Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - Consumer Electronics Archives

Yealink SIP T-38G Review

2013-06-17T12:00:00Z

The Yealink SIP T-38G Gigabit color LCD PoE IP phone is another impressive IP phone following in the steps of the Yealink T-28P that Tom Keating reviewed in 2010. Tom liked the 4-way arrow navigation keypad, which continues on the T-38G, making navigating on the color screen a breeze. The T-38P also features a very similar web admin page as the T-28P and like Tom I had no trouble adding the SIP credentials, configuring the NTP server, adding speed dials, and other various configuration options.

While referencing Tom's T-28P review for comparison to the T-38G, Tom has this noteworthy comment:

The web interface displays a message when the phone is registered so you know immediately if you put the SIP credentials in correctly. I have to say, I really loved how every change I made DOES NOT require a reboot. I've never tested a phone that didn't require a reboot, especially after putting in the SIP settings. Even after putting in the SIP settings on the SIP-T28P, I didn't have to reboot. It auto-registered immediately.

I too liked that the T-38G shows if the phone is registered or not and the T-38G reboots very quickly - I timed it at 34s. One minor bug seemed to be the T-38G would sometimes boot up and say "No Network Available" and take you to the Network Setup screen where you can change from DHCP to static, or change other settings. If I left it on DHCP and clicked 'Next', it reboots the phone, tries to acquire an IP address, fails, and then takes me back to Network Setup - an endless loop. When this happened on a reboot I figured out pressing the "Back" button seemed to solve the issue.

I talked to our resident VoIP guru, Tom Keating of course , and Tom theorized the T-38G isn't waiting long enough for the DHCP server to reply, gives up and then pops the Network Unavailable message. Tom also theorized it could have something to do with communication between the Cisco SGE2010P Gigabit PoE switches we used and the T-38G. Tom put a 10/100 PoE switch between the T-38G and the SGE2010P and it never had a problem at boot-up. Score one for Tom's network troubleshooting skills!

In any event, after booting up I made some test calls. The T-38G supports HD via the G.722 wideband codec, so I made a test call to Tom Keating. He logged into our PBX's console to verify the call was HD, but he said we were connected using PCM µ-law. I logged into the T-38G to check the codec preferences and G.722 was at the bottom. Not sure why it doesn't default to the top. In any case, I moved that to the top, made another test call and Tom confirmed we were speaking in HD! A truly glorious thing... Both Tom and I thought the audio sounded excellent.

G.722 Codec For the Win!

Features:

TI Aries chipset and TI voice engine
Dual-port Gigabit Ethernet (Router & Switch)
Supports IPV6
Power over Ethernet
4.3” TFT-LCD, 480 x 272 pixel, 16.7M colors
Color Picture Caller-ID, Screensaver, Wallpaper
Convenient and intuitive user structure
Headset, EHS support, LCD Expansion module
6 VoIP accounts, Hotline, Emergency call
Call hold, Call waiting, Call forward, Call return
Call transfer (blind/semi-attended/attended)
Caller ID display, Redial, Mute, DND
Auto-answer, 3-way conferencing
Speed dial, SMS, Voicemail
Message Waiting Indication (MWI) LED
Direct IP call without SIP proxy
Ring tone selection/import/delete
Phonebook (1000 entries), Black list
Call history: dialed/received/missed/forwarded
Soft keys programmable

Overall Impressions
I really liked the quality of the hardware. The phone may be manufactured by a Chinese company, but this phone doesn't feel cheap, a common knock against Chinese products. The phone feels rock solid. The handset doesn't feel flimsy and has some solid weight to it making this a perfect choice as an executive IP phone. Similarly, the color screen makes this phone look like an executive phone and you can have nice background images load when the phone is in screensaver / idle mode.

I have had numerous meetings with company execs in Europe and at TMC HQ and they are always sure to point out not only how much the company spends on R&D but on the best-of-the-best components. They believe their phones are on par in terms of build quality and voice quality with competitors charging many times more and I agree.

Importantly, the phone sports dual Gigabit Ethernet ports in bridged mode. What this means is you get FULL gigabit Ethernet speed when your desktop PC or laptop is connected to the T-38P's PC Ethernet port. The speakerphone quality was excellent, with superb echo cancellation and very good volume.

The phone retails for around $166 according to Amazon, making this one of the best value color Gigabit IP phones on the market today.

