By Dmitry Shapiro
Many tout video as the next killer app for the mobile device. But what is involved in bringing video to the phone?
It turns out there are multiple steps. First the video must be encoded (if source is analog) or trans-coded (if source is digital) into the proper format for the target mobile device.
If the video is to be viewed on multiple devices, then a separate device-specific file is required for each. At this point, metadata, which describes the video, its title, location for ads, etc, is added to the trans-coded file.
Next, the video is encoded in multiple bit rates in order to satisfy the variability of bandwidth available to the user at his location. Typically high, medium, and low bit rates are used, but more flexibility here gives a better viewing experience on the other end.
Finally, these multiple files must be stored where they can be accessed by the Content Delivery Network (CDN). CDNs have many, many servers in geographic locations close to the users to allow them scale delivery of the video content to 1000s of users simultaneously.
So how does all this look from user perspective? Well, when a user clicks a URL on his mobile device, the request is sent to the CDN. The CDN notes the user’s device and bandwidth, then finds the video in the appropriate format and bit rate on the storage server, then sends it the requesting device. And, voila: cats are playing the piano on your phone!
In summary, if video is indeed YOUR killer app, make sure you have all the pieces in place to deliver it to your target audience.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
From Analog to 4G -April 21
By Kishore Ballal
A few of us remember the first analog phone with a really long antenna and weighing as much as a brick. Then came the digital revolution, with much more modern and pretty cool phones. I still remember the first ATT plan; 19.99$ for 40 minutes of usage within the network! And that was 12 years ago.
Texting being common in other parts of the world was not available in the US back then. We saw the mega talking plans of 300 minutes usage + weekends free, followed by friends and family free. The revolution kicked off the next level when operators in the US upgraded to a 2.5G network (EDGE, or 3G voice cards). The young generation of youth/college kids replaced the landlines with cell phones.
Then the 3G upgrade happened in 2006 in the US and the now familiar “all you can eat/call” mobile plans came into existence. Thus the cellphone penetration went through the roof.
In fact, operators used to charge per MegaBit (MB) and most consumers did not know what it was, so users did not value content. No industry can survive with shrinking revenues. But the 2 biggest game changers were the iPod/iTunes and the Amazon Kindle. Now, consumers were charged not for “data” but for content: buying songs, buying books, downloading movies, playing games, etc.
The bandwidth constraint is now pushing operators into the next level of technology; 4G where LTE or WIMAX are the big standards. The idea is the ability to pay for content where the operator is no longer a pipe, but gets a share of the content revenue (movies, books, games, songs, etc).
If you think 4G is not really needed, think about it this way; every major technology step takes about 6 years: Analog in early 90s, 2G digital in 1999/2000, 3G in 2006, full 4G adoption/acceleration in 2012. Operators are already building the bandwidth beginning in 2010. Widgets and cloud services, video, mobile TV and music streaming will push the bandwidth to it´s limits.
So there will be 4G, it will be needed and we will enjoy it! The future is truly mobile and then content is finally the king.
A few of us remember the first analog phone with a really long antenna and weighing as much as a brick. Then came the digital revolution, with much more modern and pretty cool phones. I still remember the first ATT plan; 19.99$ for 40 minutes of usage within the network! And that was 12 years ago.
Texting being common in other parts of the world was not available in the US back then. We saw the mega talking plans of 300 minutes usage + weekends free, followed by friends and family free. The revolution kicked off the next level when operators in the US upgraded to a 2.5G network (EDGE, or 3G voice cards). The young generation of youth/college kids replaced the landlines with cell phones.
Then the 3G upgrade happened in 2006 in the US and the now familiar “all you can eat/call” mobile plans came into existence. Thus the cellphone penetration went through the roof.
In fact, operators used to charge per MegaBit (MB) and most consumers did not know what it was, so users did not value content. No industry can survive with shrinking revenues. But the 2 biggest game changers were the iPod/iTunes and the Amazon Kindle. Now, consumers were charged not for “data” but for content: buying songs, buying books, downloading movies, playing games, etc.
The bandwidth constraint is now pushing operators into the next level of technology; 4G where LTE or WIMAX are the big standards. The idea is the ability to pay for content where the operator is no longer a pipe, but gets a share of the content revenue (movies, books, games, songs, etc).
