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Metaswitch Clearwater: Game Changing Open Source IMS Initiative

2013-05-08T12:20:23Z

The march to a software telco world is progressing nicely

Communications service providers are at war with OTT providers and need to ensure they are able to battle on as level a playing field as possible. There are significant costs associated with running a major telco and hardware infrastructure certainly ranks high among them. Sure, OTT providers like Skype and WhatsApp have infrastructure costs as well but they often leverage standard servers and software to achieve their goals. Contrast this to a telecom operator who typically buys proprietary equipment from a number of specialized manufacturers. The difference in costs between these approaches is quite steep.

This is of course is why carriers are pushing equipment providers to provide all of the network functions they supply in software which will run in virtualized instances on off-the-shelf servers. It also explains what ETSI network functions virtualization or NFV is all about and Metaswitch Networks has been on the forefront of this trend and hopes to ride the wave into larger carriers worldwide.

To further this push from hardware into software, the company recently announced Project Clearwater which takes the components of IMS and runs them on standard servers in an open-source manner. A number of carriers have leveraged open-source Asterisk in the past to provide telephony service to their customers, now they and others can take advantage of this new initiative to provide open-source IMS as well.

One of the main reasons carriers want to shift their network functions to software is it allows them to select products from a wider variety of vendors. The reason has to do with the costs of developing telephony hardware for carriers. You need phenomenally deep pockets and lots of patience to sell to carriers as an upstart hardware provider. As a result, an amazing number of equipment companies have gone belly up waiting to become adopted by telcos worldwide. Software on the other hand has less cost associated with it meaning a potentially higher likelihood of success.

Still, telcos can never be too cautious choosing a company to base their network on. One of the benefits of going with an open-source project is you no longer need to worry about one company to support it.

I spoke at length with CTO Martin Taylor and he tells me they learned a great deal from the efforts of many of the players in the social networking and cloud space and took the best ideas from these players and applied them to a SIP centric IMS network. Some things they learned and applied were using DNS as a load balancing technique as well as building massively scalable and resilient solutions in a low-cost manner.

How low cost you ask? Well, I am glad you did. Taylor says about 2 cents per subscriber per year based on the costs of AWS. Of course the solution is not dependent on Amazon, but this is just a guideline to consider. Moreover, this cost covers core plumbing of voice, video and messaging… You would still need an SBC, telephony app servers, messaging app servers and media gateways.

He further explained that carriers who are looking to deploy RCS know they have compete with OTT providers and being able to lower the cost of IMS is a huge help in doing so.

Metaswitch will supply support and bug fixes for the project. Taylor exclaimed, “Charging for peace of mind really is what it boils down to.” This and supplying additional solutions is how the company hopes to monetize this new initiative which is free for telcos to use.

This news is a potential game changer for telecom. Carriers once had to grapple with whether to purchase their IMS solutions from the US, Europe or Chinese equipment providers… Now they have the option of trying a software-centric, open-source approach. They can even try this solution in tandem with other trials going on in their labs.

Be sure to learn everything there is to know about NFV and the birth of the software telco at Software Telco Congress, Nov 19-21, 2013 in Santa Clara, Ca.

AT&T: From Dumb Pipe to Security and Home Automation

2013-04-26T21:49:39Z

There has been talk within the telecom industry for many years regarding whether communications service providers would eventually just become providers of dumb pipes or provide added value they can charge for. The move to IMS in-part was supposed to allow these companies to add more apps and services to their offerings, allowing them to generate more revenue.

When Apple opened up its iPhone platform, hundreds of thousands of apps began to do many of the things telcos would have liked to provide. Moreover, many functions which telcos used to charge for like SMS were given away for free from the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook.

A natural place for these companies to look for growth is an adjacent industry – one which could not easily be disrupted by an app or a technology shift.

This explains AT&T’s move into the home security market with its Digital Life solutions which also tackle the task of home automation. TMC reported on this news in the past but the big roll out was today in Atlanta, Austin, Texas, Boulder, Colo., Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Riverside, Calif., San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and select areas of the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area. The company plans to introduce Digital Life in up to 50 markets by the end of 2013.

“We know how important security is to our customers, and this was our top priority when we set out to build Digital Life,” said Kevin Petersen, senior vice president, AT&T Digital Life. “People rely on their mobile devices more than ever, so Digital Life offers an easy and convenient way to secure their homes, protect their families and simplify their lives from virtually anywhere.”

