Platforms

100 Million Cellular/VoWi-Fi Phones By 2010:ABI Research
Figures from a new study by ABI Research reveal that annual global sales of “dual-mode” mobile phones – clever-clogs handsets that can connect to either a conventional cellular service or a Wi-Fi network – are likely to exceed 100 million during the final year of this decade.
Currently, such dual mode devices are as familiar to the public as the five headed Dongo Worm, with most of the enterprise sector equally clueless.
But according to ABI Research senior analyst Philip Solis, some of the King Dongs of global telecommunications – notably British Telecom and Korea Telecom – plan to roll out dual-mode services as soon as the end of 2005.
“The advantages of dual mode handsets and services, when they arrive, can be summed up in two words: seamless and economical,” he said.
In the wonderful future world of dual mode phones, seamless network switching between networks is promised, although all the groovy stuff is unlikely to appear in the first generation of products.
When the technology is mature, users should be able to ring up a chum and start rabbiting at home, with the phone connecting via the residential Wi-Fi network, in turn connected to a broadband VoIP phone service.
The nattering can continue uninterrupted in the car to work, with the phone automatically switching to a cellular network, and there’d be no need for the marathon chinwag to come to an end upon arrival at work, as the phone could switch to the company’s 802.11 LAN, and VoIP.
Despite all the travelling through different locations, the smartypants handset would sense the available signals and switch automatically from one network mode to another, keeping the user connected at the lowest cost.
With the Digital Lifestyle office currently sporting a desk-hogging, charger-needing collection of mobile phones, DECT phones and Skype phones, we can’t wait for the telecoms convergence revolution to happen.
Elsewhere, Infonetics Research has predicted that VoIP service revenues will jump from 2004’s US$1.3 billion (~€1.01bn~£690m) to US$19.9 billion (~€15.5bn~£10.5bn) in 2009 – a 1,431% jump.
Infonetics directing analyst Kevin Mitchell commented that part of this growth can be attributed to the technology’s newness, noting that with VoIP services representing less than 1% of wireline carrier revenue in North America last year, the market can’t really go anywhere but up.
“Growth is driven by carrier footprint and solution expansion, marketing, and service bundling, leading to more adoption by new business/government/education and residential/SOHO customers and increased usage at more sites,” Mitchell said in a statement. “Our forecast also assumes that revenue growth is due to incremental revenue from add-on VoIP applications, such as conferencing, remote office integration, presence/location-based services, and collaboration.”
Infonetics also expects the number of residential and small office/home office VoIP subscribers to rocket from 1.1 million in the last year to 20.8 million in 2008.
ABI Research
Infonetics Research
10 May, 2005
Palm LifeDrive “Mobile Manager” Appears On Amazon
After months of rumours on the Web, details of palmOne’s new LifeDrive PDA have finally shown up on Amazon.
Engadget.com reported that the listing confirms that the US$499 (~£262 ~€385) device will come with a 4GB Hitachi Microdrive, SD card slot, 320×480 hi-resolution colour display (with portrait and landscape viewing) and offer Bluetooth and 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless connectivity.
The LifeDrive handhelds will be powered by a 416MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and run on the Palm GarnetOS, which includes support for wireless connections such as Bluetooth.
The device will be a little larger than palmOne’s latest high-end model, the Tungsten T5, sizing up at 4.7 inches tall, 2.8 inches wide, and a pocket-threatening 0.8 inches thick. It will weigh 6.8 ounces.
According to sources, the music-playing device will use Pocket Tunes and sync with Real’s Rhapsody music service, suggesting that it could be seen as a turbo-charged challenger to Apple Computer’s US$199 (~£104 ~€153) 4GB iPod Mini.
NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes is able to play MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV files and the unit will also support full screen video and photo playback.
Business users will be catered for with the bundled DocumentsToGo software supporting Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Acrobat files.
The unit also comes with ‘Camera Companion’ software for transferring photos to and from the device, with ‘Drive Mode’ allowing users to plug their handheld into the USB port on a PC and have the microdrive appear as a removable drive.
The LifeDrive comes with USB 2.0, so transferring files onto the microdrive should be a fairly nifty business.
Despite black leather clad doomsayers predicting the death of the PDA, palmOne clearly thinks that a hard drive-based multimedia device able to take advantage of the immense software resources of the palm platform could be a winner.
There’s certainly industry interest elsewhere, with Dell rumoured to be considering a hard drive based handheld.
Although there’s been no official announcement from palmOne, the LifeDrive is expected to launch in the US on 18th May, 2005.
palmOne
Palm LifeDrive on Amazon
Engadget coverage
9 May, 2005
How-To: Spotlight, Power Search With Tiger, Mac OS 10.4
It’s that time again, a new version of OS X has been released! For those that aren’t aware of OS X, it’s Apple’s operating system. As usual, OS 10.4 is named after a cat: 10.2 was named Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and the new 10.4 has been titled Tiger.
OS X has been touted by some as uncrashable, and that is how I’ve found it too: After setting it up, I haven’t once restarted my computer despite having installed over 30 applications since. This stability is what makes Apple have such a following of fans, and would be unheard of on a Windows box.
There’s lots of new goodies in Tiger, but in this article I’ll focus on the addition of a search technology called Spotlight, which makes searching through files instantaneous. It also allows the creation of so-called search folders, with links to every file which matches that folder’s search criteria, which I detail lower down.
The clever bit, is that these search folders are self-updating, meaning that as soon as you start writing a document containing the word “banana”, the search folder that is told to look for this word, will find it and create a shortcut to it along with all the other files that contain the word.
This is the spotlight icon in the menubar