Your iPhone Could Get Hacked Through the Charger

2013-06-04T19:13:59Z

As scary as it sounds – that iOS device which you thought was safe from hackers because Apple controls the App Store could get infected through a malicious charger. This is a major concern for IT departments who didn’t previously worry about Apple devices which were not jailbroken. It is now impossible to know which Apple devices have been infected meaning all of them are suspect.

An article on TMCnet by Steve Anderson explains that a group of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology discovered the exploit which can be duplicated via a device called a Mactans charger. The device is built via a BeagleBoard which is a TI-based single board computer and costs around $45.

The biggest fear you should have is that a malicious individual will install one of these on the cardio equipment of a gym which has an embedded 30-pin or Lighting adapter. Another obvious area is an airport lounge or coffee shop.

Anderson continues:

The researchers in question went on to contact Apple about the Mactans' capabilities, though as yet have not received a response. But the Mactans itself can, reportedly, leave its malware behind in just under one minute of continuous exposure, and once it's in, it can be extremely difficult to dislodge. According to the researchers, the malware can be hidden in much the same way that Apple hides its own built-in hardware, making removal a difficult proposition.

Efforts from Apple came quickly in terms of blocking the ability to jailbreak an iOS device by using a USB port, and given the kind of damage that Mactans can do, Apple will likely be moving all the more quickly to find patches to block Mactans' capabilities. But with large numbers of people using Apple devices—especially iOS devices—it may well be that the metaphorical genie is out of the equally metaphorical bottle.

As mobile devices proliferate and the PC market decreases in importance, there an increased desire by hackers to keep up with the most popular devices. For IT departments everywhere this means they need to watch their BYOD device policy and ensure they are ready for the malicious attacks which could be produced as a result of unsuspecting users downloading a malicious program which affects the network and steals precious corporate data.

To learn more about the state of secure mobility and how your company can keep itself protected in the age of BYOD, attend the Secure Mobility Conference July 23^rd, 2013 in NYC.

Wearable Tech to Grow Even Faster than 40% a Year?

2013-05-09T11:08:15Z

If you had a chance to listen to my radio interview with IMI TechTalk you know I believe the analytics behinds wearable computing will be a huge business. As sensors and cameras become part of our wardrobe, there will be billions of new data gathering devices connected to the cloud.

Companies like Facebook and Google will want to soak up as much of this data as possible and use it to generate revenue through a variety of services.

At a certain point, many of us will have sensors on our bodies - perhaps as part of our smarphones which measure our pulse and body temperature in real time. Using analytics we can use this data to determine the epicenter of a variety of incidents. For example, one imagines heart rates will increase in unison when there is roaring thunder, tsunami or earthquake.

Moreover, this data can be used to determine the spread of the flu or a pandemic based upon the increasing temperature of a population.

In addition there could be early heart attack symptoms we can determine from this wealth of sensory information which means lives can be saved... Who knows what other treasures we will discover as this is an untapped area of research.

Enter Stephen Wolfrom, the man behind Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha... His latest adventure is personal analytics and has already developed an app for Facebook which can tell you interesting facts about your friends and relationships. He also records his phone calls and keystrokes and monitors his personal productivity in this manner.

He beleives that by using such data, people and companies will become more efficient. In fact he compares the ability to monitor this information with investing. He says, you are basically investing blind if you can't track your investments but if you do track them, you can make a lot more money.

Seems to me the key takeaway here is wearable tech + big data analytics means better personal and corporate productivity.

If purchasing decisions in this new market begin to be driven by such logic, the already optimistic estimates about the growth of wearable tech could be low.

This could be a very big deal for this emerging space as some analysts already say the market will reach $5.8 billion in 2018, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.8 percent from 2012 to 2018!

Disclosure: I am CEO of TMC and my company is the host of the world's first Wearable Tech Expo July 24-25, 2013 in NYC.

The Pen is Mightier Than the Spell Check

2013-05-03T10:19:59Z

As technology continues to get smaller and faster, buying a simple plastic pen may soon be seen like the equivalent of buying a flip-phone... Sure, you could do it but you just don't. This is where Lernstift, the German pen that vibrates when you make a mistake comes in.

In a way, this pen reminds me of HAPIfork - the fork that vibrates when you eat too fast... These are a new class of devices designed to monitor your activities and assist you in improving your behavior.

