Non-Voice Emergency Services (NOVES)

Its been a while we talked about SMS for Emergency purposes and eCall. A new study item in 3GPP has looked at non-voice alternatives for Emergency purposes.

Picture Source: Dailymail

The following is from the recent 4G Americas report entitled: 4G Mobile Broadband Evolution: 3GPP Release-10 and Beyond:

Non-verbal communications such as text messaging and instant messaging via wireless devices has been very successful and continues to expand. Many of the consumers assume that they can utilize these types of non-verbal communications as mechanisms to communicate with emergency services whenever emergency assistance is required. Such mechanisms currently do not exist. The Emergency Services community has a desire to have multimedia emergency services supported with the same general characteristics as emergency voice calls.

Currently, service requirements for emergency calls (with or without the IP Multimedia Core Network) are limited to voice media. The Non-Voice Emergency Services (NOVES) is intended to be an end-to-end citizen to authority communications. NOVES could support the following examples of non-verbal communications to an emergency services network:

1. Text messages from citizen to emergency services

2. Session-based and session-less instant messaging type sessions with emergency services

3. Multimedia (e.g., pictures, video clips) transfer to emergency services either during or after other communications with emergency services.

4. Real-time video session with emergency services

In addition, to support the general public, this capability would facilitate emergency communications to emergency services by individuals with special needs (e.g., hearing impaired citizens).

The objectives of this study include the following questions for NOVES with media other than or in addition to voice:

1. What are the requirements for NOVES?

2. What are the security, reliability, and priority handling requirements for NOVES?

3. How is the appropriate recipient emergency services system (e.g., PSAP) determined?

4. What are the implications due to roaming?

5. Are there any implications to hand over between access networks?

6. Are there any implications due to the subscriber crossing a PSAP boundary during NOVES communications (e.g., subsequent text messages should go to the same PSAP)?

7. Do multiple communication streams (e.g., voice, text, video emergency services) need to be associated together?

8. What types of “call-back” capabilities are required?

9. What are the load impacts of NOVES in the case of a large scale emergency event or malicious use?

NOVES will be applicable to GPRS (GERAN, UTRAN) and to EPS (GERAN, UTRAN, E-UTRAN and non-3GPP). The content may be transmitted between the subscribers and the emergency services which might bring new security issues. Therefore, the security impacts need to be studied.

You can spend your weekend reading the 3GPP Study Item TR 22.871: Study on Non-Voice Emergency Services (Release 11).

A word of caution, the name NOVES may be changed in future as Emergency agencies in Europe have an objection to the name. See here and here.

Smarter Cars of the Future

We all know that cars are getting smarter. Back in Oct., Google unveiled the cars that can drive by themselves. I am sure they will make our life much better and we will be able to catch on the sleep at early morning commute.

Then there were quite a few futuristic cars at the CES 2011 last month. One such video is embedded below.

The following is a summary from the an IEEE article:

Cars have been getting smarter for years, studded with suites of sensors and supporting electronics aimed at keeping them from crashing. But entertainment and convenience have rapidly caught up to safety as the impetus for new in-car electronics development. Because automakers typically spend three years developing and producing new cars—and new gadget candy to go with them—they’ve found themselves constantly playing catch-up with consumer electronics and consumer expectations. So car companies have teamed up with the makers of smartphone software platforms to integrate a spectacular array of apps designed for handsets with cars’ digital dashboards, center consoles, and speaker systems.

Take for instance Ford’s new Focus all-electric vehicle, which made a big splash at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month. It features a software application called MyFord Mobile.

The app, which runs on Ford’s proprietary Sync platform and is compatible with the BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android devices, links the car with the driver’s smartphone and home computer. The software lets the driver listen to a smartphone’s music library and lets passengers watch movies or TV shows. It delivers information such as when electricity prices are at their lowest (to allow for the cheapest battery recharging) and where the nearest charging stations are. And it allows a smartphone to function as a remote control, by means of a connection to cloud-based servers. This remote communication lets the handset keep tabs on the car’s location and the batteries’ state of charge. It will also let the driver start the Focus EV from indoors on a blustery January morning, then step into a car whose seats and steering wheel are already warm. The MyFord Mobile app lets the driver remotely start the car, turn on the heater or air conditioner, or unlock the doors from anywhere in the world (including beneath the bedcovers).

And because the system differentiates one driver’s key from another’s, it presents information on the reconfigurable 4-inch screens on either side of the speedometer in the current driver’s preferred color and style. The state of charge, for example, could be shown as a percentage of the full charge, as an estimate of the remaining miles before recharging, or as a simple bar that gets shorter as the batteries’ energy is consumed. This differentiation also works for utility and entertainment options; it automatically queues up driver A’s list of radio station presets, favorite mobile apps, and preferred display options for the 8-inch center console touch screen. Because MyFord Mobile links the Focus to the driver’s handset, it can also access his or her contact list for hands-free calling and read out e-mails and texts through the car’s speakers.

Ford is trying to position itself as a technological leader in the automotive industry with MyFord Mobile and Sync AppLink Voice Control, which puts the driver in control of all the Sync system’s capabilities via voice commands, but it has stiff competition from the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Continental, and Toyota. Launched by Mercedes-Benz in November 2009, the Mbrace system, designed and engineered by Hughes Telematics of Atlanta, was the first telematics service on the market to give smartphones the power to remotely lock, unlock, or locate a car. It didn’t signal a revolution in the way the average driver interacts with his or her vehicle because when the German luxury vehicle maker offers a new technology or set of features, there is usually a multiyear wait for them to trickle down to cars whose sticker prices aren’t stratospheric.