The system is designed to be user-friendly and control cameras, door locks, lights, thermostats, small appliances and provide the capability of setting alerts or programs which manage your home.

Customers can choose from two base plans: Simple Security, which is their basic home security package; or Smart Security which includes enhanced security features and the option to add home automation.

Simple Security - Includes 24/7 home monitoring, 24-hour battery backup, a wireless keypad, keychain remote, recessed sensors and an indoor siren for $29.99 a month plus $149.99 for equipment and installation.
Smart Security - Includes the benefits of Simple Security plus a choice of three of the following features: motion sensor, carbon monoxide sensor, glass break sensor, smoke sensor or takeover kit. Smart Security begins at $39.99 a month plus $249.99 for equipment and installation.

Customers who select Smart Security can add these automation packages:

Camera Package - View live video from inside and outside of the home for an additional $9.99 a month plus equipment and installation.
Energy Package - Control appliances, lighting and thermostats for convenience and energy efficiency for an additional $4.99 a month plus equipment and installation.
Door Package - Allow a pet sitter or repairman into your home remotely with automated door locks, or check to see whether your garage door is open or closed for an additional $4.99 a month plus equipment and installation.
Water Detection Package - Detect water leaks before damage occurs for an additional $4.99 a month plus equipment and installation.
Water Control Package - Detect leaks and shut off water at the main water source for an additional $9.99 a month plus equipment and installation.

According to wireless analyst Jeff Kagan, "This is the kind of new and innovative service we can expect from the wireless industry going forward. This is an exciting opportunity for AT&T, and a competitive threat to the traditional home security and automation business. I think we can expect to see much more innovation in this space thanks to this move from AT&T. This service connects every part of a consumer's home to the AT&T Mobility wireless network. Home automation and security is the next generation of services we will see AT&T offer across the country."

ADT is the leading player in the market with nearly 16,000 employees and over six million small business and residential customers. They will have to contend with a new and very large competitor in AT&T.

I reached out to Sarah Cohn, Director, Media Relations about the company’s thoughts on the new competition and she said, “With nearly 140 years of experience, our customers have told us that what matters most to them is the quality and reliability of our home automation and security solutions. Telecom and cable companies have been in the security space before, and we welcome their re-entry because we believe it will not only raise awareness of smart home technology, but also expand the category, ultimately helping to attract new customers to ADT Pulse.”

Of course AT&T has the ability to not only offer home automation but can further bundle television, wireless and broadband service into an attractive package which may cut into ADT’s margins if they choose to compete for market share. Consider this the new quadruple or quintuple play. Moreover, AT&T has retail stores which means this real estate has just become more valuable as some customers will certainly be swayed to purchase from the company which allows them to speak to a salesperson about their home security system in their local shopping center or mall. In fact, home automation can be a complex concept to many - seeing solutions in action at a store is likely the best way to sell such solutions.

There is always the chance that AT&T’s marketing clout will grow the market and as a result, the entire home security and automation sector will see a boost. Either way, for AT&T, the move to offer television and now security and home automation shows that communications service providers do have numerous options when it comes to extending their revenue base beyond just dumb pipes.

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.

Altair Semiconductor's 4G Chip Bet Pays Off

2013-02-26T16:54:16Z

As wireless markets globally move to 4G, Altair Semiconductor has targeted this newer network standard with a single-mode line of chips which cost less and use less power than mult-mode solutions which have to grapple with 3G and older standards. As consumer electronics devices become more price-competitive, choosing a streamlined solution means OEMs/ODMs can reduce their costs and pass part of the savings on to customers allowing more inexpensive solutions to be marketed.

The big news for the company at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona was the release of a new chipset for LTE-A, the 3800/6300 FourGee line which can download at 150Mbps and upload at 50 Mbps. The chips support carrier aggregation and a wide frequency band span of 400-3800MHz with 6 concurrent LTE bands for both primary and diversity antennas, enabling global band combinations. There is further support for VoLTE and HD-voice as well as interference cancellation an peripheral interface support for a wide variety of applications from consumer electronics to M2M.

The company hopes it becomes the go to source for connectivity in an "internet of things" world and spokesman Matthew Krieger (pictured) brimmed with excitement about how their solutions are replacing competitors in the market. Moreover they see larger competitors selling 3G-disabled solutions as a sign they are on the right track.