Click it.

And type what it is that you are looking for. In my case, I typed ‘Summer’.

Within about one and a half seconds, the above menu appears. Clicking the top icon (Show All), shows a traditional window of all the results for the search. The second icon, labelled Top Hit, is the file that Mac OS X thinks is the most relevant to the search criteria.
The next section of search results lists folders with the word ‘Summer’ in their names. Pretty self-explanatory really.
Then email messages with the word ‘Summer’ in them are listed. The ability to index pretty much anything and then make it searchable is what’s so special about Spotlight.
The following one has items that Spotlight drew up from the calendar application I use.
Images, self-explanatory too.
PDF Documents are listed in the next section. Not many other search applications can index PDF files, but thanks to the tight integration of PDF with Mac OS X it is easily possible.
The last section contains music with the word ‘Summer’ in. Although not apparent here, Spotlight even searches the tags of MP3 and AAC files for words, meaning that if a song file was called, say, Winter but the artist in the tag of the file said ‘Summer’, it would still show up in the list of results.
Searchable folders, or “Smart” folders as Apple likes to call them, work similarly, but they are more use for things you often need to access and don’t want to keep typing into spotlight to find.
Click on the “file” option in the finder and then click on New Smart Folder.

A window appears.

I typed “Summer” in the top right box as before. This instantly showed all the related files:

Next you just have to click on the red circle, the equivalent of the close window button in Windows. Finder asks you where you want to save the smart folder just created. I told it to just save it to the desktop as “Summer”:

Hit Save and the newly created smart folder appears on the desktop:

