The biggest mobile industry trade show, Mobile World Congress, will take place next week in Barcelona. Sixty thousand delegates and 1400 exhibitors are expected to come together for four days of packed mobile industry seeing and being seen.
There will be plenty of innovations in mobile devices, mobile content and services, and mobile networks. We will be eyeing two key areas that will be most significant to growth of mobile industry going forward:
Capacity: Smartphone and tablets, along with gazillion amazing apps, have created explosive data load on mobile networks. The cloud sensation is adding more fuel to that fire. We’ll keep a close eye on innovations that can help address data load issues, both in terms of technology and business models.
Machine to Machine (M2M): We’ll be looking forward to seeing the latest developments in M2M, particularly outside of mobile health arena. How is the mobile technology affecting other industries? How the mobile service providers partnering with other industries to create mutually beneficial business models? M2M is where we expect to see new categories of wirelessly-connected devices.
Make sure you are signed up to Arvani Report to get the MWC coverage.
Super Bowl XLVI, the biggest sporting event in the US, ended in a close win of New York Giants over New England Patriots last night. This was the first time that the event was live streamed. As usual, there was as much buzz about the game as there was about the commercials. We noted only three commercials on mobile products, which we will recap for you. According to Google blog, “around 41% of searches related to [Super Bowl ads] that were made during the game came from mobile devices, up from 25% for the same time the day prior.”
As the biggest event on TV, Super Bowl commands big numbers for its TV spots. Advertisers, on average, paid $3.5M for a 30-second commercial. The mobile commercials were:
Samsung Galaxy Note – Thing Called Love
Samsung aired a commercial for their new Galaxy Note smartphone, which was debuted in Consumer Electronic Show last month. The theme followed that of the Samsung Galaxy SII ad, aired late last year. They even had some of the same actors. A group of young iPhone users are waiting in line, looking bored and apparently missing the game. Then, someone in the line notices a guy walking by with a Samsung Galaxy Note using a stylus pen to draw something on the screen. The crowd gets excited and goes wild over the stylus-equipped phone. The lead singer for The Darkness rock group, Justing Hawkins, appears and sings the “I Believe in A Thing Called Love”, while the crowd dances and engages in circus-type acts. At the end, the camera flashes back to the original line, where all but one have abandoned the line.
This commercial missed a big point. It put the main selling point on the stylus, which for many is a PalmPilot feature circa 1996. And, Steve Jobs had already innovated away from that by using our ten God-given styluses. To be fair, we saw Galaxy Note at the Consumer Electronic Show, and the stylus enables very fine writing and drawing. As a matter of fact, Samsung had hired a group of professionals that drew caricatures of people on Galaxy Note using its Stylus. And, they did a pretty good job of it. However, the commercial totally missed that point and showed the example of something that one can easily do using any finger.
Besides the commercial not being on point, there are three big challenges with Galaxy Note:
Phone or Tablet? At 5.3” display, Galaxy Note is half way between a phone and a tablet. It seems too small for a tablet. And, putting something that big to your ear seems a little awkward too.
High price point: The phone can be ordered online from AT&T and will be available in stores on Feb 19th for $299. We believe this is a high price point without a real differentiating selling point.
Use case for stylus: Steve Jobs and Apple have done a wonderful job moving us away from Stylus. If Samsung wants us to give stylus a new try, it needs to do a much better job in selling us why it is important to have a stylus. What kinds of user scenarios would make us want to carry this extra thing we were so happy to dump?
Hits: Continue the theme from previous Galaxy phone commercials
Misses: Stylus, on its own, as a selling point was a notably expensive miss.
BestBuy – Phone Innovators
The commercial covers a number of cameo appearances from folks who invented features that we now commonly see in our smartphones. They include: Philippe Khan for camera phone, Ray Kurzweil for text to speech, Chris Barton and Avery Wang for Shazam (song recognition app), Jim McKelvey for Square (mobile payment), Kevin Systrom for Instagram (photo sharing app), Neil Papworth for text message, and Paul and David Bettner for Words with Friends game. The part about Words with Friends is cleverly shot in an airplane setting where the flight attendant asks them to shut their phones, as a reference to Alec Baldwin who was kicked out of a plane for not wanting to shut his phone while playing Words with Friends.
