Phones with a mind

Financial Chronicle : FC KNOW, Tuesday

By G Krishna Kumar Oct 25 2010    

Who could have imagined the unprecedented influence of iPhone’s revolutionary user experience on the smartphone market? The smartphone and the universe surrounding the device provide immense potential for innovation. Would you like your smartphone to automatically switch to silent mode the moment you enter your office? Basically, the phone is “context-aware”; by constantly learning from the user’s activities it takes appropriate action. “Context-aware” computing is a niche area on which technology giants like Intel are heavily betting, writes G Krishna Kumar
Multiple sensors

The phone can switch function depending on the user’s grip, allowing the user to flip between phone, camera, music, for example, without pressing any button. Today’s smartphones carry sensors that detect motion, temperature, noise, proximity or light. This provides a huge opportunity for innovative applications, and exciting games can be developed with a combination of sensors. Gartner estimates mobile gaming revenue, under $5 billion in 2010, to grow over two fold by 2014. Surveys indicate that the mobile gaming industry is expected to explode in India too. IPhone is already stealing market share from gaming giants Nintendo and Sony. Smartphones, with faster processing power aided by 3D graphics and sound effects, would propel the gaming market.

Research firms predict that the wide-screen tablet market will touch over 200 million devices by 2014, a tenfold growth from now! Smartphones will witness strong competition from tablet devices, especially the five-inch devices. In fact, there is high potential for coordinated innovation for tablets and smartphones.

Just touch?

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed an innovative spring-based smartphone design using “haptic feedback”. It interacts with a user through the sense of touch. The shape of the mobile alters, depending on the situation, allowing “eyes-free” interaction wherever possible. MIT researchers are building pressure sensors into the phone that can detect the exact position of a person's fingers.

Battery life

With all the computing power packed into smartphones, improving their battery life through energy harvesting is another area with high potential for innovation. Nokia’s prototype, which draws energy from mobile antennas to charge itself, could be an answer. Nokia also filed a patent for kinetic- energy-style phone batteries recently that allows the device to be partly powered by the user’s movements. Solar powered smartphones is yet to gather momentum, but will definitely be a winner.

Home & car entertainment

Smartphones would play a key role in home entertainment. The demand to share mobile screens on televisions, directly print mobile photos, and edit mobile content on PCs is increasing. Smartphones working seamlessly with home entertainment devices (like TV and home theatre) are becoming a reality. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) allows consumers to share multimedia content between their mobile phones and other electronic devices. In-car entertainment, a rapidly growing and evolving field that allows all occupants of a car to use features like navigation and entertainment, provides a huge opportunity for innovation. GENIVI is an association of automotive, consumer electronica and mobile handset companies looking at adopting an in-vehicle infotainment open source development platform to accelerate innovation.

Google’s open and free mobile software platform Android has gained popularity with many original equipment manufacturers adopting the platform. There is excitement in the smartphone platforms market with Apple's iPhone OS 4, Nokia's Symbian and Meego (with Intel), HP’s WebOS, RIM’s BlackBerry and Microsoft’s WinMobile competing for market share. Recently, Airtel, China Mobile, Vodafone and other operators formed Wholesale Applications Community, an open mobile development system.

Another emerging trend is operators trying to attract subscribers with their own version of App stores. Even BSNL is expected to launch an App store for its wireless subscribers.

Every smartphone manufacturer aims to woo the consumer by bringing in exciting experiences. The consumer’s desire for the smartphone to seamlessly function as a mobile phone and an integral part of the home and in-car entertainment segments will certainly fuel continuous innovation, at least for the next few years.

The writer is director—engineering, Teleca Software Solutions India

Call of convergence

The Hindu Business Line, 13th September 2010 , eWorld

 

A nascent market segment between Smartphone and Laptop PC is being formed.

G Krishna Kumar

 

While the world's doctors debate whether the latest iPhone application, iStethoscope, could replace the stethoscope, there is no doubt that simple and user-friendly smartphone applications are taking the world by storm. With the Appstore and Android marketplace together hosting over 3.5 lakh downloadable applications (Apps), the smartphone applications space thrives both on innovation and convergence.

Yesterday's smart high-end phone is today's mid-range phone and tomorrow's entry-level phone, says a Forrester report. World-wide, smartphone sales are expected to more than double and cross 460 million over the next two years. Morgan Stanley's Mobile Internet report states that trends in 3G, social networking, Video, VoIP, along with impressive smartphone devices, would lead the way towards convergence.

