Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
A spate of Apple news this week highlights the fact that the iPhone maker, like Google, needs to diversify its business, and become less dependent on the decelerating smartphone market. Reports that Apple would soon launch a home hub to rival Amazon Echo, just as Google did this week (see separate item), were quickly followed by rumors that it was interested in buying Time Warner. In both cases, the moves seem aimed at one competitor above all others – not a traditional mobile major, but Amazon. Apple’s competitive landscape is changing, and it can no longer rely only on the appeal of its hardware and user interface design when one of its biggest threats is Amazon – whose retail roots…
At the Small Cells World Summit (SCWS) in London earlier this month, the star of the show in terms of acronyms was undoubtedly MEC (Mobile Edge Computing). This lies at the heart of many operators’ roadmaps to deliver services more efficiently and enhance user experience. Along with related efforts like the OpenFog consortium (developing specs around Cisco’s concept of fog and mist computing at the edge), it will arguably make the large-scale Internet of Things practicable. And for the small cell industry, it is a significant positive – any architecture which distributes the cloud platform to the network edge will inherently rely on small cells and local gateways, and in many cases MEC will justify a small cell deployment for…
Despite rumors of its death, Project Ara is still alive, even if Google has compromised on its original vision of a fully customizable handsets. At its I/O developer conference, Google confirmed that it intends to release the consumer version of its modular smartphone, Project Ara, next year. And setting out the roadmap for the platform, it argued that Ara has the potential to expand beyond its smartphone roots if the connection protocol and Android implementation prove reliable. This could launch the modular device concept in other consumer electronics markets, boosting Google’s attempt to shift its software and services into new areas, to counter the slowdown in smartphones, and to seize a lead in areas where new form factors and user…
Google’s I/O developer conference has been heavily mobile-centric in recent years, but this year the buzz was in other areas. The latest Android release, N, has been widely previewed already, while the most interesting of the search giant’s mobile initiatives, Project Ara, has seen its ambitions scaled back (see separate item). Instead, the I/O highlights reflected the transition that Google and others are making, away from specifically mobile platforms, to a new generation of web services and user experiences, which span multiple devices and screens, and are driven by virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Diversification – under a unified Google-centric interface – was the theme, even if, in many areas of development such as VR, the smartphone remains the starting…
Hardware Imec has launched a sub-GHz LPWAN radio, with multi-protocol support including 802.15.4, LoRa, Sigfox, and W-MBUS, in the 780-930MHz range. Netclearance has announced the mBeaconSense, a sensor board the size of a penny that houses 5 sensors, runs on a coincell battery, and uses RFID. Software EMC has open-sourced its UniK (Unique) unikernal tool, which it says allows developers to more easily deploy to cloud applications and embedded IoT devices. NEC has provided SoftBank with an IoT and M2M platform called Connexive, which will power SoftBank’s IoT Cloud Service on Connexive (ICC). Telit has announced that USRobotics, a division of Unicom, has put its deviceWISE Asset Gateway software on its new Courier 3G M2M gateway. Networks and Protocols Microchip…
Nordic telco and M2M Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider Tele2 has made a string of announcements this week that individually don’t particularly whet the appetite, but which collectively suggest the formation of a key pivot for the company – perhaps switching its focus on the IoT in the face of increased cellular competition in Eastern Europe and saturated markets in the West. The announcements span an IoT partnership with IBM, the unveiling of plans to launch a LoRa network in Gothenburg, and also a contract win with the 1-Fleet Alliance – a group of European telematics service providers. All it takes is a look back at Tele2’s recent past to dig up some unnerving signs, most notably the corruption allegations at its…
Wading through the 348-page FCC decision document on the Charter TWC BrightHouse merger makes interesting reading and it gives some clues to where CEO Tom Rutledge will take this merger – much of it we have mentioned in the past over these pages. Add to that the promise this week that Charter would use TWC’s pledge from Verizon to work with it on an MVNO, and you start to see the direction that New Charter is heading in. But the first noises to greet the completed deal were those of continued complaint from the deals’ detractors with warnings that Charter Communications’ $66 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks could result in a combined entity which will…