Then, a group of BestBuy salesfolks come on to say how they have created a better way to buy a smartphone, covering all phones, carriers, and plans.
Hits: It was interesting to see BestBuy featuring tech innovators versus going with regular celebrities. And, there was a good tie-in to where BestBuy fits in. Overall, a great commercial and efficient use of ad dollars.
Misses: For those of us in tech, we can definitely appreciate the innovators and their contributions. For general public, the celebrity factor was low.
Motorola Razr for Verizon – More colors, same edge!
This was a pretty disappointing commercial, and to think that they paid few million dollars to air this…
It shows two people dressed in astronaut suites, in a seemingly futuristic factory, coloring Motorola Razr phones, in purple, and white. They take off their suits to show their Verizon uniforms as they walk into Verizon retail store, where Motorola Razrs are on display in three colors now. The tag line is: more colors, same edge.
Hits: Background music is upbeat.
Misses: Focus on color as a differentiating factor to buy a smartphone certainly did not create any edge, whatsoever. With original Razr’s back in 2004 timeframe, color may have been a big deal. Not the case with today’s smartphoens!
Overall, there weren’t that many mobile commercials in Super Bowl 2012. And two out of three were not strong. Companies may be waiting for Mobile World Congress, happening at end of this month, to announce their new products. We will keep you posted. Make sure you are signed up to Arvani Report to get the MWC coverage!
We are excited to see that fourth generation (4G) mobile networks, using Long Term Evolution(LTE) standards, are growing both in the US and globally. Mobile operators deploying these networks, such as Verizon and AT&T, are able to offer their subscribers faster data speeds and lower response time. We are also glad to see that devices, besides USB dongles for computers, are available to take advantage of these faster speeds. But in the midst of all this industry excitement, we are forgetting one important question: Why should the consumers care? Here is what the consumers have been told so far:
1) The 4G/LTE network is much faster. This is what the consumer is being pounded with.
Here is a Verizon commercial
It shows a group of black-leather-clad sky divers each taking a crystal ball (presumably data packets) and jumping off a plane. Users are watching in disbelief while enjoying supposedly fast LTE network speeds on both a tablet and a phone. The message is that 4G LTE is “Built so you can Rule the Air.”
Here is a commercial from AT&T
“Fellow tailgaters approach the main characters, eager to share news about the football game. But with speeds up to 10x faster than 3G, AT&T’s 4G LTE has enabled our two tailgaters to find out everything faster, transforming the “breaking news” into something “so 42 seconds ago.””
2) 4G must be better than 3G (after all, 4 is bigger than 3!). The consumer is faced with a buzz word(4G) and an accompanying 3 letter acronym(LTE) that makes no sense to them.
This Samsung Galaxy S II commercial highlights that kind of message:
A group of young iPhone users are waiting in line, when a woman with a Samsung 4G phone walks by. The group gets greatly disappointed when they find out their phones are not 4G. There is no indication why users should be disappointed, except that 4G must be better than 3G.
Really? That is all we got?
The fast-ness of networks and low latency will certainly attract techies and early adopters, and trend catchers. However, to get mass adoption, there has to be “must have” applications that users could not do, or do in a meaningful way, on non-4G/LTE networks.
There are benefits to the operators. 4G/LTE networks enable operators to increase data capacity (especially useful in urban areas), being more efficient with spectrum usage, and reaching a global standard.
As an industry, we have to empathize with what the users get out of 4G/LTE network. Faster is just not enough to the consumer! What kind of applications can we envision that will truly showcase 4G/LTE without even having to mention it? So, the users would long for the application, not for “faster” and better clichés.
