Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Software provide Bsquare has published its IIoT Maturity Survey, and its findings read like good news for all those with skin in the Industrial IoT (IIoT) game – with businesses looking to boost their investments. The company’s Senior Director of Products, Dave McCarthy talked us through the results, as the company hopes to push its DataV software offerings on an industry hungry for uptime improvements. The findings of the survey were collated from decision-makers and influencers in three main areas – Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, and Transportation. Bsquare says that they show that the IIoT has progressed beyond hype to widespread use, with 86% adopting an IIoT solution, and 84% saying that their solution was very or extremely effective –…
The European Smart Home summit was an event that let Riot do an awful lot of thinking about the smart home, fostered by two days of very interesting discussion. With operators and developers present, there were some common concerns and themes present – and an expectation that now might finally be the time for the smart home to take off. A full exploration of that event will be published next week, but while chairing a panel, the distinction of ‘gadgets vs. services’ was brought up – with many seeing the early adopter momentum as a flash in the pan and the provision of Smart-Home-as-a-Service (SHaaS) from operators, utilities, or insurers as the vehicle that really drives growth in the smart…
Waymo is launching a ride hailing service pilot in Phoenix, Arizona, following a recent demonstration of its vehicles driving without any humans onboard. The service seems necessary to prove the safety of a driverless ride hailing service to regulators and potential users of the Waymo system – but could also mark its first move into the ride-hailing business, and the potential for its expansion should deeply concern market incumbents Uber and Lyft. Waymo boss John Krafcik wrote that in the metro region of Phoenix, a subset of the fleet will operate in fully autonomous mode without a safety driver – meaning that the autonomous Waymo system is the sole driver of the vehicle. A simple app hails the cars, and…
Intel has snatched rival AMD’s former SVP and Chief Architect of its Radeon GPU division, and tasked him with heading up the new Core and Visual Computing Group, a new division that Intel hopes will provide discrete GPU cards and integrated graphics to counter Nvidia’s incursion. It looks like Intel is about to try and out-muscle Nvidia’s video cards with its own GPUs. Koduri, the public face of the Radeon group, bowed out a few months ago, saying he planned to recover from the Ryzen and Vega projects and take some family time. However, it seems that Koduri was planning a new type of family, and was poached for the new job by Intel. AMD won’t be amused, but it’s…
Deutsche Telekom has launched its first 4K set top via the operator’s TDG Group subsidiary in Germany, powered by the Zenterio OS which has become one of DT’s favorite software suppliers. But the elephant in the room is why has it taken the German giant so long to get 4K hardware out to its pay TV subscriber base? Over in the US, Comcast launched its first 4K-capable DVR earlier this year and was mocked for being late to the party. Concerns about the added strain that additional features will have on its network has meant Comcast is often late to launch with new viewing formats and functionalities, while DT prides itself on trend-setting moves, particularly in its US operations. Rivals…
Google getting its AI assistant technology into Sony’s Android TV sets is one of the easiest decisions the tech monolith has ever had to make – a move that could mount the beginning of a significant fight back for Android TV at the heart of its wider Alexa-chasing smart home push. A burning instant question we have is “Are Amazon’s Echo smart speaker devices compatible with these Sony TVs” and can its own AI assistant Alexa live peacefully alongside Google Assistant? While neither party has provided a definitive answer, the fact that the touchscreen Echo does not allow YouTube videos to be played probably suggests the two would also butt horns if an end user wanted to, for example, use…
At last there is a version of a cellular video broadcasting standard which has for the first time been created with input from commercial broadcasters, and is not just the pipedream of the cellular community. There have been so many false dawns for mobile TV that there is inevitable skepticism, when yet another attempt is made to get it off the ground. But there are two big differences this time around, firstly that people are now consuming video on mobile devices in industrial quantities anyway. A lot of that consumption via tablets is over Wi-Fi, but the fastest growth has been through smartphones over cellular by people while on the road. Secondly for the first-time broadcasters have got on board…
