mobile

Mobile OS buzz for some, deafening silence for others

3 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Firefox hasn’t quite landed yet.

Firefox has sharpened the debate over prospects for HTML5. The open source, connectivity-centric mobile operating system developed by the Mozilla Foundation gained a lot of attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Sceptical attention, mostly.

When the OS landscape is so thoroughly dominated by two superpowers – Apple and Google – it’s risky to bet on a challenger. Several mobile carriers expressed support, but manufacturers lagged behind. Geeksphone, a small Spanish company, had demo units to show at Barcelona, but missed its February ship date for SDKs.… More

Tizen ready to replace Samsung's Bada OS

23 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Doesn’t take long to browse the Bada store.

Bada is Samsung’s in-house operating system for low cost smartphones, but its days might be numbered. Tizen 2.0 has been released to developers, with a consumer version likely to be available on phones in the fall.

This Linux-based, open source operating system is also backed by Samsung, along with other major technology players. And that’s the key difference. The burden is distributed across many companies and individual developers who, for one reason or another, invest their time in developing Tizen source code and writing apps to run on it.… More

AT&T fails to offload traffic to WiFi

22 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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AT&T must’ve hired the same guy who invented premium lifeboat pricing on the Titanic.

AT&T’s public WiFi network is not the offload destination of choice for its smart phone customers, according to usage data from January 2013. Instead, customers prefer to log onto randomly available hotspots where ever they might be – home, work or in a pub.

In the U.S., only 3% of a typical smart phone user’s WiFi traffic goes via a WiFi access point managed by his or her’s primary mobile carrier.… More

WiFi has huge role in mobile capacity management

16 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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There’s a reason Cisco bought Meraki.

Four times as much traffic goes via WiFi as on mobile data connections, when users’ Android smart phones and tablets have the capability to do both. A recent mobile data study by Cisco showed that, worldwide, the average Android owner sent 55.4 MB of data on WiFi connections and only 13.9 MB via mobile data networks on the average day in December 2012.

Cisco’s conclusion is that tablet and smart phone customers are using WiFi as a way of “staying within the limits of their cellular data plans”.… More

Mobile data caps starting to shift costs to heavier users

15 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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The whales don’t stand out as much anymore.

Three years ago, unlimited data plans accounted for 81% of monthly mobile subscriptions worldwide. Now, only 45% are unlimited, according to research conducted by Cisco.

With or without monthly caps, the growth in mobile data traffic is booming, but Cisco’s white papers shows a change in usage patterns corresponding to this business model shift.

Unlimited plans still generate more traffic per user, with an average of 1.3 GB per month versus 922 MB for tiered subscribers.… More

Beefier mobile data networks slim medical costs

11 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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https://www.withings.com/en/press/mediakits
Download an app, upload your blood pressure.

Health care is a major driver of booming mobile data traffic. The growth in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications means we’re nearly in a world with more mobile data accounts than people, and networked medical devices, wearable and otherwise, are a principal reason.

In the same five years that’ll see a billion and a half M2M devices added to global networks, just the number of U.S. patients receiving being monitored remotely will grow to 1.3 million, according to projections just released by IMS Research.… More

Health care driving mobile M2M traffic

10 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Bits keep you fit.

Some time this year, we’ll hit the point where there are more connected devices on mobile networks than there are people on the planet. That doesn’t mean everyone everywhere will have a smartphone. A lot of people have more than one device, of course. And a growing share of those connections don’t involve human beings at all.

According to a report on worldwide mobile data traffic just released by Cisco, 369 million machine-to-machine (M2M) devices accounted for 3% of global traffic last year.… More

Cisco forecasts booming mobile traffic

8 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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WiFi, femtocells supporting mobile data growth.

A third of mobile data traffic isn’t really mobile. It’s offloaded onto WiFi networks and femtocells, most commonly when consumers use their mobile devices at home.

That’s just one of many fascinating findings in Cisco’s latest report on global mobile data traffic. No surprise: it’s growing at a rapid rate, increasing 70% worldwide in 2012. If it weren’t for offloading onto fixed networks, last year’s increase would have been 96%, assuming mobile carriers could have handled the load.… More

Local, state role curtailed for tower upgrades

6 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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No substantial change.

Local and state government agencies have to say yes to any request for “collocation, removal, or replacement of transmission equipment on an existing wireless tower or base station,” so long as it doesn’t involve a substantial change to the existing structure’s dimensions. That’s what last year’s Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act required. Now, the FCC has issued guidance that tries to come up with practical rules to apply it.

Drawing on language from a couple of past rulings, the FCC says that…

  • Requests must be granted.
… More

Blackberry is as good as ever, but no better

30 January 2013 by Steve Blum
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None of this Tomfoolery for Blackberry!

What RIM, excuse me, Blackberry showed this morning was solid technology that’s ahead in some regards and more or less keeping up with the pack in others. The new Blackberry 10 operating system is consistent with what they demonstrated and described last October at MobileCon.

They have a full touchscreen phone and they’re keeping a keyboard model in play. That’s probably a good idea given that their best short term hope is to re-energize their legacy institutional customers.… More