Kyobo's Mirasol-enabled e-reader

An E-reader launched by South Korea’s largest book retailer, Kyobo, has become the first device featuring a Qualcomm-produced colour Mirasol screen to go on sale. Mirasol display technology, developed by wholly-owned subsidiary Qualcomm MEMS, offers significant reductions in screen power consumption, as well as improved visibility in daylight.

The technology, which is based on the same principles that create the shimmering effect on the wings of butterflies, has been in development for a long time. The firms are claiming that, depending on ambient light conditions, the device will “weeks of reading” on a single charge.

“Kyobo is a recognized content leader focused on bringing unique and innovative experiences to its customers,” said Clarence Chui, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. “Kyobo’s customers will be the first to enjoy the exceptional color e-reader experience and long battery life that only mirasol displays can provide.”

Qualcomm made little fanfare around the first commercial appearance of the new technology, and Ovum analyst Nick Dillon suggested that Mirasol has proven more complicated than Qualcomm initially expected and that it wants to launch it as softly as possible.

“I think it’s clear that the technology has been trickier to develop than Qualcomm first envisaged, given the time it has taken to come to market,” Dillon said. “I think they are using the Kyodo product as a soft launch to test it out and to try and generate some interest form other manufacturers.”

Dillon said that the technology is not yet at the stage where it can offer comparable colour and video performance to the TFT and LED screens that dominate the current mobile device market. But as it improves, Mirasol will likely be deployed in smartphones and tablets, he said. “It should lead to some interesting new products,” he added, “there is definitely room for innovation in this area.”

Qualcomm's Gobi 4000 could be the integrated LTE/3G chipset that Apple is waiting to include in the iPhone 5

Chipmaker Qualcomm has announced the Gobi 4000, its first integrated chipset that supports LTE and various 3G flavours such as HSPA+, dual-carrier HSPA+, CDMA2000, and 1xEV-DO Rev A and B. The chipset package, which consists of the MDM9600 and MDM9200 chips, is the first integrated 3G/LTE chipset available from Qualcomm, which should bring the increasing efficiency and improved packaging that has prevented Apple from introducing LTE into the iPhone 4GS.

Apple uses Qualcomm previous generation chips for the baseband of its current iPhones and the 3G enabled iPads, making it likely that the new chips will provide a straight upgrade path to an LTE capable iPhone 5 and iPad 3.

According to Cristiano Amon, senior vice president of product management for Qualcomm, the Gobi 4000 chipset will offer, “an uncompromised mobile connectivity experience, both in terms of download speeds and flexibility.” The company said that Gobi 4000-based modules are now available from Novatel Wireless and Sierra Wireless.

While there are many LTE enabled handsets on the market, these involve using a separate 3G and LTE chipsets, which results in an poor battery life, a fact recently criticised by Tommy Ljunggren, head of system development at TeliaSonera in an interview with Telecoms.com, who described them as, “basically a dongle and phone that they glue together. They work – just not for long.”

Ljunggren also said that LTE in the iPhone 5 would be was essential if Apple was to maintain its market share. “It will be a bad mistake not to include LTE in the iPhone 5, as otherwise they will really be run over by the others.”

The Californian silicon and IP player saw revenues for the final quarter of its fiscal year up by 39 per cent year on year to $4.12bn, with profits up 22 per cent to $1.06bn. Profit for the full year hit $4.26bn on revenues of $14.96bn, an improvement over the previous year of 31 per cent.

Head honcho Paul Jacobs credited the growth in demand for smartphones as well as the strength of the firm’s legendary patent portfolio for the performance, predicting further growth of up to 27 per cent for the upcoming year. Revenues should hit between $18bn and $19bn, he said.

The firm clearly doesn’t expect any negative impact from the news that Nokia has offered a lifeline to ST-Ericsson, announcing that it’s planning to use the chip player’s NovaThor platform in Windows-based smartphones at some stage in the future. But Ovum analyst Nick Dillon poured cold water on the announcement, pointing out that WP7 doesn’t support dual-core chipsets like the NovaThor, with Microsoft having announced no plans to change this state of affairs.