Smartphones are part of the larger “Connected Devices” universe comprising consumer electronics devices such as TV, laptop, e-reader and digital camera. By 2015, it is estimated there will be one trillion connected devices. Technology and Hardware companies are in a race for market share in this market. In fact, Google and Apple, with their Internet-enabled device to be launched shortly, are aggressively entering the “Connected TV” or “Smart TV” market by providing OTT (Over-the-Top) services.

On the home front

Smartphones are set to play an important role in the “Home Convergence” segment. How about, for instance, watching a high-definition video stored on the smartphone on a big screen TV? Printing mobile photos, editing mobile content on PCs, using the smartphone as a storage device are other examples of convergence. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) helps consumers locate and share photos, videos and music between their mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices. Gartner indicates that there has been a steady increase in the number of DLNA-Certified mobile devices over the last two years, with the Tier 1 handset manufacturers leading from the front.

Auto drive

In-car entertainment is a rapidly growing field that allows all occupants of a car to use features such as navigation, entertainment, location-based services, connectivity to devices and broadband networks. Devices such as the Nokia Car kit connect smartphones with other devices through “clickwheel” and voice prompts. GENIVI is an association where automotive, consumer electronic and mobile handset companies are driving adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source development platform. GENIVI plans to use Meego, an open source Linux platform supported by Intel and Nokia. Android and Meego are poised to be the leaders in the cross-device architecture platforms enabling convergence among the connected devices, including the IVI systems.

Innovation at every turn

Apple's game-changing “user experience” on the iPhone device has revolutionised the smartphone market. Wider touch screen has become the de facto requirement for any smartphone. Considering that the first iPhone was launched in 2007, now there are over 100 touch-based smartphone models. From Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader, Apple's iPad, Dell's Streak, HP's slate, to the latest entrant Cisco's Cius, there is a sudden spurt in the widescreen Tablet devices. Browsing pictures, watching videos, and reading books are simple on the Tablets. A nascent market segment between Smartphone and Laptop PC is being formed. The current Tablet devices are likely to become thinner with foldable screen to enable ease of carrying.

Examples abound on the rapid innovation on smartphones. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are building pressure sensors into the phone that can detect the exact position of a person's fingers. The phone can switch function, depending on the user's grip; flipping between camera, phone, music, for example, without one pressing any buttons. A Carnegie Mellon Student uses skin as input for smartphones by using a combination of simple bio-acoustic sensors; and some sophisticated machine learning makes it possible for people to use their fingers or forearms — and potentially, any part of the body — as touchpads to control smartphones.

“Sidesight” an infra-red based system developed by Microsoft research is used to interact with objects onscreen without touching the phone at all and could particularly be useful for handset to control another device, whether a robot or a TV.

The Nintendo Wii and Microsoft's Xbox Kinect suggest that gestures could replace keyboards and touch screens for some of the interactions. Better multi-touch support, along with accurate voice input, could make physical keyboards almost redundant. Swype's technology, designed to work across a variety of connected devices, allows the users to glide a finger across the virtual keyboard to spell words, rather than tap out each letter.

Dash 7, an RFID-based wireless sensor networking technology, is expected to be ubiquitous in smartphones and other connected devices. Dash 7 would co-exist with NFC and would enable smartphones to be used as credit card, identity/security card, etc. Nokia is an early adopter of this technology and it is certain that Google and Apple phones will carry NFC/Dash 7 shortly.

Improving battery life through energy harvesting is another area with high potential for innovation. Nokia has developed a prototype that draws energy from radio waves emitted by antennas, TV masts and Wi-Fi transmitters. Nokia recently filed a patent for Kinetic energy-based phone batteries that allow the device to be partly powered by the user's movements. Solar-powered smartphones are slowly picking up. Sharp recently announced a solar-powered phone for the Japan market. Samsung and LG are also active in this space.

The future of smartphones is certainly bright in the “Connected Devices” universe and will be stimulated by constant innovation, both in hardware and software, providing a truly converged and enriching user experience.

The author is Director- Engineering, Teleca Software Solutions India. Views expressed are personal

Freedom of Choice

Deccan Herald , 1st Feb 2010, Economy and Business

 

Krishna Kumar G

Mobile service providers in India have witnessed some unprecedented developments in the last couple of quarters, thanks to the fierce competition leading to price war. Stock prices have plummeted; suddenly every second of talk time and every character used for SMS have become the focus area for mobile service operators.