Let’s focus on that for 2012!
Happy New Year!
We’ll be at Consumer Electronics Show and chairing the panel on Planet of the Apps joined by executives from AT&T, eBay, Sports Illustrated, and MEDL Mobile. See Arvani Group Events for more details.
HP announced today that it will contribute the WebOS software to the open source community. HP says WebOS provides developers an easy way to develop applications based on standard web technologies. And, for device vendors, WebOS provides “a platform to run across multiple devices”.
WebOS can provide a new option for mobile device vendors who are looking for an open operating system. Device vendors would use it under an open source license that would require them to contribute their enhancements back into the WebOS.
Good spirit but no body: WebOS is an innovative web based operating system. Its support for web technologies, such as HTML5, can make it a compelling platform. But it has failed to gain traction, for several non-technology reasons. And, due to lack of use, it probably hasn’t been polished enough. At the moment, no hardware vendors are publicly developing devices based on WebOS. HP itself withdrew from WebOS-based hardware five months ago, when it put its WebOS-based TouchPad tablets on a fire sale.
In an interview with Bloomberg, CEO Meg Whitman said HP will likely release new WebOS devices, but not until 2013. And, they won’t be doing smartphones.
Harder chicken and egg problem to solve: Regardless of how good WebOS might be, it is challenging to attract developers to write applications for it without any devices. On the other hand, it would be hard for device vendors to justify making WebOS-based devices, since there is not a healthy community of application developers for WebOS.
Lower priority hedge: For most smartphone and tablet vendors (other than Apple, RIM and Nokia), Android has become the dominant choice of mobile software. These vendors would probably welcome a second option as a hedge against the risk of being solely dependent on Google. At the moment, that choice is Windows Phone, or upcoming Windows 8 for tablets. WebOS is another choice, but it has to start at the bottom of the priority.
The good news is, for now, WebOS lives to see another day. The challenge is to cultivate a healthy ecosystem of devices and developers around it. Let’s see if a WebOS champion will come forward!
On Friday Dec 2, Verizon Wireless announced that it will acquire 122 AWS spectrum licenses covering 259 million Americans for $3.6B, from a joint venture of three US cable companies. This will give Verizon Wireless a sizable spectrum advantage over AT&T (111 MHz for VZW versus 100 MHz for AT&T). More importantly, the acquisition will shake up the US wireless industry at its core.
This purchase is the savviest investment Verizon Wireless could have made for under $4B. Verizon Wireless will be buying spectrum from SpectrumCo, a joint venture between Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House. While AT&T is fighting with regulators to keep its $39B acquisition of T-Mobile alive (with a risk of having to pay up to $6B if the deal does not go through), Verizon Wireless will probably not get much objection to its deal. The cable companies are not doing much with the spectrum that they are selling to Verizon. So, if anything, the deal would be putting some scarce resources to good use. On the other hand, Verizon and cable companies have agreed to resell each other’s products and services, which would be a great boost of new wholesale customers for Verizon Wireless.
The ramifications to the US wireless industry will also be huge in three key areas:
Wireless spectrum landscape: Spectrum is the scarcest resource in wireless networks. As Dan Mead, President and CEO of Verizon Wireless said in the announcement, “Spectrum is the raw material on which wireless networks are built”. Verizon’s purchase of this significant piece of scarce wireless resource will not only help in its expansion of its fourth generation LTE network. It will also eliminate opportunities for other players to get access to this invaluable resource. For example, AT&T would have to push harder for T-Mobile merger or look hard elsewhere. Other carriers, including international operators will also be very limited in their ambitions to set up networks in the US.
Wireless wholesale demand side: With this deal, cable companies are scrapping their own plans to build a wireless network and looking to Verizon Wireless to provide the wireless services for them. The acquisition agreement also includes an option for cable companies for “selling Verizon Wireless’ service on a wholesale basis”. This agreement will take out cable companies’ demand for wholesale wireless service from other operators.
