Business News Holding

Category: smartphone

  • MWC 2010: Interview with Alexandros Moukas, CEO of Velti

     We have met the very friendly team from Velti at the Mobile World Congress, they specialize on mobile marketing and mobile advertising technologies.

    Basically they make it simple for marketers, advertisers, publishers and mobile operators to fulfil all of their mobile marketing and advertising needs through a simple, convenient platform. Alexandrous Moukas, CEO, has given us a complete introduction to the company and an overview on where it is heading, followed by an interactive demonstration by Dimitris Kontarinis, Director of Innovation.

    View the video interview to have a one to one insight into this great company you must watch out for.

  • MWC 2010: Interview with Mikko Hypponen, CRO of F-Secure

    The Smartphone.Biz-News.com team has been today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the most exciting mobile event of the year!
    We have met with F-Secure, a company focused on protecting the irreplaceable.

    F-Secure provides Mobile Security software that makes smartphone use completely safe against robbery, malware infections and spy software.
    As users increasingly use their mobiles for everyday transactions where confidential information is used F-Secure promises to make your experience 100% safe.

    Watch our video interview with Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer of the company to find out what type of malware mobile users can find themselves with.

  • MWC 2010: Interview with Jean-Paul Deschamps, CEO of 3Roam

    VIDEO INTERVIEW. At Mobile World Congress Smartphone.biz-news.com interviewed Jean-Paul Deschamps, President & CEO of 3Roam, the provider of IP and MPLS microwave backhaul solutions.

    He gave us a brief introduction to the company and talked about the MicrowaveRouter – the company’s star product. “Our MicrowaveRouter with its cost-optimized design is the scalable answer to your long-haul IP transport needs,” said Jean-Paul.

    The 3Roam WLS MicrowaveRouter product range enables deployment of microwave wireless backhaul networks to carry traffic in packet based networks (Wifi, WiMAX, LTE), video networks (DVB-H) or fixed line networks (micro DSLAM), reducing operators’ CAPEX and OPEX.

  • MWC 2010: Interview with Chris Cox, Product Line Manager at ip.access

    VIDEO INTERVIEW. The first day of the Mobile World Congress was full of interesting conversations for the Smartphone.Biz-news.com reporters. One of them was the interview we did with Chris Cox, Product Line Manager at ip.access.

    At this year’s MWC ip.access is presenting their multi-award winning range of picocells and femtocells, including nano3G picocell, nanoGSM picocell, Oyster 3G technology and various femto services.

  • Smartphone.Biz-News.com Goes iPhone

    We are happy to announce that our own iPhone /iPod touch application is now available in the Apple App Store.

    Biz News app delivers a constant stream of news from our website giving you quick access to the latest news on the smartphone industry.

    Categories like Events, Market Data, Hardware, People and Jobs, to mention a few, make the app easy to navigate and search for the specific content.

    It also integrates a mini web browser for reading the news without leaving the app.

    Biz News iPhone/iPod touch app is free and you can easily download it from your device or from the iTunes.

    Download Biz News app from the App Store
     

  • AT&T Selects LTE Equipment Suppliers

    AT&T announced the selection of Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as equipment suppliers for the planned deployment of its LTE mobile broadband network.

    The company is planning a first field trials of LTE later this year. Commercial deployment is scheduled to begin in 2011.

    According to AT&T, after testing equipment from multiple suppliers in the field and in a lab environment, the company chose to extend existing relationships with Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, which provide equipment for the AT&T 3G network today.

    "Continued work with these two suppliers will enable AT&T not only to incorporate LTE equipment, but also to take advantage of compatibility between the suppliers’ existing 3G equipment and forthcoming LTE upgrades," states AT&T.

    As part of the supplier agreements, 3G equipment delivered to AT&T by the suppliers starting this year will be easily convertible to LTE, enabling AT&T to upgrade existing equipment and software rather than install entirely new equipment.

    “AT&T has a key advantage in that LTE is an evolution of the existing GSM family of technologies that powers our network and the vast majority of the world’s global wireless infrastructure today. As some competitors move away from their existing investment in niche 3G platforms, we are able to efficiently and quickly move toward LTE while enhancing our existing 3G performance and providing access to a strong ecosystem of customer devices,” said John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T.