If you think 4G is not really needed, think about it this way; every major technology step takes about 6 years: Analog in early 90s, 2G digital in 1999/2000, 3G in 2006, full 4G adoption/acceleration in 2012. Operators are already building the bandwidth beginning in 2010. Widgets and cloud services, video, mobile TV and music streaming will push the bandwidth to it´s limits.
So there will be 4G, it will be needed and we will enjoy it! The future is truly mobile and then content is finally the king.
Monday, April 19, 2010
100 years from now -April 19th
By Magnus Ingelsten
What do we imagine 100 years from now? Did HG Wells, in his book "When the Sleeper walks" in 1899 imagine the I-pad for Video viewing when he writes and describes a modern media player as a “flat square with a smaller picture that was very vividly colored”? Not only where there people on the screen moving, but they were conversing with clear small voices as he continued to describe it.
And did Mark Twain envision the internet already in 1898 when writing about the "The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone that was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues." He described a global communications network called the telelectroscope that allowed us to see and hear through. Spot on. ..almost.
So what do we for see 100 years from now or is everything already invented? Hardly, but surely everything becomes much more advanced and involves scientific complexity and in many cases micro chips, software ad wireless technologies and thus very far far from inventions such as the wheel or the potato peeler!
Could we in 100 years have the mobile artificial you? Perhaps we can by choice produce avatars that are incarnations of ourselves that travel through room and space electronically and virtual and perform our duties and live our lives. No more hours spend on airplanes. All good for environment. We can experience and control business meetings, holidays and new encounters by means of the chip we have in our brain and only our status in society can determine how many avatars we have in life, and thus our focus is to live for long, distanced from the real raging world outside the control tube we live in with artificial air.
Oh my god, hope not.. Instead hope we and our children can still physically sit on an exotic beach and make a call to friends. And experience through a multimedia device what happens at home, read any book, listen to any music share anything with anybody of our choice, buy and sell and by doing so experience great freedom and efficiency. The good thing is, seems we are there already.
What do we imagine 100 years from now? Did HG Wells, in his book "When the Sleeper walks" in 1899 imagine the I-pad for Video viewing when he writes and describes a modern media player as a “flat square with a smaller picture that was very vividly colored”? Not only where there people on the screen moving, but they were conversing with clear small voices as he continued to describe it.
And did Mark Twain envision the internet already in 1898 when writing about the "The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone that was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues." He described a global communications network called the telelectroscope that allowed us to see and hear through. Spot on. ..almost.
So what do we for see 100 years from now or is everything already invented? Hardly, but surely everything becomes much more advanced and involves scientific complexity and in many cases micro chips, software ad wireless technologies and thus very far far from inventions such as the wheel or the potato peeler!
Could we in 100 years have the mobile artificial you? Perhaps we can by choice produce avatars that are incarnations of ourselves that travel through room and space electronically and virtual and perform our duties and live our lives. No more hours spend on airplanes. All good for environment. We can experience and control business meetings, holidays and new encounters by means of the chip we have in our brain and only our status in society can determine how many avatars we have in life, and thus our focus is to live for long, distanced from the real raging world outside the control tube we live in with artificial air.
Oh my god, hope not.. Instead hope we and our children can still physically sit on an exotic beach and make a call to friends. And experience through a multimedia device what happens at home, read any book, listen to any music share anything with anybody of our choice, buy and sell and by doing so experience great freedom and efficiency. The good thing is, seems we are there already.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
When an apple is better than an orange -April 8th
By Magnus Ingelsten
7 years ago the mobile world was completely different. It was all about telephony, SMS, MMS, PIM and business usage. You uploaded ripped MP3 music files to your mobile and it competed with MP3 players. The multinational music corporations were standing appalled to see their music got copied and stolen from various web servers.
Then Apple having introduced their I-Pods, which totally outdid the MP3 player market, launched i-Tunes. In one week (yes 1 week) Steve Jobs could simply confirm that they had become the world’s leading music distributor on the web with one million downloads (April 2003).
In February Apple gave away a grand price of 10.000 USD to the customer that got their web counter doing 11 digits (10 billion downloads). Now is´t that a success? The real boost for downloads came with the release of the I-Pod Touch and the I-Phone.
During this time the share price increased from 7 to 200 USD (2003-2010). Over the last year alone the share price has risen with 120%.
