Wireless Gobbler

Mobile payment challenges

2010-11-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

Saw quite a bit of news on the mobile payment front the past couple of weeks. AT&T, VZN and TMO form a new venture called ISIS. According to a blogger for WSJ, there are still significant challenges.

Merchant fees paid on credit-, debit-, and charge card transaction totalled $62 billion last year. The bulk of that goes back to banks issuing credit and debit cards. Phone companies are not likely to take credit risk involved in issuing cards. So Visa and MasterCard are most vulnerable to competition. They both generated $7 billion in total US revenue last year. Adding NFC tags a $200 reader to the merchants according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's estimate.

4G opportunities

2010-11-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

There are new application models will be emerged or enhanced with the 4G deployment. Noticeable is VZN and ATT's 700MHz deployment. In addition, 4G (LTE) has the following advantages: High Peak Rate, Low Latency, Spectral Efficiency (5Mhz to 20 Mhz).

source: link

Video cost per wireless technology

2010-11-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

An interesting analysis of cost of delivering video technology over 3G vs 4G.

The journey of an app and its developer.

2010-11-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

Source: link

Barcode scanning way up

2010-11-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

According to this blog, ScanBuy published an very interesting usage report. Barcode scanning is up 700% from the beginning of this year. 1D and 2D split of all code scanned. Surprisingly, Android took the top OS (wonder if it is just their app has more download in the Android platform).

80% of the US smartphone users indicated that they like to scan barcodes.

Their report can be found here.

AdMob chief quits Google

2010-11-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

Omar Hamoui started out to build a cell phone photo sharing social site. Then he realized the business had too high customer acquisition cost. He also realized that the advertising cost was the main factor. He then went out to create a solution to aggregate the ad for mobile. Within 3 years, adMob became a multi-million business and the eventual acquisition by Google. A good read and interview with the ex-CEO is here. In the article, he and another early employee shared some learn lessons during the process.

Giayee?

2010-11-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Found this chinese OEM/ODM through LinkedIn. Android handset experience. 80 engineers located in ShenZhen.

Wonder how many of this type of companies are there in China? The barrier to entry for making a handset like this is so low that a lot of them can easily create a device in less than 6 months with no more than 20-30 ppl. I believe the differentiators will be focused on software in the near term. How many of these will eventually survive the shape up.... time will tell.

Smartphone growth and network capacity

2010-10-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Smartphone continues to grow 50% year over year and 20% over Q1 of 2010. This is a tremendous growth amid the condition of the overall economy. One note about the growth is that the network capacity of various carriers continue to under heavy pressure. With LTE arriving, the technology is supposed to alleviate the network by utilizing the spectrum more efficiently. It is likely a 2011 and 2012 event even VZN is committed to the 38 market launch this year.

The smartphone growth is expected to slow down by 2011 to 25%, ABI anaylst Michael Morgan predicts after the carrier have already fulfilled the demand side.

Teens drive data usage

2010-10-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

Teen data usage rose from 14MB Q2 last year to 62MB. Message is still considered the main revenue source. Male teens use 72MB while females use 53MB of data compared to just 11MB just last year.

source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-mobile-report-calling-yesterday-texting-today-using-apps-tomorrow/

Nielson - smartphone out grew feature phones

2010-10-26T09:41:00.001-07:00

Male vs female smartphone users are 53% vs 47%. I think that is a very healthy spread in the industry. The purchasing habit of the two demographics will likely change over time. iSupply also claims that smartphone will grow to 500 million units by 2014. That is about half of what the current annual unit sold worldwide. So we should see the tipping point of mass market adoption by 2014 at least in the US.

Being Steve's boss & the history of Apple

2010-10-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

What an interesting read on ex-CEO Sculley and Steve Job. This article covers the inside thinking of Steve Jobs, what it means to be a marketing company, how the core strength of a company means and bad decisions Sculley has made (with a self admission) before Steve turned it around.

article link.

Open cell access in burning

2010-09-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

Link

Android Paid app

2010-08-30T19:17:00.001-07:00

13 out of 46 countries where Android phones are being sold support paid app in Android Market. That means the rest only have free apps. In order for Android users in those countries to access the paid apps, they are forced to turn to piracy.