You can preorder the pen now... It should be available this August.

Does Wearable Tech Make You a Jerk

2013-05-03T00:07:06Z

To the fashionable, the latest technology innovations have typically been frowned upon. Wearing a bluetooth headset is more accepted than ever but still has a stigma in certain social circles. Apple is an example of a company that understood and embraced this challenge and at one time had the highest valuation of any publicly traded company as a result. This also explains why the iPhone 5 doesn't look out of place next to an expensive watch.

In fact, smartphones are status symbols today and feature phones tell others you aren't with it or are cheap.

Google is not Apple but they have certainly learned a lot from Cupertino and applied much of it to Google Glass. Even though this new wearable tech device is sleek in comparison to its capabilities, some believe wearable tech makes you look like a jerk. In fact CNBC's Carl Quintanilla even mentioned so on live TV today. Interestingly the audience didn't think he did. Or maybe they were being polite. Watch it for yourself and decide.

One day, wearable tech could become as ubiquitous as smartphones or perhaps even replace them. Society's acceptance will in-part determine how the future unfolds.

If you want to learn more about wearable tech be sure to be at TMC's Wearable Tech Expo July 24-25 in NY where we'll explore all the latest industry innovations if their full "jerky" glory.

How a Call Center Translation Service Went Mainstream

2013-04-24T18:24:08Z

Virtually everything in our lives has gotten more expensive over the years such as housing, cars, postage stamps, food and energy and yet telecommunications and broadband service costs continue to plummet. This state of affairs is in-part due to Moore’s Law and a side benefit of the declining connectivity costs has been bringing the world closer together. In the nineties you could bankrupt yourself quite easily if you direct-dialed from one country to another yet today IP communications has lowered the price of such calls to zero or a few pennies a minute depending on your location and device.

In 1982 a company called LanguageLine Solutions was founded to focus on helping translate conversations via telephone and since then, the company has grown to 6,000 interpreters who speak 98.6% of the 6,809 languages spoken in the world today. In this same year, TMC launched a magazine focusing on the call center market (now called Customer) and wrote about this company frequently in the subsequent decades.

I recently caught up with LanguageLine representative Linda Taffy who walked me through many of the new services the company offers such as Language Line University which measures the proficiency of multilingual agents. LanguageLine Direct Response is a service which allows your customer who speaks limited English to hear your message when they call in. From there, they first speak with an interpreter who greets them and then changes from being the greeter to an interpreter again. The company also offers a localization and translation service which helps companies keep their websites and documents accurate in other other countries and languages.

Perhaps the most exciting service is Language UC which is a video chat solution which runs on Macs, PCs and tablets. I had a chance to see a demonstration of sign language via an iPad and it was quite fascinating. What I learned was the sign for coffee which is an arm churning looks more to me like butter. But I digress. With this service you could be a traveling salesperson who could go to any country and communicate effectively in meetings by connecting to LanguageLine UC as needed.

Some of the benefits of LanguageLine’s services are you don’t have to hire full-time people on staff and can instead pay as you go. It is worth noting the video service has a license fee as well.

There aren’t too many companies still focusing on the same core business for over 30 years but LanguageLine is certainly one of them. With their new app/video service, they have certainly elevated their offerings and brought themselves current with the times and made their solutions something the mainstream market can use. You might even say the company is now a bit ahead of the times.

On Screen Size, Apple is From Mars, Samsung from Venus

2013-04-24T15:57:29Z

For many years now I have waxed poetic about the need for Apple to create a large screen phone. With the latest iteration of the iPhone, the “5” they decided to elongate the device but not make it wider. To me, this mistake is the worst that Apple has made since ignoring the market for seven-inch tablets and then playing catch-up with the iPad mini.

At first, when asked about larger screen phones, Apple said that they didn’t fit in the hand. Of course this was a shock to many people who not only were able to fit larger phones in their hands but to those of us who saw the ad for the iPad mini where the company showed it FITTING IN A HAND.

Now the story from Apple has changed – Apple’s Tim Cook said yesterday that large screen phones require trade-offs. Specifically he said:

My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the absolute best display in the industry. And we always strive to create the very best display for our customers. And some customers value large screen size, others value also other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, brightness, reflectivity, screen longevity, power consumption, portability, compatibility with apps and many things.

