Business News Holding

Blog

  • Voxbone, Jajah Create Service That Localizes International Calling

    Voxbone has collaborated with Jajah to develop a value-added telecommunications service, which is said to make international calling "simple and affordable." The International Favorites service, which Jajah provides for mobile customers of O2 in the United Kingdom, offers a subscriber a virtual overseas number so the users can call at local rates.

    As part of the new service, Voxbone supplies an international “Call Me” number that directly reaches a customer’s mobile phone.

    The customer adds this second phone number from a country of choice to an existing mobile subscription. Calls to the number are dialed, delivered and billed like local PSTN calls. These calls are transmitted through Voxbone’s IP network to the O2 user’s mobile phone. The subscriber doesn’t need a special phone or application.

    The virtual number complements the subscriber’s U.K. mobile number, enabling two phone numbers to be mapped to the same device. The service works with most O2 phones.

    In addition, Voxbone is supplying numbers for another feature of International Favorites: provision of three local outbound numbers per subscriber that the customer may use to reach selected international landline and mobile numbers. A flat fee of £10 per month covers 3,000 minutes (50 hours) of calls to these numbers.

    “We are enthused about this opportunity to help a global telecom leader use our phone numbers and global VoIP backbone to create value for its customers and its business,” said Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens. “International Favorites enables customers to keep in closer touch with friends and loved ones in other countries, while it benefits operators by promoting customer loyalty and international calling.”

    “A new kind of geography is being formed that is about local presence and global relationships superseding distance or national borders,” said Trevor Healy, Chief Innovation Officer for Telefónica Europe. “International Favorites gives us a tremendous opportunity to innovate, reflect our users’ needs and open new revenue streams.”

  • Android To Become the Most Popular OS by the End of 2011

    Worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57.7 percent increase from 2010, according to Gartner. By the end of 2011, Android will move to become the most popular operating system worldwide and will build on its strength to account for 49 percent of the smartphone market by 2012.

    According to the report, sales of open OS devices will account for 26 percent of all mobile handset device sales in 2011, and are expected to surpass the 1 billion mark by 2015, when they will account for 47 percent of the total mobile device market.

    “By 2015, 67 percent of all open OS devices will have an average selling price of $300 or below, proving that smartphones have been finally truly democratized,” said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.

    “As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to fight for market share, price will decrease to further benefit consumers”, Cozza said. “Android’s position at the high end of the market will remain strong, but its greatest volume opportunity in the longer term will be in the mid- to low-cost smartphones, above all in emerging markets.”

    Gartner predicts that Apple’s iOS will remain the second biggest platform worldwide through 2014 despite its share deceasing slightly after 2011. This reflects Gartner’s underlying assumption that Apple will be interested in maintaining margins rather than pursuing market share by changing its pricing strategy. This will continue to limit adoption in emerging regions. iOS share will peak in 2011, with volume growth well above the market average. This is driven by increased channel reach in key mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe.

    Research In Motion’s share over the forecast period will decline, reflecting the stronger competitive environment in the consumer market, as well as increased competition in the business sector. Gartner has factored in RIM’s migration from BlackBerry OS to QNX which is expected in 2012. Analysts said this transition makes sense because RIM can create a consistent experience going from smartphones to tablets with a single developer community and — given that QNX as a platform brings more advanced features than the classic BlackBerry OS — it can enable more competitive smartphone products.

    Gartner predicts that Nokia will push Windows Phone well into the mid-tier of its portfolio by the end of 2012, driving the platform to be the third largest in the worldwide ranking by 2013. Gartner has revised its forecast of Windows Phone’s market share upward, solely by virtue of Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia. Although this is an honorable performance it is considerably less than what Symbian had achieve in the past underlying the upward battle that Nokia has to face.

    Gartner analysts said new device types will widen ecosystems. “The growth in sales of media tablets expected in 2011 and future years will widen the ecosystems that open OS communications devices have created. This will, by and large, function more as a driver than an inhibitor for sales of open OS devices,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

    “Consumers who already own an open OS communications device will be drawn to media tablets and more often than not, to media tablets that share the same OS as their smartphone,” Milanesi said. “This allows consumers to be able to share the same experience across devices as well as apps, settings or game scores. At the same time, tablet users who don’t own a smartphone could be prompted to adopt one to be able to share the experience they have on their tablets.”