From the point of view of Faultline Online reporter coverage – i.e. video delivery – the potential takeover by Broadcom of Qualcomm, in a $100 billion plus bid announced this week, seems relatively unimportant. On the one hand Broadcom is dominant in both WiFi and set top chips, as well as strong in full band capture, and these are, for the most part, alongside important future broadband delivery technologies such as G.fast, as the chip areas which define video performance globally. 5G may yet become one such technology, but Broadcom has no presence here. There are a few other areas – Smart TV chips, which MediaTek’s MStar dominates; CCAP components where companies like MaxLinear have a good showing, and to…
Deutsche Telekom has teamed with fellow operator Orange to work with the Eclipse Foundation on a cloud-based API (application programming interface) for smart home devices, based on the OneM2M standard. Speaking to DT about Smart Home as a Service (SHaaS) revealed the stickiness of the offerings, but also a sense of frustration with the slow pace of the market – which has been sluggish in both the service and direct-to-consumer retail sectors. With Orange (which has just joined the Eclipse Foundation), DT will be demonstrating a new showcase of how an open standards approach can provide a better consumer and developer ecosystem. Specifically, the Foundation is hoping that the demo convinces smart home developers to adopt its Eclipse oneM2M and Eclipse SmartHome frameworks. The Eclipse…
The first release of the open source ONAP code, largely based on AT&T’s inhouse development ECOMP, will be available on November 16, aiming to simplify management and orchestration (MANO) of virtualized telco networks. However, though it is being supported by operators such as Orange and Bell Canada, it also has its critics, some of them backing its main rival, ETSI’s Open Source MANO (OSM). Telefonica has been a significant contributor to OSM, though it was recently reported to be close to joining ONAP too, which would be a valuable step towards avoiding fragmentation in this vital area of software. ONAP’s critics claim the first release will not be usable in production networks and will lack that level of stability until…
AT&T has made considerable waves in the mobile industry by shaking up its supply chain, adopting aggressive roadmaps for software-defined networking (SDN) and network virtualization, and even placing key technology developments into open source, notably its ECOMP management and orchestration (MANO) software, now the basis of the ONAP (Open Network Automation Protocol) platform, hosted by the Linux Foundation. All this highlights how the operator of the future could look. It will have a dramatically different cost base, relying heavily on open source and multivendor technologies as well as software rather than proprietary hardware. But that openness means additional resource and work is needed inhouse (or via integrators) to make open source platforms fully optimal for the demanding processes of telecoms…
So the engagement between Sprint and T-Mobile USA is off again, and until the next time they dance around one another, Sprint is focusing on the cablecos. It will be supporting an MVNO-based mobile launch by Altice, even as rumors swirl that its owner, Softbank, will seek an alternative merger plan, with Altice’s rival Charter Communications (whose own MVNO is powered by Verizon). The proposed merger would have created a powerful third player of a similar size to AT&T and Verizon, assuming antitrust authorities could be assuaged, which was considered more likely under the current administration than when Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s chairman, previously went after T-Mobile during the Obama government. Then, he backed away in the face of almost certain…
The failure of many chipmakers to challenge Qualcomm in the smartphone chip market is still having ripple effects on many players today, continually shifting the landscape for mobile semiconductors. Even MediaTek, once seen as a danger to the US giant in its core business, now gets only 20% of its revenues from smartphones, while mobile disappointments have driven companies like Intel and Marvell to seek new strategies and new acquisitions. One of many reasons why Broadcom should want to acquire Qualcomm is to make up for its own failure in the mobile modem/processor market, which remains highly strategic – cellular chips should generate both unit volumes, thanks to the wireless IoT, and a revival in margins, thanks to 5G, over…
