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Category: smartphone

  • Developing 3D Mobile Solutions: Interview with Eric Bernard, CEO of Visioglobe

    Since we observe a rapid growth of 3D interactive mobile applications market, Smartphone.Biz-news.com wanted to know more about the technology behind it.

    We spoke to Eric Bernard, CEO & Co-Founder of Visoglobe, the company that won the French National Contest for Innovative Companies for bringing innovative real-time solutions to 3D technology for mobile devices.

    Recently, they released Visio Ski, an iPhone app that enables to navigate in 3D on the ski trails of 3 Vallées French ski resort.

    Smartphone.Biz-News.com: Try to convince me I should not go skiing to Courchevel without Visio Ski installed on my iPhone.

    Eric Bernard: Our app grants you access to a 3D and completely interactive map of ski trails. Geolocate yourself, wherever you are! Identify immediately the trail, the lift or simply the mountains near you.

    Eric Bernard

    Visio Ski also makes your first rides in the resort easier by enabling you to bookmark trails or lifts, or even to share your GPS position with your friends.

    Once installed, the application contains all the data necessary so you don’t need to use the network on site and thus avoid data roaming charges (except if you send your position by email) and get better battery life. Given that the data is embedded in the application, we recommend to install the application from a WiFi connection.

    How the developing process of this app looked like?

    We have made a partnership with the US company Intermap. They provide us the data, then we optimize it we combine them with the ski trail, lift, POI information, and we integrate those data with our application for having the full area in 3D with all the information.

    The application is running on iPhone, and soon we will start the development for Android. Those two environments are from our side the most interesting for this kind of application.

    Tell as a little about your real-time 3D engine, a core of your technology.

    The Visioglobe Technology is a first life experience, which enhances the real world experience by providing the world in 3D on embedded devices with high detailed buildings and landmarks.

    The world is enhanced with real time information of the surrounding environment, for example to find friends, events, restaurants, and other useful places of interest.

    The background came from the aircraft simulation, and we have decided to port it on mobile phone for addressing the mass market

    What is today’s biggest challenge for 3D real-time visualization for smartphones?

    Have the better 3D chips, to be sure that the rendering is good and fast enough. It’s the reason why we have built strong partnership with hardware provider, like Imagination Technologies for the mobile, and NVIDIA Tegra for the automotive.

    In the near future, in what kind of mobile devices and applications you think you could use this technology?

    All the mobiles which have a Power VR from Imagination Technologies, and actually Imagination have been shipped in over 100 million consumer products. So all the smartphones from Samsung, Nokia, Sony, LG, HTC and Motorolas can receive our technology.

    How will Google’s and Nokia’s navigations change the navigation, and 3D navigation, market? Have you already noticed any impact?

    A lot! But it’s very good for us, because our market is in B to B and we provide 3D to the navigation and LBA application which didn’t have it. So for the moment all the mobile phone manufacturers, operators, and even Google could be interested by our application for having a very good 3D engine on mobile phone.

    Having well equipped smartphones, do we still need PNDs?

    No, because until recently the PND didn’t have a 3D chips embedded. And for the future, the PND market doesn’t seem as promising as the mobile phone market.

    What are you presenting at this year’s World Mobile Congress?

    We will present our application on the Imagination Technologies booth the Monday 15th of February, and Wednesday 17th of February. And full time with Navteq for presenting their last enhanced 3D city model at the Pueblo Español just above the Fira de Barcelona.

  • Mobile Phone Shipments Rebound To Double-Digit Growth in Q4 2009

    The worldwide mobile phone market grew 11.3% in the fourth quarter of 2009, ending five consecutive quarters of retrenchment. According to IDC‘s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 325.3 million units in 4Q09 compared to 292.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2008.

    Vendors shipped a total of 1.13 billion units on a cumulative worldwide basis in 2009, down 5.2% from the 1.19 billion units shipped in 2008.

    "The mobile phone market has rebounded in dramatic fashion," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Phone Tracker.