Other recent achievements have to do with certification on the networks of Telefonica and Verizon, meaning ODM/OEM customers no longer need to get their products certified themselves.

Krieger continued to tout current success in the market and spoke of future opportunity which they believe will be quite bright as 4G markets in India and China begin to emerge.

Verizon MiFi and Boingo Indispensable

2013-02-08T23:36:05Z

Some time back Verizon Wireless sent me a MiFi device to test and I have used it as a long-term review unit and am blown away at how useful it has become. Recently at ITEXPO in Miami I was able to use it instead of hotel WiFi which often can cost $15/day. Moreover, there was one hotel I stayed at this past month where the position of the hotel meant 4G didn't work from any provider - and it turns out I paid through the nose for hotel WiFi. I happened to use three devices and I got charged for each one (almost daily) for seven days. I didn't notice that there was a per-device charge as typically this isn't the case at the hotels I use.

Although I didn't get charged $315, that is what I would have paid had I used each device each day and the hotel didn't take some of the charges off my bill. The point is, your workers could save a bundle over the hotel WiFi charge with a single MiFi device.

Moreover, at the Gym at ITEXPO in Miami there was poor connectivity and no WiFi. What I ended up doing was placing the MiFi device on top of the hand sanitizer dispenser which was about six feet high or so. Up there it was able to receive a 4G signal.

This allowed me to have great connectivity through my workouts - I could tweet, stream music and keep in touch with my team the entire time I was down there.

In fact whenever I am in a location where connectivity is poor I look for a high place to put the MiFi device to maximize broadband supplied to my devices.

I also have to give a hats off to Boingo Wireless - thanks to them I was able to stay connected in the convention center, at airports and on my flight home from the show. Even better - their new iOS app makes it far easier to find networks which work with the service. It's worth pointing out that devices using WiFi use far less battery power than on a 3G or 4G network meaning when you are a conference you want to use WiFi as much as possible to conserve the battery on your devices.

Some Shots From Related ITEXPO Events

2013-01-30T19:56:16Z

The collocated events at ITEXPO Miami 2013 are doing great - here are some shots from Super WiFi Summit (below) and M2M Evolution. Hopefully the attendance at these events is indicative of the growth these markets will experience this year.

FCC Commissioner Adelstein Speaks at ITEXPO/Super WiFi Summit

2013-01-17T21:58:29Z

Many people who read that former Apple CEO John Sculley is speaking at ITEXPO wondered why I didn’t mention former FCC Commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein is also speaking. I really didn’t have an answer except to say a post will be forthcoming on the matter. Here is that post.

Mr. Adelstein will deliver a keynote address on “Investing in America’s Wireless Future” at Super Wi-Fi Summit on Wednesday, January 30, at 9 a.m. EST.

Recently leaving government work for the private sector, Adelstein is now president and CEO of PCIA – The Wireless Infrastructure Association, the trade association for the telecommunications infrastructure industry. PCIA provides expertise and support in the areas of advocacy, communications, events and education to its members: the carriers, infrastructure providers and professional services firms that own and manage more than 130,000 telecommunications facilities throughout the world.

Adelstein previously served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service, a position to which he was appointed to by President Barack Obama. Adelstein also previously served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission from 2002 to 2009, a position to which he was appointed by President George W. Bush.

We hope to see you at the conference in Miami the after next to hear him speak. It should be a great talk.

It's an App Eat App World

2013-01-17T20:36:31Z

Peter Bernstein has a great analysis piece on how the Unilever/Slim-Fast empire is struggling in-part because the company was too slow to come out with an app as well as the fact that other competitors have expanded their offerings to match the company or even take the lead. Personal experience has shown that the majority of my friends and acquaintances are now using apps to track their fitness – running and/or eating via calorie counting.

It’s amazing to me that even a company which profits handsomely from items sold in grocery stores can lose share because it didn’t provide apps on smartphones. This is in contrast to Starbucks who I tweeted about earlier this week – they really think mobile and social are crucial to their future.

Peter makes some good points in the piece and in a water-cooler conversation he said that the health app explosion may just be a fad. He goes on to say the problem with having so many apps is not having enough time to use them all.

This being a media company after all, I decided to take the conversation public and answer him on my blog. Hey, I don’t get paid to talk all day in a kitchen.

The bottom line is fitness apps are yet another tool in war on being and staying healthy. Consider them a productivity booster for the motivated. I just had lunch with a high school friend today who told me he just downloaded and uses a fitness app and moreover that he is an impatient person when it comes to weight loss.