Our competitors had made some significant trade-offs in many of these areas in order to ship a larger display, we would not ship a larger display iPhone while these trade-offs exist.

Some of these points actually do make sense and I speculated as such last September but perhaps the most important aspect of a portable device like a smartphone is its battery life and no one gets a whole day of use from an iPhone 5 if they actually use it for much of the day.

In other words, Apple already made a major trade-off sacrificing a full day of battery life to keep the iPhone 5 thin and light.

And every day Apple Store employees get hammered with the question, “When will Apple come out with a larger screen phone.” How do I know? Because I ask them, and this is what they tell me.

The biggest weakness Apple has right now is a device which fits between the size of the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini. What smartphones does Samsung sell which are bigger than the four-inch iPhone 5? The list is extensive. The Galaxy S3 is 4.8 inches in size, the S5 is five inches in size. The Galaxy Note 2 is 5.5 inches. Want a tablet from Samsung, you can choose from the following sizes: 7”, 7.7”, 8.0”, 10.1” and 11.6”. Apple has merely two tablet sizes. Let’s stipulate for the moment that the iPad and Mini give enough options to consumers looking for a large and small tablet… Even so, we have to agree that Apple needs at least one wider smartphone.

I have consistently warned Apple of the multiple device threat starting on July 8^th, 2010. I saw Apple’s Achilles’ heel as being its limited product line competing with myriad screen sizes from a plethora of competitors. I saw how the PC market overtook Apple in the eighties due to improvements in price/performance from a multiple vendors and I realized screen size was the equivalent differentiator in the mobile space.

Yet Apple has changed its story on the topic – first telling us that larger phones don’t fit in the hand (how do they look at themselves with a straight face?) and now that they have trade-offs. The trouble is, these product trade-offs are causing customers to walk across the Verizon store from the Apple section into Samsung’s arms.

I have tremendous respect for Apple but when millions of customers vote with their wallets and tell you they prefer a larger phone – even with trade-offs, you have to listen to them. Or am I wrong? Let me know.

For more – see the post which shows how hand sizes vary widely and making a statement that “our phone fists in the hand” doesn’t take into account how much hand sizes vary.

With Tablets and Smartphones Eating the PC, What Can Microsoft Do?

2013-04-11T21:48:24Z

These are very dark days for people who work for many divisions of Microsoft as tablets and smartphones have absolutely decimated the PC market as evidenced by a decline of 14% in sales of PCs last quarter. This news comes on the heels of the Windows 8 launch, the new OS which fuses the best of the tablet and Windows experience in one platform. The only problem is the new OS with all its marketing and slick new form factors isn’t cutting it, as consumers gravitate towards smaller screen devices.

Expect many calls for Steve Ballmer to be fired and when you consider how many markets Redmond has squandered since 2000 you could make a solid case for pushing him out. Tablets, music, cloud and smartphones are just a few. 11 months ago, one reporter had the foresight to say he should have been fired already.

It’s worth noting that Samsung has been one of the few companies besides Apple to capitalize on tablets and smartphones and other companies in this space which enjoyed leadership positions such as Blackberry, Nokia and HTC are also struggling.

Redmond will definitely see sales from corporate customers who upgrade PCs from XP and other operating systems to Windows 8 and of course its developer, server and Exchange lines of business are in no jeopardy at the moment.

Still, you have to wonder why the company isn’t leading the market in app sales on Android and iOS. It is common knowledge that users want Office on their iPads for example… What is the delay? The latest rumors say the market needs to wait a full 18 months from now to see its debut! The company makes games as well so why not try to dominate mobile devices with your game development?

The additional challenge here is Microsoft already tried to fight Apple with the unveiling of Windows 8 and it seems this isn’t a successful strategy. In fact, this polarizing OS seems to be pushing people to tablets and smartphones.

This strategic shift in the market requires Microsoft to refocus like it did when it missed the internet in the nineties – but this time, Google and Apple have precious few vulnerabilities to go after.

When Borland owned the desktop database market and could charge $650 for its software some decades ago, Microsoft stunned the world by rolling out its Access competitor for only $99. When Netscape owned the desktop browser market and charged for its software, Microsoft rolled out Internet Explorer for free.