The second generation of Mbrace debuted last September. It introduced Mercedes-Benz Concierge, which not only opens the car to information from the outside but also makes some car-based information and entertainment options portable. The Mbrace Mobile Application 2.0 gives iPhone and Blackberry users single-phone-number access to recommendations for nearby entertainment and restaurant options, directions, traffic updates, and more, whether the person is in the car or not. The concierge then sends destination information to the smartphone or directly to the in-vehicle navigation system. With the Mbrace system’s latest wrinkle, the Drive2Friend service, the driver can dictate a friend’s mobile number and the app sends a text message reporting that the driver is trying to find the person. The friend has the option of allowing his or her location to be sent back to the car via cellular triangulation.

While Ford was showing off its wares at CES, Continental was also there showcasing the Android-based AutoLinQ system, which lets the driver connect to the car in three ways.

AutoLinQ’s Mobile View lets you to send text messages to your car; the smart vehicle can text you back with information such as its location. In this demo [Flash video], a smartphone user is shown making a remote inquiry about the status of his car. Mobile View reports that the sunroof is open and offers the option to close it or ignore the warning. When he taps Close on the handset’s touch screen, the sunroof’s glass panel glides shut. This type of call-and-response vehicle update also tells whether doors are closed and locked and whether the headlights or interior lights are on. Mobile View doesn’t wait for a query to alert the driver when the alarm is triggered, the battery is depleted, the air bag has been activated, or the internal temperature of the car is too high or low. And like MyFord Mobile, it turns the smartphone into a remote control for locking and unlocking the doors, starting the engine, flashing the lights, and more.

AutoLinQ’s Home View lets you download apps and configure vehicle settings from your home computer. Clickable tabs at the bottom of the Home View screen let the car owner move through screens showing a wealth of data on the car’s status, driver preferences, navigation information, and applications that can be downloaded or fine-tuned. The status menu tells whether the ignition is on and displays the fuel and motor oil levels, the pressure for each of the four tires, and much, much more.

Car View, in AutoLinQ, is for updating features from the driver’s seat. Car View provides the same information as Home View but lets the driver use the center console touch screen to download apps on the fly that provide better control of the car and the ability to remotely manipulate electronic devices back home. An app that sends an alert when a game or match in the driver’s favorite sport is about to appear on television also gives the option to activate a digital video recorder at home, pull up a Web site featuring periodic updates about the game, or listen to play-by-play on the radio.

Continental is also designing unique apps that will enhance vehicle performance. For instance, the Filling Assistant will detect underinflated tires and notify the driver. When the driver goes to inflate the tires, the Filling Assistant will report pressure information to the driver’s smartphone and honk the car’s horn or flash its lights to indicate when a tire has enough air.

Not to be left out, Toyota, the world’s leading automaker, debuted the QNX-based Entune at CES 2011. Entune is an upgradable suite of entertainment, navigation, and information functions. "Consumers have grown accustomed to having the world at their fingertips through their mobile phones," says Jon Bucci, vice president of Toyota’s advanced technology department, who notes that putting them in the car is a natural evolution.

After downloading the Toyota Entune app to a handset and syncing it with the Toyota vehicle, the driver can begin accessing content and services, including Bing for Web navigation and OpenTable, which can make reservations at any one of 15 000 restaurants, with directions sent seamlessly to the navigation system and information appearing on the center console. Entune also lets a driver get customizable real-time traffic updates, sports, weather, stocks, and information on prices at local fueling stations. The system doesn’t forget music, which has almost always been a part of the driving experience. Entune includes Iheartradio, which delivers roughly 750 local radio stations at the touch of a button.

The tide of apps extending handset capabilities to cars will only continue to rise. ABI Research, in Oyster Bay, N.Y., reports that the number of users of automotive apps will increase from 1.4 million in 2010 to more than 28 million by 2015. And according to Global Industry Analysts, the vehicle telematics market is expected to reach US $11.2 billion by 2015.

You can read the complete article here.

In other news, Robots in future will have their own Internet and content like Wikipedia, etc. Does anyone else remember 'The Terminator'?

Making small purchases simpler with Ericsson IPX

Yesterday a colleague made me aware of this Ericsson's IPX SMS based payment system that looks like a competitor to the NFC technology and doesn't involve any additional chip/hardware. Here is a video:

From Ericsson's website:

Ericsson Internet Payment Exchange (IPX) is a leading mobile aggregator, providing delivery and billing services, via SMS, MMS, web and online mobile billing, to more than 2 billion mobile subscribers across 26 countries. Ericsson IPX also brokers location information in selected countries and Ericsson IPX Messaging provides reach to 96% of all mobile subscribers worldwide with SMS. Ericsson IPX customers are companies who offer digital content, mobile voting & directory information and enterprises offering mobile marketing, communities and banking.

Now, we all love SMS and we have to admit that its the simplest of technology and even the most primitive phone nowadays support it but there could be scenarios when this can be a bit of a problem:

1. SMS can sometimes be delayed if a particular cell is overloaded, etc. So how long do we have to stand in front of the machine?