Nonetheless, Dillon said that in time the deal would prove to be a “huge win” for ST Ericsson, especially if Nokia is looking in time to end its reliance on Qualcomm silicon altogether.

Meanwhile profits were declining at Indian and pan-African operator Bharti Airtel. Profits for fiscal Q2 were down by 38 per cent to $225m, the carrier said, partly due to currency fluctuations and the strength of the US dollar against currencies in the African markets where it operates. Zain, which sold Bharti all of those African properties, has been enjoying slightly more positive times, with a seven per cent increase in profit for the first nine months of 2011, hitting $762.5m.

Perhaps the Zain African portfolio is a bit like the video tape in cult Japanese horror flick The Ring. So long as you can pass the curse to somebody else, you’ll survive.

The same cannot be said for WiMAX, largely because nobody else seems to want to take it on. Israeli player Alvarion, which has carried the WiMAX can for what seems like more than its fair share of the relay, had more bad news this week, with the announcement that Q3 revenues were down year on year to $47m, with losses increasing to $7.5m from $6.1m a year ago.

Alvarion decided to console itself with the acquisition of a company with a vaguely similar name. Fellow Israeli outfit Wavion, develops wifi applications, and became part of the Alvarion stable for $30m in cash.

On the handset side of the fence, Motorola Mobility, which Google recently snapped up for an eye-watering $12.5bn, last week reported a shrinking net loss, but this week revealed plans to lay off around 800 workers, costing around $34m in related costs.

European and Latin American carrier Telefónica is doing some slashing of its own in a bid to keep future costs down. Matthew Key, former head of Telefónica Europe and current head of the newly formed digital unit, said the operator currently offers more than 240 handsets worldwide, of which just 12 are common in every market, but aims to cut that number down to less than 100. The move comes as part of a wider efficiency drive, and aims to allow the operator enhanced freedom to develop new products and services within its digital division.

The Informer recently saw Key talking about a “mindset shift” that would come about as a result of the creation of Telefónica Digital, during which he said: “The biggest factor in this mindset shift is that we have to move into the future and not protect the past. We can’t operate in a walled garden, we need to create the right products for people.”

With one eye on the future Korean vendor Pantech will be launching its Vega handset in South Korea this month, utilising gesture recognition technology provided by Israeli firm eyeSight. The device will enable users to answer incoming calls, activate their MP3 players, play games, and perform other tasks using simple hand gestures and without actually touching the screen.

Meanwhile, Samsung has confirmed that it will be launching a smartphone with a flexible screen in 2012. The firm has been showcasing its flexible Super-AMOLED displays since last year and company spokesman Robert Yi confirmed in an earnings call that products utilising the technology will be on sale next year.

There was more future gazing from Square, the payments startup founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame, which is working on a ‘pay by face’ functionality for its platform. The system knows which store you are in from the location of your phone, delivers your photo to the shopkeeper and allows him to verify you by confirming you are the person in the photo. Transaction complete.

Visa Europe meanwhile, has invested £24.7m in mobile payments platform Monitise, giving the latter a greater European presence through an 8.8 per cent holding in the firm. Visa Europe president and chief executive Peter Ayliffe, will join Monitise’s board of directors, and said that that the growth of mobile phone services and e-commerce, together with the evolution of the mobile handset into the smartphone, present two of the most significant opportunities for the payments technology industry.

In September, Visa Europe announced the launch of Visa Mobile Person-to-Person payments and Visa Alerts, two services designed to help consumers manage their money and make payments using their mobile phones. Monitise was involved in both initiatives.