Google VP8 and WebM Project

2010-06-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

Google announced the WebM Project at this year's Google I/O conference. The original license had the limitation that if legal actions brought against Google and the right would have terminated. Google has changed that by decoupling license and legal text.

http://webmproject.blogspot.com/

Wholesale Application Community

2010-05-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to reduce the application fragmentation across platforms and operation, carriers are banding together in an attempt to provide more standard for developers.

The Wholesale Applications Community members include: AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. Together the operators in the group have about 3 billion subscribers, the GSMA said.

The standard won't be really ready toward the end of this year - or in a more realistic term 2011. Other standard bodies like JIL and BONDI are also trying to address this age old problem of market fragmentation.

Microsft & HTC get intimated

2010-04-28T21:31:00.001-07:00

The companies announced today that they have reached a licensing agreement. HTC will pay MS for leveraging their advanced patent licenses in the mobile space. The fact that Apple's pending lawsuit against HTC which is really directly against Android is a good move for HTC. It is certainly a 3 way corporation to fight against the mobile giant Apple's dominance.

2010-04-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

ArcTechnica and AdMob released data traffic for the US and worldwide. The iPhone is certainly still the big dominance in the US. But Android is sneaking up from below. Sadly the other OS are trailing behind with a pretty big margin. The overall data traffic for smartphone still garners a mere 17 percent of the overall traffic. Yet, it is a astonishing 400% growth last quarter. More on this story.

iPhone & network load.

2010-04-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

One of the main reasons, other than too many people are overloading networks, that iPhone is causing such headache for operators (esp AT&T)is that the paging channel is not implemented. In order to save battery life, smartphones completely drop off from the connection when data is done and reconnect when data is needed. This requires the re-establishment to the network again and eating up the channel bandwidth rather than using the paging channel and using keep alive message.

Android Fragmentation

2010-04-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

According to IMS Research, Number of Android based handsets is expected to be 20 million shipped by the end of the year. Certainly a big achievement for a hot OS. However, this comes with like everything else, growing pain - fragmentation. There are two types of fragmentation for this platform. First it is the OS itself and the second one is physical design.

The Android OS is now at version 2.1 which has few major revisions since its launch. Each revision comes with different features and interfaces that developer and applications may chuck on one device but works great on the other.

Screen size and physical design is also an issue for developers. Android is supposed to be able to handle different screen size - only the ones it supports and uses Android's own resources type. Like the Archos 5 Internet tablet is certainly not part of this category.

Developers need to be aware of this. Prepare your apps to handle this type of different resources. Or take your battle and choose only the platforms you think make most sense for your app.

Can NFC play an important role in small biz growth

2010-04-03T13:29:00.002-07:00

It seems the NFC industry is like the interactive TV industry... we are here, now. (repeat that for 5 years).

With the increasingly smartphone adoption rate, this may change as people are relying more on their phone which is no longer a voice device.

Businessweek has an article recently about the overall contactless mobile payment. Certainly enterprise can generate extra revenue with this technology as soon as they can figure out the revenue model. what about small business? it is an largely untapped market that I think can help reduce operating cost with this kind of technology.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/europeinsight/archives/2010/03/alcatel-lucent_1.html

Sony Ericsson's Project Capuchin

2008-10-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

The platform enables flash UI execution within the J2ME environment. Doc & Tools are available here.

VZW increases fee on SMS aggregators

2008-10-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

Update: VZW says it has not decided if the fee will be increased... backing down?!

1 cent to 4 cents. So a $10,000 campaign will costs $40,000. Huge jump. This does not affect consumers. VZW is the first one to raise the fee which send shockwave to the advert. & marketing industry.

Smartphone Q2 2008 Market Share by Sales

2008-09-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

Google to be VZN search partner

2008-09-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

Google is already Sprint's search partner. Will this mean that VZN will eventually like to adapt Android.

Sprint launch NFL video app

2008-08-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

This Java-based app is powered by Hands-On Mobile which has already launched multiple sport related apps (NBA, NASCAR, CBS Sports). This will only be available on Moto RAZR VE20 at this point. NFL is aggressively targeting the mobile segment. The announcment did validate the fact that Sprint is still only interested in Java platform at this point - probably the by product from the Sprint Nextel merger.