2. If say for 2-3 mins we do not receive an indication that the machine has a cash, do we send another SMS to cancel the transaction?

3. If we have a problem, do we have a support number to call to? How much will that cost?

4. If there is a queue of people and someone else wants to purchase something as well, does the next person has to wait till the person before has received the item?

5. If two people have sent an SMS, how do they know whose cash is in the machine now? Do we start putting a Pin as well ?

I agree, this technology could be really useful if you have run out of cash (even if you have NFC chip) and you need to purchase something small.

The other obvious advantage is that you can target advertisement at regular users who are at a particular place at a particular time to make them buy something. Also you can get statistics like what time people tend to purchase, what do they purchase, where, etc.

Anyway, hard for me to see this take off big time.

10 business models that rocked 2010

Very interesting read!

10 business models that rocked 2010 - by @nickdemey (boardofinnovation.com)

View more presentations from Board of Innovation (BOI).

Dilbert Humour: Face Recognition Apps

Source: http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2010-12-17/

HTML5 for Mobile Devices

I had been recently talking to some developers about the programming and App development on mobiles and quite a few people are of the opinion that HTML5 may help the mobile Apps go to the next level.

The biggest problem HTML5 is supposed to solve is write once run anywhere applicatons. Most of the programs will have the same look and feel if they are run on a PC or mobile and between different devices.

Ofcourse not everything is perfect. There are yet many API's that need to be implemented in for HTML5 like the 3D and Mic API's, etc. Another problem is that a lot of phones are not yet supporting HTML5 and some of them that are supporting, not supporting it completely. This will have to be solved asap.

The following is a recent presentation from Ericsson on HTML5 that gives a good idea on why it is a good idea.

HTML5 impact on application programming

View more presentations from Ericsson Labs.

Another interesting place to look for some HTML5 stuff is Patrick Chanezon's html5 Bookmarks

Phone(y) Detectives!

Too many Apps are being developed that will turn people into ametuer detectives.

A new mobile application called Recognizr can identify a person’s face via your phone camera and deliver not only profile information about that person but also show you their latest status updates.

Swedish computer vision specialists Polar Rose combined forces with interface designers TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) to create the Recognizr as a prototype application for Android phones to show off Polar Rose’s mobile face recognition library. Polar Rose’s software recognizes individuals, while TAT’s interface uses augmented reality to show profile information from sites like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn and the latest status updates from the recognized person.

Recognizr uses FaceLib, a mobile face recognition library from Polar Rose, which is available for Android and iPhone. FaceLib can recognize faces in photo or video but, in common with other facial recognition products, is more accurate for photos. Recognizr also uses Polar Rose’s server-side solution FaceCloud because you can’t store profiles of all potential matches in the phone — although recognizing people who are already in the phone’s address book can be handled locally on the device.

In a presentation at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, David Petrou, a project lead of Google Goggles, described the future of Goggles.

Google Goggles, as Petrou reminded the audience, includes the ability for the mobile Android application to take a picture of the object ad send it back to Google's cloud services. Petrou demonstrated the app with a picture of a beer can with an Android smart phone, which identified the can as a can of Boddington's. A results page showed an icon of the result, with some results from the Web. He also showed a videocassette of the movie Breakin', and Goggles identified it correctly.

The basic design principle of Goggles, Petrou said, was that it has to be universal: queries can't be processed within a single finite context, such as a bottle of wine. Petrou showed off a book that contained an image of a manual transmission linkage: Goggle returned both a link to the book on a shopping site, but also linked to a search on manual transmissions.

Goggles returns a specific result about a third of the time, Petrou said, and the internal CONGAS recognition engine matches images to aa database of about 150,000 landmarks by finding "interest points" within an image. New photos compared to the database can be correctly identified about 50 to 60 percent of the time, with a false positive rate of about one in 10,000, he said.

Goggles' strong suits? Packaged goods, such as movies. But with generic objects, such as an image of a red car, Goggles still struggles.

Goggles can also work with bar codes. A recent addition has been the inclusion of machine translation, which can recognize text and translate it on the fly.

Unfortunately, Goggles has to work as a client application, as Google needs as much of a fine-grained control of the camera as possible, such as the white balance.

Petrou said that Google was considering opening up Goggles to third-party applications, so that a stamp collector could upload an image of a stamp with annotation describing what it is. An open API may also be released, so that a picture could be taken of a foreign currency, and an app could be opened to automatically convert that bill's value into dollars.

Google also plans to fuse the camera with Goggles, so that augmented reality may be the future of visual search, Petrou said. "We'll use it where it's the right user interface," he said.

Goggles does have the capability to recognize faces, although that functionality hasn't been implemented in the app as yet. That might change as more and more people begin uploading data to the Web: if 17 different images of your face appeared on the Web, a picture take of you with Google Goggles would rank "you" in the top ten results about half the time. If there were 50 results, your face would be ranked in the top 5 results abour half the time, he said

Facial Recognition along with Geo-tagging is also available in Picasa web albums. You can already find who is connected to someone in facebook when you search for the people. Once all these information would start working together then you can identify the person where they have been on holidays (based on Geo-tagging of photos) and when they have gone there. Who else in their friends/family had gone with them, etc.

