Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
French developer Nemeus has announced the launch of what it says is the first RF module that combines both the LoRa and Sigfox LPWAN software stacks on one chip. The MM002-LS-EU might only ever find a niche market, but it is an interesting chip nonetheless. Founded by engineers from Renesas Mobile around twenty years ago, Nemeus has recently partnered with Bouygues Telecom, working on a French smart city project. Nemeus is also a member of the LoRa Alliance, the organization that is pushing LoRa adoption. Bouygues has announced plans to build out LoRa a national LoRa network in France, and was shortly followed by a similar announcement from Orange. France seems to be leading the way on both LPWAN development…
Hardly a month goes by without a new communications protocol staking its claim for a critical role in the IoT (internet of things). These may be in the wide, local or personal area network, and each one usually, beneath the big vision statements, has quite particular strengths and target use cases. This makes efforts like OneM2M important, as they seek to create cross-platform protocols to allow these many networks to interwork, and to protect early adopters from technology dead ends. This defines an abstraction layer between applications and the various network protocols and was created as a joint effort between a bewildering array of standards bodies and industry alliances. Its idea was to accelerate its development by reusing elements from…
As carriers race towards virtualization, software-defined networking and increasingly complex back office IT platforms, they will increasingly engage with suppliers from the data center world. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and others are already very familiar to them, but now there will be a new powerhouse, if Dell’s record-breaking $67bn takeover of storage supplier EMC goes through. The deal will give Dell an end-to-end play for cloud and telco providers, as well as enterprises, encompassing servers, storage and virtualization, and it will pose a very interesting alternative for MNOs to set against the claims of Ericsson and Huawei, as well as the IT giants. This is at a time when the infrastructure space is ripe for the kind of disruption Dell brought,…
If there’s one thing Dell’s bid for EMC tells us, it’s that the big money is in the data center. Dell played around with mobile devices, but now sees its future at the other end of the technology chain, in hyperscale servers and storage. Many chipmakers feel the same way, and this week saw Qualcomm, the king of mobile device silicon, making its first assault on Intel’s server kingdom. The challenge to Intel in its server heartland has been gathering pace. Early, 32-bit designs from pioneers like the lamented Calxeda had limited impact, but since ARM introduced its 64-bit architecture, companies like Cavium, Applied Micro and EZchip have shown off high performance system-on-chip designs. But Qualcomm has held back, apart…
There is every indication that homes will need a wireline backbone to support WiFi whose shortcomings, even the 11ac version, have become obvious with the increasing use of mobile devices within the home, the coming proliferation 4K capable devices and future bandwidth-hungry applications such as telemedicine and video calls. We have from day one supported the companies developing the G.hn home network technology under the umbrella of the HomeGrid Forum. At that time we first reported on G.hn in 2008, we thought that a better technology was needed for powerline and for telephone wiring, both of which the G.hn crowd promised along with faster networking over coax – although MoCA appeared to be filling that need – and still does.…
It is not too surprising that prior to the merger of Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks getting the go ahead that we anticipate, we were bound to hear some dissenting voices and they started coming in this week led by Dish Networks and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in response to the September 11th call for comments from the FCC. Dish is in an unenviable position and has been trying to position itself vis-à-vis a broadband return path for as long as we can remember. Being a one way satellite network, it is now out on its own – DirecTV becoming a subsidiary of AT&T it now finally has the potential for fiber return paths from…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances The Wireless IoT Forum (WIoTF) is calling on regulators to do more to encourage IoT adoption and development, by dedicating spectrum in the 800-1000MHz band to IoT apps, with a light touch approach to regulation. Such plans will face staunch opposition from spectrum-hungry MNOs. Wipro has joined founding members AirWatch, AT&T, and Samsung at Georgia Tech’s IoT-focused R&D project, the Center for the Development and Application of IoT Technologies (CDAIT). The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) has announced a liaison agreement with the EnOcean Alliance, a group that looks at energy harvesting RF communications technology, and a new collaboration with the HyperCat Consortium, a body and technology that aims to catalog data to make it searchable by autonomous…
