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Category: smartphone

  • OnePhone Seeks To Benefit From Shift To Open-source

    smartphone.biz-news spoke to Christoph Wernli, business development manager at Devoteam, about the convergence market and the opportunities offered by open-source operating systems.

    Devoteam is to release a Blackberry version of its VoIP client OnePhone that runs on mobile platforms enabling voice calls over an IP network.

    It is expected to be available for the RIM handset in the first quarter of 2009.

    The application, which effectively turns mobile devices into extensions of employees’ desk phones, is also being made ready for Android and the iPhone.

    Christoph Wernli, business development manager at Devoteam, said the application would have to be modified to comply with Apple’s legal requirements for services such as VoIP functionality.

    That aside, he said the aim was to expand beyond the current offering for Symbian and Windows Mobile handset to provide its clients – and in particular operators – with a wider choice of devices on which OnePhone can be used.

    "What we are aiming to do is create this same kind of convergence platform for all operating systems out there," he said.

    Convergence Is The Future

    OnePhone is a SIP-based, dual mode GSM-WiFi solution that is able to interwork with public and private WiFi hot spots, and with mobile networks.

    It was first released in 2004 – before the advent of smartphones – in an internal Bluetooth version.

    Wernli said they had anticipated the growth of WiFi and sophisticated handsets, and the application had evolved for use with 3G and WiFi.

    "The vision we had is that it’s not going to be a mobile world but a converged one," he said.

    From an infrastructure access point of view, this entails a plethora of wireless options – WiFi or GSM/GPRS/UMTS.

    Wernli said this meant that a device has to be agnostic in regards to the access methods it uses.

    Devoteam had also to consider the gamut of services required for mobile devices, including:

    • Traditional voice
    • Messaging – SMS, email, instant messaging
    • Location Based Services (LBS)
    • TV
    • Video calls

    "All these should be accessible seamlessly by whatever means is available, without having to choose different WiFi access points or UMTS, if you are in the field. That should be transparent," said Wernli.

    He said OnePhone has been set up based on these requirements. As a result, it sits on top of the different stacks for accessing GSM or WiFi but beneath the user interface.

    "That means that on one hand the OnePhone is not necessarily visible to the user, but can translate any kind of user action towards different access stacks," he said.

    "So, if you place a voice call, then of course you couldn’t care less if you are in the office or in range of WiFi access or outside on GSM.

    "You place the call, OnePhone intercepts it and depending on the parameters, processes the call over GSM or, if WiFi is available, it will transform this user action into a VoIP call."

    Wernli said that ability to seamlessly communicate via the best possible wireless option at any given moment was one of the fundamental concepts of OnePhone.

    He said it was this that gave it a huge advantage over other applications that were often separate add-ons that sat on top of the user interface.

    "OnePhone is structured so that it can be used by my grandmother – it’s point and click," he said.

    Convergence Platform

    Wernli explained that behind the scenes OnePhone was a convergence platform providing voice call functions as well as others such as video calling and access to data (email, mapping etc).

    A key element was its ability to provide call continuity, switching between GSM and WiFi mid-call without calls being dropped or any loss of call quality.

    He said other solutions relied on special boxes to provide this functionality, increasing the burden on enterprises.

    "OnePhone implements the hand-over mechanism, which is entirely client-based," he said.

    "It senses when it is losing the WiFi signal and starts transferring a call over to GSM or whatever is available."

    Signal strength is continuously measured and based on a series of complex factors the application decides when it is necessary to start the hand-over procedure.

    "It’s a trade-off. On the one hand you want to remain on VoIP as long as possible because it costs less," he said.

    "On the other hand you don’t want to have dropped calls."

    Encryption Becoming Essential

    A recent feature added to OnePhone was the ability to encrypt voice calls, something that is required particularly by users handling sensitive information such as banks.

    Wernli said there was still a certain wariness that someone could eavesdrop on calls.

    "With GSM it’s usually taken for granted that no-one can drop in on your call," he said.

    "With VoIP that’s not the impression people have."

    Wernli said because Devoteam developed and controls the entire stack within the application it has the flexibilty to implement such user requests speedily – something he said was almost certainly not always the case.

    "We don’t have to tell the customer that we would like to provide this feature, but you will have to wait until someone in Microsoft or Nokia agrees," he said.

    Market Expanding

    Devoteam’s main market is currently Italy, where it has over 60,000 users but it signed up a UK operator earlier this year and is currently in talks with operators in Spain and France.

    Typically sales are to operators who are able to sell OnePhone’s mobility function as a complementary product to an IP PBX.

    Wernli said that while efforts were being focussed on the European market, they weren’t ruling out future operations in the US.