Google announced its answer to Amazon’s surprise success, its digital assistant and home audio speaker, the Echo. The Google Home is a standalone unit, quite a bit smaller than the Echo, which houses the Google Assistant – a rebadged Google Now by the sounds of it, and rival to Amazon’s Alexa. However, the device was very conspicuously designed by the team behind Chromecast, part of a new division that is being led by ex-Motorola Rick Osterloh, who is in charge of uniting Google’s disparate hardware projects. But the big question is not why Google wants to move into the smart home, but why it decided not to use Nest. Logically, Nest should have become the Alphabet brand for the smart…
Cableco companies gathered in Boston last week for the second annual Inter-net and Television Show, the latest incarnation of The Cable Show. NCTA president Mike Powell’s address – and indeed the entire INTX theme – embraced the term disruption this year, a term that cable execs had in previous years shunned completely. The tagline for this year’s show: Turning today’s chaos into tomorrow’s growth. Powell opened the conference by saying the walls of the cable industry are coming down, hinting the impending collision of content and broadband. “The companies that are gathered here are in a transformative period that presents significant challenges as well as enormous opportunities,” he said. “There are many currents of change shaping the contours of this…
Comments made by the great and the good across the US are often a litmus test for whether a proposed ruling gets made or unmade, even one as powerful as the FCC Open Set Top initiative. And if comments rule, then this piece of FCC shenanigans is being viewed as government interference, pure and simple and it won’t pass unchanged. The latest mouths to issue their two pennies worth are the Consumer Watchdog association and AT&T, and for very different reasons this week they say the ruling should not go ahead. The Consumer Watchdog makes the point that while it agrees with FCC reasoning behind the plan, the idea of allowing companies such as Google and Roku to have access…
It’s not been a good few weeks for Nest, and it looks like things are going to get worse, before/if they ever get better. Google has launched the Home, its rival to Amazon’s Echo, with Nest, Alphabet’s smart home subsidiary, entirely absent from proceedings. From a business efficiency standpoint, it seems logical that Alphabet would want to focus its resources and combine its consumer electronics ambitions into one division – thereby uniting its OnHub router and the new Home with Nest’s smart home portfolio. But so far this has not been the case. While this could be attributed to the early day integrations and crease-ironing that Alphabet has to manage as it straightens out operations amidst its internal reorganization, the…
Google used its I/O conference to announce a significant step forward in its automotive ambitions, and a turning of the screw for auto OEMs that might be considering in-house IVI systems based on platforms like BlackBerry’s QNX, or the GENIVI Alliance’s Linux-based version. Android Auto was positioned as an option for automotive OEMs to include in their designs, as a way of quickly adding IVI capabilities to their product lines, without having to go through the lengthy design and implementation processs that an in-house solution would require. The trade-off, of course, was that Google would gain access to all that valuable data that the vehicle and its occupants generate. While the automaker didn’t have to worry too much about the…
Smart Homes and Buildings Google has launched Home, its answer to Amazon’s Echo-Alexa digital assistant, based around a home-speaker unit that funnels voice-queries into Google’s web platform. It looks like Google is throwing Nest under the bus, somewhat. Digital Lumens and Schneider Electric have signed a partnership deal that will bring smart lighting to Schneider customers looking to augment their building automation. KingTing Tech has launched a LoRa-powered smart home line, based on a YoSmart Hub, with three initial devices – thermostat, smart socket, and sprinkler. Wearables Garmin has announced its new vivosmart HR+ activity tracker, with wrist-based heart rate and GPS positional functionality, in a waterproof form factor. Google announced that Android Wear 2.0 is coming in Q3, although…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Imagination Technologies is donating several of its MIPS appliances to the Debian Project, to help advance the open source OS on the 64-bit MIPS architecture that ImgTec licenses. ARM has acquired Apical for $350m, to branch into vision-based IoT technology. Startup IoT platform Afero has announced a Series A round of $20.3m, with support for its Bluetooth module and back-end service mostly coming from Samsung. Orange has joined the board of the LoRa Alliance. Verizon has joined the International City/County Management Association, as an executive partner. Forecasts, Reports, and Blue Sky Thinking Schneider Electric has conducted a survey that has found that there is growing optimism in the IoT, which counters some previous reports that seemed…