The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) and its IoTivity device interoperability protocol is rapidly making up ground on its closest rival AllJoyn, and has this week announced two new partnerships that significantly improve its position in the market. The most prominent is a deal with the HyperCat Consortium, a group of companies that are developing a standard that would do for data what a protocol like IoTivity would do for actual physical things – make it discoverable and therefore accessible to other devices to gain greater insight or functionality. The second deal is with the EnOcean Alliance, where the two organizations have signed a liaison agreement to encourage greater collaboration between members of the OIC and EnOcean – an alliance that…
As the 3GPP pushes towards standardizing the LTE-based equivalents of the LPWAN technology used by a number of smaller companies in the IoT, the window is slowly closing for the likes of Sigfox and LoRa. While the MNOs wait for the 3GPP to set its standard in stone, the LPWAN players have free reign in the market to snap up as many customers as possible before the monolithic weight of the LTE market presence is brought to bear. Of course, many of the LPWAN vendors are involved in the 3GPP, and some of the MNOs are already investigating LPWAN deployments, so this isn’t as adversarial a contest as that first paragraph might make it sound. But since their emergence, the…
Google’s aggressive pursuit of world domination has taken a knock. It turns out the giant search engine has rivals after all, and a Russian one leads the way. An investigation by the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) found that the US powerhouse required manufacturers of Android devices to preinstall Google applications and use its search engine by default if they wanted the devices to have access to the Google Play app store. Subsequently, it has ordered that Google is to change its stance on pre-installed apps on Android devices by November 18, or face fines of up to 15% of sales made from the apps. Russia and China are the two markets where Google has genuine competition – so naturally…
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 is one of the most critical SoC (system-on-chip) solutions the company has launched, and it should start to announce design wins within weeks. On the chip’s heavyweight shoulders is the challenge of maintaining Qualcomm’s performance lead over rivals like MediaTek while adapting to the smartphone price war; and of winning back business from key customers like Samsung while defending existing clients (Apple’s iPhone from Intel, most importantly). Samsung is reported to be testing the 820 for some Galaxy S7 models, despite its rising use of its inhouse processor/modem solutions (it is also supposedly manufacturing some 820 products). If the chip does find its way into a flagship Galaxy device, it would be a very important deal, in…
Recent months have seen European regulators go cold on mobile mergers, especially those which reduce the number of operators in a country, and Sharon White, new CEO of UK regulator Ofcom, reflected that mood when voicing new concerns about the proposed acquisitions of EE by incumbent telco BT, and of O2’s UK arm by Hutchison Three. White told an audience at the London School of Economics that, unlike some markets, the UK was still delivering good returns for four MNOs, with average cashflow margins above 12% despite recent high investments in LTE. “We continue to believe that four operators is a competitive number that has delivered good results for consumers and sustainable returns for companies,” she said. “I am concerned…
Semiconductors will rescue both Sony and Samsung from the decline of their smartphone businesses in the year ahead. The Korean giant has announced preliminary third quarter results which indicate a surprisingly robust turnaround, driven primarily by chips, while Sony is to hive off its semiconductor business into a separate company from next year, to allow it to grow unburdened by need to prop up mobile devices and TVs. Sony’s predicament in smartphones is far worse than that of Samsung, which remains the world’s largest handset vendor even if its market lead, and its profits, are being severely squeezed by the rise of Chinese competition and by slowdown in demand for high end models. But Sony may exit the game altogether…