I too am impatient. The problem with being impatient is if you don’t see results quickly you are more likely to give up. So fitness apps help keep you focused, motivated and maximize your results by letting you know how many calories you should burn and ingest in order to achieve your goals on a desired schedule.

BTW I don’t use a calorie counting app but I have found an app called WalkJogRun (iOS) to be a great way to track my running speed.

On Peter’s second point, I discovered through TMCnet an app called EasilyDo which looks at my schedule and alerts me to when I have to leave my office to get to my appointments on time. It uses GPS and worked great for about a week and then stopped alerting me about my meetings for some reason. then I turned off location services which temporarily stopped it from working correctly.

Putting that aside it also monitors Facebook for me and alerts me to birthdays and other events where I could congratulate my friends. It even fills out a field for me with “Happy Birthday Peter” allowing me to edit as needed. All I have to do is press send on each event and the post is taken care of for me.

The point is there are apps which make our lives easier – and even apps which work with other apps/cloud services to make our lives even more productive. We are increasingly becoming a mobile computing-dominated society and like it or not technology is here to stay and will soon become wearable meaning your gadgets and you will be even more tightly connected to you.

As this happens we can expect apps which manage apps and services to become more important than the underlying apps they are managing. Its truly an app eat app world.

xG Technology Scores Another Potential Win

2013-01-15T18:29:37Z

Yesterday I discussed how xG Technology scored with a big $6M win and today the company has announced Cornet Technology has entered into an agreement with xG to resell $5M worth of the company’s products to the government and DoD.

Cornet Technology, Inc. is a privately-held concern which designs, engineers, and manufactures a wide range of advanced command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) solutions targeted at U.S. and international defense and aerospace agencies.

The deal covers part of an end-to-end two-way video streaming solution for vehicles that is currently under development.

For a company which so many predicted wouldn’t make it – the potential for $11M in sales in two days is pretty impressive. Still, while the news of this partnership is great for company backers and employees, it isn’t a done deal quite yet.

A few other points. If the company is successful selling to the government via this deal - it could do exceedingly well selling to other governments around the world and to more US agencies as well. Also, M2M could be a market which can benefit from the company's solutions.

On the negative side of the ledger is the potential for ubiquitous WiFi coverage and Super-WiFi technologies to make the company's solutions less valuable over time.

Shockingly Nortel's Frank Dunn not Found Guilty in Canada

2013-01-15T11:52:31Z

In February 2004 I was invited to a Nortel analyst day. The Canadian telecom giant had great news to share about their worldwide sales – especially in China. CEO Frank Dunn was the primary speaker at the conference and explained just how well the company was doing. Thereafter, I met with division head after division head and the story kept getting better. The stated sales increases seemed too good to be true and it turns out they were – helping to batter the company’s share price over a number of years once news was released that the books were cooked.

Nortel’s senior management had large financial incentives to turn the company around quickly and they fraudulently recognized revenue at times which violated GAAP accounting standards in order to pay less bonuses than needed and to ensure they had reserve earnings needed to make the numbers in future quarters which allowed them to receive performance-oriented bonuses.

On March 12, 2007 the US DOJ said as much in a complaint against former execs Frank A. Dunn, Douglas C. Beatty, Michael J. Gollogly and MaryAnne E. Pahapill. "The fraudulent conduct at issue here was egregious and long-running. Each of the defendants betrayed Nortel's investors and their misconduct gave rise to billions of dollars in shareholder losses," said Linda Thomsen, Director of the Commission's Division of Enforcement. "The action we take today sends a strong message that officers of U.S.-filing foreign corporations will be held to the same standards of accountability that are required of all participants in the U.S. financial markets."

Asa result of this incident, the loss of trust between Nortel execs and the public markets, customers, media and analyst community coupled with the company overpaying for acquisitions during the dotcom and telecom bubbles combined with competition from ZTE and Huawei eventually forced this Canadian telecom icon to declare bankruptcy.

This is why I read with some surprise that an Ontario Superior Court judge dismissed the case against these same former Nortel Networks execs. The judge, Frank Marrocco said he was "not satisfied" the financials were misrepresented.

Greg Draper, who heads investigative and forensic services at chartered accountancy and business consulting firm MNP, says that the burden of proof was difficult to meet in this case.