Rounding up now and something the Informer’s long suspected – 97 per cent of all the traffic travelling through the network of mobile operator 3UK today is data. The carrier said that in the 14 months between June 2010 and September 201, it has seen a 427 per cent increase in data usage for smartphone customers. Phil Sheppard, director of network strategy at 3UK, said that the operator’s focus has primarily been on users’ online experience and that its 3G network was made for the mobile internet.

Perhaps pushing a solution to the “too much data on the network” problem, Nokia has teamed up with wifi network operator Spectrum Interactive and location based media firm Selective Media, to trial a free wifi offering on the streets of London.

The trial project, which runs until the end of 2011, takes advantage of 26 London hot spot locations from Spectrum Interactive’s portfolio of real estate, most of which will be based on payphone boxes. It’s intended to assess both the demand for free wifi access and the browsing behaviour of consumers using the service across the British capital. The hotspots are typically fed by a 20Mbps DSL backhaul link, while individual users will allowed a 1Mbps connection in order to keep bandwidth hogging down.

Usage will be unrestricted across devices, browsers and apps, with users confirming a terms and conditions check box before access is granted. Following a successful trial, Nokia said plans are in place for a large-scale rollout across London from early 2012.

The question remains as to how this initiative is monetised, which is where Chris Bull, founder of Selective Media, comes in, saying that mobile advertising is on the agenda. Presumably the reason for allowing open access to start with would allow Selective to build up an idea of who is using the service and what they’re using it for. The firm would then be able to use its ad network to serve appropriate ads to popular sites.

That’s about the size of it for this week

Take care

The Informer

Qualcomm reports stellar results for 2011

Chipmaker Qualcomm has announced a sharp increase in revenue and profit in its financial results for its final quarter and year ending September 25, 2011.

The firm saw its revenue rise to $4.12bn for the quarter, an increase of 39 per cent year-on-year and up 14 per cent on the previous quarter. Net income for the quarter stood at $1.06bn, a rise of 22 per cent year-on-year and two per cent consecutively.

Overall for the full year, revenues stood at $14.96bn – a 36 per cent increase on FY10, while net income also climbed by 31 per cent to $4.26bn.

Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, stated that the popularity of smartphones, continued adoption of 3G technologies and its patent portfolio drove record revenues, earnings and MSM chipset shipments for the firm.

He added that the firm expects revenue for 2012 to reach between $18bn and $19bn – which would mark an increase of 20 per cent to 27 per cent on 2011 – and would surpass Wall Street expectations.

“The breadth and depth of our chipset roadmap, extensive licensing program and diverse set of global partnerships position us well for strong revenue and earnings growth in fiscal 2012,” he said.

“We are excited about the upcoming commercial launch of our groundbreaking Snapdragon multimode LTE solution and continue to invest in and execute on our strategic priorities to drive profitable growth.”

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Watch Qualcomm discuss video over wifi at Broadband World Forum 2011

When Netflix decided to separate DVD delivery from its video streaming service, consumers rebelled. Many dropped both services and the company lost half its value on Wall Street. Trouble like this is commonplace for cable TV and satellite providers, which, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), both consistently rank low in customer satisfaction surveys.

The ACSI found that for the first two quarters of 2011, “higher fees are significantly dampening customer satisfaction [for cable and satellite TV service], more so than in other industries.” J.D. Powers drew a similar conclusion, finding that customer satisfaction for all TV services fell in 2010.

Price dissatisfaction is only one of the challenges facing TV service providers today.

An even more pressing problem is the fact that consumers are turning to the Internet for more and more rich media. Consumers want instant availability to content on any device, at any time and with the ability to switch from device to device on the fly without interrupting the service. But, the two devices that could potentially manage this device-to-device sharing, the set-top box and wifi gateway, weren’t designed to deliver multiple video streams over wireless connections. This results in a poor user experience.

As a result, consumers are starting to drop traditional cable TV services in favor of on-demand – or pirated content available on the Internet – and a new set of equipment. Consumers, and especially those in the under-30 demographic, simply aren’t satisfied with dated video delivery models.

