The size of Mobile Market (Amazing Pic)

Click on the photograph to view the larger version. I assume, its self explanatory.

Via: Mr. Mobile Blog

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.

Ringtones to help you in your daily life..

I am sure you must have heard of Music being used to torture terrorists or hardened crminals. Now you can have complete different use of music or ringtones in this case. “Well . . . I can definitely feel a bit of adrenalin,” says Yukari Sendo, savouring the mobile phone ringtone like a fine wine, “but it really doesn’t make me want to do any housework.” She flicks through a menu of alternative tunes and settles on one that offers to improve her skin tone through the power of alpha-waves. Ms Sendo and her friend Ayaka Wakabayashi are among an army of young Japanese drawn to the allure of “therapeutic ringtones” — a genre of melodies that promises to ease a range of day-to-day gripes, from chronic insomnia to a rotten hangover. Japan is no stranger to bizarre phone fads but the popularity of the ringtones is perhaps surprising given the flimsiness of the science behind them. Much of the tones’ credibility rests in the solid reputation of Matsumi Suzuki, the head of the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, an eight-year-old subsidiary of the Japan Acoustic Laboratory.

Mr Suzuki’s adventures in the realm of mood-altering ringtones follow a career at the National Research Institute of Police Science, where he made award-winning advances in the field of voiceprints. One of his proudest achievements was the development of a synthetic mosquito noise that is inaudible to Japan’s over-60s but supposedly discourages teenagers from “congregating in parks at midnight”.

A spokesman for Index, the giant Japanese mobile phone content provider that sells Mr Suzuki’s ringtones, explains that while there is a shortage of actual experimentation, “the number of downloads suggests the ringtones must be working to a certain extent”. Index’s other innovations include an iPhone application that translates your dog’s bark; the “Bowlingual” automatic canine interpreter draws on an database of woofs from dozens of species.

The first therapeutic tone, a high-energy rhythm, tested for The Times by Ms Sendo and Ms Wakabayashi, was supposed to provide a sudden burst of impetus to sluggardly housewives. Yukari and Ayaka had their doubts.

The tone that is said to improve skin mixes a burst of electro-Schubert with woodland noises such as birdsong and streams. “I suppose it might subconsciously make you think of washing your face, and that is good for the skin,” said Ayaka. “At least, it would certainly send you towards the bathroom.”

Ms Sendo and Ms Wakabayashi were marginally more impressed by the sleep-inducing and sleep-preventing tones, suspiciously akin to a lullaby and a dance track. The one with most practical use, they concluded, was the tone that scares away crows — the sinister jungle ravens that terrorise the dawn streets of Tokyo by pecking at bags of rubbish.

Mr Suzuki’s latest ringtone has been timed to coincide with the Japanese hay fever season. The Ohana Sukkiri Melody emits a series of sounds at different frequencies “so that people can choose the sound that resonates most to their sinus and causes pollen lodged there to fall from the nasal cavity”.

Index admitted that it had not conducted any research on how great a pollen deluge would be induced by the ringtone but said that it was “generally understood” that resonance would help hayfever sufferers if they brought the phone close to their noses.

When it came to testing the hangover chaser ringtone, Yukari and Ayaka were relieved from experimental duties. This popular application works through what Index describes as a careful selection of “pulse-melodies” chosen for their astonishing atunement to the body’s “medical rhythms”. Testers concluded that a fried breakfast, though less portable, still had the edge.

How to avoid network choking in the future?

If you are looking for an answer to this question then you wont find an answer to that here. Probably no one really knows a complete answer to this question right now. A simple answer would be to have a mix of the Macro cells, Micro cells and Femtocells with some way to offload some more traffic via WiFi.

Earlier this month Skype announced that its client would be able to work on most Symbian phones. I have used the Skype client on phones from '3' and they work great. Skype is even available on iPhones and they were downloaded 1 million times in the first couple of days. Now a big chunk of operator profits come from long distance calls and calls when abroad. If we all start using our phones with Skype, its going to bite into the operators profits. That means they will have to recover this profit from us by another way.

Skype on phones will be used in always on mode, meaning that the networks will get loaded and get congested. A simple solution is to have Femtocells at home that can offload the traffic on Internet. These background apps do cause a considerable amount of traffic and recently an Operator blamed the apps for its network woes.

Femtocells have been targeted generally at the residential market with developments going on for Business users as well. Another smaller Picocells and Microcells are also easily and cheaply available nowadays. With the Ad-Hoc deployment of all these smaller cells, Self Organising Networks (SON) may have a big role to play.

What happens where there are multiple networks present in the same place via these smaller cells? Can the back-haul not get congested because of these multiple networks which may be lying Idle most of the time? How would these impact other services that we use on our PC's?

