Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
A survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau out this week simply emphasizes a trend we have all witnessed for a long time – that is the rise in viewing long form video content on portable, battery constrained, devices. Its core message is that advertising on this type of long form mobile video should be tailored to each individual. The IAB says in its survey “Mobile Video Usage: A Global Perspective,” with data from across 24 countries, that 36% of respondents watch videos 5-minutes or longer on their phones every day or more frequently. Naturally this type of viewing is on the rise and the IAB has a truly vested interest in making sure we are aware of it. Top countries…
People just love the simplicity that a straight line gives to their thought processes. Nature abhors straight lines, rather like it abhors a vacuum. But straight lines are what are fuelling forecasts, out this week on Netflix, touted by US technology and finance analysts to reach 96.5 million homes by 2019. We are not saying that this is impossible, just less likely that appears the case right now. There are pros and cons. Firstly the more partners that Netflix attracts, the more customer’s it will sign up. The more customer it signs, the more partners will flock to it – or not. The very idea of our service Faultline comes from the idea that one company is mining a rich…
UK operators may have an additional source of mobile spectrum coming their way, with Qualcomm reportedly looking for a buyer for its L-band spectrum in the country. The chip giant acquired all 40 MHz in the 1452 MHZ-1492 MHz spectrum for $12.8m in 2008. At the time, mobile broadcasting seemed to be the main interest – the company had also acquired unpaired 700 MHz frequencies in the US to support its MediaFLO mobile TV platform. However, that failed and the main interest in these TDD bands, on both sides of the Atlantic, has subsequently been to augment a primary FDD-LTE network using supplemental downlink (SDL). AT&T has trialled that application in the 700 MHz TDD spectrum, which it acquired from…
We had our fingers quietly crossed that ‘Bluetooth Smart: The Future is Smart’ might just provide a solid date for the reveal of Bluetooth’s mesh standard implementation. Alas, it was not to be, but the event in London did let Wireless Watch’s sister service, Rethink IoT (RIoT) root around several intriguing Bluetooth products, and get a quick word in with Errett Kroeter, senior director of brand and developer marketing at the Bluetooth SIG. In his opening remarks to the collected developers and attendees, he declared “Bluetooth will the central part of what makes the IoT a reality.” A bold claim, but one that is certainly a defensible opinion. Bluetooth benefits from its brand recognition – something that the likes of…
Vodafone has belatedly moved into the multiplay market in its home UK market, an essential move if the company is not to be drowned by the wave of consolidation in the country. The mobile operator urgently needs to increase its access to fixed-line and content platforms if it is to stay afloat in the race to offer quad play bundles, the primary source of new revenue and market share in the over-competitive UK market. It will be left disadvantaged if the current proposed UK mergers go ahead. If so, BT will buy the largest MNO, EE, to create the most comprehensive multiplay platform in the country, while Hutchison Whampoa will acquire Telefonica O2, merging it with its own Three UK…
As outgoing CEO John Chambers hosted his last Cisco Live annual conference, it was fitting that the centrepiece of the event was virtualization. The somewhat abrupt timing of Chambers’ retirement indicated that he felt the giant IP company was at an important turning point, which made it the right time for a change of leadership. The move, by carriers and enterprises, from physical to virtual networks and towards software-defined networking (SDN) will define the next few years in Cisco’s core business and decide whether it remains in the dominant position which Chambers, despite recent turmoils, carved out for it. The risks are huge, but Cisco is rising to the challenge robustly, putting together an SDN platform which will increasingly be…
At the Small Cells World Summit in London this week, the Small Cell Forum unveiled the latest instalment of its Release Program, this time focused on virtualization, a trend which will have a deep impact on small cell deployment and may, in time, spur adoption of new HetNet architectures. Release 5.1, like its predecessors, consists of case studies, technical primers, best practice guides, business cases and other resources, designed to set out technical and commercial options and to lower the barriers to deployment for would-be small cell adopters. It is a point update to Release 5, and adds 12 documents, five of them focused on virtualization (other topics include LTE-LAA and 5G). The SCF put virtualization on its agenda a…
Apple’s WWDC announcements were very similar in tone to Google’s I/O, with no radical changes to the operating system, and a focus on expanding the services the OS enables. The company unveiled iOS 9; the Apple Music streaming service – the much anticipated rebranding and reworking of its Beats acquisition; a smart home HomeKit framework; and an open source scheme for its Swift programming language. While Apple Music played directly to the firm’s roots – seeking to revive the glory days of early iTunes and seize the digital music agenda back from Spotify – the Swift announcement showed Apple bowing to the inevitability of the modern software world. This may be another brick removed from Apple’s high garden walls, but…
Spending on LTE infrastructure will peak this year, and already vendors like Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are feeling the pinch as major customers in north America, Japan and elsewhere complete the bulk of their 4G roll-outs. Of course there will be new contracts to win, including continuing spend in China and the prospect of large Indian deployments, as well as steady expansion in Europe, including Russia, and Latin America. However, many carriers in those regions are focusing on modernization or step-by-step LTE migrations, rather than big-bang, big-buck projects like those in north America. This means there will be pressure on the vendors to seek revenue growth elsewhere. Some of this effort will be focused on non-infrastructure businesses such as managed services.…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances ON Semiconductor has joined the Thread Group. Libelium’s open hardware division Cooking Hacks has overhauled its website to provide 70 new tutorials, which the company hopes will be very useful for educational and learning syllabuses. After the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) and Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) completed their merger, the Wireless Power Consortium is still holding out with its Qi standard, ignoring calls from the newly-merged body to join them. Samsung and Telefonica are partnering on a R&D project, to link Samsung devices and Telefonica’s Thinking Things sensor platform. Mojix has acquired TierConnect and its subsidiary CodeRoad, the companies behind ViZix, and IoT platform built to provide software solutions and analytics. Mojix says the buy will…