“Why am I paying $100+ each month for 200+ channels when I only watch HGTV, the Travel Channel and sports?” they ask. “And why can’t I watch the shows I recorded on my DVR on my iPad or Android phone?”

Pay TV Delivery Model Fails to Keep Up with Consumer Preferences

Of course, one of the ways TV service providers respond to customer dissatisfaction is to point to the poor performance of online video. Netflix streams drop and its streaming catalog is growing, but still in the infancy stage. Hulu has limited content and suffers from the same performance issues as Netflix. YouTube is rife with useless and low-quality videos. Illegal BitTorrent videos take forever to download.

Consumers put up with these problems, though, because the price is right – anywhere from free to less than $10 per month. As the price rises, though, say for something like MLB.TV (Major League Baseball), consumers won’t settle for poor performance online any more than they do with cable or satellite TV.

In a pinched economy, the pressure to deliver only the content customers want will become increasingly important. If consumers can get what they want from online streaming and pay-per-view services, while saving money each month, they’ll opt for the flexibility and cost savings en masse. Meanwhile, cable TV and satellite providers may permanently lose their pathway into the home.

High Setup and Support Costs Apply Even More Pressure, Opening the Door to Google or Amazon?

Now, let’s throw yet another wrench into the mix: HDTV. Everyone wants HD streaming, and this demand is even more pronounced among early adopters. Consumers are seeking providers who can deliver HD content to any device, anywhere in the home, and with performance on par with or better than classic cable TV service. If TV service providers don’t think ahead and prepare their offering for this new demand someone else (Google? Amazon? A recovered Netflix?) will come along and steal their business. If past history foretells the future, an offer of a new and more attuned service at a lower price point often results in the demise of the established providers. Trying to ward off competitors using your existing model cannot be a viable strategy in a free market when your customers are crying for change.

The Way Forward: Video over wifi

Today, set-top boxes/DVRs are the hub of video services. An increasing number of savvy consumers dislike these devices, since they know that most new HDTVs have the computing power to make these set-top boxes unnecessary. Meanwhile, DVR functionality tends to be low, with most service providers actually dumbing down the devices by shutting down services and blocking peripheral ports. Thus, in-the-know consumers chafe at paying $15 each month for what is essentially an overpriced, underperforming storage device.

Set-top boxes could conceivably rebound to serve as a hub for video sharing, but most consumers want their content centralized on a device with better sharing capabilities, such as the home gateway. As content shifts away from set-top boxes, wifi gateways will become ever more important.

Unfortunately, today’s installed wifi networks aren’t quite ready for the coming “my content, my way, my device” consumer wave. Today’s gateways don’t yet enable you to start watching a program on your HDTV, before bumping it over to your netbook on the kitchen table and onwards to your iPad as you head to the basement to check on the laundry.

That doesn’t mean this is not technically feasible. It is. New high-capacity, multi-stream capable wifi solutions are starting to hit the market, and some of the major service providers have already expressed the intention to cash in on this new opportunity.

The opportunity for Video over wifi is huge. New, robust wifi solutions can stream content from Internet video services, direct content to be consumed later to appropriate consumer-picked storage depositories, facilitate in-house device-to-device sharing, and even enable carrier-approved P2P sharing to overcome network bottlenecks.

wifi gateways can even help providers lower opex and support costs. New customers will be able to log onto online self-service portals to get setup, and once service is established, carriers will have a better ability to remotely monitor service quality and troubleshoot without sending a service truck.

Is interference from a microwave oven causing an iPad in the kitchen to drop video streams? Onboard diagnostic tools in the wifi gateway will help remote technicians pinpoint the problem at a fraction of the cost of today’s cable or satellite service calls.

Let’s face it: the most important cable into the home these days is the broadband connection. Number two probably isn’t a cable at all, but rather cellular service. Cable and satellite TV services are a distant third. With carriers bundling services anyway, TV service providers would be well served to set their sights on the right cable into the home and the right box (the wifi gateway) to keep up with consumers’ changing behaviors.

