I have mentioned this earlier: Next week, I will be headed to beautiful Prague in order to attend and contribute to the European Mobile Media Conference. If you can, make sure to head over (there is even some last-minute discount).
Tag: Ericsson
So it was just as well that, one day before CTIA Wireless, I had the great pleasure of contributing to the “Connecting the Consumer” panel at Alcatel-Lucent’s 4G Symposium (with Disney, Samsung, Buzznet and Atlantic Records all contributing, providing for the various facets of content [games, video/film, music, web]). The ground had been laid by the keynote of the formidable Mitch Singer, Sony Pictures CTO and a long-standing thought-leader in changing sectors (he’s one of the people who brought the original Napster down and – in his own words – “look was the music industry has become”). Mitch had reminded us of “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (Read it! It’s worth it!), which deals with how businesses should tackle change…
US handset maker Motorola acquired half the shares in UIQ, the smartphone software unit, from Sony Ericsson. Sony Ericsson had bought UIQ from handset OS maker Symbian last year. UIQ is essentially a graphic interface adding components to the Symbian OS. Symbian in turn is 47.9% owned by Nokia. Under UIQ, native programming can be made in C++ although the software does support the – in the mobile games space – ubiquitous J2ME standard. Motorola’s new flagship Z8 (nicknamed “MotoRzr” as in “riser”) is running on it already. The battle of the OS giants begins…
It is an interesting move since Moto has been the most active OEM for the use of Linux Mobile: it has released a whole range of phones for the open source OS featuring the penguin. It is also one of the founding fathers of the LiMo Foundation, an initiative it embarked on together with industry heavyweights NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Samsung, NEC and Panasonic (and which was recently joined by LG, McAfee, Broadcom, Ericsson and others). Now, I understand that Linux and C++ work together but must admit that my knowledge is more than limited here. It is in any event noteworthy that Motorola goes with a UI based on Symbian rather than straight-forward Linux. Motorola was quick to state that UIQ would only be “one of the actions to support [a] strategy” adding more investment in multimedia product segments.
With hundreds of millions in development cost at stake, it is probably too early to tell but it certainly is a new twist in the quest to uproot Nokia‘s top position with the Symbian s60 platform. So, what’s next?
Swedish firm TerraNet is trialling a mobile mesh network, we read. In a mesh network, each handset works like a little base station, too. It is a peer-to-peer technology without the need for a base station and, hence without a network operator or carrier. TerraNet’s devices currently have 1km range, i.e. unless there is another device within a range of 1km, it will not work.
However, should this technology become robust and sufficiently scaled, the new Vodafones and Verizons would probably be Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, i.e. the big network vendors. Incidentally, Ericsson is said to have invested $3m in TerraNet. At present, a maximum of 7 hops can be done, and this would be limiting the distance that can be covered. However, the company apparently also offers a network node via a USB dongle and this could then connect to a VoIP system to bridge long-distance and go into another mesh network closer to the recipient.
Would this technology be available on a larger scale (and perhaps ultimately without the constraints of so many hops), this would then result in lower cost for users because there would be one less mouth to be fed in the value chain, and it so happens that this is the hungriest mouth at present. Terranet is said to be recognizing that the telcos won’t be delighted about this (multi-media evangelists like Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki will however be uber-excited as it will boost multimedia offerings and the opportunities over there). Oh, dreaming of the future…
At present, the offering is geared to scarcely populated areas (the company runs trials in Tanzania and Ecuador), and the above-described problems might not be an issue there. In the contrary, it could be that operators would embrace the technology to expand coverage. The company also targets urban areas where people make lots of local calls, which would then be virtually free.
In those more urban areas, there may be problems with having enough available frequencies, and the struggle with the regulators in the space might indeed slow the deployment down significantly. This would probably be made even harder due to the political concerns of many countries when it comes to weakening some of their economic powerhouses (because this is what carriers also are).
Other commentators are also concerned with battery life but also note that, if the phones are replacing landlines, they can be left plugged into a power source (which would be defeating the purpose of the notion of being mobile though, I guess). Surely this would be solvable though.
Very interesting indeed, I think!