Wireless wholesale supplier side: With a big chunk of demand for wholesale wireless service taken out, it would be challenging for wholesale service providers to get customers. Companies like Clearwire and LightSquared will have to look in a much smaller pool of potential wholesale customers. The pressure on Clearwire will also impact its relations with Sprint, which might end up becoming its only major customer.
One major domino effect might be the crash landing of the independent wholesale wireless service provider model. Given the gazillion dollars of capital expenditure needed to build wireless networks and with key wholesale customers taken out, it would be very tough to justify the future investments.
We will see the results in 2012, no doubt!
We’ll be at Consumer Electronics Show and moderating Planet of the Apps session. Check out this and other events here.
I was asked to lead the discussion at last week’s Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco on Roadmaps for the Open Mobile Web: HTML5, Monetization and Discovery. It was a last minute request, as the original moderator could not make it. But seeing the brilliant roster of speakers (Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of digital at Financial Times; Kinsey Wilson, Senior VP of NPR; Marc Frons, CTO of New York Times; and Steven Goh, CEO of mig 33) and having spent good time working on the topic, I gladly accepted. We collectively decided we were going to cover business considerations of going with HTML5, and not get into religious wars over technology features. Here, we summarize highlights of our discussion:
Taxes Drive Apps Away!
Financial Times(FT) was the first major publisher that had decided earlier this summer to abandon iTunes mobile app store altogether in favor of HTML5 web-based apps on iOS devices. Grimshaw said FT was driven to this decision because Apple decided to charge the 30% tax on all in-app purchases, including subscriptions. FT wasn’t going to accept that.
Frons of New York Times says, for now, the math for having an app at iTunes still makes sense for them. They recommend that app developers monitor that for their own case and make a decision based on their own economics.
What About User Experience?
All speakers agreed that HTML5 is growing stronger in its capabilities. According to Grimshaw, FT team did not initially believe they could implement a web user interface as sophisticated as their iPhone app. But they proved themselves wrong as they spent more time digging into HTML5.
Wilson of NPR said with web and HTML5, a publisher can offer a consistent user experience across multiple channels. This would include not only mobile devices but also laptops and desktops. So, again, with one upfront investment in design, the publisher can ensure consistent user experience on any device they choose to consume content on.
Are We Really Always On?
Frons said New York Times customers would like access to Times’ content in the subways and on the planes. And, being solely dependent on web-based apps would make it difficult for those times where networks are simply not available.
Goh of Mig 33 also cautioned that the wireless network connectivity is a not dependable in many developing countries.
How Can a Web-based App Be Found?
iPad and iPhone users have to type in app.ft.com to get to FT’s web-based app. How are the consumers supposed to know this? Well, Grimshaw says FT has invested quite a bit in making this known. This might not be a viable option for an app developer on a shoe string budget.
On the other hand, NPR’s Wilson made the point that less popular apps in the app store will have an equally hard time being discovered.
Beware of the Unsupportive Browsers!
Browsers have inconsistent support for HTML5 and its various elements. App developers must take that into account when designing and testing their mobile web-based apps. And, at times, they may have to resort to work-arounds.
According to FT’s Grimshaw, Android browsers don’t do well on some HTML5 elements. So, FT had to work around that and create a shell Android app that wraps itself around the HTML5-based core.
Keep in mind that creating a shell app for iTunes will not get your around the 30% tax on the in-app subscriptions and purchases.
HTML5 Saves Development Time!
All speakers agreed that developing in HTML5 with flexible design that can cover range of devices from smartphones to tablets to desktops and TV’s is more cost effective. Fragmentation caused by several mobile operating systems and several Android versions multiply the development cost for app developers.
Flash Became a Roadkill!
Confronted with the question of Adobe Flash being dead, speakers reluctantly and politely agreed that Flash days are over, at least on the mobile platforms. Adobe’s move yesterday to stop Flash development on mobile validates our projection.