    The company also announced that it has designated Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as the domain suppliers for its Radio Access Network Domain. The multi-year agreement covers radio access network equipment needed to deliver LTE service. This equipment will be deployed at cell sites across AT&T’s network to enable LTE speeds and functionality. Financial terms of the supplier agreements were not disclosed.

    AT&T in January announced total 2010 capital expenditures are expected to be between $18 billion and $19 billion. These plans include an increase of approximately $2 billion in wireless network and backhaul investment.

    Earlier this year, AT&T upgraded 3G cell sites to HSPA 7.2 technology. Over the course of 2010 and 2011, the firm plans to combine this upgrade with enhanced fiber-optic backhaul connectivity.

    AT&T wireless network investment plans for 2010 also include construction of about 2,000 new cell sites and adding new radio controllers and carriers at a pace that doubles deployment in 2009.

    Related articles
    In-Stat: 4G LTE Gated by 3G Success, not WiMAX
    4G Mobile Consumer Service Revenue Will Exceed $70 Billion in 2014
    TeliaSonera Launches World’s First LTE Network

  • In-Stat: 4G LTE Gated by 3G Success, not WiMAX

    LTE, the next-generation mobile broadband standard, is the clear choice for the next leap in wireless technology, reports In-Stat. The analysts claim that while WiMax appeared to be a competitor for 4G early on, that battle is now largely resolved.

    In-Stat predicts that LTE’s deployment will primarily be impeded by the success of 3G networks and HSPA and HSPA+ networks as mobile operators seek to leverage their installed infrastructure.

    LTE still has several glaring issues. These include lack of spectrum, signal-to-noise ratio, and non-established patent and royalty pool. “It’s clear that the shift toward 4G LTE will be gradual and protracted,” says In-Stat.

    While LTE will ultimately become the 4G standard of choice, Mobile Wi-Max is much more mature in deployment and has a distinct niche. According to the research group, even by 2013, Mobile Wi-Max will have more than 5 times as many global subscribers as LTE.

    LTE deployments will effectively begin in 2010. North America and Asia/Pacific will be the first regions to deploy.

    In-Stat also believes that external clients, such as dongles, network cards, and USB dongles will be the first LTE subscriber devices sold. LTE mobile handsets will not start shipping in major volumes until 2H12.

    “WiMAX deployments have given chipset manufacturers, device manufacturers, and infrastructure suppliers real-world experience,” state the analysts.

    Related articles
    ABI Research: 4G Mobile Consumer Service Revenue Will Exceed $70 Billion in 2014
    TeliaSonera Launches World’s First LTE Network
    Almost Two Million Mobile WiMAX Subscribers Expected by End of 2009
    AIRCOM Reveals the Economic Reality of LTE Migration

  • Interview with Xavier Bertschy, Founder of CityOnline.net

    Smartphone.Biz-News.com spoke to Xavier Bertschy, CEO at xb83studio Sàrl and the founder of CityOnline.net, a specialist in web content management. Xavier was one of the speakers at MobileMonday “Android and web-convergence” event that was held last… Monday in Fribourg, Switzerland.

    Smartphone.Biz-news.com: Can you tell us a little about CityOnline.net background and what other projects your team has worked on recently?

    Xavier Bertschy: CityOnline.net is a Swiss SME providing cityguide technology. Our free service provides prompts information about all local activities of the user’s region: cinemas, concerts, restaurants, hotels, museums and shopping.

    Xavier Bertschy

    Behind CityOnline.net is Skeeble‘s technology. Skeeble.com is a mobile internet database / Content Management System for everyone.

    Skeeble imports data from all kinds of sources (XML, databases, static HTML pages, WordPress, Drupal, Typo3, Excel, Access, PDF, and many others) and provides this data in a standard and structured format to all kinds of devices. So as a result, you can manage all your content in one place and Skeeble takes care of creating the data for any interface required.

    By having this available, services, events and even information related to tourism are easily accessible to a variety of devices such as mobile phones, smartphone, PDA, iPhone, PSP, Nintendo DS etc. Skeeble automatically detects the user’s device and adapts images, videos, sounds and texts for the interface the user is using.

    A good example of this is Crans-Montana Tourism. They had recently started to use our technology. As a consequence, a user is able to access their website from the mobile.

    What are your experiences with Android so far?

    Our R&D team has performed numerous test applications for internal use. We have explored the main functionalities of the SDK, like the camera functions, the GPS device and the User Interface framework.