    "The Asia/Pacific region and the United States were primarily responsible for pushing the market back into growth territory. Overall, vendors offered a wide array of converged mobile devices and messaging devices in the seasonally strong fourth quarter, to take advantage of increased user demand."

    According to Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team, consumer tastes for mobile phones have increasingly shifted from simple voice telephony to greater data usage, and both handset vendors and carriers have been eager to meet demand despite ongoing economic challenges.

    IDC anticipates that the worldwide mobile phone market will rebound in 2010. "Economic recovery mixed with pent-up demand will create positive conditions for handset vendors in both developed and emerging markets in 2010,” said Llamas.

    The research shows that in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), 2009 as a whole was relatively flat year on year, marked by a stronger preference for low-cost handsets in China and India as users substituted away from more expensive options under recessionary pressure.

    However, the Asia/Pacific market saw strong gains in 4Q09, reflecting a strong start to recovery.

    Touchscreen-enabled devices remained a hot segment of the market, helping to drive the demand for converged mobile devices across the region.

    The Western European handset market grew on both a year-over-year and sequential basis in 4Q09.

    LG Electronics and Samsung performed particularly well thanks to their collective strength in the traditional mobile phones segment while Apple, Nokia, and Research In Motion helped sustain growth in the converged mobile device market.

    On a full-year basis, however, shipments into the region still declined as the improved second-half performance was not enough to offset the declines in the first half.

    In CEMA vendors found pockets of improvement during 4Q09, but overall sales in the region were focused on entry-level handsets targeted at first-time users.

    According to IDC, the North American market finished 2009 relatively strong posting the second-highest regional growth after the Asia/Pacific region. Converged mobile devices remained in high demand in the fourth quarter due to a combination of lower priced devices and rate plans as well as greater user and carrier interest.

    However, feature phones accounted for the majority of shipments last year despite an overall volume decrease on a year-over-year basis. In Canada, mobile phone shipment volumes were buoyed by the introduction of a new wireless network, which increased the demand for smartphones, particularly the Apple iPhone.

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    IDC: 450 Million Mobile Internet Users Worldwide in 2009, One Billion by 2013

  • Firefox Goes Mobile

    Mozilla announced that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. The browser is intended and optimized for use on the Nokia N900. It can also be run on the Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets, but Mozilla don’t recommend using its product on these devices because they are "significantly less powerful.”

    Firefox for Maemo is built on the same engine as Firefox 3.6 for desktop (Gecko 1.9.2) with some extensive under the hood work to optimize for mobile. It includes the new “TraceMonkey” JavaScript engine, an advanced JIT (“just in time”) compiler using tracing technology.

    New Mozilla’s mobile browser comes with Weave Sync that enables to sync tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords with desktop Firefox, Location-Aware Browsing, which gives you maps and information relevant to your location, offline browsing and one-touch bookmarking.

    It’s the first mobile browser with add-ons support. There are currently more than 40 Firefox add-ons available for mobile, like popular AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides, to name a few.

    Initially, Firefox for N900 does not support browser plug-ins. “Due to performance problems using Adobe Flash within Firefox on many websites, especially those with multiple plug-ins on them, we have disabled plugins for Firefox for Maemo 1.0.,” states Mozilla.

    “We plan to provide a browser add-on that will enable you to selectively enable plugins on certain sites, because some sites, like YouTube, work well.”

    Mozilla is also working on a mobile version of its browser for other platforms. Firefox for the Windows Mobile is in Alpha (yet optimized for Samsung Omnia II, AT&T Touch Fuze, HTC Touch Pro), the company is currently investigating development for Android.

    They do not have plans to build Firefox for iPhone – due to “constraints with the OS environment and distribution”, Blackberry – due to “its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components”, and Symbian.

    Related articles
    Nokia Unveils N900 – The New Company’s Flagship Handset
    Mobile Firefox Expected On HTC Touch Pro

  • Is an iPad a Revolutionary Device?

    After all the rumors and geek’s dreams… I’m almost sure some people get disappointed about the device and the general consensus among the people I spoke with about the iPad is that “Wow! But is not for me,” or “It’s only for geeks.”