"To prove that there was not just intention to do the conduct, moving the money and making the financial statements that were made, but to do it with a criminal purpose to defraud shareholders and the corporation is difficult to prove," he said.

In his judgment, Marrocco said the decision to only release $80 million in excess accruals when it had $189 million to boost numbers during the company's first quarter of 2003 were not out of the ordinary.

This policy did not lead to misrepresenting Nortel's "financial results to the investing public or Nortel's audit committee or Nortel's board of directors," he wrote.

Marrocco concluded the company's statements were restated twice in one quarter to reflect differences of opinion in accounting practices, not as an effort to cover up fraud.

Although the judge found that genuine accrued liabilities were not released when they should have been nor adjusted when they should have been, he was "not satisfied that any or all of the accused understood the extent of the excess accrued liabilities on Nortel's balance sheet." Furthermore, the amount was immaterial to the finances of such a large company, and even if they were not released, the executives would've received their profit bonuses anyway, Marrocco told the court.

At trial, Dunn's lawyer said his client approved the accounting at the telecom equipment maker but should not be held responsible if the figures given to him were inaccurate. At the time, Dunn was preoccupied with trying to save the company and trusted that the balance sheets were correct when he approved them, argued the defense.

"I am satisfied that non-cash impacting excess accrued liabilities on the balance sheet were not a priority," the judge wrote in his decision.

Dunn made the following statement as a result:

For a very long time, integrity has been the foundation of Nortel Networks' corporate governance and business practices. The documentary evidence and testimony re-affirmed this core value that I witnessed over my 28 years with the company," he said. "I am looking forward to turning the page on this chapter of my life.

At one point Nortel had almost 100,000 employees. While Dunn and the other managers are no doubt happy right now, many ex-Nortel staffers may feel like they have just been cheated out of seeing justice served to a management team which helped kill an industry icon.

How Mobile Will Destroy Retail Margins

2012-12-21T22:45:17Z

Some of the news of the week has to do with eBay deciding mobile advertising doesn’t work for them as it clutters small screens and doesn’t provide that much revenue. This seems to make sense but if you think this in any way is going to change the impact of mobile advertising and commerce you are dead wrong.

Logic and rumors tell us Amazon will be releasing a telephone soon and the reasoning for them to do so goes far beyond expanding its ecosystem and pushing people to download apps and watch videos online.

Location based advertising is where everything is going.

We all know about the potential to flash an ad for a company when the customer is nearby and this will no doubt be an effective strategy to boost sales and traffic. Especially for restaurants who want all their tables filled.

The real power of mobile ads however comes into play when customers aren’t near the company’s retail location. Imagine you go to a car dealer and its competitor across town flashes an ad on the spot with a $1,500 rebate on any car in their lot and maybe offers to buy you lunch as well. You may not get up and go to the other dealer but you’d be a fool to not show the salesperson your cellphone in order to get a better price.

Think of all those purchases you have made over the years on your supermarket loyalty card and imagine if your supermarket had an opportunity to flash ads at you for the items you’ve previously purchased when you are at a rival grocer or at a pharmacy which now stocks almost everything the grocery store does.

And so it begins.

Sure, many savvy customers currently collect coupons and look for numerous retailers before going on a shopping expedition but the sheer ease of discovering competitive pricing will mean everyone will have access to the best prices at all times.

And retailers will have to price match or risk watching customers turn their cars around before they even park their cars in front of the store!

This is why the Amazon Kindle Phone has to happen. This is why Google purchased Motorola and is working on a killer “X Phone” to rival Apple and Samsung.

Moreover, this is why mobile devices will get cheaper as commerce will continue to subsidize them. Amazon and Google will no doubt want to get these devices into as many hands as possible – even if it involves losing (more) money on each one sold. Apple and Samsung will have to find ways to get a piece of this market and may have to partner or acquire. Suddenly Groupon has become more valuable. Suddenly, eBay has a chance to proactively sell you used products when you are in a retail store looking for something new.

Today, Amazon will sell you a Kindle Fire for $159 if you don’t mind the ads or $174 if want an advertising-free experience. In other words it is worth at least $15 to Amazon to show you ads on a tablet. Over time, if Amazon is successful with this dual-pricing strategy we can imagine it lowering the price of the subsidized model even more. A phone with permission to show you ads would be even more valuable than a tablet as you take it everywhere. Certainly Google can’t wait to bring its massive ad network into play in new ways. It certainly shows location-based ads today – but on a less proactive basis.

