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Tag: market-data

  • 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

  • VoIP Penetration Forecast to Reach 79% of US Businesses by 2013

    VoIP penetration among US businesses will increase rapidly over the next few years, reaching 79% by 2013, compared to 42% at the end of 2009, reports In-Stat. This penetration reflects companies having a VoIP solution deployed in at least one location.

    “VoIP adopters have a good understanding of the cost savings associated with VoIP, and have oriented their limited budgets to optimizing efficiency and savings by replacing legacy TDM voice solutions,” says David Lemelin, In-Stat analyst.

    “With businesses opening up fewer new locations than we have seen in recent years, much of this current investment is occurring at headquarters locations where efficiencies and savings can be maximized.”

    The research shows that hosted IP Centrex has now surpassed Broadband IP Telephony as the leading revenue-generating, carrier-based business VoIP solution.

    33% of businesses that have already deployed VoIP solutions report that recent economic conditions have caused them to slow additional deployment plans, compared to 30% reporting no change in plans.

    According to the report, broadband IP Telephony revenues continue to grow and will more than double by 2013, compared to 2008. This growth will be fueled by single-user applications among increasingly distributed and mobile workforces.

    In-Stat states that growth in the business IP market has tremendous potential to disrupt the traditional telephone industry on multiple levels.

    “Service providers, equipment manufacturers and systems integrators are increasingly offering different types of business VoIP solutions. IT managers and C-level executives recognize the cost savings and flexibility that VoIP solutions can bring to their businesses, but issues remain before comprehensive adoption takes place, such as security, integration and end-user transparency,” says the research group.

    Analysts also say business adoption of IP communications will also be influenced by how companies integrate other communications functionalities, such as wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi and WiMAX, IM, and video applications.

    Related articles
    VoIP Investment Remains Strong, IP Line Penetration Rose to 40% in Q3
    Report: Worldwide VoIP Market Grew to $20.7 Billion; Strong Demand Continues

  • 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?

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • Skype’s On-Net International Traffic Growing Fast

    New data from TeleGeography show that the growth of international telephone traffic has slowed, while Skype’s growth has accelerated.

    Over the past 25 years, international call volume from telephones has grown at a compounded annual rate of 15 percent. In the past two years, however, international telephone traffic annual growth has slowed to only 8 percent, growing from 376 billion minutes in 2008 to an estimated 406 billion minutes in 2009, according to recent TeleGeography research.

    The deep recession has had a marked impact on many routes. "Demand for international voice has been remarkably robust, but it’s clearly not recession-proof," said TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert.

    “While international telephone traffic growth has slowed, Skype’s traffic has soared,” he added.

    Skype’s on-net international traffic (between two Skype users) grew 51 percent in 2008, and is projected to grow 63 percent in 2009, to 54 billion minutes. That means that about 13 percent of international calls are made on Skype.

    "The volume of traffic routed via Skype is tremendous. Skype is now the largest provider of cross border communications in the world, by far," said Beckert.

    He claims that the proliferation of alternatives to telephone calls—including Skype for mobile devices, and Google’s gradual entry into the voice market—will present ever greater challenges to international carriers.

  • HDTV.Biz-News.com Wins the PostRank Award “Biggest Mover & Shaker 2009”

    PostRank has announced its Top Blogs for 2009. Catalogued topics where awarded in three categories: Most Engagement, Most Influential, and Biggest Mover & Shaker.

    HDTV.Biz-News.com is a winner in the 2009 Category for “Mover & Shakers” and has ranked second in the “Most Engagement” Category for HDTV.

    We are honoured to receive such a PostRank award that evaluates the best blogs on the web. This award would not be possible without our unconditional followers who use HDTV.Biz-News.com as a news reference for the sector.

    The PostRank philosophy is best described as follows “it is a scoring system developed by AideRSS to rank any kind of online content, such as RSS feed items, blog posts, articles, or news stories. PostRank is based on social engagement, which refers to how interesting or relevant people have found an item or category to be. Examples of engagement include writing a blog post in response to someone else, bookmarking an article, leaving a comment on a blog, or clicking a link to read a news item.”

    This is a true reader’s choice award and we owe it to you! Thank you!

    We will keep bringing great news and hope for yet another successful year in 2010.

  • Tight Competition for Biz-News.com Product of the Year Awards

    Contenders for the Biz-News.com Product of the Year Award are on a tight struggle to obtain the leading amount of votes for the 2009 Awards.

    The awards are people’s choice; users are being called upon to express their consumer experiences during 2009.

    What Storage service worked for you best? Which service would you recommend to your friends and colleagues?

    Let us know and award them a vote by filling this form.

    Currently top contenders stand as follows:

    • Storage Center by Compellent
    • Drobo by Data Robotics
    • Pivot3 Serverless Computing by Pivot3
    • 3X Remote Backup Appliance by 3X Systems
    • NexetaStor by Nexeta
    • StarWind Enterprise by StarWind Software

    You can vote for them or nominate your personal favourite.

    If you have more than one nomination for "Best Product" you can make multiple submissions – but you can only vote once for any product.

    Voting closes on the 15th of February!

    May the best be rewarded.

  • Tight Competition for Biz-News.com Product of the Year Awards

    Contenders for the Biz-News.com Product of the Year Award are on a tight struggle to obtain the leading amount of votes for the 2009 Awards.

    The awards are people’s choice; users are being called upon to express their consumer experiences during 2009.

    What HDTV device or complement worked for you best? Which would you recommend to your friends and colleagues?

    Let us know and award them a vote by filling this form.

    Currently the top contender is:

    • HD-PVR by Hauppauge

    You can vote for it or nominate your personal favourite.

    If you have more than one nomination for "Best Product" you can make multiple submissions – but you can only vote once for any product.

    Voting closes on the 15th of February!

    May the best be rewarded.