Summary
Apple are carrying out a pincher movement. Bit by bit, Apple are both removing reasons for Windows users not to switch to Mac, while adding tempting reasons to convert. This latest offering of OS X, in conjunction with less viruses on a Mac, and access to a powerful collection of digital media software (iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD) should encourage Windows users to want an Apple computer. Let’s not forget that the next significant version of Windows, Longhorn, and its promised security and anti-virus features, are still likely to be more than a year away,
Overall, there are many more new features in Tiger, over 200 according to Apple. Having made the change from Windows myself, my suggestion is to spend some time with a Mac and experience it for yourself. You too might make the change.
For those wanting to buy a brand new Apple Mac, they can be purchased from Amazon (US|UK), and if you are a student or are otherwise involved in education, you can get a juicy education discount from Apple, so there’s really no excuse anymore!
Apple Spotlight
6 May, 2005
Mobile Penetration In Europe To Hit 100% By 2007: Analysis
Cell phone penetration in Western Europe will hit 100% by 2007 as mobile-loving customers continue to scoop up multiple phones and phone cards.
A report by management consultancy Analysys Research revealed that active mobile penetration – which excludes phones that have not been used for about three months – would rise to 98% in 2006 (up from 90% in 2004) and eventually exceed 100% in western Europe.
The consultancy also warned that the market would stagnate in markets where operators shunned the cheaper pay-as-you-go offerings in an attempt to benefit from more lucrative contract deals.
(Contract deals usually involve customers signing up for 12-18 months, thus delivering stabilised customer revenues – or, as they call it in the trade, ARPU – average revenues per user.)
“In countries such as France and Germany, operators have an opportunity to increase penetration by marketing pre-paid offerings, which is often the best way to attract certain segments of the population, but they should not lose sight of profitability,” commented report co-author, Alex Zadvorny.
“Italy, where ARPU has been in line with the Western European market average and registered the slowest decline among the major European countries between 2000 and 2004, is a good example of how the prevalence of pre-paid does not necessarily suppress ARPU,” be continued.
In countries like Italy, Sweden and the UK, growth in penetration has shown no signs of abating, with penetration rising from 93%, 93% and 89%, respectively, in 2003 to 104%, 103% and 101% in 2004.
Although some people might think that the rise is fuelled by drug dealers toting multiple phones for ‘business’, the increase is actually explained by customers buying multiple phones and/or SIM cards.
Zadvorny explained that sales were also boosted by 3G, giving opportunities to “stabilise and potentially even grow voice ARPU by using the efficiency of the technology and offering large bundles of minutes”
“At the same time, in order to take advantage of the mobile data services opportunity, operators need to address factors such as transparency of pricing, standardisation and ease of use of devices, and the implementation of the relevant billing systems,” he added.
Analysys expects mobile service revenue to grow at a healthy 9% per year between 2004 and 2007, with 3G video phones creaking open more wallets with an alluring fare of video, Internet and music services.
Analysys
6 May, 2005
iPod shuffle Scoops Up 58% Of US Flash Player Market
Purring like a cat recumbing in cream, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that Apple’s iPod shuffle has snaffled a 58 per cent share of the flash-based digital media market in the US.
The iPods shuffle’s market share rose from 43% in February to 58% in March, with Oppenheimer positive that the flash-player market share will continue to grow.
He told Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich that Apple was “supply-constrained in March” suggesting that the figures for April will be more sales-tastic.
According to Apple’s own figures, the company now boasts a 90 per cent share of the hard disk-based MP3 player market and 70 per cent of the digital music download market.
Apple’s CFO asserted that “Apple isn’t feeling the competitive heat yet” from other digital media device manufacturers like Creative, Sony, iRiver and others, insisting that Apple “doesn’t appear concerned” about the threat from music-playing mobile phones.
Positively glowing with confidence, Oppenheimer claimed that MP3 capability in handsets will be more complementary than a replacement, with handsets suffering from “a worse user interface and limited battery life,”
Despite the much-publicised non-appearance of the iTunes-capable Motorola handset, Oppenheimer was equally upbeat about working with mobile phone operators.
Milunovich expects Apple to reveal iPods with wireless and video capacity before Christmas, guessing that new Ipods will be able to play short video clips.
Apple Exec: Shuffle Grabs 58% of Flash Player Market; What Cell Phone Threat?
5 May, 2005
Nokia Set To Become World’s Biggest Camera And MP3 Manufacturer
Nokia continues to be the Big Cheese of the worldwide mobile handset market, shipping nearly twice as many phones as its nearest competitor, Motorola.
According to a report by IDC, Nokia shipped 53.8 million handsets in the first quarter of 2005, representing a chunky 30.9% share of the market.