    Yeah, Wednesday’s presentation was quite impressive and I have to agree that it would be nice to have such a device. But if I already have a computer and an iPhone… the only reason to buy the iPad would be that is not so expensive and that I love to have gadgets.

    But I have to be positive on it. I think it will make a huge difference and it’s the first of a new category of devices that will come sooner than expected.

    I see two main market segments for the iPad. Well, three if we include the geeks.

    Who does not have a photo album at home? The experience of opening the book, sharing and commenting the pictures while handling it and sitting close to our friends… Digital photography has reduced the amount of printed pictures, and we have started to use TV and computer slideshows to view it.

    I can imagine my parents using the iPad just like they were using an ordinary photo album, having it ready to show the pictures of their grandsons to unexpected guests. No need to open the TV, no need to bring the computer.

    In order to fit in this category it will require over the air iPhoto synchronization, something that Apple TV already does. Also, it would be great to have bi-directional synchronization to be able to play with the photos (re-arrange, comment, tag) on the iPad.

    Another area is a segment of professional applications. The list here is long: from doctors handling it in the hospitals, decoration outlets and architects showing their projects and interacting with their customer’s work, to more basic, like a restaurant menu or beauty salons offering it instead of newspapers and magazines.

    What the device is missing?

    Clearly it needs a video camera for video conferencing. It would be great if it also had a rear camera.

    Size is important… and most probably we will see this device in smaller, portable 6” format as well as in a larger format to facilitate reading newspapers and magazines.

    A memory slot and USB connector to connect with the rest of the world are also more than welcome.

    And networking capabilities! Why do I have to have the media in the iPad? Why not let the device mount an AFP or SMB drive, so that it could have virtually unlimited storage capacity?

    My conclusion is that it is only a first step, but the iPad is definitely a revolutionary device.

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    The Apple iPad is Here

  • The Apple iPad is Here

    “It is a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” said Steve Jobs unveiling Apple’s “latest creation” yesterday in San Francisco. Although we may doubt if the iPad really brings “magic” and “revolution” to us, we have to admit the prices are unexpectedly low. Yesterday, Apple’s stocks started to climb fast only when Jobs revealed how much we’ll have to spend on the device.

    All the rumors were saying the tablet will be not less than $999, and from this point of view the actual prices look really affordable. $499 for the basic version (16GB, no 3G) is something nobody expected; also $829 for the bloated 64GB, 3G version won’t scare anyone.

    So, what do you get for this price? iPad is 0.5 inch thick, 1.5 pound device with 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768, LED-backlit, responsive high-resolution Multi-Touch display that features IPS technology and has a wide 178 degree viewing angle.

    It’s powered by 1GHz “A4” chip designed by Apple (using their own P.A. Semi technology) and is claimed to have 10-hour battery life and a month of standby.

    It’ll come with a 30-pin dock connector, a microphone, a speaker, Bluetooth (2.1 + EDR), 802.11n WiFi and optional 3G, as well as an accelerometer and a compass.

    iPad comes in two versions—one with Wi-Fi and the other with both Wi-Fi and 3G. iPad includes the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi, and the 3G versions support speeds up to 7.2 Mbps on HSDPA networks.

    Every iPad is unlocked and comes with a GSM micro-SIM. Together with AT&T, Apple announced 3G pre-paid data plans for iPad: 250MB for $14.99 and an unlimited plan for $29.99 a month contract-free (with on-device activation and management, and a free use of AT&T WiFi hotspots). International deals will come in June.

    iPad syncs with iTunes just like the iPhone and iPod touch, using the standard Apple 30-pin to USB cable. The device features 12 Multi-Touch applications. Every app works in both portrait and landscape, automatically animating between views as the user rotates iPad in any direction.

    The operating system is based on iPhone OS, so the iPad can run all iPhone apps – either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen. Apple says they rewrote all of our apps for this display.