Whichever cable TV or satellite provider, or whichever newcomer like Amazon, Google or Apple, figures out how to wirelessly stream multiple video services to multiple devices at once will be able to differentiate itself from competitors in a market where consumers often have trouble seeing any difference from one service provider to the next.

The first TV service provider to meet this challenge won’t have to answer the question of “Why am I paying so much for these services?” Customers of this forward-thinking provider will have a vast range of new services at their fingertips, services better tailored to meet their evolving consumption demands, and services for which they’ll be willing to pay.

Patrick Ribardiere is director of product management with a focus on carrier technologies in the networking business unit at Qualcomm Atheros.

Sources:

1. Netflix debacle: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/09/19/netflix_separates_its_dvd_streaming_businesses/?camp=obnetwork

2. Cable/satellite customer satisfaction survey: http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=246&Itemid=291

3. A good overview of cable TV satisfaction surveys: http://www.fiercecable.com/special-reports/cable-customer-service-struggles-climb

4. JD Power’s survey: Customers of traditional cable providers are particularly dissatisfied with their cost of service. (**NOTE: Last year this study came out on 10/6, so we may want to update this at the last minute.) http://businesscenter.jdpower.com/news/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2010166

Qualcomm’s Patrick Ribardiere, director of product management with a focus on carrier technologies in the networking business unit at Qualcomm Atheros, also has a front line piece up about video over wifi.

Qualcomm disputes India's DoT claims that its application for broadband licences were invalid

Qualcomm has hit back at India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) after being told it stands to lose its $1bn investment and the licences it won in the country’s BWA auction in May 2010.

The company said that it applied for its ISP licence through four locally incorporated entities on August 9th 2010, within three months of winning spectrum, as required by the DoT. The DoT recently argued that Qualcomm had not applied until December last year.

“These entities at that time were fully owned subsidiaries of Qualcomm Incorporated.  In the applications, these four companies explicitly stated the fact that they are Qualcomm Inc nominees,” Qualcomm said in a statement supplied to Telecoms.com.

“DoT vide their letters dated 30th Nov 2010 and 2nd December, 2010 asked these four companies to submit proof of them being Qualcomm’s nominees, to which Qualcomm Inc responded vide letter dated 20th Dec 2010. Thereafter, DoT’s licensing wing has been in communication with these four companies towards license issuance,” the company said.

It added that Quacomm, and its four subsidiaries, have written several letters to DoT and met DoT officials multiple times, requesting to expedite the licensing process.

“We believe we have been in full compliance of all the regulatory requirements. Our four applications are in line with the NIA requirements and the undertaking submitted by us along with our bid application. The undertaking (page 94) clause (c) of the NIA explicitly requires new entrants to apply for an ISP license in the specified service area, in case the applicant is declared successful in that service area.”

The company went on to say that India’s DoT seems to have a different interpretation and, since it has not yet issued Qualcomm the licence, and in the interest of expediting the licensing process, the company has written a letter to DoT on 9th Sept 2011 agreeing to DoT’s interpretation of granting one license instead of four.

“Upon doing so, we would then merge the three other entities into the fourth, which would hold the license,” said Qualcomm.

Qualcomm has invested $1bn in India, one of the largest investments made so far by the firm outside the US, and said that this reiterates its faith and belief in the potential of this market.

“Since we have followed all the stipulated rules in both letter and spirit, we believe that DoT should grant us license immediately, so that we can execute our plans of empowering India and its consumers with broadband connectivity. Any delay in this regard will dampen the spirit and decrease the momentum, and is not in the interest of the stakeholders and consumers.”

A variety of chips will be made available for Microsoft Windows 8

US chipset manufacturer Qualcomm has confirmed full support for Microsoft Windows 8 PCs and smartphones based on its next generation Snapdragon family of processors. The move is of interest as it marks the arrival of an OS designed to span both the PC and mobile device form factors and Qualcomm’s foray into the same area.