The takeaways are as follows:

Mobile devices will increasingly be subsidized
Google and Amazon have to have the best devices possible in order to compel users into their mobile commerce ecosystem
Apple, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia and RIM have to come up with a strategy to compete in mobile advertising, commerce and location-based services
Retail margins for electronics and many other items have already taken a massive hit as a result of the Internet and mobile – but we haven’t seen anything yet
There is the potential for consumer backlash as they deal with ad overload
Apple will likely come out with an ecosystem for commerce and shopping – let’s call it iShop where it will handle flashing the offers while taking a cut of the sale
They may even (gasp!) charge less for a device which shows ads just like Amazon
Samsung may do the same
Carriers have an amazing opportunity in this space they will likely squander over the next few years
Consumers will win

Flexible Samsung Screens and Jim Cramer's Mistake Round Out Tech News

2012-12-20T19:17:13Z

Samsung to show flexible screens are coming
Apple's patent on 'Pinch-to-Zoom' feature invalidated
Facebook may force you to watch video ads to boost sales
The US is getting serious about child online privacy
Securing mobile devices is more important than ever
Jim Cramer makes a huge mistake

Samsung to show flexible screens are coming to a smartphone and tablet near you but what still needs to be worked out is how to get multicore processors and batteries to bend along with them. Moreover, what happens when you bend them too far – do they just snap, pouring the guts of the battery onto your lap or dinner plate? We still have some time on this tech but the progress is promising. Can’t wait to see it (and bend it) at CES.

Apple's Patent on 'Pinch-to-Zoom' Feature Invalidated meaning other tablet and smartphone makers can breathe easily for now. This may be the most important feature on a touchscreen device and Apple would wield tremendous power if it could deny others access to this technology or extract painfrul royalties for its use.

Facebook Plans Auto-Play Video Ads and users are not happy. No big surprise here but someone has to pay for all that data the company stores. If they can find a way to pull this off without retracting the idea as a result of backlash, it could be a big threat not only to YouTube but television advertising.

The US is getting serious about child online privacy and as a result, the Federal Trade Commission said it would change how it implements the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, to reflect the growth of social networks and smartphone apps among children. The result of this new push will be increasing the challenge when providing service or apps to this demographic.

Securing mobile devices is more important than ever and if you arent familiar with a term like SMiShing, you have to read this articleto get prepared for the onslaught of mobile hackers looking to steal your data.

Jim Cramer makes a huge mistake as he didn’t think through his reasoning regarding Intel, ARM Holdings and McAfee where he reasoned the processor giant was better off buying its small soon-to-be rival as opposed to a company which would have positioned it as a leader in mobile security.

Chinese Government Funds Global Telecom Roll Outs Through ZTE

2012-12-20T17:32:34Z

With global uncertainty the norm, many carriers have struggled to get financing for new infrastructure projects and in fact they have been a bit hesitant to spend on areas other than wireless where ROI is much more predictable. Subsequently, the financial challenges facing Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, ZTE and others aren’t expected to dissipate any time soon. What may be a surprise to some though is how ZTE, a Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer with relatively low costs could have lost $414 in Q3 of this year while seeing sales drop by 13% and gross margins cut in half.

In response to this decline, China Development Bank (CDB) an entity controlled by the Chinese government has given the company a $20B line of credit at very low rates allowing it to streamline operations, continue its expansion and perhaps most importantly finance its customers’ purchases.

According to Chris Antlitz, Networking & Mobility Practice Analyst at Technology Business Research (TBR), ZTE is investing heavily in smartphones, tablets, enterprise network communications technologies, LTE-Advanced, heterogeneous networks, software and services automation and will now be able to fund resource builds, such as new Global Network Operations Centers (GNOC) to support continued growth in the managed services business.

The company hopes this continued strategy of investments in technology and financing its customers will allow it to leapfrog Alcatel-Lucent and NSN to become the number three provider of telecom equipment by 2015. TBR agrees and you can see below (click to enlarge) their projected ranking of each of the major telecom vendors. They assume ZTE will grow 10% each year. They also believe Huawei and Ericsson will continue to grow but at progressively slower rates. Other vendors will see a decrease in sales according to their estimates.

The bottom line is ZTE could be the number three telecom equipment vendor in a few years thanks to the deep pockets of the Chinese government.