Now the I-Pad is launched, and it will be a success. First day 300.000 units sold, over one million apps were purchased, over 250,000 books downloaded. (The i-Phone sold 270.00 units on it´s introduction day three years ago). And it is a movie player and you can get movies from i-Tunes from 1.99 USD. And it’s a game player and it is a e-reader, and it can become a .... ?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Understanding Flash and the latest innovations - March 19th
By Andrew Frost
Understanding the Latest Innovations In Flash – What and Where
Recently Adobe announced a number of new product releases for mobile devices and consumer electronics devices. This has lead to some confusion amongst developers as to which platform is the right one to target for them. In this blog I attempt to give a brief overview of the 4 key platforms for leveraging Flash outside the traditional desktop PC domain
Flash 10.1
Perhaps the most eagerly awaited release in the mobile industry Flash 10.1 at long last brings the benefits of desktop flash content to the mobile work. Flash 10.1 is designed for delivering rich browsing experiences on mid to high end smart devices. Designed as browser plug-in only (i.e it must run within a web browser) it enables mobile consumers to have access to exactly the same flash based content as any desktop user. In addition Flash 10.1 also comes with support for OpenGLES 2.0 which means that it can take full advantage of the latest developments in hardware acceleration and graphics performance on the latest generation of mobile chipsets. For example this means that H.264 video content can now be decoded in hardware delivering both improved rendering performance and critically reducing power consumption. Other key features that developers will be keen to exploit include Accelerometer input, which could for example be used to enhance flash based mobile games, screen orientation handling, support for multi-touch and gestures, new commands for pause/resume to conserve battery when not the player is in use and globalization support for device-specific location information.
Flash Lite 4.0
Flash Lite 4.0 is a natural evolution of Adobe’s platform for more limited mobile devices such as mobile phones designed for the mass market or for vertical market devices that also want to leverage Flash for other application or UI development. Thus it can be used as both a browser plug-in and an application / device UI framework. Flash Lite 4.0 also brings support for Flash 10 based content but is not able to support the full rage of content as is delivered with Flash 10.1. In reality between 80-85% of web content can be supported with Flash Lite 4.0. Deltas from Flash 10.1 include the lack of support for some AIR APIs, limitations due to memory/processor constraints, and no OpenGL ES support, through OpenVG 1.1 is supported, as well as a more limited range of 3D rendering options. However Flash Lite 4 does include a number of key upgrades form the previous version (3.1) including a full ActionScript 3 implementation, and Flash Video with dynamic streaming.
Stagecraft
Stagecraft is Adobe’s platform for the digital home and is today becoming an increasingly popular platform for the development of next generation Set Top Boxes. The current release of Stagecraft 1.2 is based on the on Flash Lite 3.1 platform but future releases of Stagecraft are likely to include the full Flash 10.1 player. Amongst the key features of Stagecraft are a framework for accelerating graphics operations and video decoding and optimisations for 2D rendering accelerations (for example through DirectFB) . Typically many chipset vendors will have implemented specific Stagecraft optimisations for their specific reference platforms. Stagecraft is currently designed to be standalone application and is not integrated into a browser or the existing DVB / STB middleware.
AIR
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is currently designed for desktop environments and Mobile Internet Devices. AIR enables rich internet apps to run natively outside the browser using the Flash runtime engine. Adobe recently demonstrated a beta of the AIR 2.0 platform running on Android handsets at MWC2010. As chipsets become ever more powerful then it is likely that we will see AIR become more widely used in the mobile world to provide a greater set of capabilities for building Flash in to traditional mobile applications outside the browser as well as providing a platform for running Flash based content when disconnected from the network.
Hopefully this blog has provided a clear overview of the different flash options and the target usages. The above can be simply summarized as:
Flash 10.1 - Delvers a rich browsing experience for Smartdevices
Flash Lite 4.0 - Bring the benefits of Flash, for browsing or application development, to lower powered mobile devices
Stagecraft - Flash for the Digital Home – primarily the STB market.
AIR - Support for Flash based applications outside the browser.