    Apple released a new SDK for iPad, allowing developers to target iPad’s specifics while developing new apps. The SDK includes a simulator that lets developers test and debug their iPad apps on a Mac, and also lets developers create Universal Applications that run on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

    Apple also announced the new iBooks app for iPad, which includes Apple’s new iBookstore that will feature books from “major and independent publishers”– five new big Apple’s partners: Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillian and Harper Collins.

    iPad has almost full-size soft keyboard but it also connects to the new iPad Keyboard Dock with a full-size traditional keyboard ($70). Additionally, there is a "camera connection kit" to allow to plug a camera in over USB or use an SD card ($30) and a leather case ($40).

    Unfortunately, iPad doesn’t support Adobe Flash and multitasking. There is also no camera and HDMI output.

    New Apple device will be available in late March worldwide for a suggested retail price of $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB.

    The Wi-Fi + 3G models of iPad will be available in April in the US and selected countries for a suggested retail price of $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB.

    Related articles
    Is an iPad a Revolutionary Device?

  • Cox Successfully Delivers Voice and HD Video via LTE

    Cox announced the successful completion of voice calling and high definition video streaming over wireless networks using LTE technology.

    Cox’s 4G technology and service trials utilize the AWS and 700 MHz spectrum that it acquired at Federal Communication Commission auctions in 2006 and 2008. The company informed that they spent over $550 million for radio spectrum licenses to support its wireless plans, which include wireless broadband.

    Cox conducted the 4G trials in Phoenix and San Diego and chose these markets for “the advanced technology-orientation of its residential and business customers”, as well as the terrain and suburban density variances of their geographies.

    While Cox is testing 4G LTE technology in these markets, it is initially deploying wireless services using the 3G CDMA standard in some regions of California and Nebraska.

    “We are encouraged by the success of the Phoenix and San Diego tests, which further validate our decision to pursue 4G based on LTE, specifically the 3GPP Release 8 standard," said Stephen Bye, Cox’s vice president of wireless.

    Next month, Bye will expand on Cox’s 4G learnings as he participates in a keynote session titled "Ready for Launch of Next Generation Mobile Networks" at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    Collaborating with Cox in conducting the 4G trials and testing the wireless services and applications were Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei.

    Cox, the third-largest U.S. cable TV company, provides digital video, internet, telephone and wireless services over its own nationwide IP network.

  • Apple Reports All-Time Highest Revenue, Sold 8.7 Million iPhones in Q1 2010

    Two days before the long-awaited unveiling of the company’s “latest creation”, Apple revealed financial results for its Q1 2010 (ended December 26, 2009).

    The company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share.

    These results compare to revenue of $11.88 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.26 billion, or $2.50 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

    International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

    Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

    Sales went up especially in Japan (400 percent!), Australia, UK, France, and Germany. Apple’s flag device is now sold in 86 countries. 17 new carriers have added iPhone to their offerings.

    Apple COO Tim Cook said the company is moving slow in China because they are focused on building the brand there and on the quality of point of sale (there are 1500 points of sale for the iPhone in China). Earlier this month Apple activated over 200,000 units in China.

    The company also sold 3.36 million Macs during the quarter (a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter) and 21 million iPods (an eight percent decline).

    Laptop sales were up 18 percent and sales of the iPod touch went up 55 percent.

    “If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

    “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

    According to Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, Apple expects revenue in the range of about $11.0 billion to $11.4 billion and diluted earnings per share in the range of about $2.06 to $2.18 in Q2 2010.

  • What Does Nokia’s Launch of Free Navigation Mean to the Market?

    On 21 January 2010, Nokia announced that it is to make turn-by-turn navigation free with its Ovi Maps offering. The research firm Canalys claims the move is a logical one for Nokia to take, especially in light of the recent launch of Google’s free navigation solution.

    Google’s navigation currently supports only Android devices and is confined to the United States – though Canalys expects both of these limitations to be addressed this year.

    “As Google’s free solution becomes more widely available, it will inevitably have a negative impact on consumers’ willingness to pay for navigation, making it increasingly hard for application providers to charge for their solutions. Yet Nokia’s move should be viewed less as a defensive measure and more as it going on the offensive,” state Canalys.