The challenge the non-Chinese manufacturers have is bloated infrastructure, unions and legacy costs such as pensions associated with being in business for decades. Alcatel-Lucent for its part recently secured $2.1B in financing but much of this money will go to pay debts and to buy time as the company looks to spin off assets. It’s worth noting the Paris-based company has patent assets which includes those developed by Bell Labs and the aggregate number of these valuable pieces of intellectual property is at 27,900 and counting.

Perhaps they will sell some soon? After all Kodak just landed $500M using a similar strategy.

It will be very interesting to see if politicians tackle this issue as it does seem ZTE just received a major advantage in the market and could threaten global jobs as a result. The flipside of course is with American politicians actually using the funding of GM and Chrysler as a political advantage – explaining that without the government’s help, both companies would have gone under – there really isn’t a moral high-ground in a negotiation. Then there was that whole broadband stimulus bill.

Time will tell and 2013 should be a very interesting year for the whole market as mobility usage continues to skyrocket but not all players will benefit equally from this growth.

Important Tech News of the Day Dec 14, 2012

2012-12-14T20:34:59Z

Amazon Prime Instant Video app for iOS is out
Alcatel Lucent says providing video to devices is a great new revenue opportunity for carriers
Google Just Settled a Six-Year Dispute with Belgian Publishers
IT spending will pick up in 2013
Mobile data growth is booming
Apple lost patent litigation to MobileMedia
Easilydo is an app which aims to become a personal assistant
There are some good apps to help manage your holiday shopping
A win for the free market in the EU
There’s an app to measure skin health
Social is playing a major role in news dissemination in tragedies as
Sprint’s Clearwire bid will help it deliver true unlimited and unthrottled data plans
Small business hopes for better 2013
Cities are cutting out ISPs
We are actively trading privacy for security
But at least the government wants to make it tougher for apps to share our private location data
Comcast now allows video downloads
Social media has destroyed the web
If mobile payments are booming why is Verifone telling us it is an unprofitable market?
China will be less restrictive with their Internet censorship

Amazon Prime Instant Video app for iOS is out and in my testing on a 4^th generation iPad it worked well. Some complaints remain that for non-Prime users the experience isn’t that great. I for one would like to be able to download video on the app – there is a download area but no instructions as to what is downloadable or how to download.

Alcatel Lucent says providing video to devices is a great new revenue opportunity for carriers. According to Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer, “Left unmanaged, the rapid growth in video traffic can turn into a deluge and spell disaster. It is important to look at where service providers’ investments can have the most impact, and this research makes clear that the IP edge of both wireline and wireless networks – which are increasingly becoming one and the same - offers the greatest opportunity to improve network performance.”

It is undeniable that video streaming will grow in popularity – the war between cable providers and companies working with Roku, Apple TV, Google and others will only continue with the goal being to keep the viewer watching as much content as possible on your service(s).

Google Just Settled a Six-Year Dispute with Belgian Publishers and must pay them for their legal fees and in the form of advertising in the newspapers whose content was used by the search giant. Some say the settlement totals $6M. Moreover, there will be an ongoing advertising partnership between the news outlets and Google. The challenge for the search leader who profits handsomely from content on the web is if this case could set a precedent allowing many other companies to sue for damages because their content too is being used without permission.

IT spending will pick up in 2013 which is great news for the tech market which has had to deal with numerous ups and downs since the dotcom bubble burst over a decade ago. Gartner recently noted that “most enterprises have already significantly cut discretionary IT spending growth over the past several years,” and that “they have little room to reduce IT spending further over the long run.”

Mobile data growth is booming and has seen a compound annual growth rate of 25.4% between 2006 and 2011. Interestingly only in United States, Japan and Australia does mobile data revenue exceed fixed broadband revenues. No surprise here but voice revenue is declining in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2011 according to Ofcom.

Apple lost patent litigation to MobileMedia and this is the danger of the patent wars – even if you were smart enough to invent lots of cool new ideas, there will always be some people somewhere who thought of some things before you did. This is why the tech patent wars may on the surface seem like a smart way for a company to protect their intellectual property but in reality, when defending your inventions in every country you are bound to lose sometimes.

All of this litigation hurts consumers at the end of the day.

Of course I am referring primarily to Apple and Samsung, in the case of MobileMedia, they are a patent troll (but owned by Nokia, Sony and MPEG LA) so there isn’t much of a defense when you lose. Moreover, you are generally a sitting duck, waiting for these companies to come after you. Especially when you become successful in the market.

