Internet Phone Service for Skype. While the service doesn’t exactly USE the skype network or take advantage of, ehem, the carriers data networks… it still is a strong indicator as to what direction VoIP is going. An even stronger indicator is the little less known news that SIPQuest, a Canadian company that specializes in VoIP and multimedia systems, has upgraded its status in the Symbian OS smartphone movement by signing on to the company’s Platinum Program which allow the two companies to share Fixed Mobile Convergence and IP Multimedia Susbsytem technologies. In SIPquest’s word’s
“As a member of the Symbian Platinum Program, SIPquest is delighted to work with Symbian to bring functionally rich VoIP solutions to Symbian OS phones and thereby satisfy the needs of users that depend on dual mode—WiFi and GSM or WiFi and CDMA—features.”
So now we have to throw the Operating System manufactures into the pot of potential vendors that could greatly benefit from the mobile VoIP revolution. Let me put it to you the way SIPquest sees it. 70 million Americans use cell phone at work. 70% of all cell calls are made from a WiFi spot. By 2008, 25% of cell phones will be ’smart.’ Get the drift? A seamless user experience for WiFi and cellular calls is on its way.
I think that individuals, as well as and especially business’, will jump at the chance, if given, to use a VoIP service on their mobile phones to either conserve minutes and or make communication 10X more cost effective. Think about what would happen, for example, to Cingular’s International Roaming and International Long Distance Plan’s if people knew that they could just use their mobile phone’s WiFi connection (or even Cingular’s very own data network) to call Aunt Beatrice in Germany for 5 cents a minute instead of 36 cents. While in Barcelona, Cingular will be charging me 99 cents a minute to make as well a s receive phone calls; so you better believe I will be using my VoIP services as much as possible, and would, if I could, use it on my mobile.
There is also the issue of people using their carrier’s own data plan to make VoIP calls. But at the rate of how much data plan’s cost (especially the unlimited packages that one would need if they where constantly using Ev-Do or HSDPA or GPRS to make make VoIP calls), this is not yet a cost effective option. And, for one thing, I never heard of a person being able to buy a mobile phone with only a data plan (only a data plan with a PC card, yes, but only a data plan for a phone… I don’t think thats possible). Plus the carriers do control the roads and can make such activity impossible to do on their networks, but that usually leads to bad publicity. Nevertheless, using a carrier network for VoIP is not a cost effective option right now. But does raise some interesting issues.
Do the carriers have a defense? The trojan horse can only work once. I mean, unless cell phone manufactures open their own retail stores people will still have to buy the phones from the carriers and the people would still have to sign up for at least a minimum amount of minutes. But if people don’t sign up for or use the extra services provided by the network, because a WiFi UMD option exists, then that still is a nasty bruise to the carriers. Th carriers need the traffic, thats how they make money.
The carriers could, of course, start offering their own VoIP packages (perhaps starting with international calls) that would be able to work both in a general WiFi atmosphere as well as on their own networks (but with special discounts plus added benefits and services if used directly on their own data networks).
Update:
Also on this note is the story that chipmaker Royal Philips Electronics confirmed that a U.S. cellular carrier will launch voice-over-Wi-Fi technology this year, based on Philips’ new Nexperia 6120 chipset. This will allows callers o make calls on their home Wi-Fi networks for “a couple of bucks a month, flat rate,” says Philips’ Carsten Schimanke. The chip set is already “trojan horsed” in the Samsung SGH-T709 phone. [thanks Emily] This is how it works:
Nexperia’s UMA technology lets calls “tunnel” from Wi-Fi access points, through the Internet, and onto a cellular network. From there, the calls will be tracked by the carriers billing system and forwarded along to their destination.
So its a Wifi solution that involves a carrier, which my guess involves T-Mobile since they aready play the WiFi hotspot game so well (and since that was the network the phone was associated with at CES). This would make sense in that it would allow T-Mobile to leverage its Wi-Fi network as a competitor to other carriers’ 3G high-speed cellular systems. With UMA, every home with a wireless LAN and every Starbucks becomes a place with full bars of signal, and that’s compelling.
Update:
My speculation that T-Mobile mobile would take advantage of WiFi integration with their handsets has proven to be a founded one. The Seattle Times is reporting that next week (probably during 3GSM) T-Mobile will introduce WiFi enabled phones with the goal of having them compete with with other (and their lack of) 3G networks in the US. These devices can thus take advantage of the one high-speed technology T-Mobile is known for: Wi-Fi networks in Starbucks, Hyatt hotels and other locations. This will include a new plan which includes unlimited EDGE network data (for the places you can’t get WiFi) usage and use of its T-Mobile Hotspot network for $30 a month on top of the subscriber’s regular voice plan.
The two phones that will have the Wifi are the SDA, which looks and feels like a phone, and the MDA, a handheld that has a large screen and pull-out keyboard.
Now you can see a little bit more clearly how much of an impact something like municipal WiFi can have on the mobile networks. [Thanks Jon]
And to top that all off, Philips also announced a DTM (dual transfer mode) solution which will enable simultaneous voice and data transfer over EDGE networks. Not only will this allow seamless transferring between WiFi and VoIP calls, but will enable things like video calling and simultaneous phone calling/Web browsing which are selling points for European 3G networks, and haven’t even been introduced here in the US yet.
“Though UMTS coverage is growing among major metro areas and highways, there will always be some white spots which will be covered by GSM/EDGE,” he said. “This allows operators to have the same experience in UMTS or EDGE coverage.”
The mobile VoIP revolution is upon us and we are witnessing the transitional stages. This is a key time to create a discussions around the subject. I enjoyed my conversation with Oliver and following his discussion of the topic while he was still over at Mobile-Weblog and Wireless Weblog.The mobile VoIP discourse has been pretty lackluster as of late and its up to someone to revive it. Im counting on you mobilists. I look forward to hearing your comments and participating in conversations about mobile VoIP both hear [spelt wrong on purpose to make the pun intended] and other mobile weblogs.
Everybody already knows that Google, Skype, Sequoia and Index Fund FON, but Oliver Starr and Mobile Crunch wonders why.
THE FUTURE
As mobile phones are able to take on more and more of the data needs we require from our PC’s, there is not a doubt in my mind that this technology is going to have a major impact on the mobile medium. Imagine a roll away screen built into a phone, or just a bunch of ways an extra screen can be applied to a mobile phone… like here [warning cool stuff in this link].
RFID
Now this is a technological use that has immense marketing value… but I am real glad to be seeing it used for art first.
TIM and Polymer Vision’s new Cellular-Book (mighty creative name) is a very interesting device: 5 inch foldout “newspaper†display, 4 GBs of storage, cellular connectivity, 10 day “usage time†and access to e-mail, RSS feeds, LBS, music downloads, audio books and more. Besides all that, upgrades are also on the way including a color screen and video capabilities. Faster connectivity and a better UI are probably also coming soon. If interested, I would read the full press release and check out this cool demo.
A 