In fact FBI/CIA/MI5 may make their own app to "report potential terrorists" where if you see any suspicious person you can open one of their apps and click the photo of some person and the secret service will quickly check if this person is potentially a problem.

Of course we are not discussing the privacy concerns yet but looks like Scary future to me.

Mobile Payments to be mainstream in 2011

With some much talk (and hype) surrounding NFC and Mobile payments, it looks quite possible that m-payments will enter mainstream in the Western world in the forthcoming year. Though mobile payments have become norm in developing countries like Kenya, Senegal and India, its yet to catch on in UK and the USA.

Here are some interesting facts from MobileBeyond:

• The mobile transaction market is so huge it offers room for multiple players. Yearly worldwide electronic transactions total $7-$10 TRILLION
• Competitors are generally local to each country or region leaving plenty of open territory for mobile payment service and technology companies. Companies that win in their markets will be those that understand customer needs.
• PayPal in the U.S., which has traditionally catered to merchant accounts, most likely will adopt a similar mobile strategy. (Both Obopay and PayPal are service providers–not technology companies like Fundamo in South Africa that provides software solutions for service companies.)
• “The competition is cash”–not the other players in this market space
• In five to ten years, mobile payments will achieve high adoption among consumers in developing and developed countries.
• Brazil, Russia, China and Mexico offer growth opportunities for players that understand these markets
• According to Portio Research, by 2011 mobile commerce payments are estimated to climb to $86.6 billion
• Nielsen predicts 27% of all U.S. payments by 2012 will still be cash

To get an idea, there are already multiple m-payments providers in Kenya. Leaving out the gians like Google and Paypal, there are other local providers like M-pesa, Pay-Zunguka, Pesapal and Zynde.

The following are the developments in UK from Computer weekly:

Some forms of mobile payments already exist. Phone applications like PayPal Mobile support person-to-person (P2P) payments. SMS-based transactions are used for car parking tickets and mobile commerce allows online shopping through mobile phone browsers.

Contactless cards are also in circulation for credit cards, transport tickets and are used in some food stores. The industry is looking next at near-field communication (NFC) mobile handsets. NFC allows 'tap-and-go' style payments using mobile phones at in-store terminals by incorporating contactless card technology into handsets. Alternatively, micro-SD cards with NFC-enabled chips can be inserted into mobile phones.

The Global System for Mobile Association (GSMA) has launched a Pay-Buy-Mobile project to enable consumers to pay for goods and services via their mobile phones. "By storing a consumer's credit or debit card within the SIM card and employing NFC technology, the mobile phone can be passed near a contactless Point Of Sale (POS) terminal to complete transactions," said Nav Bains, GSMA's senior director of mobile money.

GSMA has been collaborating with standardisation bodies; the European Payments Council, EMVCo, which manages card specifications and smartcard infrastructure standards body, Global Platform. The consortium is developing the Trusted Service Manager requirements document and a certification process to accelerate the commercialisation of mobile NFC services. But some experts believe NFC is a long way from a mass market roll-out in the UK.

The biggest breakthrough in the mobile payment market have been in developing countries, providing bank services via mobile phones for people who have traditionally not had bank accounts. Visa Europe recently launched Europe's first micro-SD based mobile payment systems in Turkey. But it is unclear when such a system will be introduced in the UK. says Juniper Research senior analyst, Howard Wilcox.

The number of contactless terminals in the UK is approximately 26,500 and the UK Card Association predict 14 million contactless cards will have been issued with contactless functionality by the end of 2010. "We're not expecting to give a launch date any time soon," continues Swain. "Globally, there's a lot of discussion but the UK is one of the only areas where we already have the infrastructure that would accept contactless mobile payments," he adds.
UK-based mobile banking firm, Monitise, has also recently launched a joint venture with Visa in India to accelerate the delivery of mobile financial services such as banking, bill payments, mass transit ticketing and mobile top-up to Indian customers. More than infrastructure, Monitise group strategy director, Richard Johnson, believes banks and mobile network operators need to work together. "Banks are where most people keep their money. It's about mobilising bank accounts rather than creating new accounts with network operators. Tap-and-go really requires collaboration," he says.

Industry expert consortium, Mobey Forum, hopes to bring banks, mobile network operators, acquirers and merchants together to build the relationships needed to progress the mobile payments industry.

Gerhard Romen, Mobey Forum marketing chair and director of mobile financial services at Nokia, believes the NFC trials have proved the consumer demand and, by 2011, all of Nokia's new smartphones will be NFC-enabled. "Once people work together, it'll provide simplicity for the user" he says. "A phone with NFC can do more than just behave like a card - it has a display, keyboard and internet connection - and becomes more interactive," he adds.

Today we have credit, debit and, perhaps, contactless cards. Tomorrow banks and mobile network operators hope to provide a mobile wallet. The next step will be introducing tap-and-go into the mainstream market and, despite slow progress, industry experts are increasingly certain it will happen "soon".

From eWeek:

Google and Apple are both making moves to ensure smooth financial transactions on their mobile platforms.

Last week news bubbled up that Google and PayPal were brokering a deal to let the search engine use the e-commerce service as a payment option for applications purchased through Google's Android Market.

Apple, meanwhile, hired an expert in near field communication (NFC) technology as its new product manager for mobile commerce and has published a number of NFC-related patents in recent months.