    As yet, we have not developed a real and usable application, however in the near future we expect to release our first application. CityOnline.net has its own Android application, but it’s a WebView of the Web Application (available with a mobile browser).

    How the Android can help with web content management, its usability and accessibility?

    Android has an excellent web browser that supports all the latest technology, i.e. HTML 5. This allows the developers to be really inventive, as they can continue to use the Web 2.0 concepts that they are already familiar with. We admit that a lot of current WebApps are now at the maturity stage, so why not adapt them to be usable on the mobiles phones?

    What distinguishes Android from other platforms?

    The alliance with Google and the mobile manufacturers will make Android available on many phones brands such as: Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, HTC etc. From what I have seen during the last months, almost all the mobile manufacturers have announced mobile phones with Android for the next two years.

    How will Android benefit from the convergence of mobile and web?

    I think that Android will benefit from this convergence as it will universalize the usage of WebApp. In this day, due to the constant increases in mobile internet connection speeds, the need for offline phone applications is quickly becoming redundant.

    Cloud-computing is the next generation of application usage and Google is making preparations for it, at the same time it is also trying to influence the users/developers behavior using Android and Chrome OS.

    Will Android and Chrome converge? Does it make sense? Do you agree that the future is just for the web-based apps?

    It is uncertain whether or not Android and Chrome will converge, but I think that Google is betting on the possibility that the usage of web-based apps will flourish. Most of all their services are available through the mobile browsers and are really handy. One of the biggest advantages of web-based apps is that they are compatible with a great number of different devices and browsers unlike native applications.

    What are the main problems Android has to struggle with?

    The Market is one of the biggest weaknesses for Android, reason being there is no way to search a specific application, and at present the quality and the quantity of applications are really low. However, Android is still young and emerging, and Google is constantly improving it day by day.

    The Android developers struggle with the problem of custom firmware on many phones as well as the hardware differences between different models. Is there any solution in your mind of how the Android could solve this problem?

    I don’t think there is an easy way to manage these problems. For instance, let’s think about the web: with the multitude of different OS and browsers, it gives the developers a hard time but they have learned to deal with that problem. The mobile development will have the same difficulties in the future.

    For example, if one wants his/her application to be available on all the different models of devices, he/she would have to be well-informed on the differences and adapt or redevelop the application for each interface. Having said that, it’s not just a simple technical adaptation; you will have to consider the navigation system, the screen size, the kind of available interactions and many other parameters. Perhaps WebApp is the solution but it’s too soon to make this prediction.

    Apple’s App Store recently reached three billion downloads. What are the perspectives for Android Market in terms of the competition with the App Store?

    I believe that Android Market will one day catch up the App Store. Apple has the monopoly with the App Store because he was the first one in the business. So why do I think that the Android Market will catch up the App Store.

    There are three different iPhones on the market, but Android is different: manufacturer-free and carrier-free. There is more and more devices with the Android OS, so if you do simple math: more phones = more customers = more money.

    Do you agree with the opinion that the Google’s main goal of releasing Nexus One was to gather critical user data for developing new software and improving Android?

    It’s really difficult to say what is the main goal of Google. I imagine that Google wants to have a functional phone to show the others manufacturers the possibilities of Android OS.

    Is it possible to imagine Android without Google behind it? How would the Android operating system look like without Google’s web-based services?

    There aren’t many companies which can afford the costs to develop a free mobile operating system, Microsoft and Apple already have their own system. But sometimes the open source community on the web can be surprisingly innovative and maybe one day we will see a new open source mobile operating system.

    And Android, without all Google’s services, would only be a mobile operating system like the others without any advantages. It’s understandable that Google integrates its services in Android, it’s a good way to get more users and develop their loyalty.

    What is your best Android feature or application?

    Actually, I have two preferences: the customizable home screen with widgets and the integration of Google’s services such as Gmail, the contacts and the calendar.

    ***
    Mobile Monday is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends from global markets.

  • iSuppli: iPad Will Be a Sales Success for Apple

    The research group iSuppli says while the iPad has met its lofty expectations and is likely to be a sales success for Apple, the jury is still out as to whether the tablet will define or redefine the technology market to the same degree the other products like Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod and the iPhone have.

    “In terms of features, product design, software and content, the iPad delivered on all its promises,” said Dale Ford, senior vice president at iSuppli.

    “And at a starting price of $499, the product even exceeded expectations. However, with the iPad straddling multiple product categories and with the usage model for the product still unproven, it likely will be a number of quarters after shipments begin before whether we know the product will have a revolutionary impact on the technology world.”

