This is perhaps one of the most exciting areas of IT today, with new products
and technologies being developed left, right and center, new standards emerging
rapidly, and a slew of innovative services being introduced like there's no
tomorrow. It impacts just about every IT user, be it a consumer, enterprise,
service provider, or vendor. The reason for this is the excellent
synchronization between activities in wireless and mobility domains. Both are
leveraging each other's strengths to reach new heights. Mobile penetration in
India has already crossed 350 million users, providing tremendous opportunity
for everyone to introduce innovative applications to leverage this reach. The
latest in this slew of applications is mobile commerce, with services like
Oxygen and ngpay gaining popularity.
Mobile action
The mobile subscribers in India in early 2008 were around 350 million with an
annual growth rate of more than 50%. This figure is huge and will continue to
grow; which has led to investment of global players including Vodafone's single
largest investment in India. As far as the overall growth in mobile industry is
concerned, we have witnessed several innovations. Let's have a look at what's in
store for us in the future.
Platforms
Mobile phone platforms are moving in two directions. One is open source and open
architecture approach and the other being Windows based or proprietary
architectures. This is credited first with the launch of Android based mobile
architecture and then with the release of the phone based on it. Open handset
alliance has made Android code available for download. Now the question is why
open source? The answer is simple. Mobile applications keep changing and
incorporating those changes is critical to sustain in the market. Mobile giant
Nokia is also joining the bandwagon by moving from Symbian to free licensed
model. Blackberry provides push mail facility; now again the same open source
facility is available in much lower price or even for free which can indeed save
cost of enterprise mobile push mailing. The other platform to look for in future
is WM platform. Microsoft is coming up with Windows Mobile 7. This new version
would be packed with advanced gesture recognition (to counter iphone). The other
feature to look for is enhanced browsing as Microsoft is using Internet Explorer
6 rendering engine, this will enable rich web pages having flash and Ajax
content.
Voice SMS |
Many mobile service providers have launched this service in India and many more to follow. There is a huge potential for Voice SMS not only in coming years. Mobile users in India especially in small towns and villages can effectively communicate using this service. The key highlight of this service is commu-nication of emotions via SMS that was difficult with plain text SMS (“I miss u and it hurts”, from the Airtel VoiceSMS Ad.). For instance, if you are an AirTel subscriber, to send VoiceSMS press '*' button and then write mobile number of the recipient (don't prefix 0 even in STD VoiceSMS). Press 'calling' button and record your voice message. Hang up after recording your message. Receiver will receive auto generated call that plays out VoiceSMS, if receiver is not able to pick call he/she gets SMS notification. Recipient need to dial '*0*' to listen to new VoiceSMS and '*1*' for old ones. Users can send VoiceSMS to any mobile user in India. With price at Rs 0.75 per voice message this service is quite economical. |
Bluetooth 2.1 based devices & Bluetooth 3.0
The latest products from mobile companies are coming with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
(enhanced data rate). Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR will obviouly be popular in near
future. There will be many products integrated with this new specification in
future. This new specification will enhance performance of bluetooth devices by
simplifying pairing of devices and making connection more secure than previous
version of Bluetooth. Bluetooth 2.1 uses 'near field communication' a dedicated
short range connectivity that helps in file transfer between devices. The
benefit of NFC is that, no additional setup is required and single touch can
establish data connection. The other major enhancement is power consumption, 2.1
devices will consume less energy. Bluetooth 2.1 devices will be backward
compatible with previous version of Bluetooth specifications.
On 28 th August '08, Intel with support of other industry partners started 'Connected Indian' campaign. The aim of this movement is to connect billion Indians; this is to boost overall growth by sharing thoughts, innovations and ideas via Internet. Intel has announced to deliver atom based internet devices on an affordable price tag of Rs 5,000. For more information visit: www.connectedindians.com |
Next version of Bluetooth (v 3.0) will further enhance connectivity, a speed
of around 480 Mbps can be archived in close proximity. This enhanced speed will
make it possible to stream videos using bluetooth.
Mobile Wan Acceleration
Now a days, more and more users are using their phones not just to make and
receive calls but for more productive needs, such as connecting to the Internet,
doing mobile commerce, connecting to the office network over VPN. But till
today, be it either GSM or CDMA, the speed which we get is not at all
satisfactory, and even the 3G is not going to drastically improve.
The Road Ahead | |
Future of wireless and mobility is driven by new innovative technology. In mobile phone domain, the future is clearly in between open source platforms and Windows mobile with mobile added services gaining popularity. Among the added services to look for is voice SMS that will enhance communication between non-English speaking masses in India. For people in urban areas, mobile as device for paying your monthly bills and shopping is gaining popularity. Future lies in new standards like WiMAX, Bluetooth 2.1 based devices and Bluetooth 3.0, though both are completely different wireless connectivity standards. WiMAX can be of great help in bringing more Indians under broadband cover. Focus is on rural areas where Internet can change lives and cable infrastructure is almost impossible to implement. Bluetooth 2.1 on other hand, can add value to products like mobile phones, music headsets etc. 3G is round the corner which in turn will make mobile video calls possible along with live TV on mobile. Further boost to this domain is given by low power consuming processor technologies, with Atom and its competitors locking horns ultimate winner would be end user. Cost of these processors is low making devices built on them economical. |
So a new need of a specific type of software has emerged in the market and
that is for software based WAN accelerators which can get installed on the phone
and do bandwidth optimization.
The WAN acceleration concept is not new and we had first seen appliances
which could be placed at both the ends of two branches. The setup was
complicated, the investment was huge and it was not at all mobile.
REPTOR is essentially a WAN Acceleration Suite. It includes a REPTOR WAN acceleration appliance -which is essentially a virtual appliance for VMWare, and an Enterprise Manager, again a VMWare appliance to manage a large REPTOR Accelerator deployment with many such appliances and clients. It also has a client which gets installed on client machines from where you can connect to your services through the acceleration appliance. |
Then we saw the software based WAN accelerators which can get installed on
laptops and do the same task of a WAN appliance. And now, we have started seeing
similar software products which can get installed on a mobile phone and can give
you better WAN experience while using common protocols such as SMB, HTTP, VPN,
etc. Replify is a pioneer in this domain.
Openmoko is a project aimed at building open source mobile phones and openmoko Linux is a operating system developed for smart phone by FIC. |
Wireless
The sales of laptops in 2008 were around 700 thousands units with growth of
around 59% over previous year. This market will continue to grow with Internet
based devices which are becoming popular among masses due to low price.
Beyond the Atom
Late 2008 saw sudden burst of products based on Intel's Atom processor, which
has been built for portable devices and designed keeping low power consumption
in mind. This microprocessor is designed for 45 nm CMOS process.
With Intel active in this domain, we can't expect arch-rival AMD to remain
silent. AMD is coming up with x86 Bobcat processor for ultra portable devices,
which is expected to have power consumption of less than 10W.
We already see a war brewing here, because Intel is further enhancing the
processing power of Atom with dual core Atom processors, simplified design and
cost efficiency along with low power consumption. Besides processors, some
standards expected to be in by 2009 inlcude WiMAX and IEEE 802:11n. So, lots of
exciting times ahead.