    "We have seen a lot of interest in the upper segment of the market where OnePhone is used to offer additional services to complement other corporate functions and broaden an enterprise’s offering."

    Open-source World

    Wernli said he expected the penetration of OnePhone to increase as the shift towards handsets being mobile computers rather than simple phones quickened.

    He said that in addition to improvements in hardware towards iPhone-like handsets, the shift to open-source operating systems such as Android, LiMo and iPhone was extremely positive.

    "Open-source gives so much more choice to enable new kinds of services," he said."We will see a huge explosion of applications and services in the same way we saw it on the Internet 10 years ago."

  • Smartphones To Buck Global Mobile Sales Fall


    IDC forecasts that global mobile phone shipments will fall 2.2 per cent next year, the first decline since 2001.

    However, the researchers expect smartphone sales to outperform the market next year, growing an estimated 8.9 per cent.

    This follows a 27 per cent increase in smartphone shipments this year, which helped boost worldwide growth to an estimated 7.3 per cent in 2008.

    IDC does not expect the downturn in mobile phone shipments to stretch past 2009.

    Its report states that by 2010, the worldwide mobile phone market should show signs of improvement as economic recovery plans start to take effect.

    IDC forecasts 7.7 per cent volume growth in 2010 and a return to double-digit growth in the following years.

  • Apple Devices Dominate Mobile Wi-Fi Use


    iPhone owners are the single largest source of mobile WiFi data traffic worldwide, particularly in the US and UK, according to AdMob.

    In the US, the Apple handset represents 50.6 per cent of all requests from handhelds of any kind, followed by the iPod touch, which accounts for 28 per cent of the requests.

    The best non-Apple device, Sony’s PSP, only manages 13.1 per cent of this traffic.

    Even further down the scale come the T-Mobile Dash, G1 and various BlackBerries, which each have less than one per cent of WiFi use.

    UK figures are similarly weighted and give the iPhone the lead at 46.1 per cent, followed by the iPod touch at 21.8 per cent and Nokia’s N95 at 16.7 per cent.

    The Apple device is also more than twice as likely to be used on Wi-Fi than other devices and is used 42 per cent of the time on these hotspots in the US rather than EDGE or 3G compared to no more than 10 to 20 per cent for competitors.

    In the UK, this reaches 56 per cent.

    The phone’s presence helped roughly double the use of mobile WiFi to 8 per cent in both countries between October and November.

    Increasing numbers of smartphone users are taking advantage of WiFi to make voice calls over IP networks.

  • Seadragon App Is Microsoft's First For iPhone


    Microsoft’s Live Labs has released its first application for the iPhone.

    Seadragon Mobile is an experimental image viewer that aims to make high-resolution images easier to handle on a small screen.

    It allows users to view enormous photo collections and high-resolution imagery using the iPhone’s multi-touch intuitive interface.

    The application provides a Deep Zoom feature to enable smooth image browsing of lots of images as well as simple manipulation of massive, gigapixel images.

    Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, said the iPhone had been chosen to launch the app because it is the most widely distributed phone with a graphics processing unit.

    "Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them," he said. "The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do.

    "I couldn’t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support."

    Microsoft’s goal for Seadragon is nothing if not ambitious – essentially it wants to change the way screens are used, be they wall-sized displays or smartphone screens, so that graphics and photos are smoothly browsed, regardless of the amount of data or the bandwidth of the network.

    Seadragon Mobile is available immediately on the iTunes App Store as a free download.

  • Palm Announces Successor To CFO Andy Brown


    Palm has announced that Douglas C. Jeffries has been appointed as the company’s Chief Financial Officer.

    Previously chief accounting officer at eBay, Jeffries will join Palm in January as replacement for Andy Brown.

    In addition to his role as chief accounting officer at eBay, Jeffries has held financial and information technology leadership roles at GenCorp, Red Herring Communications and Cardinal Health. Jeffries began his career at Price Waterhouse, is a CPA and holds an MBA from the University of Southern California.

    The executive changes come as Palm is about to launch what is being widely seen as the key to its future – a smartphone platform called Nova.

    It is also releasing an App Store for its Palm OS and Windows Mobile-based smartphones along the lines of Apple and Google’s software ventures.

    The beleaguered handset maker is beset by falling sales as it struggles in the smartphone market.

    In mid-2007, Palm hired Jon Rubenstein, formerly an Apple product development specialist who led development on the iMac and iPod, to help revive its fortunes.

    Rubenstein has said that Nova will bridge the market between enterprise-oriented BlackBerry devices from Research In Motion and more consumer-centric ones like Apple’s iPhone 3G.

  • iPhone As A Netbook?


    Predictions about Apple’s intentions for the upcoming Macworld Expo are ripe – with the latest being the launch of a netbook that works like an iPhone.

    Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil believes that as with the iPhone, users will download mobile applications for the netbook from Apple’s App Store.

    According to the analysts, Apple would benefit from allowing such a device access to its App Store, through which Apple reports iPhone users have downloaded more than 300 million apps since its launch in July.

    Gottheil claims Apple will announce its a netbook-like device at next month’s Macworld conference in San Francisco and will launch it in the middle of 2009.

    While Apple as always is giving nothing away, one thing is certain: this Macworld Expo will be Apple’s last appearance at the event.

    The company has announced that chief executive Steve Jobs will not be giving the keynote at the event that is traditionally Apple’s largest of the year.

    Instead, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing, is to give the keynote on Tuesday January 6, 2009.

    While the move will undoubtedly reignite speculation about Jobs’ health, successor and a myriad of other issues, the only explanation from Apple came in a statement saying: "Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris."

  • Copy And Paste On The iPhone – Finally


    The lack of copy and paste on the iPhone could soon be a thing of the past if a new web service called Pastebud is as good as it appears.

    Although still to be launched Pastebud’s creators have put a demonstration of their service on YouTube showing how iPhone users can copy and paste text from Safari into Mail and between web pages.

    Based on the YouTube demo, it works through bookmarks that allow users to go between Web pages and email.

    Users are then able to highlight text and hit a button to copy, flip to the another page and hit paste.

    As a web-based service users don’t have to download software onto their iPhones – meaning it bypasses Apple’s App Store altogether.

    While Pastebud may be quite limited in copy and paste capabilities, it will definitely be gratefully received by iPhone users.

    Video below:

  • Mobile Videoconferencing Still Some Way To Go


    Improvements in call quality and economic conditions are doing wonders for global demand for videoconferencing – and in particular desktop video calling.

    But the day when globe-trotting executives hook up to a video conference call on their smartphone would still appear to be a little way off.

    Linor Shachar, VP sales and marketing for videoconferencing experts Emblaze VCON, said video over mobile had had limited success so far.

    "People are refusing to have a video call over mobile," she said. "It’s still not there in terms of end-user quality.

    "For the user it’s very annoying, so people tend to give up very quickly."

    Shachar said issues such as being to able to deliver the service over all types of phone and the cost of making video calls would remain barriers to the adoption of mobile videoconferencing.

    "Once you get over these, I’m sure people will be ready to try mobile video call. I am sure it will get there," she said.

  • Increase Revenue Share – Or Games Developers May Exit Java


    Games publishers and developers will give up on Java unless operators follow Apple’s lead in offering more appealing revenue shares.

    That’s according to a report by analyst Windsor Holden, of Juniper Research, who warns that as well as being a lost opportunity for developers it would seriously reduce the variety of games for players.

    In his report Holden shows that the value of the global mobile games market is expected to rise from USD $5.4 billion this year to more than USD $10 billion in 2013.

    However, he says the volume of paid mobile game downloads has stagnated across North America and Western Europe.

    This is despite the positive response from mobile games publishers and developers to Apple’s iPhone.

    Developers and gamers have reacted strongly to the possibilities handsets such as Apple’s offer for sophisticated games that were previously only possible on consoles.

    Holden believes growth is being hindered by a combination of limited on-portal revenue share for publishers, causing some to leave the market, and poor marketing of games.

    The report author said that the revenue share offered by Apple to games publishers is incredibly attractive.

    “The danger is that if operators do not respond with a similar business model, publishers faced with low margins may simply exit Java completely, thereby reducing consumer choice in the longer term,” he said.

    The report also found that ad-funded downloads have become increasingly popular, but that revenues generated from that model are not likely to provide developers and operators with a sufficient primary revenue stream.

  • Sony Ericsson Among 14 Newbies To Open Handset Alliance


    It looks like 2009 could be an interesting year for Android following the announcement by the Open Handset Alliance that it has 14 new members.

    Topping the list of newcomers most likely to offer a handset to rival Google’s HTC-built G1 is Sony Ericsson.

    The list also includes ASUS and navigation systems manufacturer Garmin.

    ASUS has already announced its intention to build a Google smartphone and there has been much speculation about Garmin’s efforts to produce a phone.

    Sony Ericsson has so far used the Windows Mobile – most notably for its recent Xperia handset – and Symbian platforms.

    Now it is promising "consumer focused multimedia handsets" that draw on the successes of the Walkman and Cyber-shot sub-brands.

    Based on that its likely that Android-based Walkman and Cyber-shot handsets are in the offing.

    The Alliance said that new members will either deploy compatible Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of
    Android-based devices.

    The full list of new members is: AKM Semiconductor Inc., ARM, ASUS, Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin, Huawei Technologies, Omron Software, Softbank Mobile Corporation, Sony Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba and Vodafone.