These questions can be easily answered if a single Microcell/Picocell/Femtocell was able to work for Multiple Networks. Practically this may not be possible right now because each network has a different Authentication and Security arrangement.

At least we can start thinking and working on these problems while we still have time. When its too late, we may have to come up with workarounds. These workarounds only cause more headache in the longer term.

Picture Source

Qualcomm's FLO on the go...

Qualcomm's FLO TV is a reality in the U. S. of A. This is the advert which was being shown in the Superbowl

Many popular channels like the CNN are available real time. The following is a review from CNET.

Not everyone is enthusiastic, which is understandable considering the high cost.

I remember reading a research couple of years back which said that users are willing to pay a maximum of £5 for any service like the Internet or Mobile TV over their phone. Personally I think that is right and maybe in the next few months we may see the subscription prices dropping.

I would be interested in hearing from people who have experienced the FLO service first hand.

Motorola (Concept) Phone that will help capture memories

A bit old new but new for me.

The idea, known as the Motorola 2033 Concept Series, was based around what mobile phones might look like in the year 2033.

The 2033 concept would allow for the device to capture memories directly from the user’s brain, through a process Motorola calls "organic memory capture". And if that wasn't enough, the 2033 concept would also allow users' to completely augment their eyesight through a process called Second Sight.

More concept phones here.

HSPA+ to reach 168Mbps in Release-10

Just when we thought that we have squeezed every bit out of HSPA, a surprise waiting is the speeds of upto 168Mbps in the downlink. Going back to the 3G Americas report, there is a section in the end that details HSPA+ enhancements for Rel-10:

Rel-8 introduced dual-carrier HSDPA operation in the downlink while Rel-9 similarly introduced dual-carrier HSUPA operation in the uplink and also enhanced the dual-carrier HSDPA operation by combining it with MIMO.

Further enhanced multi-carrier HSDPA operation is being specified for Rel-10, where the base station will be able to schedule HSDPA transmissions over three or four carriers simultaneously to a single user with the carriers are spread over one or two frequency bands. Solutions specified in earlier releases can be reused to a large extent. The difference is that now it is possible to configure a UE with one primary serving cell and up to three secondary serving cells. As in earlier releases, the secondary serving cells can be activated and deactivated dynamically by the base station using so-called “HS-SCCH orders.” With MIMO transmission on all four carriers, the peak rate would be doubled to 168 Mbps compared to Rel-9 and for typical bursty traffic the average user throughput would also experience a substantial increase.

Remember, I posted a blog on data rates calculation? The maximum data rate in Release-8 HSDPA is 42Mbps. With Dual-carrier operation, this could be doubled to 84Mbps. As you can probably guess, with 4 carriers, this will become 168Mbps ;)

For people who are less technically inclined, can check this Ericsson presentation on HSPA+ data rates. For people who may become sleepless without some technical references can check this report from RAN WG#1 meeting#59. If you are not sure what RAN WG#1 is, check quick tutorial on 3GPP here.

Going back to the 3GPP report, section 5.4 lists the details of 4 carriers HSDPA. It would be interesting to see what happens in cases where initially there were 4 carriers but then in a particular spot it changed to 2 carriers, and vice-versa. People who have yet to work on LTE may not have to worry too much as HSPA is being future proofed against the threats of LTE and WiMAX.

Interestingly enough, HSPA+ offers a better and cleaner solution at the moment especially with regards to voice calls and handing over to GSM then LTE or WiMAX.

It wont come as a surprise if the HSPA+ camp are able to pull out some new tricks from their bag just in time for Release-11.

3GPP and Broadband Forum Collaboration on Fixed Mobile Convergence Standards

Fixed/Mobile Convergence (FMC) was the key topic that brought 3GPP and the Broadband Forum together for their first joint workshop, held February 18-19 in San Francisco. The two-day workshop was attended by 120 industry experts, who reviewed over 40 contributions focused primarily on use cases and joint requirements.

The attendees, primarily 3GPP and Broadband Forum members, also included representatives from ETSI TISPAN, ATIS and other standards bodies. The diverse group came together with a shared goal; to start the process of aligning new FMC work in each organization to best address both fixed and wireless management requirements. The two days spent together allowed the group to identify the key issues at hand and the work that needs to be done. With words of appreciation and encouragement from workshop co-chairs, Stephen Hayes of 3GPP and Dave Allan of the Broadband Forum, each organization took away work items that address both near term and long term next steps for both 3GPP and the Broadband Forum.


Through liaison communications and technical contributions into each organization, joint requirements will be shared, and another workshop is envisioned for the future after a scope and gap analysis is performed by the organizations.