Given HTML5 is not limited to mobile devices, the assault on Flash will not stop at mobile.
HTML5 is super charged and ready to serve. An ongoing challenge is to keep it stable. It would be even more useful if there was a standard version that would freeze the features at a snapshot. So, browsers and app developers would have a target to shoot for. But in the dynamic world of the web and mobile, that might be too much to ask.
HTML5 won’t totally replace mobile apps. However, business considerations will be driving the development decisions more as HTML5 technology becomes more robust.
Check out what mobile topics reporters ask us about here.
Apple just completed their press event, announcing the iPhone 4S. We could be disappointed that this was not about iPhone 5, as most had expected. And, there was no disruptive “one more thing”, the signature piece that Steve Jobs had at the end of his presentations, which led observers to wonder if the event was actually over. Like the concert goers expecting a “surprise” encore, the audience held their breadths for “one more thing” that never came. There were quite a few interesting features along with lots of stats that put Apple products in the best light.
iPhone 4S can be ordered starting this Friday Oct 7, and will be available on October 14th. In US, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint will carry the device. By year end, one hundred carriers will join the iPhone 4S party.
In the sea of features for iOS (200 new features in iOS 5) and iPhone, we dug up a few themes that are very significant:
Say Hello to your new assistant Siri: The most intriguing feature of iPhone 4S is the Siri voice-activated assistant. This addition came to iPhone, courtesy of the start-up company Apple acquired back in April 2010. One can presumably talk to his phone using various voice commands: to write messages, set up wake up calls, or hear about weather or appointments. We’ll have to see how Siri will work in real-life environments, with lots of background noise and millions of different accents and dictions. If successful, Siri could help Apple push Google search down and hide it under a voice activation layer. This product will be out in Beta, in English, French, and German.
Replace your Point and Shoot camera with iPhone: While on surface, iPhone has just another 8MP camera, which we knew about. But underneath, there are a bunch of interesting features that really make it comparable to a Point and Shoot camera. It is much faster to take the first picture (1.1 sec), and subsequent pictures (0.5 sec). It will enable better lighting. Apple wants you to put your Point and Shoot at home and rely on this phone as your camera. The new free Cards application is a brilliant of how Apple always focuses about use case for new technologies. The Cards app allows all iOS device users to take pictures and turn them into (paper) cards, which Apple will send via snail mail to their friends. It leaves no excuses for not sending a birthday card.
iPhone gets better at gaming: The new dual core A5 and dual core graphics turn the iPhone 4S into a formidable portable gaming device. Apple says iPod Touch is already the most popular portable game player in the world. iPhone 4S will enable much better graphics in the games.
One world, one phone please: iPhone 4S packs in GSM and CDMA cellular technologies all in one single package. This is a brilliant move on two fronts: one, it will make it easier for consumers to choose iPhones without worrying about switching carriers in the future (at least in theory. In practice, carriers could put some restrictions to make this difficult). Second, this will be hugely beneficial for Apple by not having to carry multiple product versions for different carriers. This will tremendously reduce the supply chain logistical headaches.
iPhone for every one: iPhone 3GS price can now be offered free to subscribers with a 2-year contract. This will definitely expand the reach of iPhones to the masses.
Keep Content in the Cloud: You already know this but Apple also covered iCloud service, which allows users to keep their music, photos, and other documents in the cloud. It includes daily back-ups. Once in the cloud, users can access their information from any iOS device. This is very significant as Apple provide a seamless integration of content across all its mobile and desktop devices.
What we didn’t see is a difference in the form factor that would distinguish iPhone 4 from iPhone 4S. This might be an important buying factor for some iPhone 4 users that must show off their new phones. We also didn’t see any NFC(Near Field Communications) chip that enables mobile payments. While iPhone 4S is twice as fast as iPhone 4, up to 14.4 megabits per second download speeds, it does not support fourth generation LTE(Long Term Evolution) technology, but we didn’t really expect that. Well, we’ll have to wait for iPhone 5 …
We’ll be at CTIA coming up, Oct 11-13, in San Diego, and will be bringing Arvani Report with analysis of latest wireless developments of the show. Subscribe for Arvani Report with our compliments!
