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Tag: market-data

  • Dell's Smartphone Preparations Gain Pace


    Dell’s plans for entering the smartphone market have gained some more meat.

    The world’s second largest PC brand is working with two companies to develop software and hardware for new mobile devices.

    Accel’s Jim Breyer join Dell’s board

    Chi Mei Communications – an unlisted unit of Taiwan’s Hon Hai – is involved with the hardware, while China-based Red Office is engineering the operating system, according to Reuters.

    The outcome is expected to be the launch of multiple smartphones in the Chinese market before the end of the year.

    If all goes well, the US and Europe would then get the PC maker’s devices.

    Dell’s move into the smartphone market – and China, where China Mobile is seen as the favored operator – could be part of the reason why it has appointed Jim Breyer, of Venture firm Accel Partners, to its board.

    Already on ten boards, including Facebook, Etsy, Wal-Mart and Marvel, his company launched a USD $250 million fund in China in 2005.

    Breyer’s experience of finding the right partners and market could be important to Dell as it prepares new devices.

  • Optimism Seems High in the Storage Efficiency World

    Optimism remains high in storage efficiency world despite recession and talks of possibly impending depression. The focus seems to be on doing more with less and optimizing on existing capacities.

    Nick Broadbent, UK Managing Director of DataCore Software says: 
“Virtualisation and hence consolidation has transformed all that with IT managers able to meet the business data growth needs by re-utilising external storage solutions already in their network.”

    Joyce Putscher, In-Stat analyst feels that there is a significant shift towards higher capacity models. He says, "While the overall market is maturing, growth is shifting towards higher capacity models… The 1.5TB+ segment is forecasted to see the highest growth, exceeding 100 per cent CAGR."

    Data deduplication, 6 GB’s SAS, FCoe, Virtualization, automation, optimization and cost savings seems to be the mantra that is doing the rounds.
    Deduplication is seen as a means of generating a quick return on investment and several vendors are pushing the technology this week.
    Storage capacity optimization appliances for primary and backup storage also have generated a lot of interest.
    Data reduction solutions from Hifn, backup acceleration options for virtual tape libraries, data reduction technology for cloud form Nirvanix and Ocarina are significant in this scenario. Virtualization and automation gained favor and disaster recovery advisor from Symantec was unveiled. NetApp has announced new storage and data management features for VMWare for virtual desktop environments. SAS attracted attention for its high performance, low cost solution, while ATTO announced FastStream SC 8200 controller and 3PAR unveiled its InSery F-Class Storage Servers. Data Robotics announced its DroboPro.

    In this backdrop there the venture funding announcement from Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Dell ventures and Focus Ventures, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Valhalla Partners and HarborVest Partners, further signals that the interest in the Storage sector has not died down. Fusion_IO received a whopping $47.5 million and Sepaton netted $15.5 million.

    All this keeps optimism high and market watchers agree that while the Storage industry seems to be slowing down due to the recession the slow down is minimal and not very alarming. It is true that external disk storage system numbers are being affected by market conditions, but storage efficiency technologies are picking up. Sean Haffey, storage product manager at FSC, says that there is no doubt that the external disk market is slowing. “When things were booming 18 months ago it was a question of how fast you could go to market,” he said. “Now it is a case of how efficiently you can run.

  • Internet Calling Companies Struggling With European and US Carriers

    As soon as Skype released its iPhone application  problems emerged with using it with some carriers. both in Europe and the US.

    In a USA Today article last week, a senior AT&T official, Jim Cicconi, suggested that the carrier, in cooperation with Apple, expects device vendors to block consumers’ access to Skype’s VoIP application that competes with AT&T’s own voice service. "Skype is a competitor, just like Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile,” said Cicconi.

    According to Free Press, AT&T is not the only carrier limiting consumers’ wireless Internet access – T-Mobile is reportedly restricting the availability of tethering within Google’s Android Marketplace. And most major wireless companies have terms of service that prohibit the use of certain applications and services.

    That was the reason that, in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, Free Press called on the agency to confirm that wireless networks must adhere to the Internet Policy Statement, which protects consumers’ right to access any online content and services on any device of their choosing.

    "The Internet in your pocket should be just as free and open as the Internet in your home,” said Chris Riley, policy counsel of Free Press.

    Free Press is asking acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps to inform AT&T and other US wireless operators that they cannot adopt discriminating terms of service prohibiting the use of certain applications.

    At the same time agencies informed that German carrier T-Mobile, an exclusive carrier of the iPhone in Germany, will not allow customers to use the application, and is blocking it both physically and contractually.