This has driven them to plan new strategies to woo customers and achieve profitability. Now, the operators are gearing-up to face the next challenge— MNP or Mobile number portability.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is the ability for mobile phone subscribers to retain their phone numbers even when they change their service provider irrespective of the mobile technology of GSM or CDMA. In short, if a Airtel customer want to switch to Vodafone, or the reverse, he or she can retain the same number. With over 50 crore mobile subscribers, India will have the largest MNP implementation in the world, when it happens. Like many of the developing countries, India too has a very high prepaid subscriber base (about 90 per cent). The porting fee, that a subscriber have to pay, which was expected to be as high as Rs 300 couple of years back, has been attractively set at a maximum of Rs 19 by the regulatory authority to make sure porting fee does not inhibit subscribers to switch operators.

Global trends
MNP roll-out in India is being planned for close to three years, it is now expected to start in April 2010. In fact, MNP roll-out globally has been delayed anywhere between four months (in Finland) to over fifty months (in Germany) due to various reasons like non-availability of a feasible technical solution, general apprehension from the mobile operators, cost to be incurred by operators and the realistic time required to set-up the infrastructure.

Empirical Studies have shown MNP implementation to be more productive for markets that have at least 50 per cent Mobile Tele-density (Number of phones per 100 people).
India, with current Mobile Tele-density of over 45 per cent, will hover around the 50 per cent mark during the actual MNP roll out. MNP has been implemented in over 40 countries across the world spread over 12 years starting with Singapore in 1997. MNP has received lukewarm response in most of the countries.

In the UK, MNP did not take-off due to low awareness, long wait period and long term contract with the current service provider. Among the SAARC nations, Pakistan was the first country to introduce MNP in March 2007 and it experienced less than 1 per cent porting (churn-rate). The poor response was attributed to time consuming porting process and poor customer service. Among the BRIC countries, while China and Russia have deferred the MNP implementation, Brazil implemented both Fixed line and Mobile Number portability during late 2008. Mobile tele-density of Brazil is about 90 per cent.
Even though MNP porting is carried out free of cost to the subscribers, less than 2 per cent of the mobile subscribers have opted for porting over the past 16 months.

However, only Finland, Hong Kong and Australia have been successful in achieving high percentage of Porting. Finland experienced over 10 per cent churn rate due to regulatory prohibition on SIM-locked phones (operator locked phones are extremely popular in the rest of Europe). Hong Kong effectively utilised its fixed line number porting experience which helped quick turn-around of porting requests. In Australia, the regulator has ensured porting to be completed within three hours.

India may follow global trend
Will MNP lead to a huge churn? Churn rate largely depends on country’s mobile penetration, awareness of the portability process, cost, customer service and most importantly on seamless and quick porting experience for the subscribers.

Many surveys conducted in India predict up to 50 per cent porting rate with postpaid subscribers and 10 to 20 per cent for pre-paid subscription. In fact, telecom regulator TRAI has estimated an overall 10 per cent porting rate for the first 15 months and a gradual decrease to 7, 6 and 5 per cent for the successive three years.

Considering the global trends, achieving 10 per cent porting requests in India seems unlikely. There would certainly be interest among subscribers to bargain hunt for the best deal during the initial period. But the euphoria may die down as there is no significant difference in terms of network coverage or cost among the incumbent operators, especially the larger ones.

But the new entrants, and there are four of them, could attract subscribers by offering attractive pricing and exciting vale added service (VAS) offerings. However their poor network coverage and unproven quality of service could become a deterrent for subscribers to switch. Although the international mobile market trends show that MNP has not made much difference to the incumbent service providers, it will be interesting to see the impact on the new entrants.

Availability of affordable and good quality dual sim phones could also prevent subscribers to avail MNP. Dual sIM phones, hitherto limited to cheaper phone manufactures, have started gaining popularity with the leading manufacturers. Dual sim may soon become the industry standard in India where a subscriber may retain old number for receiving calls and use new and cheap connection for making calls.

Benefits to the subscribers
Number portability would be a very effective tool for ensuring competition and keeping the service providers on their toes. MNP implementation will certainly motivate operators to constantly improve their quality of services in order to retain existing customers and attract new subscribers. All the service providers, no matter how big or small, would have an inherent fear of losing customers. Operators could offer loyalty-based benefits to their existing subscribers and offer subsidised phones with attractive tariff plan with fixed period contract in order to retain the high ARPU (average revenue per user) post paid subscribers.

This may even encourage some of the pre-paid customers to switch to postpaid plans. Subscribers planning to switch can certainly look forward to migration benefits from the recipient operators.

MNP would certainly not revolutionise the Indian telecom market; however, it is a step towards pushing the service providers to improve their quality of service and fostering competitiveness. This could serve as a catalyst to spur further growth in the mobile industry. Subscribers are sure to benefit from the introduction of MNP and importantly it positively affects subscribers’ psychology with the option to switch “anytime”.

The writer is Director and Head of Engineering, Teleca Software Solutions