Mobile Ad market

2008-05-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

source

Mobile ad. revenue already reached $1B this year, and expected to reach to $7.6B by 2013. Ad spending on mobile TV services is expected to grow from $335 million to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. Idle-screen advertising will grow from $7 million this year to more than $500 million by 2013, according to Juniper.

Mobile data growth

2007-12-13T17:30:00.000-08:00

http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/08/partial-state-of-mobile-data-market.html

HTC handset sales

2007-11-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

HTC reports their Touch sales figures exceeded over 1 million units since launched in Oct. The company also says the total handset sales has reached 15 million so far for 2007.

Sprint breaks-up with ClearWire

2007-11-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

Sprint announced today that they have terminated the partnership with Clearwire, sending Clearwire's stock down 28%. Analysts also believed that Sprint's rollout plan will be reduced.

iPhone w/ Intel inside. JP operators to cut rate

2007-10-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

It is reported today that Apple may come out of a iPhone based on the Intel Moorsetown Mobile Internet Device chipset in 2009. Intel has been pushing Taiwanese companies to adopt the MID platform but with little success. However, we should start seeing UMPC coming out in 2008 with MID platform.

On the other news, NTT DoCoMo announced 30% cut in monthly rate in exchange of higher handset price (average $540). KDDI has announced 20% cut in monthly rate with the same offer. How will that affect the Japanese handset manufacturers. I think the turnover rate for new handset will be longer and thus slower sale.

DMCA made unlocking cellphone LEGAL

2007-09-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network. Source

Moto moving away from Qualcomm

2007-09-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

After the long battled litigation between Broadcom & Qualcomm, here is latest defector of Qualcomm. Motoroloa announced that they will switch their future future 3G chipsets suppliers to TI & Freescale based "on business reason". On the bright side, Federal Court is allowing carriers to continue importing new phones with Qualcomm's chips. Though the chips cannot be imported directly into the US.

iPhone file voice commands patent

2007-08-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

VoiceSignal is demoing a iPhone with voice command to control the songs and music. Apple also files a patent that allow voice command to control menu controls. I believe this is an evolution path that Apple will have to adapt for enhancing its touch screen only interface.

Analyst predicts mobile sale to drop in 07

2007-08-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Infonetics expects worldwide revenue for mobile phones to total only $117. 5 billion in 2010, an 18% drop from 2006. iPhone & Samsung's Blackjack are expected to boost smartphone sale. Another repeating theme is the WiFi convergence device. The company predicts a double digit growth through 2010 reaching a total market of $145 billions.

AdMob served 5 billionth ad

2007-08-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

In less than 9 months, the company has served more than 5 billionth ad to mobile users.

T-Mobile Financial result

2007-08-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

Added 857,000 new subscribers. Total of 27 million. Churn rate downed to 1.8%. ARPU is at $53.

Patent Reform Legislation Introduced

2007-04-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

The new legislation will be the first patent reform since 1950s. The new bill will award patent to first to file (not the first to invent), curtail the infringement damage and new framework for litigation.

Wireless broadband growing faster than cable or DSL

2007-03-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

In January, the FCC released its High Speed Services Report, which provided clear evidence that consumers are turning to wireless for their high-speed broadband needs. Between June 2005 and June 2006, there was a 2,800% increase in the number of high-speed wireless lines in-use. In fact, during the first six months of 2006, wireless accounted for 59% of all new high-speed lines. This last statistic indicates that wireless broadband is growing faster than cable and DSL combined

Beceem customers

2007-03-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Beceem has announced that Sanyo will use their MobileWiMax chip on the CDMA/WiMax dual mode handset. Samsung is also to use Beceem's chips in their WiMax handsets.

2007-03-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Rumor - Google to make mobile devices

Ex-Danger founder Andy Rubin has joined Google. And recent job post on Google suggested that the company intends to explore in the wireless communications devices.