    “It is clearly stated in our customer contracts that such services may not be used,” T-Mobile spokesperson Alexander von Schmettow told The Local, a German online site. “There are two reasons for this – because the high level of traffic would hinder our network performance, and because if the Skype programme didn’t work properly, customers would make us responsible for it.”

    Skype quickly responded on that: “They pretend that their action has to do with technical concerns: this is baseless. Skype works perfectly well on iPhone, as hundreds of thousands of people globally can already readily attest. There is no technical justification for this arbitrary blocking of Skype, and it represents a barrier to online business put in place by a private company just because they can, because they control access to the Internet,” said Robert Miller, Skype’s General Counsel

    “Yet, no one can do anything about it: German or EU regulation does not forbid such blatantly unfair practices. But we are trying to change things, together with other Internet companies."

  • WD Enters Solid-State Drive Market With Acquisition Of SiliconSystems


    Western Digital has completed a USD $65 million cash acquisition of leading solid-state drives supplier, SiliconSystems.

    SiliconSystems’ product portfolio includes solid-state drives with SATA, EIDE, PC Card, USB and CF interfaces in 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch, CF and other form factors.

    Since its inception in 2002, SiliconSystems has sold millions of SiliconDrive products to the network-communications, industrial, embedded-computing, medical, military and aerospace markets.

    These markets accounted for approximately one third of worldwide solid-state drive revenues in 2008.

    John Coyne, president and CEO of WD, said its worldwide infrastructure and technical and financial resources will enable further growth in SiliconSystems’ existing markets and customer relationships.

    He said SiliconSystems’ intellectual property and technical expertise will provide additional building blocks for future products to address emerging opportunities in WD’s existing markets.

    "The combination will be modestly accretive to revenue and margins as a result of SiliconSystems’ existing position as a trusted supplier to the well-established USD $400 million market for embedded solid-state drives," he said.

    "SiliconSystems’ intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD’s solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements."

    Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD’s existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise Storage business units.

  • Storage Management Priorities: the Need of the Hour


    Most industries acknowledge that increasing IT Storage needs is a fact of life even in the face of economic downturn.

    Newer and more efficient ways of optimizing existing storage facilities are being explored as budgets are tight and capital outlay has been squeezed, writes Samantha Sai for storage.biz-news.

    Hu Yoshida, VP and CTO of Hitachi Data Systems, says: "In this economy, it will be important for IT professionals to stick to the fundamentals and focus on ROA and the ability to break even quickly."

    Major Storage investment priorities for IT Professionals in 2009 have been identified and listed unequivocally.

    Virtualized Storage services already in place require optimization. The direction of thinking seems to be virtualization of external storage and combining it with lower cost tiers of storage and thin provisioning.

    The stress is on curtailing data growth, while maximizing current investments, to get quick returns.

    The drive is to exploit the 70-80 per cent capacity that remains largely unused in existing storage.

    Unstructured data growth remains a persistent problem.

    Data storage optimization would require dealing with unstructured data on a war footing.

    The imperative is to archive unstructured data and map resources back to the bottom line of information needs.

    Tiered and priority ordering of information is identified as an essential activity that will help identify data that can be moved and archived without affecting critical data access.

    Consequently, the archiving solutions features being sought include simple process management, reduction in TCO and mitigation of risk.

    Active archiving solutions that are being put in place, have been recognized as integral to organization management initiatives and two tier storage systems are being moved to archival tier.

    Closely associated with the above processes is the data de-duplication process. Market conditions rule that duplicate data comes at a cost and de-duplication will save costs and improve productivity.

    Additionally, data compression and reduction in number of data backups are seen as methods to save costs.

    It is expected that as the year 2009 advances more and more companies will turn their attention from optimization and archiving needs towards Risk Mitigation and savings that can be had form power and cooling costs.

    Green, clean data centers will be seen as a real and urgent requirement.

    The need to stay ahead of energy issues will be dictated by upcoming regulations of EMEA and increasing purchasing requirements in the USA.

  • Android Market Reaches 40 Million Downloads


    T-Mobile G1 customers have downloaded on average more than 40 applications from Android Market.

    With one million G1s sold that adds up to 40 million downloads in total since the first Android handset was launched six months ago.

    The stats, which come from an interview T-Mobile gave to mocoNews, also show that among T-Mobile customers who’ve purchased a G1 around half traded up from a basic handset.

    Other details include:

    • Approximately 80 per cent of T-Mobile G1 users browse the web on a daily basis
    • The majority of T-Mobile G1 owners use Facebook and Youtube at least once a day and access Wi-Fi on a daily basis
    • Four out of five G1 customers download applications at least once a week

    While the figures pall when compared to the iPhones 500 million plus downloads, but it’s early days for the G1.