  • Novell to Enable Development of .NET Apps for Android using Microsoft Visual Studio

    Novell today announced the availability of Mono for Android, the first solution for developing Microsoft .NET applications for the Android platform using Microsoft Visual Studio.

    With the addition of Mono for Android to its existing Mono development tools, Novell is enabling Microsoft .NET and C# developers using Visual Studio and other environments to utilize a common code base to create applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

    According to statistics released by research firm Nielson, Android has a 29 percent consumer market share, making it the most popular smartphone platform. With Mono for Android, .NET developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) can utilize Visual Studio and their existing skills to build a vast array of Android-based applications and sell their products into this massive market.

    "Since the introduction of MonoTouch in 2009, developers have experienced how Mono streamlines mobile application development," said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and vice president of Developer Platforms at Novell. "As a result, many asked us to build a similar tool for Android. We developed Mono for Android to give both individual developers and businesses a way of sharing their code across multiple mobile platforms, increasing efficiency and reuse of their C# and .NET expertise across the board."

    Mono for Android consists of the core Mono runtime, bindings for native Android APIs, a Visual Studio 2010 plugin to develop Android applications, and a software development kit that contains all the tools needed to build, debug and deploy applications. Developers trained in Microsoft Visual Studio can stay within their preferred IDE, while using their existing skills and .NET code, libraries and tools, as well as C# programming knowledge, to create mobile applications for Android-based devices. With the Visual Studio 2010 plugin, engineers can develop, debug and deploy their applications to an Android simulator, an Android device or the Android Application Store.

    Mono for Android complements MonoTouch, Novell’s popular solution for developing applications for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Developers utilizing Mono for Android and MonoTouch can save time and money by sharing common code between iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android phones and tablets, as well as Windows Phone 7, Windows desktops and Windows Server. A Mono for Android add-in also allows MonoDevelop users to develop on OS X.

    "As a mobile software developer and middleware vendor, Resco customers are enabled to use our products to develop MonoTouch, and now Mono for Android applications for Android and Apple devices," said Michal Sartoris, senior developer at Resco. "With more than 3,000 customers, our business success depends on us delivering feature-rich, highly-quality applications to the market before our competitors. Novell is providing us with innovative, cross-platform development tools that enable us to reduce the cost and resources required to create mobile applications."

    Mono for Android Enterprise Edition is available for US $999 per developer for a one-year subscription, which includes maintenance and updates. A five-developer Enterprise license supports five concurrent developers and is available for US $3,999 per year. Mono for Android Professional Edition is available for US $399 per developer for a one-year subscription. For a limited time, existing MonoTouch customers can receive a 50 percent discount off a similar Mono for Android Edition by using their activation code as a discount code.

  • iSuppli: Apple’s A5 Microprocessor Builds on Success of Predecessor

    Driven by the soaring sales of products including the iPad and the iPhone 4, Apple’s shipments of products based on its A4 microprocessor reached nearly 50 million units in 2010 from virtually zero sales in 2009, IHS iSuppli research indicates.

    Building on the success of its A4 microprocessor, Apple recently announced that its second-generation iPad line will be based on a new microprocessor, the A5, which the company said doubles the performance of the A4. Apple said the A5 will include dual microprocessor cores, compared to a single core for the A4. Along with the rise in computing power, Apple said the A5 will offer nine times faster graphics performance than the A4.

    In an indication of how successful the microprocessor has been, Apple in 2010 shipped nearly four times as many units of A4-based products as it did of X86-based .

    According to the analysts, the low-cost, highly integrated A4 and A5 designs represent an important element in Apple’s philosophy of offering products focused on delivering a compelling user interface (UI) and a greatly optimized computing platform for Apple’s iOS operating system.

    "In the new design paradigm of smart phones and tablets, computing efficiency trumps raw computing power. Designs like the iPad demand highly integrated microprocessors that emphasize graphics performance, lower power consumption and small space usage," Wayne Lam, Senior Analyst at iSuppli.

    Apple so far has introduced five products based on the A4: the first-generation iPad, the AT&T version of the iPhone 4, the Apple TV, the iPod Touch and the CDMA iPhone 4 carried by Verizon Wireless.