2007-02-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

Steve Jobs & Microsoft on DRM

Apple has been using the FairPlay DRM which posts a restriction on music download from the iTune. Steve Jobs suggested that the label companies should not impose the DRM and allow music to be downloaded without DRM.

Microsoft unveiled a new content delivery technology called PlayReady that includes its own DRM scheme. Several large operators, including Cingular (AT&T) and Verizon Wireless, said they would support PlayReady although it isn’t expected to be in handsets until later this year. PlayReady

2007-02-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Clearwire plans for IPO

Clearwire, the Washington based company, plans to file an IPO that will worth $575 million later this year. It actually withdrew the first attempt of an $400 million mid-2006, however, not before it received a $900 million funding from both Intel and Motorola. McCow rocks!

2007-02-13T13:45:00.000-08:00

LG selected as the low cost 3G handset provider

Led by GSMA, LG was selected by a group of 12 operators including 3, T-Mobile & Cingular (now AT&T) after beating 18 other proposals from 8 handset makers. The model is KU250 15mm think.

2007-02-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

Amp'd numbers

Back in Sept of 06, Amp'd announced that they would increase the subscriber number by 50K to 100K. At the end of 06, they made the number. Q4 saw an increase 70K increase. How did they do that?!

Not only that they claimed the ARPU was $100/month. 30% of that is from media download. I started wondering if any financial models were used to achieved this type of number.

2007-01-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

Nokia & Sony Ericsson Q4 results

Nokia beats estimates of $11.5B with $15.1B sales in Q4. 31% increase QOQ. Strong selling in India, China and Latin America. CEO Olli_Pekka said "through the strengths of Nokia's brand, products, cost structure and efficiency, without sacrificing our operating margins or cash flow". On the other hand, Moto reported a 48% drop in profits in Q4. So is Samsung which also suffered from the price pressure in the market.

Sony Ericsson reported tripled Q4 profits due to the strong sales of Walkman & Cybershot phones.

One key point: Nokia's N. America sales dropped 39% but 60% gain in APAC.

2007-01-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

WiFi VoIP phones growth

According to Analyst firm Infonetics Research - WiFi phone grew to $535M, up 327% from 05 verses $115B, up 13% of the mobile phone market. Forecast of 07-10, WiFi handsets are forecast to jump nearly 1300%. Fastest growing segment will be the dual-mode phones.

[source]

2007-01-25T10:14:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

It has been awhile since my last update. Had a wonderful vacation.

To start the year off, let me predict what is hot this year.

Hot: 1. Mobile TV/video
2. Messaging (Txt & IM)
3. WiFi capable phones.
4. LBS services.
5. Mobile payment.

Lets see how accurate I am and check back in a year.

2006-12-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

China Unicom launches 3G in Macau

The service will become available in 2 quarter of 2007.

According to estimates, the total anticipated 3G market size in China will reach RMB 285 billion (US$35.6 billion) within 5 years after the launch of 3G in China, creating about 30 million new jobs annually in China's 3G services market. According to recent industry reports by CCID and DoNews, 3G Killer Apps will concentrate on the 3Gs: Games, Gambling and Girls, as mobile online games will become vastly more popular with the launch of 3G networks in China.

2006-12-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

Foxconn open new factory in China

The company is investing US$1.2 billion to build a mobile phone factory in LangFang, Hebei province, which is known as the Silicon Valley of China.

Foxconn currently accounts for about 48.5% of the moible phone market. 07 revenue expects to rise 50% YTY. Woww....

2006-12-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

Free WiFi available in the city of Portland.

- MetrFi network will go live on Tuesday morning.
- Blocking only port 25 (emails) to avoid spamming activities.
- Free or $19.95/mo subscription. Free is sponsored by ad. which is powered by Microsoft AdServer.

2006-11-30T11:27:00.000-08:00

Linux Open Mobile Platform

OpenMoKo is an open mobile platform that aims to enable linux based applications to be easily developed for wireless devices.

http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html

Trolltech - Produces the "Greenphone" that is based on their Qtopia platform. Not sure who built the phone. Development forum is available.

FIC, a Taiwan OEM company, makes the Neo1973 Smartphone which is based on OpenMoKo.