  • HD-Capable Device Shipments To Triple by 2012


    As HD becomes the global video standard shipments of high-definition set-top boxes (STBs), camcorders, DVD players and video-game consoles are expected to triple from 2008 to 2012, according to iSuppli.

    Shipments of HD-capable equipment in these categories will rise to 202 million units by 2012, up from 68.9 million in 2008.

    The researchers forecast that by 2012, 52.9 per cent of STBs, camcorders, DVD players and game consoles shipped will be HD-capable, up from 21.6 per cent in 2008.

    Randy Lawson, senior analyst for DTV and display electronics at iSuppli, said that for the last 20 years, HD video has been the holy grail for consumer electronics OEMs, as well as for avid home theater fans around the world.

    "The high-tech industry’s efforts to provide HD service to every home now are finally coming to fruition," he said.

    "This has resulted in an explosion of shipments of consumer-electronics devices that support HD video, from new Blu-ray DVD players to ultra-thin LCD HDTVs, and even some portable media players."

    This is reflected in a surge in the availability of HD content.

    In some mature television markets this has reached the stage where hundreds of high-definition channels now are being offered by the entire spectrum of television service providers – from cable, to satellite, to terrestrial and to even to telecom – due to the rollout of Internet protocol television (IPTV) services.

    iSuppli points to the rapidly growing list of HD content suppliers, along with the fast-rising adoption rates seen for HDTVs and STBs, as a clear indication that HD video transmission and delivery are becoming major motivators for consumer adoption of newer technology television displays and playback/recording equipment.

    Added to this is the fact that the broadcast TV market is rapidly shifting to all-digital television formats, further raising the incentive for the inclusion of HD support in consumer-electronics devices.

  • 3D Heading For Home Screens – Likely To Be Games First


    More than 10 per cent of TVs sold worldwide could have 3D capability by 2011, rising to 16 per cent or 2.8bn sets by 2015.

    That’s the prediction of research by Screen Digest, which suggests that technological advances mean today’s 3D cinema viewing experience will soon be possible at home.

    The researchers’ forecasts are, however, dependent on a unifying standard emerging that works across all technologies.

    If that fails to materialise, Display Search downgrades its estimates to 3D-capable sets accounting for just three per cent of sales by 2015 – or 500m units.

    At present the most reliable technology will require consumers to invest in a new TV and wear special 3D glasses.

    But Screen Digest believes that autostereoscopic technology will eventually become most popular as it has one major advantage: no glasses.

    Stressing that the 3D market is in its infancy and that mass uptake is a long way off, the report says that 3D requires twice the broadcast bandwidth of today’s two-dimensional viewing experience.

    For this reason, Screen Digest expects Blu-ray Disc to provide the main method of distribution, as its hi-def content capacity bypasses the bandwidth issue altogether.

    Since Screen 3D films attract a premium of up to 50 per cent on cinema tickets, the researchers note that Hollywood Studios have a vested interest in getting 3D entertainment into homes.

    Marie Bloomfield, analyst at Screen Digest, said since no-one wants a costly replay of the hi-def disc format war, industry associations are already working together to establish a viable roadmap to make that happen.

    She said that due to higher bandwidth and incremental production costs, when it does come to the small screen, 3D TV programming will be the reserve of paying customers only.

    "What 3D offers the Studios and pay TV operators is an opportunity to charge a premium for content – perhaps even more so than high definition," she said.

    "But as it is emerging in the middle of a recession, the home 3D market is in a Catch 22 situation.

    "Consumers will not be persuaded to invest in new equipment to experience 3D until there is enough content; and content production will not ramp up until there is a significant audience.

    "3D in the home will therefore be a slow burn, remaining a niche business for the foreseeable future."

    3D movie production has increased rapidly.

    In 2008, there were seven films; in 2009 there will be 17 and a further 28 are due to be released in 2010.

    Compared with live action, animated films are much easier to adapt to 3D and Disney and DreamWorks Animation have been quick to grasp the opportunity.

    Together they account for more than half of the 3D film release slate.

    It is more challenging to produce 3D TV programming on broadcasting budgets, yet nonetheless several broadcasters have launched trials around sporting events.

    In conclusion, Screen Digest predicts that it may be 3D games and not movies or TV that arrives in the home first.

    Gaming is an early adopter market, consoles and software could be upgraded relatively painlessly and gamers are more willing to adopt peripherals such as glasses, all of which make it an ideal home entry point for 3D technology.