    The iPad seems to occupy a position somewhere between the smart phone, the e-reader and the netbook PC. “The question for Apple is what is the usage case for such a product?” said Dr. Jagdish Rebello, senior director and principal analyst iSuppli.

    “What does it do that other products don’t do—and what does it have that will make a large number of consumers want to buy the product?”

    According to the analysts, the killer app for the iPad appears to be delivery and presentation of content. “The iPad’s portability, built-in iPod, display, touch interface, wireless connectivity and powerful processor make it ideal for convenient viewing of all types of content, from photos, to videos, to music, to games, to e-books, to online newspapers,” they say.

    Rebello claims that what Apple is trying to do with the iPad is to try and create a new market by stimulating new user behavior and new use cases. “So while the iPad might appear to compete with many existing products in specialized markets like eBooks, tablet PCs and PMP/MP3 players, the success of the produce is intrinsically linked to its capability to change consumer behavior,” he says.

    “The iPad will be a game changer if it becomes the Trojan horse that changes the slowly dying print information business to an electronic information market,” said Egil Juliussen, principal analyst and fellow at iSuppli.

    Analysts ensure that it’s not hardware that makes an electronic product different and unique. “The ingredients of Apple’s iPhone are similar to the other 1.1 Billion phones sold in 2009. What makes the iPhone so different, prompting sales of 8.7 million last quarter, is its unique usability, convenience and content,” they say.

    “The iPad has similar traits to the iPhone—being the right enabler at the right time” said Steve Mather, principal analyst for iSuppli.

    “For investors and corporate leaders, it’s all about identifying trends early, positioning for success. To this end, we believe an area centered on usability, convenience, and emerging content on the Internet, will prove increasingly relevant in the coming years. Furthermore, we believe Apple’s iPad will prove a unique enabling device, connecting new apps and content with emerging behavior trends.”

    While many early reviews concluded the iPad is simply a bigger, faster iPhone, iSuppli believes it more closely resembles Apple’s iPod touch. The research group thinks this is because the iPad is available in a version that includes Wi-Fi as its exclusive wireless connection, the same as the iPod touch.

    Because of this similarity, the initial total available market for the iPad may be similar to that of the iPod touch. During the first four quarters after its introduction, Apple sold a total of 8.3 million iPod touch units, according to iSuppli.

    Over the longer term, the iPad will benefit from Apple’s large and loyal customer base, as the analysts claim.

    “The iPad’s success is expected to be substantial because a significant portion of the 200 million plus users of iPhones, iPods and Macintoshes will want one,” Juliussen added.

    Related articles
    The Apple iPad is Here
    Is an iPad a Revolutionary Device?

  • iPhone and Nexus One Get a Software Update

    Two smartphone giants – iPhone and Nexus One – got a software update yesterday.

    Apple released iPhone OS 3.1.3 for iPhone and iPod touch that improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS, resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instantes and fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard.

    The update relates to security issues with:

    • Recovery Mode: a person with physical access to a locked device might be able to access the user’s data. The update improves handling of the USB control message;
    • WebKit: accessing a maliciously crafted FTP server could result in an unexpected application termination, information disclosure, or arbitrary code execution. The update addresses the issues through improved parsing of FTP directory listings;
    • CoreAudio: playing a maliciously crafted mp4 audio file might lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking;
    • ImageIO: viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image might lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Apple fixes it also through improved bounds checking.

    The update is compatible with all iPhone and iPod touch models and is available for download from iTunes.

    Also Nexus One users began to receive an over-the-air software update on their phones yesterday. This update fixes a few problems and provides some new features, including:

    • Multitouch: Nexus One will now include a new pinch-to-zoom mechanism in the phone’s Browser, Gallery and Maps applications;
    • Google Goggles: this application will now be available directly on the device by launching it from All Apps menu;
    • Google Maps: the Maps will be updated to a new version, Google Maps 3.4, which will include starred items synchronized with maps.google.com, search suggestions from the personal maps.google.com history as well as night mode in Google Maps Navigation that automatically changes the screen at night for easier viewing and driving.

    Google said they will also provide a general fix to help improve 3G connectivity on some Nexus One phones.

    The company also informed that this update will be rolled out gradually to phones – and most users might not receive the notification until the end of the week.