Google's e-commerce infrastructure is poor compared with that of Apple. Users may only purchase applications for their Android smartphones from the Android Market in 13 countries.

By way of comparison, consumers may purchase apps from iPhone's App Store in 90 countries all over the world. PayPal would be a welcome addition to Google Checkout and credit cards as payment options in the Android Market.

Gartner has said the market for mobile apps will be $6.2 billion this year, making it an obvious sector for Google and Apple to attack with gusto.

From San Fansisco Chronicle:

Bay Area businesses like Bling Nation and eBay Inc.'s PayPal division are rolling out products that allow people to hand over money to stores, restaurants, coffee shops or friends with the tap of a mobile device. No credit cards, checks or cash are necessary.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that other major companies, including Apple Inc., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are planning or negotiating to provide similar services.

"What I see is all these distinct initiatives coming together and merging at some point in the not-too-distant future," said Aaron McPherson, practice director at IDC Financial Insights. "All together, they add up to significant change."

Bling Nation, a Palo Alto startup founded in 2007, is among the furthest along in this emerging field, with more than 1,000 retailers nationwide accepting its payment system. The company provides so-called Bling tags, or small stickers, that affix to the back of a mobile phone and transmit data using a wireless standard known as Near Field Communication.

When users tap the tag on a proprietary reader at participating retailers, it pulls money from their PayPal account. For security, users have to enter a personal identification number for purchases over a certain amount, or when transactions occur at an unusual frequency or location.

Merchants pay for or rent the reader and are charged 1.5 percent of the total of every transaction, which is well below the average transaction rate for accepting credit cards. The additional advantage for merchants is that they can analyze customer data in a more fine-grained manner than is permitted through the credit card system. This allows them, for instance, to target sales offers to regular customers or those who haven't been into the shop in a while.

"They enjoy cheaper fees and analytics that can help them issue coupons and make more money," said co-founder Meyer Malka, adding that the advantages are turning businesses into proselytizers on Bling's behalf.

A little more than a month ago, the company began an aggressive push in partnership with PayPal to expand its footprint in downtown Palo Alto. It included giving away thousands of tags preloaded with $20 in credit to customers. There are now more than 50 retailers in the city accepting the payments.

As I mentioned last week, with heavyweights like Nokia, Apple and Google all coming closer to NFC and M-Payments, it should be a winning formula for the end consumers. We will possibly see more use of m-payments in the developed world. Lets not mention about security just yet.

Mobile Developer Economics 2010 and Beyond

A new report "Mobile Developer Economics 2010 and Beyond", offers many new insights into mobile developer mindshare, and analysis into every touch point of the developer journey, from platform selection to monetisation. The research is based on a set of benchmarks and a survey across 400+ developers globally, segmented into 8 major platforms: iOS (iPhone), Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, Java ME, Windows Phone, Flash Lite, and mobile web.

In terms of developer mindshare, our research shows that Symbian and Java ME, which dominated the developer mindshare pool until 2008, have been superceded by the Android and iPhone platforms. Despite Symbian remaining in the pole position in terms of smartphone market penetration, ‘out-shipping’ iPhone 4 to 1 and Android many-times to 1, the signs of dissatisfaction with the way the Symbian platform has evolved have long been evident.

Indeed Android stands out as the top platform according to developer experience, with close to 60 percent of developers having recently developed on Android, assuming an equal number of developers with experience on each of eight major platforms. iOS (iPhone) follows closely as the next most popular platform, outranking both Symbian and Java ME, which until 2008 were in pole position.

The report can be downloaded from here and is embedded below for convenience

Mobile Developer Economics 2010 Report

View more documents from Zahid Ghadialy.

Mobile Apps a fad

It has always been a debatable issue as to how big the mobile Apps market is. Right now it is huge and seems to be growing fast.

Dean Bubley of Disruptive wireless on the other hand thinks of Apps as a fad that will die sooner or later. He re-iterated the point he made back in February that:

a) There is no mobile Internet, just the Internet on mobile. The vast bulk of usage of the Internet on mobile devices mirrors the usage on fixed networks and from PCs. In particular, there is a huge amount of mobilisation (with tweaks, yes) of existing social networks (Facebook), email and content downloads (YouTube). With the exception of mapping, most mobile-specific Internet services are niche and useless, eg Foursquare and Gowalla.

b) I'm still expecting that users will get bored of hundreds of applications, and will have a few well-chosen ones - most of which should have been in the core OS when it left the factory anyway. eg on an iPhone - Facebook, RSS and Skype clients. The "long tail" of apps will be of limited interest to most mid-late adopters apart from the occasional game or advertiser-sponsored thing. I'd expect <$2 of spend on apps per month once high-end smartphones get to, say, 30% penetration, perhaps <$1

Mind you, maybe I'm biased. I haven't bought a mobile application for personal use since a Java game in 2005, and don't have any payment mechanism registered with iTunes.

I tend to agree with him but I think that the Apps threshold will be slightly higher like $5 per month which would be stealthily provided by the operators mainly through offers like "free apps allowance" kinda stuff.

This article reminds me of the dilbert joke (below) that other professionals can also make money around the Apps marketplace:

Say no to texting and yes to Swype

Tapping out a text message could become a thing of the past due to new 'Swype' technology.