Easilydo is an app which aims to become a personal assistant of sorts by managing friend’s birthdays, your schedule and more. It offers you time to leave alerts based on your schedule, can track packages and more. It can notify you of based weather the night before and can jump into conference calls for you three minutes before they start. I just downloaded it on iOS and will post further if it is as great as it seems. I set it to remind me of free songs to download each week and to remind me once-a-month which apps are accessing my personal info.

There are some good apps to help manage your holiday shopping and TMC’s Brooke Neuman details them for you. Gilte Groupe and others make the list.

A win for the free market in the EU as Apple and four other publishers have made an offer to ease price restrictions against Amazon in the book market as a response to an anti-trust investigation.

There’s an app to measure skin health – just take well-lit pictures of yourself and receive a personal beauty number which the company, Own says is 95% accurate.

Social is playing a major role in news dissemination in tragedies as the dreadful Newtown Sandy Hook, CT Elementary School shootings remind us. Trending topics on Twitter include #Connecticut, #Newtown, #PrayForNewtown, 27 Dead and Sandy Hook.

Sprint’s Clearwire bid will help it deliver true unlimited and unthrottled data plans, especially to its iPhone customers according to TMC’s Senior Editor, Tony Rizzo.

Small business hopes for better 2013 but don’t expect them to hire more according to a study by IP communications, data and cloud provider Cbeyond. Other important parts from the survery: 83 percent of cloud users said it made them "more flexible," 78 percent said it made them "more productive," and 71 percent said it was actually saving them money to use the cloud that they wouldn't have saved without.

Cities are cutting out ISPs to get high-speed networks to their citizens and Seattle is the latest city to do so.

We are actively trading privacy for security in the US and terrorism has definitely eroded many of our freedoms. A sense that citizens are presumed innocent seems to be slowly eroding.

But at least the government wants to make it tougher for apps to share our private location data. A new bill would require companies to get a customer's consent before collecting or sharing mobile location data. It would also ban mobile applications that secretly monitor the user's location — a feature that Senator Al Franken said allows for stalking and enables domestic violence.

Comcast now allows video downloads – this may mark the first time a cable company is doing so and is a great help to people who don’t always have fast and cheap broadband access. Airline passengers are an obvious beneficiary.

Social media has destroyed the web – it’s brought in hundreds of millions of new users but has locked us in, taken over our online identities and made it more difficult to share our information from one service to the next.

If mobile payments are booming why is Verifone telling us it is an unprofitable market? Moreover, why is it pulling out?

China will be less restrictive with their Internet censorship and has already ublocked searches for the names of many top political leaders in a possible sign of looser controls a month after new senior officials were named to head the ruling party.

The Fiscal Cliff Could Kill Super-WiFi

2012-12-13T17:05:22Z

One of the most amazing turning points in technology advancement has been the US Government’s decision to allow unlicensed spectrum to be used in the form of WiFi. Instead of taking the short-term gain of revenue via spectrum auction, it was released for free for everyone to use. As a result, cable companies can compete wirelessly with 4G providers and they need no private spectrum to do so.

The point is, unlicensed spectrum has truly revolutionized technology and productivity. Think this through – even the companies who sell “competitive to WiFi” 4G service are benefiting from WiFi. Consider carriers often wheel in large-scale WiFi equipment to sporting events and other venues because of cellular capacity issues. AT&T has over 30,000 WiFi hotspots thanks in-part to acquisitions like Wayport who added 20,000 hotspots and Superclick Networks.

My thoughts in Nov 2008 on the AT&T Wayport acquisition and Optimum WiFi analysis

Moreover, Verizon for its part allows on certain plans for its 4G devices to be used as wireless hotspots at no additional charge. They benefit from the increased 4G usage which must be paid for of course.

The challenge we have today as a technology industry is the government is essentially broke and borrowing almost 50 cents on every dollar it spends. There is obviously an incentive to maximize revenue during these fiscal cliff negotiations and an area to look for it is unlicensed spectrum in the white spaces world.

As a proponent of this spectrum affording the world an unlicenced “Super WiFi” of sorts, I obviously am concerned.

You should be too.

To learn more be sure to read Carl Ford’s comments and attend this virtual event (with top speakers from the FCC and more) on Incentive Auctions/actions and be at Super WiFi Summit January 30-February 1, 2013 - Miami, Florida.