    The A4 combines an A4 microprocessor core and a graphics processing unit (GPU). The device was custom designed by P.A. Semi—a company acquired by Apple in 2008—and is manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co.

    Partly because of the popularity of Apple’s iPad, companies around the world are developing media tablets and other products that feature small and innovative form factors. These products require highly integrated semiconductor solutions that consume less power and space, similar to the A4 microprocessor.

    "In the PC market, this trend is driving rising sales of notebook microprocessors that integrate graphics processing capabilities, eliminating the need for separate GPUs," said Lam.

    In tablets and smart phones, companies are offering alternatives to the A4 that provide similar levels of integration. For instance, Intel and Nvidia have announced plans for tablet-oriented microprocessors with similar characteristics to the A4.

  • Samsung Becomes the World's First in Mass Production of Transparent LCD Panel

    Samsung has announced that it began mass production of a 22-inch transparent LCD panel in March this year. The panels come in two types, the black-and-white type and the color type, and they have a contrast ratio of 500:1 with WSXGA+ (1680*1050) resolution.

    Compared with the conventional LCD panels that use back light unit (BLU) and have 5% transparency, Samsung’s transparent LCD panel boasts the world’s best transparency rate of over 20% for the black-and-white type and over 15% for the color type.

    The transparent LCD panel has a high transparency rate, which enables a person to look right through the panel like glass, and it consumes 90% less electricity compared with a conventional LCD panel using back light unit.

    It’s because a transparent LCD panel utilizes ambient light such as sun light, which consequently reduces the dependency on electricity for generating power.

    According to Samsung, its transparent LCD panel maximizes convenience for not only manufacturers but also consumers by incorporating the HDMI and the USB interface.

    Transparent display panels have endless possibilities as an advertising tool, which can be applied to show windows and outdoor billboards or used in showcase events.

    Corporations and schools can also adopt the panel as an interactive communication device, which enables information to be displayed more effectively.

    Younghwan Park, a senior vice president of Samsung Electronics LCD Business, said, “Transparent displays will have a wide range of use in all industry areas as an efficient tool for delivering information and communication. With the world’s first mass production of the transparent LCD panel, Samsung Electronics plans to lead the global transparent LCD market by developing various applications.”

  • Sprint Opposes Proposed AT&T Acquisition of T-Mobile USA

    Sprint has announced its opposition to AT&T’s proposed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA. According to Sprint, the transaction, which requires the approval of the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, and will likely spark a host of hearings in the U.S. Congress, "would reverse nearly three decades of actions by the U.S. government and the courts that modernized and opened U.S. communications markets to competition."

    "The wireless industry has sparked unprecedented levels of competition, innovation, job creation and investment for the American economy, all of which could be undone by this transaction," as the company claims.

    AT&T and Verizon are already by far the largest wireless providers. If approved, the proposed acquisition would create a combined company that would be almost three times the size of Sprint in terms of wireless revenue and would entrench AT&T’s and Verizon’s duopoly control over the wireless market. According to Sprint, the wireless industry moving forward would be dominated overwhelmingly by two vertically integrated companies with unprecedented control over the U.S. wireless post-paid market, as well as the availability and price of key inputs, such as backhaul and access needed by other wireless companies to compete.

    “Sprint urges the United States government to block this anti-competitive acquisition,” said Vonya McCann, senior vice president, Government Affairs at Sprint.

    “This transaction will harm consumers and harm competition at a time when this country can least afford it. As the first national carrier to roll out 4G services and handsets and the carrier that brought simple unlimited pricing to the marketplace, Sprint stands ready to compete in a truly dynamic marketplace. So on behalf of our customers, our industry and our country, Sprint will fight this attempt by AT&T to undo the progress of the past 25 years and create a new Ma Bell duopoly.”

  • Black Diamond Video Launches the Sapphire-QHD1 Conferencing Solution

    Black Diamond Video launched its comprehensive high definition conferencing solution, Sapphire-QHD1, a four-faceted package that offers bi-directional HD video and audio conferencing, unidirectional HD video and audio streaming, HD video recording, and HD image capture.

    Black Diamond Video’s HIPAA compliant Sapphire-QHD1 can be incorporated into BDV’s popular Integrated Digital Surgical Suite (IDSS) for medical applications or stand alone as a commercial, business, or military conferencing system.