Vodafone has announced the 3 different OSs to be supported in the upcoming Smartphone lineup.

2006-11-20T11:11:00.000-08:00

RIM vs Microsoft Exchange

I was curious about how the technologies differ and advantage on each side. Here is my finding about reading a fairly in-depth analysis from this article.

- RIM's push technology is not much different from MS's Direct Push
- RIM allows operator to have a cut in the revenue stream. Operator is not that happy about MS not allowing them for a piece of the pie.
- MS wants to provide the service for free.
- On the other hand, operators would like to see more email service to leverage the revenue sharing terms.

2006-11-20T09:13:00.000-08:00

AT&T launches first WiMax network

Deployed with Soma network's pre-certified WiMax equipment in Pahrump, Nev., a town 60 miles outside of Las Vegas. The equipment is designed for mobile WiMax. Currently AT&T is marketing as "AT&T Yahoo! High-Speed Internet" with downstream speeds up to 1.5 Mbps and upstream speeds up to 384 kbps. Priced at $29.99 a month.

2006-11-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

Smart phone OS market update

Vodafone announced that it plans to support three standard smartphone platforms: Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Symbian/ S60, and Linux.

sony Ericsson's acquisition of UIQ allows it to further access to the Symbian platform since UIQ licenses Symbian as its OS.

2006-11-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

Motorola buying Good Technology

Price is not disclosed. It is definitely an attempt to snatch the IP portfolio by Motorola. This means that Moto believe in its Q as a growth market. Nokia bought Intellisync earlier this year.

Motorola/Good partnership could leave some Good users in the dark, namely those who use Good on Palm Treos, the core of Good's business.

Earlier this fall, MOTO also spent $3.9B to buy Symbol Technology, a company that focuses on RFID technology.

2006-11-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

Helio adds New Location Services - Drift

Drift (Location Based Services) capable phones, Samsung for now, will have access to turn by turn driving directions. It uses Google maps including traffic updates. Drift owners will also get to use Buddy Beacon, a location-based friend finder, to locate and call nearby friends who opt to be found. The other feature is to text offline friends requesting that they turn their buddy beacon on.

Q: how much is the Drift service?
Q: How accurate is the direction?

I haven't seen too many of this buddy list feature in the major, esp CDMA, carriers yet. I can see this "community" service would work well in college campus.

2006-11-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

MobiTV landed a $100M VC funding

The 7 year old company received Series C funding from investors including Adobe Systems, Hearst Corporation, Oak Investment Partners, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Gefinor Ventures.

The company has recently helped AT&T launch broadband TV on PC. It has admitted that more attention will be paid to the WiMax standard.

2006-10-31T16:31:00.000-08:00

Consumer handset trends

Consumers are more aware of handset branding, 19 % up from 11% in 2004. Other factors that influence the initial selection process are price/promotion (29 percent) and retail location (12 percent). Carriers have to strike a balance of promoting service plans & latest models.

2006-10-30T11:21:00.000-08:00

BREW continues to grow in China

Qualcomm & China Unicom announced 3.4 millions users have downloaded >43M BREW apps. The number of apps grow from 300 in 05 to 600 in 06. Currently, there are 130 BREW handset models & 1100 BREW app available.

2006-10-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

200M handsets have AGPS.

Qualcomm announced that there are total of 200 millions handsets shipped over the past few years.

"We are seeing that the ecosystem for location services is now largely established, which -- combined with the ever-growing number of GPS-enabled handsets -- will drive location services to being a mainstream cellular services component and revenue source,"

The gpsOne solution is part of the Launchpad(TM) suite, which also includes integrated multimedia engines to offer application developers the ability to leverage advanced graphics, video and audio capabilities that further enhance a location application.

2006-10-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

3Q Global phone market

Nokia (36%),
Motorola (23.3%),
Samsung (12.5%),
Sony Ericsson (8.1%),
LG (6.7%)
-- all increased market share at the expense of the smaller handset vendors.