Instead of pressing individual letters, mobile users drag their finger from one letter to the other in a fluid, faster motion.

The computer then calculates which word was intended by the combination of the letters touched upon.

The movements do not even have to be precise because the software can work it out.

According to U.S. inventor Cliff Kushler, 'Swype' can increase the speed of even the most nimble texter by up to 30 per cent

He said the technology could have an enormous impact and be used anywhere people have to use a keyboard, such as video games, sat-nav devices and ticket machines.

Mr Kushler has already invented T9 software, or predictive text, which guesses the word people are thinking of as they text, and thinks 'Swype' is the next step.

'We've squeezed the desktop computer, complete with keyboard and mouse, into something that fits in a pocket,' he said.

'The information bandwidth has become very constricted. I thought, if we can find a better way to input that information, it could be something that would really take off.

'The most important thing was that it could accurately figure out which word you wanted to spell.

'It needed to work no matter what.'

Palm pilots sought to liberate mobile users from texting, but they still demanded that you write each letter on to the device with a special plastic pen.

T9 technology went one step further, and now 'Swype' can improve even that. In demonstrations, hurdles like capitals and double letters are overcome by pausing or doing a squiggle, while spacing and punctuation are automatic.

Won Park, director of United States technology sourcing at Samsung said: 'It could become the de facto standard for tablets, next-generation TVs or next-generation remote controls. It has tremendous potential.'

Swype is now being used on seven smartphones in the U.S. across all major mobile phone companies and by the end of the year, Mr Kushler says its software will be on more than 50 models worldwide.

Deals with Apple for the iPhone are some way off, as is the technology's arrival in the UK.

Via: Daily Mail, UK

Dilbert Humour: Apps and Dates dont go together

UMTS/HSPA State Transition Problems to be solved with LTE

The way UMTS/HSPA is designed is that the Mobile (UE) is always in IDLE state. If there is some data that needs to be transferred then the UE moves to CELL_DCH. If the amount of data is very less then the UE could move to CELL_FACH state. The UE can also move to CELL_PCH and URA PCH if required but may not necessarily do so if the operator has not configured those states.

The problem in UMTS/HSPA is that these state transitions take quite some time (in mobile terms) and can slow down the browsing experience. Martin has blogged about the state transition problems because of the keep alive messages used by the Apps. These small data transfers dont let the UE go in the IDLE state. If they do then whole raft of signalling has to occur again for the UE to go to CELL_FACH or CELL_DCH. In another post Martin also pointed out the sluggishness caused by the UE in CELL_FACH state.


Mike Thelander of the Signals Research Group presented similar story in the recently concluded LTE World Summit. It can be seen from the figure above that moving from IDLE to CELL_DCH is 1-3secs whereas FACH to DCH is 500ms.

In case if some Apps are running in the background, they can be using these keep alive messages or background messages which may be very useful on the PC but for the Mobiles, these could cause unnecessary state transitions which means lots of signalling overhead.

The Apps creators have realised this problem and are working with the Phone manufacturers to optimise their messaging. For example in case of some Apps on mobiles the keep alive message has been changed from 20 seconds to 5 mins.

3GPP also realised this problem quite a while back and for this reason in Release-7 two new features were added in HSPA+. One was Continuous Packet Connectivity (CPC) and the other was Enhanced CELL_FACH. In Release-8 for HSPA+, these features were added in UL direction as well. The sole aim of these features were to reduce the time it would take to transit to CELL_DCH. Since CPC increases the cell capacity as well, more users can now be put in CELL_FACH instead of being sent to IDLE.

An interesting thing in case of LTE is that the RRC states have been simplified to just two states as shown here. The states are IDLE and CONNECTED. The intention for LTE is that all the users can be left in the CONNECTED state and so unnecessary signalling and time spent on transitioning can be reduced.

The preliminary results from the trials (as can also be seen from here) that were discussed in the LTE World Summit clearly show that LTE leads to a capacity increase by 4 times (in the same BW) and also allow very low latency. I am sure that enough tests with real life applications like Skype, Fring and Yahoo IM have not been done but I am hopeful of the positive outcome.

Using LTE to boost ARPU

Here is my presentation from the LTE World Summit 2010. The presentation was prepared for discussion during the Breakfast briefing on the 19th May 2010.

Using LTE to boost ARPU

View more presentations from zahidtg.

You can also see the discussion on Linked group here. (Sorry, you may need to register).

Pervasive connectivity means that we are working far more

Picture source: dmb

From the IET Magazine:

All of which led to it being no surprise that research from Nectar Business is headlined 'Workaholic Brits just can't switch off', according to the release. Far from saving us time and bringing quality back to our lives, Nectar - the loyalty card people - have found that we're working on average an extra 10 days a year.

Some of the headline results are alarming for managers wanting to keep a workforce motivated and fresh. They include:

• a fifth of people keep work phones on over weekends;
• 79 per cent of workers haven't met half the people with whom they do business;
• one-third of men turn their work phones off when they leave the office;
• one in 20 people get over 100 emails a day;
• twenty-four per cent of people feel stressed by this constant state of being on call;
• 42 per cent of people say they meet colleagues less regularly due to email dependence;
• 60 per cent - get this - now say they prefer to communicate by mail than face to face.