If you would like to discuss Flash for mobile in more detail please send an email to solutions@teleca.com
Understanding the Latest Innovations In Flash – What and Where
Recently Adobe announced a number of new product releases for mobile devices and consumer electronics devices. This has lead to some confusion amongst developers as to which platform is the right one to target for them. In this blog I attempt to give a brief overview of the 4 key platforms for leveraging Flash outside the traditional desktop PC domain
Flash 10.1
Perhaps the most eagerly awaited release in the mobile industry Flash 10.1 at long last brings the benefits of desktop flash content to the mobile work. Flash 10.1 is designed for delivering rich browsing experiences on mid to high end smart devices. Designed as browser plug-in only (i.e it must run within a web browser) it enables mobile consumers to have access to exactly the same flash based content as any desktop user. In addition Flash 10.1 also comes with support for OpenGLES 2.0 which means that it can take full advantage of the latest developments in hardware acceleration and graphics performance on the latest generation of mobile chipsets. For example this means that H.264 video content can now be decoded in hardware delivering both improved rendering performance and critically reducing power consumption. Other key features that developers will be keen to exploit include Accelerometer input, which could for example be used to enhance flash based mobile games, screen orientation handling, support for multi-touch and gestures, new commands for pause/resume to conserve battery when not the player is in use and globalization support for device-specific location information.
Flash Lite 4.0
Flash Lite 4.0 is a natural evolution of Adobe’s platform for more limited mobile devices such as mobile phones designed for the mass market or for vertical market devices that also want to leverage Flash for other application or UI development. Thus it can be used as both a browser plug-in and an application / device UI framework. Flash Lite 4.0 also brings support for Flash 10 based content but is not able to support the full rage of content as is delivered with Flash 10.1. In reality between 80-85% of web content can be supported with Flash Lite 4.0. Deltas from Flash 10.1 include the lack of support for some AIR APIs, limitations due to memory/processor constraints, and no OpenGL ES support, through OpenVG 1.1 is supported, as well as a more limited range of 3D rendering options. However Flash Lite 4 does include a number of key upgrades form the previous version (3.1) including a full ActionScript 3 implementation, and Flash Video with dynamic streaming.
Stagecraft
Stagecraft is Adobe’s platform for the digital home and is today becoming an increasingly popular platform for the development of next generation Set Top Boxes. The current release of Stagecraft 1.2 is based on the on Flash Lite 3.1 platform but future releases of Stagecraft are likely to include the full Flash 10.1 player. Amongst the key features of Stagecraft are a framework for accelerating graphics operations and video decoding and optimisations for 2D rendering accelerations (for example through DirectFB) . Typically many chipset vendors will have implemented specific Stagecraft optimisations for their specific reference platforms. Stagecraft is currently designed to be standalone application and is not integrated into a browser or the existing DVB / STB middleware.
AIR
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is currently designed for desktop environments and Mobile Internet Devices. AIR enables rich internet apps to run natively outside the browser using the Flash runtime engine. Adobe recently demonstrated a beta of the AIR 2.0 platform running on Android handsets at MWC2010. As chipsets become ever more powerful then it is likely that we will see AIR become more widely used in the mobile world to provide a greater set of capabilities for building Flash in to traditional mobile applications outside the browser as well as providing a platform for running Flash based content when disconnected from the network.
Hopefully this blog has provided a clear overview of the different flash options and the target usages. The above can be simply summarized as:
Flash 10.1 - Delvers a rich browsing experience for Smartdevices
Flash Lite 4.0 - Bring the benefits of Flash, for browsing or application development, to lower powered mobile devices
Stagecraft - Flash for the Digital Home – primarily the STB market.
AIR - Support for Flash based applications outside the browser.
If you would like to discuss Flash for mobile in more detail please send an email to solutions@teleca.com
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Bollywood goes mobile -February 16th
By Anette Gregow
Just back from a trip to Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of India”, where Teleca has its 2nd largest site, with many new impressions. There’s no doubt that India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. The country currently buzzes with almost 300 million mobile subscribers with over a dozen different operators spread over the country. Bangalore has the highest number of engineering colleges in India ensuring a continuous supply of fresh graduates.
These young, mobile-savvy folks have high aspirations but are underserved in everything from banking to entertainment. Getting to them via their cell phones is the best way to provide much-needed and valued services.
Why is demand for such services particularly great in India? For starters, nearly 300 million Indians now have phones - making it the No. 2 mobile market on earth - and some 8 million new subscribers sign up every month. Today the average milkman in India has a mobile phone, which was not the case ten years ago. What’s surprising is the fact that a major portion of the new mobile subscribers being added today come from the rural parts of the country.