2006-10-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

Motorola, Nokia & LG 3Q result

Both Motorola & Nokia sales up but profits drop

* Moto
"During the quarter, GSM infrastructure sales in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region were weaker than anticipated due to customer delays in capital spending," said Ed Zander, Motorola's chairman and CEO, in a prepared statement. Zander also pointed to lower sales of iDEN mobile devices as cause for the profit dip. MOTO shipped totaled 53.7 million at the end of the period, bumping the company's global handset market share to 22.4 percent.

* Nokia

Nokia experienced a surge in revenue, thanks to the company's global handset push as well as its multimedia and enterprise units. Profit, however, dipped 4.1 percent during the third quarter.

Sales for the quarter were up 20 percent, with its multimedia and enterprise units reporting sales growth of 45 percent and 27 percent, respectively. During the quarter, Nokia shipped 88.5 million phones, up from 66.6 million units in the same period a year ago.

Nokia calculates that its global market share of the handset market stood at 36 percent at the end of the quarter, up from 33 percent a year earlier. Strong performances in Latin America, China and Asia-Pacific helped increase Nokia's share, the company said.

*LG

LG mobile phone sales came in at 16.5 million in 3Q, up from 15.3 million in the previous quarter. LG shipped 10.5 million CDMA handsets, 5.6 million GSMs and 0.5 million WCDMAs. The LG Chocolate phone to ship 6 million units before the end of the year. The handset made its debut in Europe in May, and followed with a U.S. launch in August.

2006-10-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

Nokia sees India & Russia as goldmines

"India is one of the most important markets for our multimedia devices," Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson told Finnish national broadcaster YLE on Thursday. Multimedia phones usually carry a high price tag and higher profit margins.

Simonson also said Russia was a key market for Nokia's top-range 8800 model, priced at roughly 1000 euros ($1,250).

Nokia has 50% share of mobile phone market in many of the emerging countries.

2006-10-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sony-Ericsson sales jumped 42%

The company shipped 19.8 million handsets during the quarter, which is up from 13.8 million in the same quarter a year ago. The success is due to its increased shipments of the Walkman music phones and its Cyber-shot line of cameraphones.

The Walkman phone line included W850, a tri-band/UMTS slider phone with storage capacity for up to 1,000 songs. In an effort to strengthen its position in the mobile music arena, Sony Ericsson also updated its PlayNow service to support full track, over-the-air (OTA) downloads to high-end Walkman models. The updated service is branded as M-Buzz.

2006-10-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Music market rockets in Asia

From almost nothing five years ago, the mobile music market in Asia/Pacific grew to US$3.3 billion in 2005, and will reach US$9.3 billion by 2010, according to Instat.

Growth drivers include large markets like China and India reaching a critical mass of mobile subscribers and 3G services becoming prevalent regionwide.

By 2010, the music market in:
China grows to $2.8b
Japan to $3.4b

2006-10-12T16:40:00.000-07:00

QUALCOMM and MediaFLO USA Support FCC Ruling

The FCC today issued a decision that clears Qualcomm to launch its MediaFLO mobile TV network in a much larger number of markets. Qualcomm is building the network in the 700 MHz band with spectrum it owns on UHF TV channel 55.

The ruling specifies both the permitted level of minimal interference and the methodology to calculate the presence of interference from MediaFLO USA to TV or DTV stations on Channels 54, 55 or 56 until the DTV transition ends on February 17, 2009, when the stations must move off those channels. As a result, the ruling greatly expands the number of markets in which MediaFLO USA can operate prior to the DTV transition date.

2006-10-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

European handset manufacturer woes

BenQ Mobile (Germany) files bankruptcy. the division was haemorrhaging money to the tune of €1 million per day before heading east. Unfortunately, the Taipei-based company could do little to stop the bleeding. On Friday, BenQ Mobile GmbH -- the subsidiary formed as a result of the sale -- declared bankruptcy.

Philips is selling the handset unit to China Electronics Corporation (CEC) after amassing hundreds of millions of euros of losses.

2006-10-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

China wireless market growth

The China wireless market scale surged 110% from RMB 750 million in 2003 to RMB 1.58 billion in 2004, and is expected to be RMB 7 billion by 2008. China's ever expanding Mobile Wireless market has already exceeded 431 billion. Total GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) have reached 2.066 billion subscribers, or 82% of the Global market, with 1000 new GSM network subscribers per minute.