Yesterday, Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, testified before Congress responding to allegations of “cooked” search results in favor of Google’s own products and services. Jeff Katz, CEO of Nextag, an online price comparison site, and Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp, a local business review site also testified criticizing Google on abusing its market power. If you can find an extra 3 hours, the interplay is interesting to watch. While Google faces heated criticism from some of its content partners about its dominance in the online search market, it will face even more robust challenges in the mobile arena.
The congressional hearing devolved mostly around online search, where Google has a dominant market share at around 65%. The Google team was trying to downplay that number by expanding the definition of online search market. Google implied that searches done at Amazon and social networking sites should be considered in the market share calculation.
The hearings covered mobile search but only in the margins. But we know mobile will be a much more prominent playing field in the next few years. With Google commanding a whopping 97% of the mobile search market (according to Stat Counter), we believe Google will face even fiercer challenges from its content partners in the mobile space for the following reasons:
1. Pre-load Trumps Download Every Time: Google’s 97% share of mobile search market may sound surprising at first but it makes sense if one delves into it. The majority of mobile searches take place on smartphones and tablets. Google is the default search engine for most of these advanced devices, including Apple iOS devices, namely iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. It is also the default search engine for all Android smartphones and tablets made by likes of Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and others. While it is possible for users to switch to another search engine, it is not very convenient, and most users won’t do it. Pre-loaded applications have an undeniably powerful spot in the mobile device arena.
2. Provide The Answers, Not Links: Eric Schmidt stated that Google’s search has evolved in some scenarios from providing links to offering answers. For example, when someone types in an address in Google search box, Google believes what the user really wants is the map of that address, not links to the maps of the address. So, Google would return the answer in the form of a Google map of that address as the top result. Critics would argue that this approach is not fair since this is favors Google maps over rival maps. Google says the only way to offer an answer to a user’s query in such a case would be to use its own product over which it has complete access and control.
In a mobile environment, Google could well argue that users are even more interested in answers to their query, rather than links to the answers to their query. So, the company could justify putting its own products and services at the top in order to offer the answer, not just links, to the presumably rushed mobile user.
3. Mobile Search Involves Geo Location: Online search does not generally take into account the user’s location for its calculations. In a mobile environment, however, location is a fundamental part of a user’s context which should be considered when delivering search results. Google will be more drawn to using its Google Maps and Google Places to accommodate the location element of the mobile queries. This, again, would provide a justification for a Google product to show up on top.
4. Location on Display Real Estate Matters: Studies have shown that the placement of links on search results have a lot to do with how often they get clicked by the users. The closer to the top of the search results, the higher the chances of click through’s for the provided links. Most users don’t even look at the second page of search results. While this is true in the online space, it is magnified in the mobile space. Mobile displays are generally smaller, and hence more cramped. Therefore, the pages are smaller and the display real estate is that much more scarce. If Google uses its own products and services on top, the rivals would be significantly more disadvantaged.
Google’s latest congressional hearing mostly emphasized online searches. Mobile search is still dwarfed by its online cousin. But we all know mobile Internet will surpass fixed Internet in just a few years. According to IDC, that date with destiny will come in 2015.
Google is feeling the heat in online search from some of its content partners, as its business expands from distributing content to additionally providing content. IT will get mercurially hot once mobile search really takes off.
Check out Arvani Report for our analysis of wireless developments at major shows, and subscribe, with our compliments!
AT&T will soon be joining Verizon and Metro PCS in offering 4G/LTE mobile broadband data services in the US. The carrier will launch its LTE service this coming Sunday, Sep 18th in five cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. As more mobile carriers in the US and worldwide are deploying faster 4G/LTE, all eyes turn to the devices that can take advantage of it. After all, if a mobile carrier offers the fastest data speeds but subscribers don’t have compatible devices to take advantage of them, does it really matter? This is where Apple’s rivals may get an edge by showing up to the LTE party sooner.