Workshop documents and presentations are at available…on line

Presentations & Papers from the Workshop:

• Beyond FMC Interworking UDC for FMC
• Proposed Use Case and Requirement based on Policy Control in FMC
• Proposed Architecture for Policy Control in FMC
• Seamless WLAN offload
• 3GPP EPC Overview
• Broadband Forum Status (Revised version)
• 3GPP-BBF Interworking - Mobility-Roaming-Nomadism (See Workshop docs for various revisions of this document – Last version)
• 3GPP-BBF Interworking - Authentication/Authorization/Accounting
• 3GPP-BBF Interworking Policy & QoS
• High level analysis of Interworking between fixed NW access and 3GPP domain
• ATIS’ Organizational Efforts on FMC
• ATIS Exploratory Group on Convergence (EGC) Report & Recommendations
• 3GPP-BBF Interworking - Use Cases for Public and Enterprise Wireline Interworking
• 3GPP-BBF Interworking - S9 Interface: Requirements and Protocol Selection Criteria
• 3GPP-BBF Interworking - Proposal for PCRF Based BPCF
• Media and Codec policies architecture with converged Next Generation Networks
• Focus on working procedures for the policy control aspect of FMC
• PCRF-BPCF Functional Split and Information Exchange
• View on FMC – Policy Control
• ETSI TISPANPolicy Management Overview
• 3GPP Work Item Description - Support for BBF Accesses Interworking
• WT-203 - Interworking between next Generation Fixed and 3gpp wireless access
• Fixed Mobile Interworking - QoS Control via S9
• Policy Interworking – How to setup QoS for a 3GPP UE in a BBF domain
• Fixed Mobile Interworking - Establishing the s9 Session
• Connectivity and Mobility Considerations
• Authenticaton Conundrum
• TISPAN Policy Management Overview
• 3GPP-BBF Architecture - Mobility aspects
• Change Request to 3GPP Technical Specification 22.278 - Addition of operational requirements for Fixed Mobile Convergence
• Key Workshop findings

Evolution of 3G Networks: The Concept, Architecture and Realisation of Mobile Networks beyond UMTS

This book has a title that can be a bit misleading but the main focus is on LTE network. One of the main problems that I generally notice is the lack of understanding of the bigger picture from the network point of view. This book can help fill that gap. The book starts with Mobile Network Evolution in General and moves to explain the evolved 3GPP network.

The different layers and interfaces have been explained quite well and the concepts have been well illustrated with the diagrams. A lot of books have diagrams that are verbatim copy of the standards of illustrated in a complicated way, these have been avoided in this book. To illustrate my point lets look at this image below that shows example arrangement of bearers with multiple PDN connectivity.

Later on the signalling for different scenarios have been explained in a rather nice way. For example of we look at PDN connectivity again, its rather simply explained.

There are many examples of signalling and once they are complete, there is a chapter looking at different protocols like GTP, PMIP, DIAMATER, SCTP, etc.

The book is a bit pricey though but worth the investment if your focus is on the signalling side of things and if you are required to understand the concepts quite well. You can also have a look at the book n google books as embedded below:

Bluetooth 4.0 promises to be more successful than Bluetooth 3.0

Apparently the Bluetooth 3.0 has a problem that it consumes too much power so even though the specs have been available for quite some time, they haven't been rolled out.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has said that the new version, Bluetooth 4.0, could be launching in the 4th quarter of this year with devices such as headsets, phones and PC’s all getting the technology.

The latest specification allows devices with smaller batteries to utilise Bluetooth. Previous versions of BT required that a device had at lease a AAA or larger capacity battery to function. The new 4.0 specifications allow for smaller devices that require coin-cell batteries to run.

As well as utilising less power, the device also has higher speed data transfer. Version 3.0 was launched last year although it kind of fell flat on it’s face due to the power requirements needed. Version 4.0 fixes those problems.

The new specification will carry the high-speed Wi-Fi feature introduced with Bluetooth 3.0. That allows devices to jump onto Wi-Fi 802.11 networks, where it can transfer data at up to 25Mbits per second.

Hopefully with the lower power requirements and the options to switch to 802.11 networks we should start seeing more devices using the Bluetooth specification.

However, Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin believes the new standard nonetheless holds considerable appeal.

"These protocols are designed to be very efficient because they are delivering small bits of data," Golvin told PC World, adding that current technologies expended far too much energy to transmit data over short distances. “They'd be like pulling out a cannon to kill a mouse,” Golvin said.

Despite being certified nearly a year ago, the first Bluetooth 3.0+HS devices have yet to appear on the market.