The range of offerings is vast and includes downloads of prayers, crop prices to farmers, Bollywood movies and cricket contents. Bollywood is actually becoming a rising force in mobile. The Indian film industry produces more than 1,000 movies a year and attracts more than two billion viewers.
Combine this with India’s 300 million mobile subscriber base and the potential is self-evident!
Just back from a trip to Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of India”, where Teleca has its 2nd largest site, with many new impressions. There’s no doubt that India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. The country currently buzzes with almost 300 million mobile subscribers with over a dozen different operators spread over the country. Bangalore has the highest number of engineering colleges in India ensuring a continuous supply of fresh graduates.
These young, mobile-savvy folks have high aspirations but are underserved in everything from banking to entertainment. Getting to them via their cell phones is the best way to provide much-needed and valued services.
Why is demand for such services particularly great in India? For starters, nearly 300 million Indians now have phones - making it the No. 2 mobile market on earth - and some 8 million new subscribers sign up every month. Today the average milkman in India has a mobile phone, which was not the case ten years ago. What’s surprising is the fact that a major portion of the new mobile subscribers being added today come from the rural parts of the country.
The range of offerings is vast and includes downloads of prayers, crop prices to farmers, Bollywood movies and cricket contents. Bollywood is actually becoming a rising force in mobile. The Indian film industry produces more than 1,000 movies a year and attracts more than two billion viewers.
Combine this with India’s 300 million mobile subscriber base and the potential is self-evident!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Software platforms as a differentiator? -March 4th 2010
By Sergey Priporov
Are your strategic choices challenged by the fragmentation in new mobile device platforms?
I didn’t participate in MWC event and I was watching the event remotely from California. Many experts and systems analysts did try to indicate their observations in technology and market trends such as e.g.: http://www.mobilebusinessbriefing.com/article/top-10-mwc-stories and http://www.ccsinsight.com/media-coverage/?p=630
From their point of view the top important indicators are as follows
• Mobile operators unite on global apps platform
• Google embraces mobile
• Microsoft fights back in OS war
• Samsung makes waves with bada
• Industry backs voice over LTE approach
• Nokia and Intel merge Linux platforms
• HTC & SonyEricsson launched many new Android phones
We can find many other press releases but it’s almost all about the OS wars and infrastructure and there is small piece of information about the future of mobile devices itself in terms of End User future experiences and devices new capabilities. This fact reflects the situation in Product Development infrastructure associated with new Android, WinM7 and MeeGo platforms.
Each of the platforms is targeting for multiple vendors but differentiation is not clear and becomes the key area to be success on the market.
Differentiation at this point
I have seen that Microsoft and Motorola were talking about data aggregation conception on different SW levels of mobile device and its reflection in UI. Conception is similar even if we are talking about different platforms.
Possible variants of differentiation
The trend is that Smart phone market place grows and forces out featured phones. At the same time the segment of the featured phones still is significant. I would like to take a look on Mobile Device possible differentiation from this point of view.
In reality the platforms for Smart phone development cover functionality of “featured“phones with simple calling and some other dedicated features. It means that the platform can support device transformation from simple functionality to smart prone advanced functionality.
How can it be used for products differentiation? Many customers are not ready to use smart phones and are considering to keep something simple. I think that OEMs may consider to design phones with SW which can transform device capabilities from simple featured phone (Low Tier) to Mid-Tier and finally to High-End smart phone. I mean that SW on the phone can have functionality scope configurable on fly depends on customer subscriptions (enabling on demand/disabling). This approach can be used to move customers from one market segment (Low Tier) to another one (High-End).
The BOM of the HW part is coming to be lower and lower year by year so it’s possible to ship Low-Tier phone with the same H/W as for Smart phone for all products baselines. Such type of phone can be configured by SW tailoring only. As an example we can see Android phones from Quanta Computer “TWM T1” for Taiwan Mobile and Commtiva Technology “Commtiva T1”. TWM T1 without operator calling plan has cost of $280 and “Commtiva T1” cost is $311. Qualcomm, Infineon, MediaTek and others are going to use Infineon XMM 6181 chip set which is ~$150. So Software may be a phone transformer.
Another option to transform phone functionality on fly by user demand is to install drivers and SW enablers for new functionality and new peripherals from SD card (obtained as a new service subscription). Some technologies (as LTE) are not deployed yet so it will be possible to upgrade phone with LTE capabilities as an example in future (LTE external Modems). It’s not App store approach, it’s SW components upgrade from OEMs along with new subscriptions by demand.