    Sapphire-QHD1’s conferencing element provides bi-directional HD video and audio conferencing functionality. VoIP support allows phone calls into and out of the conference room, command center, or OR with no external, third party conferencing codec required. BDV’s Sapphire-QHD1 is compatible with all major conferencing systems that can support SIP and H.323 protocols, including Polycom, Tandberg, Codian, and Sony.

    Sapphire-QHD1 is also equipped with HD video streaming capability. A close relative to Sapphire-QHD1’s bidirectional HD conferencing feature, HD streaming facilitates unidirectional communication via H.264. According to the company, any HD video source can be combined with a superior quality audio feed and streamed to up to 80 remote clients. By utilizing BDV’s proprietary streaming algorithms, such a massive number of clients can be served without degradation of video or audio quality. When streaming, the remote user’s credentials and access rights are controlled by the local user’s Active Directory/LDAP servers and can be fine tuned to accommodate the customer’s requirements.

    While conferencing or streaming, the local user can route a video source to any destination or permit far-end camera control (FECC) or far-end video source selection (FEVSS). Once a conference or stream is initiated or accepted via the Sapphire-QHD1’s intuitive touch panel controls, the incoming video stream can be routed to any destination, including surgical and wall displays. By utilizing the embedded dual-tri-quad view windowing functionality, users can simultaneously see their own video sources side by side with far end video feeds.

    Describing the versatility of the system, Ed Priest, Founder and CEO of Black Diamond Video, commented, “Our Sapphire-QHD1 is an extensive solution that reaches beyond medical market applications. HD audio and video conferences can be initiated and accepted with the push of a few buttons from a business conference room. Military personnel can easily and securely conference with remote forces to discuss plans of action while panning and zooming surveillance cameras to view activity from thousands of miles away, all with the greatest detail possible thanks to our high definition video feed.”

    First deployment of the Sapphire-QHD1 conferencing solution will occur at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Connecticut, with updates of existing IDSS systems at other leading medical institutions to follow shortly thereafter.

  • Telanetix Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2010 Financial Results

    Telanetix, a communications solutions provider offering voice services and solutions to the business market, reported financial results for its 2010 fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2010.

    The company’s fourth quarter core voice revenue increased 10 percent over the same quarter last year and full-year core revenue grew nearly 16 percent over 2009.

    Fourth Quarter 2010 Financial Highlights:

    • Core voice revenue increased 10 percent year-over-year to $6.0 million, compared to $5.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.
    • Total revenue was $6.7 million, a decrease of 6.9 percent compared to $7.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2009. The decline in total revenue was due to the expected decrease in legacy product revenues, which were $733,000, a 59 percent decrease compared to $1.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.
    • Adjusted EBITDA improved to $536,000, compared to $130,000 in the fourth quarter last year.
    • Net loss from continuing operations was $1.6 million, or $0.00 per share, compared to net income of $1.1 million, or $0.04 per share, in the fourth quarter last year.
    • Total cash and cash equivalents increased $58,000 to $2.3 million at December 31, 2010.

    Full Year 2010 Financial Highlights:

    • Core voice revenue increased 15.9 percent year-over-year to $23.7 million.
    • Total revenue increased $228,000 year-over-year to $28.5 million.
    • Adjusted EBITDA of $1.7 million, first full year positive EBITDA and a more than $2.1 million improvement compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $379,000 for 2009.
    • Net income from continuing operations was $10.3 million, or $0.06 per share, which included a $16.5 million gain on recapitalization and $800,000 credit from change in fair market value of derivative liabilities, compared to net loss in 2009 of $8.1 million, or a loss of $0.26 per share, which included a $4.1 million expense for interest and a $3.8 million credit for warrant and beneficial conversion feature liabilities.

    “In addition, we achieved our fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA and first full year positive EBITDA. During the quarter, our legacy revenue flattened out from recent declines, and we expect it to stay flat or modestly improve in 2011," said Doug Johnson, Telanetix’s CEO.

    He added that during the year the company made progress building on its strategic partnerships and expanding its customer reach by adding new channel partners, including Mitel Networks and Vertical Communications, each of which offers Telanetix’s SIP trunking services to customers ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises. "We have seen strong initial interest in these services and expect this to be an important growth driver in 2011," Johnson said.