Project Tango is one of the most important developments within Google’s ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Products) unit because it will power the firm’s next generation mapping platform, promising to help transform the online experience and location-based services. At the I/O developer conference last week, Qualcomm and SK Telecom brought Tango a step closer to its disruptive potential, announcing development platforms and an augmented reality solution. In the great battle to define the next generation web and search experience, maps and location are critical, contributing to the increasingly accurate context awareness on which many new services will rely. Whether Apple can pull itself together in this area will be a topic of hot debate at its WWDC conference next week, but…
We had our fingers quietly crossed that ‘Bluetooth Smart: The Future is Smart’ might just provide a solid date for the reveal of Bluetooth’s mesh standard implementation. Alas, it was not to be, but the event in London did let us root around several intriguing Bluetooth products, and get a quick word in with Errett Kroeter, Senior Director of Brand and Developer Marketing at the Bluetooth SIG. In his opening remarks to the collected developers and attendees, he declared “Bluetooth will the central part of what makes the IoT a reality.” A bold claim, but one that is certainly a defensible opinion. Bluetooth benefits from its brand recognition – something that the likes of ZigBee and Z-Wave still can’t claim…
WhiteCryption is one of the open secrets in the world of OS hardening for software only, content protection systems, and it has this week signed up the company that is almost certainly responsible for more OTT streaming video than any other company in the world – Piksel. Piksel has built the catch up broadcast service for half of Europe’s broadcasters as well as China United Television’s OTT catch up. It has implementations at AT&T, BSkyB, Mediaset in Italy, Sky Deutschland, as well as among enterprise brands like Airbus, Barnes & Noble, and Volkswagen. WhiteCryption offers something that it calls Cryptanium, which as we understand it, allows encryption keys to execute but somehow remain invisible to the underlying operating system. It…
We have established that the set top box is here to stay in some form but that parts of it, especially the UI, application and network PVR storage will be virtualized into the cloud. The extent of this virtualization will vary between operators and platforms, but nowhere will the set top remain in the form we have come to know over the history of pay TV to date. It is clear that the advent of virtualization and cloud delivery coincides with radical changes on the threat landscape. Virtualization itself is driving some of these changes, along with the proliferation of video distribution over the Internet, leading to growth in illicit content redistribution. This week we trace how these changes will…
Once again, Dish is at the center of merger rumors, and this time they sound close to reality. According to The Wall Street Journal, the US pay TV provider is in talks with T-Mobile USA, and those are advanced enough to have worked out details of leadership, though the precise price and cash/stock mix remains unresolved. If the deal materializes, it will hardly be a surprise. The US telecoms market has been in a state of continuous consolidation for years, as the players chase the scale, spectrum and infrastructure to lead in the quad play segment and to build platforms for emerging opportunities like the internet of things (IoT). Dish’s arch-rival, DirecTV, is being acquired by AT&T (which once tried…
In the overcrowded world of wireless charging standards, Qi is the incumbent, but it needs to evolve its platform significantly or be overtaken by its two rivals – newly merged and enjoying a major push by Intel. Three organizations have been vying to provide the universal standard for wire-free charging of smartphones and other mobile devices (there are yet more would-be standards for charging other items, such as electric cars, not to mention new technologies emerging from start-ups in this immature and fluid segment). The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) announced in January that they would merge, and this was formalized this week. They represent the two main technological approaches to wireless charging –…
Project Tango is one of the most important developments within Google’s ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Products) unit because it will power the firm’s next generation mapping platform, promising to help transform the online experience and location-based services. At the I/O developer conference last week, Qualcomm and SK Telecom brought Tango a step closer to its disruptive potential, announcing development platforms and an augmented reality solution. In the great battle to define the next generation web and search experience, maps and location are critical, contributing to the increasingly accurate context awareness on which many new services will rely. Whether Apple can pull itself together in this area will be a topic of hot debate at its WWDC conference next week, but…
Over the past year, the seemingly unrelenting launch of new standards bodies and working groups focused on the IoT has (thankfully) begun to slow down. While still too many to assuage the fear of a fractured industry of competing approaches and protocols, the larger groups show no sign of slowing their growth. This week, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) has announced the addition of 25 new companies to its ranks. In addition, the group has established liaison agreements with both the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and the UPnP (Universal Plug ‘n’ Play) Forum – “to maintain compatibility and ensure common usages are covered.” This is especially important, as the OIC’s main project is the creation of IoTivity, the firmware/software…
Ericsson is clearly weighing its response to the proposed merger of its two major European rivals, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent. After it emerged that CEO Hans Vestberg is to hold a senior management meeting to discuss Ericsson’s own potential M&A options, speculation went into overdrive, with Juniper Networks appearing to be the pundits’ favorite choice. According to Ericsson sources who spoke to Bloomberg, a large acquisition may be considered as one solution to maintaining market leadership in network infrastructure despite the Nokia/ALU combination. However, the Swedish firm has limited choices at this scale, having passed on its own possible bid for ALU last year. Apparently, it was concerned that the disruption of the merger would not be justified by sufficient scale…
Ericsson has rather dramatically slashed its forecast for the number of connected devices which will be in play in 2020, from its famous 50bn – one of the most quoted figures in the history of wireless – to 26bn. The reduction may reflect more sober assumptions as the internet of things (IoT) starts to evolve for real, or the almost inevitable fact that it will not explode as quickly as many forecasters have hoped – partly, according to one IBM executive, because there is no convincing IoT business model yet. Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report represents the first time the Swedish vendor has wavered from its 50bn prediction since it first made it in 2009, but it now claims that was…