Apple generally doesn’t venture into the latest mobile network technology until the user experience is up to their standards. That level of user experience for LTE would depend on the carrier’s network coverage, required battery power, and the ironing out of the glitches that any new service would inevitably encounter. So far, Apple has not launched any LTE products. It is rumored that iPhone 5 will be launched in October without support for LTE. We have even less visibility into iPad 3’s LTE potential.
This scenario could provide an opportunity for Apple’s smartphone and tablet rivals, albeit one that is not free of challenges and has to be thoughtfully executed. In the US, Samsung is the front-runner in the mobile device LTE race with Droid Charge and Galaxy Tab 10.1 for Verizon; Craft, Indulge, and rumored Forte smartphones for Metro PCS. Motorola, HTC, and LG each have an LTE smartphone on Verizon’s network. Motorola’s Xoom tablet for Verizon is promised to be “upgradable” to LTE, and the upgrade is on its way. HTC has already launched Jetstream LTE tablet for the upcoming AT&T LTE.
The faster LTE mobile broadband network will be a great boost to a smartphone device, but on tablets it will make an even more powerful difference.
This LTE differentiation opportunity for mobile device vendors exits but is not free of challenges. Some are LTE specific. For one, there is limited LTE coverage at this point. In the US, AT&T’s LTE launch on Sunday will only cover 5 cities. Metro PCS has 14 LTE markets. Verizon has the largest LTE deployment in the US with a total of 143 markets. There is also the higher LTE power requirement that drains the battery quicker, which will impact the user experience, especially on smartphones.
Each mobile device vendor is also facing its own headwinds. Android tablet makers, such as Samsung and HTC, are entangled in a web of patent litigations which could slow down their LTE device shipments. Motorola promises LTE devices but has taken its sweet time to bring them to market. The Motorola Droid Bionic LTE smartphone went 9 months from announcement to release. Its Xoom tablets are not LTE out-of-the-box and yet to be upgraded for the masses. These timing delays can be costly in sales.
In the battle to compete with Apple’s iPhone and iPad, other device vendors can use 4G/LTE support as a weapon but they have to be quick to market and willing to play in a risky new territory.
Check out Arvani Report for our analysis of wireless developments at major shows, and subscribe, with our compliments!
At the Intel Developer Conference opening keynote, Intel announced that it will work with Google to “enable and optimize future versions of Android for Intel’s family of low power Atom processors. This means that future versions of the Android platform will support Intel technology in addition to other architectures.”
Intel hopes that this work will provide more incentives for mobile device vendors to use Intel’s Atom chips in their future smartphones and tablets. And, Google hopes to expand Android’s footprint by running it on a new set of hardware platforms.
Let’s look at it from a mobile device vendor perspective. Having an optimized Android for x86 Intel architecture would certainly make it speedier for such a vendor to use Atom chips, but would they and should they?
If a mobile device vendor is already shipping handsets and tablets with ARM-based chips, the Intel choice would face challenges. The device vendor would have to spend additional level of engineering resources to change their existing processors to Intel architecture. For their math to work, Intel has to offer significant performance and price advantages to overthrow the incumbent ARM chip architecture. Moreover, the Intel choice would not differentiate their products in the marketplace. Outside of the early adopters, people don’t buy handsets for the brand of the processor inside.
For the new mobile device vendors or for new mobile product categories, it would make more sense to consider a new choice of processor architecture. That is where Intel would have a better chance of penetrating.
While this collaboration is a solid move, it leaves a lot to desire for in terms of Intel’s mobile strategy. We still don’t know which device vendors are committing to Atom-based devices running Android. And, we still don’t know when these “Atom Inside” mobile devices will appear in the market.
Could Google be a key mobile device vendor using Intel chips, with Motorola under its wings?