Charter Communications’ $66bn acquisition of fellow US cablecos Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks is likely to result in a new wireless operator, harnessing huge numbers of WiFi hotspots and homespots to compete with Comcast’s similar strategy – and potentially to disrupt the mobile carriers. France’s Free Mobile is a clear example of how a wireline triple play provider can use the cost efficiencies of WiFi, backhauled by home and enterprise lines, to reduce the costs of a full quad play and undercut the MNOs. In justifying its approval of the Charter deal, US regulator FCC acknowledged that the combined entity was likely to pursue a wireless plan, by expanding public WiFi and possibly through an MVNO deal.…
Dutch start-up Pycom has secured another investment round for its low energy triple-bearer IoT development boards, LoPy and WiPy – this time from Hong Kong based In-Tech Electronics. WiPy launched last year, and now the LoPy board has been causing quite a stir in the industry by combining three important connectivity options for the Internet of Things – LoRa for low power wide area (LPWA) networks; WiFi for LAN and Bluetooth LE for short range links. WiPy managed to hit its Kickstarter target in just five days, raising over $136,000. The term disruptive has become almost throwaway in the IoT, but products like the LoPy have the potential to cause genuine seismic shifts in the market by combining chipsets. But…
It’s unlikely that many Apple shareholders will have heard of Didi Chuxing, a Chinese ridesharing service, similar to Uber, in which the iPhone giant has invested $1bn. This may be complementary with Apple’s much-discussed but still-hidden automotive project, but it still betrays some confused thinking in the firm’s strategy for the Internet of Things. China, despite its recent slowdown, is seeing a rapid growth in the middle class, with rising disposable incomes, and that sector is one of the quickest adopters of new digital services, including ridesharing. Reports indicate that the Chinese roads are not coping with the swift increase in car ownership, and congestion is rampant. Now there is a battle for those Chinese roads, between Didi Chuxing and…
The UK mobile industry is gripped by speculation about who may bid for Telefonica’s O2 UK arm now that Hutchison’s acquisition has been blocked. Liberty Global, BSkyB or a group of private equity firms (Apax Partners, CVC Capital Partners and KKR, according to local media reports) are said to be in the frame, or Telefonica might decide to float the unit to raise the money it needs to reduce its debt. However, far more important for the future of competition in the UK mobile and multiplay market are the consultations being conducted by regulator Ofcom, which could result in more spectrum being available to support mobile broadband, as well as the new revenue streams which MNOs badly need to counteract…
One of the fiercest current battles in the mobile value chain is over m-payments, and once again it seems that the handset giants are beating other stakeholders hands-down. As Apple Pay and Samsung Pay gain ground, mobile operators have largely given up the fight to dominate this sector via NFC, and now retailers are struggling too. Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a company started by major US retailers including WalMart, has said it will axe 40% of its staff and postpone the launch of its CurrentC m-payments service. CurrentC was announced in the fall of 2014, with WalMart, Target and BestBuy leading the funding of the new firm, MCX. The aim was to seize back control of the growing trend for consumers…
The dense HetNet has been a topic of debate and slideware for so long, but it is now becoming a reality, as operators’ need for affordable capacity and new revenue streams reach the point of urgency, even a matter of survival. One of the absolutely essential enablers of a network of huge numbers of cells, in different spectrum bands and form factors, is automation. Planning, management and optimization of all those access points cannot be done manually, especially when operators want to respond to individual user service requirements or network issues in near-real time to improve quality of experience. The availability of a broad range of SON (self-optimizing network) tools, services and functions will drive new HetNet deployments, just as…