T-Mobile launches Dash

HTC's Dash will start making its appearence at the T-Mobile stores. The Dash is equipped with WiFi access which allows users to log on to T-Mobile's HotSpot.

2006-10-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

WiMax World briefing

Nortel is doing a WiMax Mobile field trial in Moscow for Golden Telecom.

A number of base station manufacturers announced new products. Companies include Airspan, Telsima, Nortel.

It appears the WiMax infrastructure is the phase of field trial. I don't think it has solid proof that actual deployment is taking ground.

2006-10-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

Ruckus wireless

The Ruckus Wireless smart Wi-Fi system is based on patent-pending technology that selects the best RF path at any given time for a specific type of multimedia content. Instead of broadcasting Wi-Fi signals in all directions, Ruckus technology directs Wi-Fi signals over the best path to a given receiver. If, however, that path experiences interference, the Ruckus Wireless system automatically steers the traffic over another path in real-time and ensures up to 20 Mbps of consistent bandwidth to every location in the home so there is no interruption in Wi-Fi transmissions.

A very interesting p0st about the Hong Kong borned CEO Selina Lo .

2006-10-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

T-Mobile says that 30% of the SideKick users accesses MySpace. That contradicts to the article by PCMag article. It said that "so far nobody's been able to make much of mobile-generated user communities". Looking at Helio's handset selection which is none suited for access online user communities. Therefore, I can see why people would use SideKick to get onto MySpace. And thus explained why T-Mobile is so excited about the MySpace & YouTube market.

2006-10-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Based on M:Metrics data, e-mail usage (both work & personal) has grown above 11% the past 3 months. So is mobile game download. Click to enlarge the image.

2006-10-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

T-Mobile 3G rollout.

After spending $4.2 billion on the AWS auction, T-Mobile says to spend nearly $2.7 billion on a network upgrade. The upgrade will start this quarter and end in 2009 with most network completed by 2008.

New devices will have to be developed to work in the new 1,700-MHz and 2,100-MHz bands. While many European countries have a 2,100-MHz band as well, their band is configured differently, so European 2,100-MHz devices will not be able to work well on the American version.

T-Mobile's 3G rollout will include HSDPA, which will start during the fourth quarter of this year and will extend through 2007 and 2008, costing around $2.1 billion for the buildout through 2009. Consumers will be able to buy 3G handsets and services beginning in mid-2007

2006-10-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

How Single Antenna Interference Cancellation (SAIC) Works

SAIC refers to a class of processing algorithms, which attempt to cancel
or suppress interference using a single receive antenna. The two most prominent families of
SAIC algorithms are:
• Joint Demodulation (JD), also called Joint Detection
• Blind Interference Cancellation (BIC)

The basic difference between JD and BIC is that the JD receivers attempt to jointly process
(demodulate) both the desired signal and one or more of the interferers, while BIC receivers
only process (demodulate) the desired signal while canceling or suppressing the interference.
Since the BIC algorithm only specifically deals with the desired signal, it is said to be “blind” to
the interferer. BIC algorithms may not be applicable to all wireless systems, but they can be
applied to GMSK signals used in GSM due to the nature of the modulation.

SAIC works best in a synchronous network.

2006-10-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Mobile TV Comparison chart.

2006-09-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

Motorola says it is investing in a WiMAX chipset design that will give it an end-to-end solution the technology, where it also has infrastructure and handset plans. The chip will focus on the mobile version of WiMAX, using the IEEE 802.16e specification. The chips are expected to show up in devices in 2008, in time for WiMAX deployments by Sprint and other carriers. Sprint decided to choose WiMax as their 4G solution.

Qualcomm, meanwhile, has developed its CSC1100 chip, which combines a baseband modem, RF transceiver, power management and memory into a single chop. Qualcomm says the cdma2000 chip will substantially reduce the cost of handsets.

2006-09-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

Never heard of this company until today when I saw how much Samsung is strong armed to pay them for royalty ($134 million). They already won or collected royal from sony-ericsson, nokia, sharp, etc. The related litigation involved 2G TDMA technology.

businesswire news link