This time, pricing isn’t going to help the world’s still-dominant OS provider attract massive amounts of new customers. Innovation is about the only thing left to try and they are losing the innovation battle to Android and iOS. The scary thing is Adobe Flash for the moment is still a major reason to us PC products but once HTML5 gets established, PC sales could slow even more.

Microsoft needs to do something to change this momentum and it needs to do it fast as not only are customers signaling discontent but financial analysts and investors are joining in.

Learn more about HTML5 at the ultimate HTML5 developer conference DevCon5, July 24-25, 2013 in NYC.

IDC: PC Sales Decline Substantially

2013-04-10T21:29:10Z

According to IDC, PC sales are in a tailspin with 76.3 million units sold in the first quarter of 2013. This number represents a decline of 13.9% compared to the forecast decline of 7.7%. These are the worst numbers since IDC started tracking in 1994 and it is the fourth quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.

iCharts

Microsoft recently saw the prices of many of its Windows 8 machines slashed only months after they became available… This report sheds some light on the situation. In my post on the matter I said:

It seems Microsoft is getting known for making an OS you HAVE to buy while Apple makes an OS you WANT to buy.

Windows 8 needs better marketing, an update or perhaps something else to get people to accept it. These numbers should keep a slew of execs in the traditional PC market awake for many nights.

HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba and Apple all saw their PC sales decline while Lenovo grew 10% in the US but remained flat worldwide. ASUS saw some growth in the US and substantial declines elsewhere.

What this tells us is we are indeed in a post-PC era and as smartphones become more usable and tablets approximate the functions of a PC, consumers are not upgrading their old computers as quickly or buying new ones at all.

Unless Microsoft can generate some PC market excitement, the ramifications for suppliers, IT departments and developers are obvious... The PC market as we once knew it is declining more quickly than anticipated as consumers gravitate towards Android and iOS. These groups need to ensure their strategies are in-line with the current trends.

Apple Email Swings Back at Galaxy S4

2013-03-16T21:11:09Z

For Apple, this past week has got to have been the biggest nightmare the company has faced in well over a decade. Cupertino went from being on top of the world in the eighties to crashing in the nineties to soaring over the past decade as the company became synonymous with the mobile revolution. Samsung has been improving its Galaxy S line and the latest iteration, the S4 actually had as much hoopla around its introduction as an Apple event.

Finally there is a mobile competitor to Apple which can generate as much buzz around a product launch.

In response, Apple sent an e-mail to its database touting the benefits of the iPhone 5 starting with winning the J.D. Power award for customer satisfaction eight years in a row. From there the email goes into detail about perhaps the biggest external difference between it and the new Samsung Galaxy S4... It reminds the reader of the iPhone 5's sleek aluminum enclosure which is more like a fine watch than a smartphone. My colleague Tony Rizzo certainly would agree - he is no fan of the Samsung plastic case. The Korean company for its part is quick to point out the technological achievement it has attained with this new phone - implying its more important to worry about what's inside than outside. A side benefit of course is you can change the battery.

The next point the e-mail makes is the Retina Display as it explains the iPhone "ushered in the era of super-high-resolution displays." While this is true, the Galaxy S4 has thee same resolution as an HDTV - it seems like we need to call a truce to the pixel wars as we are beyond the limit of what our eyes can discern.

The next benefit the email touts is the iPhone 5 has great battery life without a great big battery. It seems this statement is only accurate if you don't use the phone that often. This is the equivalent of a car company touting a three-ton truck with a V-12 6.0 liter engine as being a fuel-efficient vehicle.

The rest of the email talks about the camera, processor, 4G-LTE support, Siri, iOS and iCloud but it seems to smack of desperation. The iPhone 5 is a great phone - Apple has screwed up by not making it larger - we are also sick of complaining about this. It's it is a solid device which has a huge PR problem primarily becasue Samsung is on a roll coming out with great devices in a variety of sizes. Although many in the press such as Rizzo aren't impressed by the Galaxy S4, the average person on the street is talking about this new phone that can sense your finger hovering over it and can respond to the position of your face.

Apple has a problem on its hands and needs to pick up the pace of innovation while understanding the market may want a phone form factor it didn't invent.

The email points to a web page with similar information titled There's iPhone And then there's everything else if you are interested in reading it for yourself.

