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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.