That's a lot of figures. However, some of the findings were positive - 71 per cent of people found email the best way to keep colleagues informed and 28 per cent thought it a useful tool for delegating. But that still leaves a quarter of respondents stressed.

Complete article here.

GPS to become commonplace and far more accurate

First it was Nokia that started giving away the Satnav software for free. Now Google is offering free Satnav software for Android phones in UK. Its already been available in US for quite some time and the response is generally positive.

According to comScore, the use cellphones for Satellite Navigation is becoming more common in Europe. According to them, in February, 21.1 million consumers in five large European markets -- Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy -- used their cellphones for navigation, 68 percent more than a year ago. This compares to 20.4 million personal navigation devices sold in those markets in 2008 and 2009 in total, according to research firm GfK.

I talked about Satellite based Internet before but today we will focus on satellite based GPS systems.

The GPS system, which was developed way back in 1989 for and by the military has been used by general public since the year 2000. Its has become very common in the last few years.

The GPS we know and love is part of a larger family of systems called Global Navigational Satellite Systems or GNSS. The following are the members of the GNSS; GPS is the USA system, GLONASS is the Russian system, Galileo is the European system and Compass is the Chinese system

The following is from the IET Magazine:

Satellite navigation systems take their location cues from 30 GPS satellites that circle the Earth twice a day transmitting status, date and time, and orbital information. Soon there will be around 100 satellites to lock on to as GPS is joined by global constellations from Europe (Galileo), Russia (GLONASS), and China (Compass).

GPS wasn't built to help us find our way to the shops - it was a Cold War project funded by the US Department of Defense to ensure that nuclear submarines could surface and target their missiles accurately. There are strategic rumblings about the new satellite constellations too, but the current consensus is that civilians have most to gain from more accurate and reliable location and tracking applications. That's if receiver designers can get the power consumption under control.

Russia's GLONASS system used to be famous for its satellites failing faster than they were launched, but since last month it has had 24 functioning satellites in orbit. Meanwhile, Europe's much-delayed Galileo system will have 14 satellites operating by 2014, according to the European Commission, with the full 30 available by 2017. The US GPS system is being modernised to become GPS III by 2013, with additional navigation signals for both civilian and military use. Information about China's Compass system is sketchier - it was going to be a regional system but is now understood to be global.

'All this activity is great news because whatever the application, there will potentially be multiple constellations to get a position fix from, which will help with signal integrity in safety-critical environments such as maritime, aviation or rail, and accuracy for mobile phone users in urban areas,' says Andrew Sage, director of Helios, a consultancy specialising in satellite navigation.

A GPS receiver should be able to 'see' at least four GPS satellites anytime, anywhere on the globe and establish three position coordinates (latitude, longitude, and altitude). But in city streets hemmed in by tall buildings, a receiver is unlikely to be able detect more than two satellites and the signals will often have bounced off structures.

'For the average pedestrian, the position fix can be a long way out and very unpredictable,' says Sage. 'Most users don't see that today because GPS receivers match us to maps and smooth the errors out. But if you are walking around a city and not on a road in a car, multi-path reflections are a problem.'

The more satellites visible from within these 'urban canyons', the easier it is to carry out consistency checks on the received signals. 'Even when you can't isolate the multipath-contaminated signals, the more signals you have, the more your errors average out,' says Dr Paul Groves, lecturer in global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), navigation and location technology at UCL.

Better GNSS integrity would enable new applications, such as road-user charging, enforcing bail conditions and pay-as-you-drive insurance. 'Clearly, if position information might be used as legal evidence, it has to be reliable,' says Groves.

The delayed arrival of Galileo and the resurrection of GLONASS have complicated matters for receiver makers. Galileo was designed to offer the simplest possible upgrade path from GPS to a dual-constellation system. Agreements were made to put the carrier frequencies of the main open services in the same part of the spectrum as GPS, at around 1575MHz, so receivers could share the same radio, analogue components and antenna. Both systems also send their signals using a spread-spectrum code-division multiple-access (CDMA) approach. GLONASS uses a frequency-division multiple-access coding technique (FDMA) and a main open-service carrier frequency of 1602.2MHz.

The complete IET Magazine article can be read here.

There is another interesting article titled 'GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Compass: What GNSS Race? What Competition' here. Interesting analysis.

Video Calling: Boon or Bane?

When 3G was launched, the operators were clueless as to what 3G can do. The only way according to them to sell 3G was to to market 'Video calling'.

I am not sure how many of you have used Video calling, but I love it. Shame that the operators have priced it so ridiculously that I only used it when I had them inclusive in my package. Otherwise paying £0.50 per min seems exorbitant to me.

We have so many other options like Google Chat with Video and Skype Video chat available which is very convenient (and far much cheaper) according to me. Skype client is available on mobiles but still Video is not included. Its just matter of time before Video calling is included part of the VoIP client. All handset manufacturers are scared to include the feature so as to avoid the ire of operators. Maybe we will have to leave it to iPhone again to break this barrier as well.

The following is from Reuters news article:

Research in Motion Ltd says it is far from certain that video will become the "killer app" that defines smartphones, but even so the BlackBerry maker says developing more efficient delivery is necessary to prevent video from choking airwaves.

The popularity of feature-rich smartphones such as the BlackBerry, Apple's iPhone, and Motorola's Droid has surged, but they use as much as 30 times as much bandwidth as regular mobile phones to run the applications, or "apps," that make them so popular.