Touchfire 2.0 Shows iPad IS a Content Creation Device

2013-03-09T17:17:00Z

When the iPad was first introduced so many pundits explained what a niche product this tablet would be as it didn't possess a way to create content - in volume anyway. This of course was a huge surprise to me because I did immediately create blog entries and articles on the device. After a while I did feel pain in my fingers from repeatedly hitting the glass surface, in-part, this is the reason I looked for solutions to my problem. Touchfire was a Kickstarter project I backed and covered - once to introduce it to my readers and another to discuss how long it took to actually get the product.

The product is a rubberized transparent keyboard which can be connected and disconnected easily from the device while fitting under the standard iPad cover. It is obviously not for everyone and has already sold 10,000 units. Is this a big number? I would say yes - not compared to the hundreds of millions of iPads sold of course but I would say it is still an impressive figure.

The Touchfire team has announced version 2.0 (see picture) of its project - the new device will have more transparent keys, be more resilient to dust, look more polished, attach more securely and sport new surfaces which make typing more fluid.

One takeaway from the news is just how lucrative it is to augment the iOS or Android ecosystem. The other of course is the iPad and to some degree all tablets are content creation devices. They certainly can be less convenient than a laptop or Ultrabook in some ways - not running Flash, Microsoft Word, etc - but their increased portability seems to more than make up for these challenges.

Speaking of keyboards, the ZaggKeys PROplus is an amazing cover and keyboard for the iPad 4. Another great benefit of the device is the keys are backlit. The one downside is the iPad 4 is too heavy for the keyboard - meaning if you aren't careful the tablet could and will slip out. From a productivity perspective however the combo of an iPad and this keyboard is enough to substitute for a laptop in most every application. See pictures below.

Google, YouTube, Apple and Beats: Music Options Galore

2013-03-06T11:07:36Z

There is good and bad news for Pandora today. The streaming radio leader has for the first time found itself in a position to compete for radio advertisers on an equal footing thanks to its inclusion in an influential ratings network run by Strata Marketing. The potential in the streaming radio market has brought new competition.

It's worth noting the news recently broke that Apple has held talks with Beats Electronics LLC about collaboration and/or investment in a music service called Daisy – apparently these talks go back a decade but Steve Jobs wasn’t ready to act when they began. Although Apple hasn’t been announced as an investor in the deal, Daisy has just secured $50M from a group including Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik, Fort Worth billionaire Lee M. Bass, and Australian financier James Packer.

Although the service may not be called Daisy when it launches officially it does seem to be based on technology developed by a company Dr. Dre purchased called MOG.

To make matters more interesting, it seems YouTube also will have a streaming service which of course will compete with Google Play (which is celebrating its first birthday with its new name). Does Google need two music services? Some speculate the reason has to do with coercing music owners to keep the free versions of their music on the world’s most popular video sharing service.

What does all this mean? Simply that the internet is going to continue to put massive pressure on terrestrial radio and the amount of choice in the market will in-turn benefit consumers tremendously. In order for these companies to compete they will have to innovate as margins are already razor-thin. Advertisers will have more choice than ever and the market is likely to become somewhat more fragmented.

Apple’s role in streaming music will be interesting to watch as just about everyone else has now launched at least on music service. Remember they picked up streaming service LaLa in 2009 for $80M meaning they are theoretically planning an entry into the space. Can they differentiate theirs somehow by embedding it into iOS more seamlessly than the other market choices? Think about what they've done with their mapping service which is the default when you ask Siri for directions. This sort of integration may make sense but it seems really late for Cupertino to act without being considered a major copycat at this point.

Aruba Networks Shows WiFi Can Boost Retail Traffic

2013-03-05T17:14:28Z

Aruba Networks had a few interesting announcements recently at Mobile World Congress 2013 and the first one shows how WiFi can be used as a differentiator and driver of retail traffic. In a deployment with NTT Broadband Platform or NTTBP the companies proudly unveiled the fact they are deploying a joint WIFi solution named Wi-Fi Cloud Services and its being deployed at over 10,000 Seven-Eleven locations as well as other retail locations owned by the mutual parent company in Japan.

This is important because the service includes an offering to consumers which allows them to come to the stores and download and stream music and other content. In this way the WiFi network supports a marketing initiative which makes the stores in-effect more "sticky."