Make sure to subscribe to get ATW in your inbox, each Monday. // M&A, Strategies, Alliances // China Telecom has partnered with the Bridge Alliance to offer APAC and MEA M2M and IoT services, using the Alliance’s MNO 34-member footprint. Telus is acquiring Xavient Information Systems, a business process and IT provider, with Telus saying that it plans to use Xavient to power new Cloud, Big Data, and IoT services. Continental is buying Argus Security Systems, reportedly for $400m, adding the software specialist to its automotive OEM offerings, which include Elektrobit. Telstra has acquired MTData, and Australian provider of GPS and telematics fleet management systems, in an IoT move that the MNO hopes will expand its footprint. Dassault Systemes is…
Deutsche Telekom announced two smart home projects recently, joining with fellow operator Orange to work with the Eclipse Foundation on a oneM2M cloud-based API for smart home devices. Speaking to DT about Smart Home as a Service (SHaaS) revealed the stickiness of the offerings, but also a sense of frustration with the slow pace of the market – which has been sluggish in both the service and direct-to-consumer retail sectors. With Orange (which has just joined the foundation), DT will be demonstrating a new showcase that shows how an open standards approach can provide a better consumer and developer ecosystem. Specifically, the Eclipse Foundation is hoping that the demo convinces smart home developers to adopt its Eclipse oneM2M and Eclipse…
The potential ramifications for Apple if it follows through on rumors to scrap Qualcomm components from iPhones and iPads, are that Cook and Co could be left well behind in the race to 5G – leaving the market wide open for Samsung to swoop in. Qualcomm fell out of favor with Apple some time ago, seeing Intel squeeze in alongside the long-term chipset supplier in iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 8 and 8 Plus handsets, but reports emerged this week that Apple has already manufactured prototype devices which are 100% absent of Qualcomm modems, instead opting for modem chips from Intel and Mediatek, according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal. It is, of course, a possibility that Apple did…
Nigerian media group Envivo Communications has selected Cisco to power its new OTT streaming service, nVivo TV, for the African continent, pushing the idea that content produced by Nollywood (the Nigerian film industry) is the fastest growing form of video in the world. We would argue that Bollywood is not yet at saturation point and represents a far larger market, given the booming mobile industry in India. Figures emerged this week showing India has overtaken the US to become the world’s second largest smartphone market behind China, shipping 40 million devices last quarter, according to research from Canalys. However, the reported rise of Nigerian-grown content represents an opportunity to potentially mirror what is currently happening in India on a similar…
The merger of Liberty Global’s UPC and Ziggo in the Netherlands three years ago, is one of the only times that Faultline Online Reporter made a prediction which turned out to be wrong. It was the habit of the European Commission acting consistently over a period of two decades prior that fooled us. It now turns out that in principle Faultline was right, and the deal should never have been allowed to go ahead. An appeal by rival KPN, under intense competitive pressure from the merged entity, has convinced the European Court of Justice to overturn the European Commission’s approval of the merger. So what now? There are two schools of thought – one that it is just a matter…
Executives from the top US TV networks recently met to determine if the time has finally come for the TV advertising industry to move away from the analog-era Nielsen panels and audience-based currencies towards a more modern, multi-screen measurement standard that tracks sales as they correlate to TV ad impressions. The Video Advertising Bureau has floated the idea of using an attribution-based measurement standard for linear TV advertising, giving linear TV networks some of the measurement prowess that’s luring brands and marketers over to digital. According to reports, over 40 executives from TV networks ABC, A&E, AMC, CBS, CW, ESPN, FOX, Discovery, Hallmark, NBCU, Turner and Viacom and others are mulling the VAB’s proposed attribution standard, currently referred to as…
The gravitational pull of Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be detected in almost all major cloud platform or service developments and this is very much the case for the newly forged alliance between Cisco and Google. By that very token It should be good news for broadcasters and operators because it adds a serious counterweight to AWS beyond Microsoft Azure, unless we also count IBM’s and Oracle’s cloud efforts which have gained less traction in the TV sector. The tie up does make sense on various levels, focusing purely on hybrid cloud deployments which is very much where the money is going both inside and outside the broadcasting sector. Whether hybrid is a temporary migration step while the private component…