  • iPhone: Not A Top 20 Handset For Browsing And Buying On The Mobile Web


    The iPhone sits outside the top 20 when it comes to the most popular phones for browsing and buying content on the mobile web worldwide.

    Nokia’s 3110c is the top handset, followed by the Samsung M800 and then Nokia’s 6300, according to statistics released today by Bango. The iPhone appears as 24th on the list.

    The data represents the activities of major brands and businesses as their consumers browse to mobile websites and buy mobile content and services.

    Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango, said the stats will be of interest to businesses that monetize their mobile content and services across a wide demographic as spending by iPhone users is restricted to the Apple App Store.

    Bango detected a total of 1,811 different types of handsets accessing the mobile Internet in just one month (February).

    The Bango Top 20 Handset chart shows that smartphones account for 30 per cent of handsets in the Top 20.

    "The iPhone has done a lot to encourage people to browse the internet on their phones," said Anderson.

    "But to get the most out of their mobile marketing spend, companies who are riding the iPhone wave, attracted by its excellent features and user demographics, need to optimize their mobile websites for all phones.

    "Without this, they will be missing out on the mass market."

    Anderson said marketers need to choose their best channel to market and consider sales projections from the leading manufacturers.

    Based on the number of handsets projected to be sold by the end of 2009, outside of Japan and Korea, he said Nokia is the leader with sales of the S60 likely to reach 300m, followed by Windows Mobile and iPhone at 40m, RIM at around 25m and Google around 5m.

    "What is clear is that mobile marketers need to better understand their users," he said.

  • ADVERTORIAL: Record-breaking Attendance Expected At East Africa Com


    More than 600 telco leaders are due to attend East Africa’s premier learning and networking event which gets underway on Wednesday.

    East Africa Com is a two-day, multi-streamed conference with a 40+ stand networking exhibition.

    The conference is the only event to represent the East African region and evolved from the highly successful GSM>3G World Series.

    Any biz-news subscribers taking the opportunity to reserve last-minute tickets will receive a 25 per cent discount (details below).

    Among the speaker panel of 37 are 19 operator CxOs and ministers, including:

    • Raed Haddidin, Commercial Director, East Africa Region, Zain Group
    • Michael Joseph, CEO, Safaricom, Kenya Peter Reinartz, Deputy-CEO,
    • Orange Telkom Kenya Tushar Maheshwari, CCO, Warid Telecom Uganda Ali
    • Bin Jarsh, CEO, Canar Telecom Sudan Noel Herrity, Director General,
    • Zantel, Tanzania Nkateko Nyoka, Chief Officer: Regulatory and
    • Government Relations, Vodacom Group Shiletsi Makhofane, Acting Chief
    • Executive Officer, Africa Online Holdings Deng Malok, Managing
    • Director, Bilpam Telecommunications Co. Ltd, Sudan Charles J.K
    • Njoroge, Director-General, Communications Commission of Kenya Joe
    • Kimani, CEO, Flashcom, Kenya

    Part of the Com World Series, the conference reflects the changing mobile communications market, where previously well defined boundaries between wireless and fixed technologies and providers are becoming increasingly blurred.

    The organisers, Informa Telecoms & Media, say that broadening the remit allowed attendees to benefit from a more all-encompassing prospective whilst still delivering focused, actionable and incisive intelligence.

    "Moreover, our technology agnostic stance embraces the global nature of the changes the market is experiencing but is careful to apply it specifically to our markets to allow a 360 degree view of the future landscape within the distinct territories in which we operate," according to the organisers.

    Among the innovations this year are:

    • New Keynote sessions, by popular demand, extra plenary speakers on the
    • morning and closing afternoon – your chance to hear directly from even more C-
    • level speakers
    • More interactive sessions: more engaging panels, Q+A and industry debate to
    • ensure the most productive use of your time
    • New topics: convergence, broadband strategies, value-added services backed
    • by our in-depth analysis
    • More of the region’s telecommunications ecosystem represented; more ISPs,
    • more fixed and wireless operators, more CxOs, all under one roof for you to
    • meet and do business with

    To take advantage of the biz-news subscriber discount, email [email protected] and quote "Biz News" for your 25 per cent discount off the ticket price.

    Conference details:
    East Africa Com
    1 – 2 April 2009
    Nairobi, Kenya
    www.comworldseries.com/eafrica

    View the very latest agenda

    Join our group on Linked-In

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    Other dates for your diary:
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    West & Central Africa Com 17-18 June 2009 – Abuja, Nigeria

    North Africa Com 27-28 October 2009 – Cairo, Egypt

    Africa Com – 18-19 November 2009 – Cape Town, South Africa

    View all ComWorldSeries 2008 events