As the content is the "hook" so to speak, it is imperative the quality of the network is up to par. In other words if a dozen people jump on this carrier-agnostic network and initiate applications or services which demand large amounts of bandwidth, there is the potential for the quality of the promoted content to suffer.

As Ben Gibson (pictured), CMO explained to me - this is where the 7200 Mobility Controller comes in. The granular access policy management based on user, device, application and location means the system can determine which traffic is of high value and needs QoS. Other traffic unrelated to the offer can connect directly to the Internet and be handled in a best-effort manner.

Moreover, he touted Aruba Activate - the company's solution which allows access points to auto-configure without the need for manual intervention.

Other news the company broke at the show had to do once again with the 7200 (pictured) - this time its ability to provide managed services and cellular offload. The company in its news release touted its solution as 40 times lower in capital cost, 14 times lower in power consumption and one-third the rack space of "competitive offerings" which is typically the code phrase for Cisco.

He further explained Aruba's HybridControl WiFi architecture allows a carrier to support more than 32,000 WiFi hotspots with a single controller.

What is interesting to me is the way QoS-enabled WiFi is being used as a marketing tool to drive traffic to brick and mortar stores. We know Starbucks was a pioneer in providing free WiFi but when a cup of coffee you sell can cost more than five times more than the competition, its easy to justify the price of free broadband.

For other retail stores we may start to see more promotional services possibly in combination with record companies, artists, movie studies and television content creators. The point is, WiFi may go from being an afterthought in retail to a strategic asset which drives micro-communities of real breathing human beings who purchase products at a cash register.

Technology has disrupted traditional retail allowing consumers to buy via apps and browsers... Perhaps now it will like a boomerang be utilized broadly to get those same consumers more interested in not only visiting but spending time in malls, convenience stores and other non-virtual locations.

Apple's Magic Dependent on iWatch Success?

2013-03-05T14:40:51Z

At this point we are all aware Apple has a new watch in the works and it is even thought to be released later this year. Pundits have even determined this product could be vastly more profitable for Cupertino than even the much-anticipated Apple TV. They call it a $6B opportunity!

One wonders however how different this product will be from the iPhone. If you think about it, the iPhone transformed the company’s mobile product line and potential. The iPod used to look like a music player but today is an iPhone without the phone. The larger iPad originally was 4 iPhones working as one. The iPad Mini is just a smaller iPad. The point here is much of the Apple innovation centers around one innovative device – everything else seems to just be an extension.

We all know about the Apple “magic” or the ability to design products we didn’t know we wanted but when we see them, we can’t figure out how we ever lived without them. Rob Enderle writes a compelling piece about the situation on TMC’s Wearable Tech World site where he explains the iPhone and iPad should have been duds based on other similar products which preceded them.

I too have commented about how the Nokia N800 tablet which was a better device than the original iPhone never gained traction in the market.

Enderle points to the iWatch as the next big test for the company. We know there are a ton of techie watches in the market - does the company still have what it takes to make a new product launch such as the iWatch go mainstream? He doesn’t think so but he says he hopes he is wrong.

Here is something worth pondering before the launch of such a device. The smartphone made watches less relevant – especially for the younger generation. Will the company who helped kill a generational desire to own time-keeping devices on their wrists get these same people to reverse course and try slapping a piece of electronic jewelry on an area which has never seen a tan line? Time will tell if Apple still has the magic we once associated with Steve Jobs.

Smith Micro Extends MDM Standard to Chipset Level

2013-02-28T14:45:02Z

Smith Micro's main message at Mobile World Congress 2013 was that wirelss broadband connectivity is going to become easier. Carla Fitzgerald, VP Marketing Wireless & Mobility explained how the company has worked with chipset vendors to get its QuickLink MBIM Middleware installed at the chip level in various computer systems.

She said, "Connectivity originally started as an application where the user was once forced to be an IT administrator." She continued, "But now with standards like MBIM and Smith Micro working with chipset vendors, connectivity will be automatic regardless of operating system."

The benfits for users will be the ability to have backward and forward compatability across not only operating system versions but operating systems as well meaning you could take a USB stick modem and seamlessly have it work regardless of your system. Currently the middleware supports just about anything you would want to use such as Windows 7, Vista, XP, Mac OSX and Linux.

There are obvious benefits for carriers as well since this advanacement "lubricates" the system meaning it should be simpler for users to connect to networks regardless of the device they purchase.