    ”2010 was a pivotal year for Telanetix and we are pleased with our progress and positive steps that have stabilized the company, including completing a comprehensive recapitalization of the Company. We believe we are well positioned now to build on this stable foundation and further expand our presence and share in the marketplace. We expect to achieve continued double digit growth in our core revenue for 2011,” he concluded.

  • Hosted Communications Services Present Excellent Growth Opportunities to European Service Providers

    Although the on-premise model with its control and security advantages will dominate the enterprise communications market in the immediate future, the revenue share of hosted services is poised to increase significantly, according to Frost & Sullivan. Hosted communications services present an ever more popular alternative for deploying IP telephony and unified communications applications.

    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan – European Hosted IP Telephony and Unified Communications Services Market – finds that the hosted IP telephony market in Europe earned revenues of €0.9 billion in 2010 and estimates this to reach €4.9 billion in 2016.

    "The hosted IP telephony and UC services market in Europe is witnessing rapid growth mainly due to the increasing awareness about hosted solutions and improved feature sets," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Dorota Oviedo. "The economic slowdown and limited capital availability for investments urged many enterprises to consider alternative communications delivery methods."

    Once companies experience the actual functionality and service level offered, they become more comfortable with communications being delivered as a service. Services are becoming more mature, offering a complete PBX capability rather than the limited functionality of Centrex solutions previously witnessed in the market.

    "With the economy rebounding, companies will continue using hosted IP telephony services," adds Oviedo. "At the same time, they are also expected to complement them with new communications and collaboration applications."

    The European hosted IP telephony and UC services market is highly fragmented. All the major enterprise communications providers and vendors show interest in tapping this opportunity to leverage the strong customer demand for operational expenditure (OPEX)-based solutions.

    However, building a distribution channel is one of the key challenges faced by this growing industry.

    "Channel partners need to be educated on the benefits of predictable revenues based on recurring monthly revenues and commissions, which are less sensitive to the general economic fluctuations and will increase as hosted services gain traction," concludes Oviedo.

  • Polycom Announces Acquisition of Accordent Technologies

    Unified Communications provider Polycom has announced the acquisition of Accordent Technologies, a provider of video content management and delivery solutions, for approximately $50 million in cash. Polycom expects this acquisition to be neutral to earnings in 2011 and slightly accretive to earnings in 2012.

    Polycom will integrate its open standards UC Intelligent Core and UC endpoints with Accordent’s open standards video content management solution. The Accordent solution provides capture solutions for all major video use cases, whether delivering highly scalable live webcasts from the studio, providing automated rich media webcasting from the meeting or classroom, adding a streaming extension to videoconferences or enabling user-generated content from the desktop.

    According to data from market research firm Wainhouse Research, this acquisition immediately expands Polycom’s total available market by $500 million and, for this video management segment, this market is projected to generate a compounded annual growth rate of 32% through 2014 to $1.2 billion. As a strategic partner with Microsoft, Accordent strengthens and further differentiates Polycom’s deep native integration with Microsoft Lync and Sharepoint.

    "Polycom is committed to delivering an innovative, flexible and world-class video communications solution to customers over the entire content lifecycle – from real-time to capture, to management, to delivery," said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Polycom Chief Development Officer.

    "We believe Accordent has the most elegant video content management solution on the market and by leveraging customer, channel, partner and product synergies with Polycom, this transaction positions Polycom at the forefront of end-to-end video and content management. We welcome Accordent’s customers and employees to the Polycom team," he added.

    "From our first meeting with Polycom, we shared a common vision about the future of unified collaboration and the paradigm shift in the way people communicate and work," said Mike Newman, previous Accordent Chief Executive Officer. "By integrating Accordent’s video content management solutions with Polycom’s unparalleled end-to-end video solution, we believe we can make this vision a reality as we harness the natural synergies between our two companies."

    Accordent grew to $9 million in revenues in 2010 and has over 1,200 customers in the enterprise and public sector, and through select service providers. The staff of 50 employees will remain in Southern California and will report into Polycom’s UC research and development organization. Accordent’s software-centric solution will become an integral element of the Polycom UC Intelligent Core and will be reported with Polycom’s Network Infrastructure revenues.