Summary
Software allows OEMs to implement incremental functionality change on fly by user demand as additional subscriptions. It may be a differentiator for OEMs.
• Featured phone with simple UI and basic functionality
• Capabilities to upgrade SW to Smart Phone simple functionality
• Capabilities to enable SW to Smart Phone advanced functionality
• SW Add-ins installation from SD card under DRM protection
• SW Add-ins installation from Operator downloading site
I would say that new Software platform configuration capabilities are potential way to differentiate devices. I cooked-up the term “Incremental Functionality Change on Fly” (IFConF).
Is it something to differentiate products? Let´s hear your comments!
Are your strategic choices challenged by the fragmentation in new mobile device platforms?
I didn’t participate in MWC event and I was watching the event remotely from California. Many experts and systems analysts did try to indicate their observations in technology and market trends such as e.g.: http://www.mobilebusinessbriefing.com/article/top-10-mwc-stories and http://www.ccsinsight.com/media-coverage/?p=630
From their point of view the top important indicators are as follows
• Mobile operators unite on global apps platform
• Google embraces mobile
• Microsoft fights back in OS war
• Samsung makes waves with bada
• Industry backs voice over LTE approach
• Nokia and Intel merge Linux platforms
• HTC & SonyEricsson launched many new Android phones
We can find many other press releases but it’s almost all about the OS wars and infrastructure and there is small piece of information about the future of mobile devices itself in terms of End User future experiences and devices new capabilities. This fact reflects the situation in Product Development infrastructure associated with new Android, WinM7 and MeeGo platforms.
Each of the platforms is targeting for multiple vendors but differentiation is not clear and becomes the key area to be success on the market.
Differentiation at this point
I have seen that Microsoft and Motorola were talking about data aggregation conception on different SW levels of mobile device and its reflection in UI. Conception is similar even if we are talking about different platforms.
Possible variants of differentiation
The trend is that Smart phone market place grows and forces out featured phones. At the same time the segment of the featured phones still is significant. I would like to take a look on Mobile Device possible differentiation from this point of view.
In reality the platforms for Smart phone development cover functionality of “featured“phones with simple calling and some other dedicated features. It means that the platform can support device transformation from simple functionality to smart prone advanced functionality.
How can it be used for products differentiation? Many customers are not ready to use smart phones and are considering to keep something simple. I think that OEMs may consider to design phones with SW which can transform device capabilities from simple featured phone (Low Tier) to Mid-Tier and finally to High-End smart phone. I mean that SW on the phone can have functionality scope configurable on fly depends on customer subscriptions (enabling on demand/disabling). This approach can be used to move customers from one market segment (Low Tier) to another one (High-End).
The BOM of the HW part is coming to be lower and lower year by year so it’s possible to ship Low-Tier phone with the same H/W as for Smart phone for all products baselines. Such type of phone can be configured by SW tailoring only. As an example we can see Android phones from Quanta Computer “TWM T1” for Taiwan Mobile and Commtiva Technology “Commtiva T1”. TWM T1 without operator calling plan has cost of $280 and “Commtiva T1” cost is $311. Qualcomm, Infineon, MediaTek and others are going to use Infineon XMM 6181 chip set which is ~$150. So Software may be a phone transformer.
Another option to transform phone functionality on fly by user demand is to install drivers and SW enablers for new functionality and new peripherals from SD card (obtained as a new service subscription). Some technologies (as LTE) are not deployed yet so it will be possible to upgrade phone with LTE capabilities as an example in future (LTE external Modems). It’s not App store approach, it’s SW components upgrade from OEMs along with new subscriptions by demand.
Summary
Software allows OEMs to implement incremental functionality change on fly by user demand as additional subscriptions. It may be a differentiator for OEMs.
• Featured phone with simple UI and basic functionality
• Capabilities to upgrade SW to Smart Phone simple functionality
• Capabilities to enable SW to Smart Phone advanced functionality
• SW Add-ins installation from SD card under DRM protection
• SW Add-ins installation from Operator downloading site
I would say that new Software platform configuration capabilities are potential way to differentiate devices. I cooked-up the term “Incremental Functionality Change on Fly” (IFConF).
Is it something to differentiate products? Let´s hear your comments!
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