The surge in traffic triggered by video and other apps has led to more dropped calls and choppy service. As video on smartphones becomes more popular, it is leading to more congestion, and forcing carriers to spend billions to upgrade networks and buy more wireless spectrum.

"I still don't know and I don't think anyone knows if video is a killer app for smartphones," RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said at a conference hosted by a unit of Toronto Dominion Bank on Friday. "I don't particularly think it is."

Lazaridis said that even if video did not become the defining app for smartphones, it is already presenting a big challenge to networks.

Analysts have praised Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM for its relatively bandwidth-light BlackBerrys, which route most emails through the company's own servers. This is a legacy of the company's earlier days when it was seeking a faster, more secure mobile email service.

RIM also sends web browsing, Facebook, Twitter, and data from a wide number of BlackBerry apps through its own servers.

That makes browsing and using apps on a BlackBerry three to eight times as efficient bandwidth-wise as on the devices of RIM's rivals, said Lazaridis.

"What that means for the carrier, though, is after they have committed all those billions of dollars on new network technology and new network spectrum, they can have three BlackBerrys using the same network capacity as one of the other smartphones."

Lazaridis said RIM would invest more in technology that provides efficiencies to carriers, including when it comes to video.

He pointed to RIM's 2006 acquisition of SlipStream, which specializes in data acceleration, compression and network optimization technology.

"They had some amazing technologies for compressing everything from web content, documents, and video. So, you never know, the research that we do is very important, it's always borne fruit and we are hoping that we can continue to ... provide tangible efficiencies to the carriers."

Speech for Mobile to become big industry

Its interesting that its not only Google that experimenting with Voice Recognition and Voice search but a whole lot of other players. Earlier I blogged about Real time Speech Translation and another one was the Voicemail search. Google's search App also allows to search using voice rather than by entering text.

SpeechTek Europe 2010 is a new conference that promises to make everyone aware of the new Speech Technologies and their application in Mobile and other domains.

From EarthTimes:

Produced by the publishers of the industry’s best-read magazine, Speech Technology, SpeechTEK Europe is the sister of the highly successful New York annual event series and aims to capitalise on the wealth of speech innovators based here in Europe.

The conference has been developed by a Steering Committee which comprises some of the industry’s most respected thought leaders. Here they share their insights into the future for speech technologies, how they are developing, and where they will be used.

Loquendo’s Vice President of International Sales, Rosanna Duce, predicts that voice control will be a major growth area in the next five years:

“One important emerging speech technology is undoubtedly the voice control of all kinds of devices, for example, PDAs, mobile phones, DVD players.” She comments, “These technologies are currently being expanded and upgraded to allow all functions to be accessed using voice, thus eliminating the need to use a keyboard. Consumer demand seems to suggest that the option to dictate text messages will be a major source of growth in this area, as will be the reading of incoming messages by a TTS application bundled with the phone/PDA.”

Nava Shaked, CEO of Business Technologies, agrees,

“The combination of voice search engines, internet and mobile is a real opportunity for speech technology growth and influence. This includes the introduction of previously unseen applications for voice user interface and transcription. The combination of voice and video is also promising and will be inevitable in our interaction with multimedia.”

James Larson, the Conference Chair, supports these views,

“Multimodal applications on mobile devices will enable customers to not only speak and listen, but to also read and type and use additional modes in interaction. These apps will be easy to learn, easy to use, and much more natural than current voice-only apps or GUI-only apps. They will always be available, and customers can use them wherever they are, not just at their desktop or in their car.” He concludes, “Multimodal applications on mobile devices will dramatically change how we interact with appliances - TV, radio, environmental control - with the internet, and with other people.”

The SpeechTEK Europe conference programme explores these trends and the implications for the industry as a whole. Real world applications and case studies are a particular feature of the event, so delegates can see for themselves how speech is working in a variety of different environments, how to select and implement the technology, and how to evaluate its performance.

The full SpeechTEK Europe programme is available at: www.speechtek.com/europe2010 along with registration information, details of registration savings, and free entry exhibition tickets.

Mobile Apps market to grow to '$17.5bn by 2012'

A study done for Getjar, the world's second biggest app store, said the market will grow to $17.5bn (£12bn) in the next two years.

The study claimed downloads would climb from 7bn last year to 50bn by 2012 - a 92% year-on-year increase.

It found there had been a gold rush with the number of app stores rising from four before 2008 to 48 today.

The study also suggests Apple's domination of the market could be challenged.

The report titled, 'Sizing up the Global Mobile Apps Market' by Chetan Sharma is available to download here.

Some more interesting stats from the report as follows:

• The overall mobile apps downloads are expected to increase from over 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion by 2012 growing at the rate of 92% CAGR
• The revenue from mobile apps which includes both paid downloads and revenue from advertising and virtual goods is expected to increase from $4.1 billion in 2009 to $17.5 billion by 2012 at the rate of 62% CAGR.
• The overall global subscriptions base is expected to exceed 5 billion by the end of 2010 with over 27% of them being data subscribers
• Non-carrier appstores jumped from a mere 8 to 38 last year
• In 2009, advertising contributed almost 12% to the overall apps revenue.
• The price range of applications in various stores can vary from $0.99 to $999.