Qualcomm’s head of product management, Cristiano Amon, said that the next generation of Snapdragon chips, dubbed the S4, would feature dual and quad core technology and would be available to the market during the first half of 2012.

During a keynote address at the Microsoft Build conference this week, Microsoft demonstrated an early developer preview of Windows 8-based prototype PCs powered by Snapdragon processors.

In addition, Qualcomm’s Gobi mobile internet connectivity offerings will provide Windows 8-based PCs with wireless 3G and 4G, while the company’s Atheros’ WCN3660 combo chip will deliver dual-band wifi, Bluetooth and FM radio connectivity.

But Qualcomm is facing some ARM-based rivalry in the form of Nvidia’s Tegra SoC offering. Nvidia this week launched its own Windows 8 developer program, with a nod to its next-generation, quad-core Tegra processor, code-named Project Kal-El, targeted at the tablet and notebook sector.

The processor manufacturer also announced plans to support Windows 8 on x86 systems with its GeForce, Quadro and Tesla GPUs.

Qualcomm admitted it only bid for the licences to stifle WiMAX

Qualcomm stands to lose over $1bn and its wireless broadband service permits in India, after a spokesperson for the Department of Telecoms (DoT) said that the company’s application for licences was invalid.

A senior official from India’s DoT has said that the company did not apply for and acquire licences within three months of the wireless broadband airwaves (BWA) auction. Although the auctions ended in June 2010, Qualcomm did not apply for permits until December.

The DoT concluded that “this was beyond the validity period for applying and acquiring the relevant licence”, and the official added that Qualcomm was informed about the application rejection over the weekend.

Qualcomm shelled out over $1bn (Rs 4.9bn) for permits in Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala in the June 2010 auction and the cancellation of permits could result in Qualcomm forfeiting the entire fee that it had paid. However, a final decision on the amount will be made after the DoT has evaluated the company’s response.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs admitted last year that the firm’s spectrum purchase was a deliberate bid to block the progress of WiMAX technology in India, in favour of LTE.

“I really believe that [the BWA] spectrum was all headed for WiMAX,” he said at the time. “Our big bet is on LTE and we wanted to make sure that there was a place for LTE in India. We were concerned that if both of those bands had gone to WiMAX it would have helped to reinvigorate that ecosystem.”

Smartphones need to be closer to the $20 mark in emerging markets

Smartphone users in emerging markets will help drive data usage up by more than tenfold by 2015, according to Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs. Around four billion smartphones will be sold in that same timeline and most of those will be in the sub-$300 segment, Jacobs, said.

Speaking at the company’s annual Innovation conference in Istanbul, Jacobs said he expects the number of 3G capable smartphone users to rise from 1.4 billion in 2011 to two billion by 2015. He identified emerging markets as a major source of growth in the smartphone and feature phone user segments, with Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s product manager adding that developments in system on a chip (SoC) techniques – specifically Qualcomm’s Snapdragon offering – would put the price of smartphones down to the $110 mark.

Informa analyst Dario Talmesio said that that the development is remarkable for the mobile industry at large, especially growing markets; but Talmesio pointed out that, in a developing economy, a smartphone pitched at $110 is the same price as one pitched at £3,000 in the UK. “Yes there are wealthy parts of the demographic in emerging markets too, but to really drive growth in that sector you have to be looking at sub-$50, maybe even $20 handsets,” he said.

And if Qualcomm’s expectations about data growth come through, it won’t be 4G technologies carrying the weight of the traffic. “HSPA+ remains the technology of choice,” said Jacobs, “and developments in dual carrier (DC) are very strong.”

According to Jacobs, it is these efficiencies in multi carrier HSPA developments that will keep the 3G technology installed as the industry leader for some time to come, although LTE will still have its place for high data density deployments in urban areas.