    “It already has the necessary assets in-house, with its own navigation software, ownership of Navteq, and a huge, growing installed base of GPS-integrated smart phones. In making its own solution free now, it has a head start over Google and any other vendor that follows in every supported market except the US, giving it time to firmly associate itself with the concept of free navigation through promotional activity.”

    Canalys’ end-user research has repeatedly shown that navigation is a feature that consumers want on their mobile phones. Being the first to make global navigation free across so wide a portfolio of devices will give Nokia handsets a true value-add and help it differentiate its products in the increasingly competitive smart phone space, according to the research group.

    Alanysts predict Nokia’s free navigation announcement will not be welcomed though by all its mobile operator partners.

    “While some are happy to endorse or support services that help encourage data consumption, many offer chargeable GPS navigation services themselves, albeit with varying success outside the US, and may well be reluctant to support a move that encourages consumers to expect navigation and other mobile content and services for free, eroding potential revenue streams,” says Canalys.

    According to the analysis, Nokia’s announcement may conceivably push more operators into partnerships with third-party navigation solution providers, where navigation is bundled with the cost of a data plan, providing their own effectively free navigation solutions with an incentive for customers to sign up to data plans, while maintaining customer ownership advantages.

    “Similarly, handset competitors may consider entering into deeper, closer relationships with selected navigation software vendors to offer their own bundled or free solutions. This would minimize Nokia’s ability to use navigation as a differentiator and enable them to also take advantage of the growing consumer appetite for, and expectation of, having free navigation available on smart phones out-of-the-box,” states Canalys.

    That it may prompt operators and some of Nokia’s competitors to pay more attention to their own navigation partner relationships.

    Canalys analysts claim the most significant impact for navigation vendors will likely be the effect that a widespread Nokia advertising campaign will have on consumers and their willingness to pay for navigation.

    "All providers will come under substantial pressure to reduce prices, and few consumers will be happy to pay the kind of prices that vendors such as TomTom or Navigon are currently able to command through application stores,” thay say.

  • Gartner: Consumers Will Spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010

    Consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores while advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to market research firm Gartner.

    Analysts said mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users.

    Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. Free downloads will account for 82 per cent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 per cent of downloads in 2013.

    “As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner.

    “Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”

    The research shows worldwide mobile application stores’ download revenue exceeded $4.2 billion in 2009 and will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013.

    This revenue forecast includes end-user spending on paid-for applications and advertising-sponsored free applications. Advertising-sponsored mobile applications will generate almost 25 per cent of mobile application stores revenue by 2013.

    According to Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms.

    “Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in,” she said.

    High-end smartphone users today tend to be early adopters of new mobile applications and more trustful of billing mechanisms, so they will pay for applications that can meet their needs, as Gartner claims.

    Analysts think average smartphone users will become less tech-savvy as smartphones come down in price to have a mass market appeal and these users will be more reluctant to pay for applications.

  • 3 Scandinavia Launches World’s First 84Mbps HSPA Network

    Danish and Swedish consumers can look forward to four times faster mobile broadband as operator 3‘s network speeds leap from 21Mbps to 84Mbps.

    To improve coverage, the upgrade will be complemented by a new 900MHz 3G network, the first in Sweden, supplied and supported by Ericsson.

    The three-year contract between Ericsson and 3 includes the HSPA Evolution capacity upgrade of its existing 3G network, via 42Mbps, to 84Mbps plus a new WCDMA/HSPA radio access network on the 900MHz frequency band.

    In addition, Ericsson is providing IP-based optical and microwave backhaul, and support services.

    Nationwide rollout in Denmark and four major cities in Sweden will start in the first quarter of 2010.

    Peder Ramel, CEO at 3 Scandinavia, said: "We were the first to launch turbo 3G in the Nordic region and now we are first signing up for the world’s fastest 3G.”

    “Ericsson is evolving our network so we can meet these demands and give our customers true connectivity, wherever they are – from city office to country cottage," he added.

    3 Scandinavia is a part of the global 3 group (25 million customers in 10 countries), a joint venture between Hutchison Whampoa Ltd in Hong Kong (60 %) and Investor AB in Stockholm (40 %). The company also holds a license to operate a 3G network in Norway.