In the telecoms world, from devices to infrastructure, the chip industry is increasingly consolidating around the two main architectures, Intel x86 and ARM, and that is proving an important driver behind the current wave of mergers and acquisitions in the sector. The planned marriages between Freescale and NXP, Broadcom and Avago, and now Mellanox and EZchip, will result in a very different landscape for makers of network infrastructure, even as Intel strengthens its own position by acquiring Altera. Usage of custom ASIC chips in networks is declining in some areas as cost pressures mount, a trend which has, in the past, opened new doors for products like Broadcom’s Ethernet switch-chips. However, the rise of software-defined infrastructure is shifting the balance…
Google’s aggressive pursuit of world domination has taken a knock. It turns out the giant search engine has rivals after all, and a Russian one leads the way. An investigation by the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) found that the US powerhouse required manufacturers of Android devices to preinstall Google applications and use its search engine by default if they wanted the devices to have access to the Google Play app store. Subsequently, it has ordered that Google is to change its stance on pre-installed apps on Android devices by November 18th, or face fines of up to 15% of sales made from the apps. Russia and China are the two markets where Google has genuine competition – so naturally…
The UK newspapers this week reported Vodafone joining the list of companies calling for the breakup of incumbent telco BT, as a response to regulator Ofcom’s sector consultation on the future of telecommunications. The issue is fixed broadband, and Vodafone adds its weight to Sky and TalkTalk who are also major rivals in delivering broadband in the UK. They all want BT OpenReach, which runs the copper loops in the UK, to be separated from the rest of BT. The truth is this is very unlikely to happen. OpenReach was set up under a compromise deal with Ofcom in 2006, to dis-entangle the way that broadband lines were allocated, from the core residential customer facing parts of BT. OpenReach was…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Deutsche Telekom has added Teraki to its hub:raum project, a sensor data filtering technology that aims to speed up the processing of the 90% of sensor data that it claims is irrelevant. Nest has opened its Weave 6LoWPAN mesh application protocol up to third-party developers – not to be confused with the Google Weave project that is essentially an API framework for cross-platform device integration. Nest’s Weave combines WiFi and the Thread protocol, and Weave has powered the thermostats since launch (although Thread didn’t exist back then). Microsoft and ARM have moved closer together after Microsoft certified the Freescale FRDM-K64F board for use with Azure for Internet of Things. Microsoft has also launched new apps and container…
Microsoft and Google have ended five years of litigation, agreeing to drop about 20 lawsuits in the US and Germany. This brings more than a long-running patents feud to an end – it is also a sign that the licensing models and secretive deals which have governed mobile technology are doomed. The two giants’ mutual need to shape the development of mobile web platforms outweighed their patent spats, and the most important aspect of their settlement is an agreement to cooperate on new, royalty-free standards – notably the proposed alternative to the HEVC video codec – and to help drive new licensing frameworks, especially in Europe. Both objectives are superficially noble but also highly disruptive, and see Google seeking to…
Google’s Nexus launch event was almost Apple-like in the way it presented the new handsets within a far wider range of software and services announcements. Like its iOS rival, Google wants to provide the complete hardware/software platform, though wisely it has abandoned its efforts to own that hardware itself and is relying, instead, on broadening the role of the Nexus family of OEM partners. Huawei has entered that fold, building the new Nexus 6P, while the 5X model comes from LG. Nexus is Google’s most consistent effort to assert control over the Android user experience and impose some kind of quality management. With an open source operating system, this is clearly challenging, and even the Open Handset Alliance, which dictates…
It almost doesn’t matter whether ongoing coexistence tests between WiFi and LTE-Unlicensed, in 5 GHz spectrum, show that the new technology can play nicely with the dominant one. Licence-exempt spectrum is an increasingly strategic resource for cellular operators as well as WiFi-oriented providers like cablecos and WISPs – and even in 5 GHz, the resource is not an unlimited one, so each camp fight hard for its share. Clear political blocs are forming, as highlighted by the creation of Evolve, a coalition to bring together the supporters of LTE in LE bands, in its various forms. The group’s most public objective is to fend off the threat of FCC regulation which would restrict the use of LTE-Unlicensed (an existing standardized…