Motorola lagged a fair way behind with 28.7 million shipments (16.5% of the market), followed by fast-rising Samsung, who had 24.5 million shipments and 14.1% of the market.
Nokia anticipates continued success and expects to shift 25 million smartphones in 2005 – twice as many as the 12 million it sold in 2004.
According to data from Canalys, it’s already off to a flying start, shipping almost 5.4 million smartphones in the traditionally slow first quarter, a triple fold increase from last year.
Overall, global shipments of smart mobile devices were up 82% year on year in Q1 2005, with Nokia grabbing half the market, followed by palmOne, RIM (Blackberry) and Fujitsu.
Phenomenal camera phone sales are also predicted by Nokia, which looks to ship 100 million camera phones and 40 million phones offering MP3 playback.
This would make Nokia the biggest camera and MP3 player sellers in the world, toppling Canon and Apple respectively off their thrones.
As we reported last week, Nokia has announced a range of high quality two-megapixel camera phones, making the phones an attractive alternative to a dedicated digital camera.
Similarly, their spanking new N91 phone has both a camera and an MP3 player built in, with a 4 gig hard drive rivalling standalone digital music players like the iPod mini.
The new phone is expected to come with a wallet draining price sting of around $800-$900 (~$422-£475 ~ €623-€700), although telecom carrier deals are expected to bring the price down to around $500 (~£264 ~€390) in the US.
Things are heating up in the handset industry, with the big players trying to out do each other on the feature lists.
Sony are about to release the W800, their first walkman phone, while Samsung is already offering camera phones offering higher resolution images than Nokia.
It’s not all going Nokia’s way though. In the US, Motorola remain the top dogs with a mobile market share of 31.7%, while Samsung overtook Nokia, grabbing 18.2% of the market compared with Nokia’s 14.6%. In fourth place was LG Electronics with a market share of 12.6%, with Kyocera in fifth at 5.2%.
Nokia
Canalys
IDC
3 May, 2005
Firefox Hits 50 Million Downloads
Like a hungry, hyperactive terrier, Firefox continues to take great chunks out of Microsoft’s market share as the Mozilla Foundation announces its 50 millionth download.
To commemorate this grand occasion, the foundation has created 50 limited edition coins, to be dished out to the best contributors to their forums.
An additional mystery prize will be given to the owner of the Web site responsible for the 50 millionth download.
“It’s funny how the counter just blows by 50 million without a care in the world, isn’t it?” Mozilla developer Blake Ross purred on the foundation’s Web site. “But it’s not just a number to us. It’s a validation of half a decade of work, and the beginning of half a decade more.”
Fully released last November, Firefox has delivered a turbo-charged size nine up the backside of the Web browser market which seemed to be heading for stagnant domination by Microsoft’s ubiquitous Internet Explorer.
The adoption of Firefox has been driven by reports of seemingly endless security holes found in Internet Explorer, with some prominent security researchers even recommending against using IE if possible.
Security conscious companies have taken heed of this advice, with TechWeb News reporting that the Firefox browser is used by more than 10 percent of business professionals, adding that the number could “more than double” by the end of the first half of the year.
Victor Janulaitis, chief executive of management consultants Janco, commented: “Since the fourth quarter of 2004, Firefox usage has more than doubled among business professionals. That rate of adoption is expected to continue next quarter, when the open-source browser is expected to reach up to 25 percent of the market.”
The next version of Internet Explorer is expected to include enhanced security and many of Firefox’s popular features (such tabbed browsing), but Microsoft won’t be shipping the IE 7 beta until this summer.
Firefox has also seen several critical security flaws emerging over the past few months, but it is still generally perceived as a ‘safer’ browser.
FireFox Browser Gains Popularity
Firefox Used By 1 Out 10 Business Professionals
Mozilla
3 May, 2005
Sony PSP Review: PlayStation Portable – Not Just Games
We’ve published another piece by Steve, where he covers How-To get your Sony PSP to access the Internet.
Sony have produced a portable games console which on its own merit is going to sell a lot of units. However it has the possibility of becoming a portable media hub that will give even Microsoft a jolt by driving into their Portable Media Center market.
The unit isn’t small, but small enough so it could just about fit inside a large coat pocket. It’s got a fantastic wide screen that is extremely crisp and sharp, 4.3 inches across, supporting 480 x 272 pixels and 16.77 million colours.
The system uses Sony’s 1.8″ UMD optical disk which comes in a protective sheath (like a minidisc). They’re small enough so you could easily carry a few around with you (though don’t eject them unless there’s something solid and accessible beneath you as they have a tendency to fly out and disappear somewhere awkward). There’s also a Memory Stick due (32MB supplied) to allow game saves and other features.
It’s also got WiFi (or to be pedantic IEEE 802.11b which is the 11Mb/s older version) built-in that can be set-up in AdHoc mode allowing game play with other PSPs, or in Infrastructure mode which goes through an access point. Though there doesn’t seem to be any Internet utilities on the device yet (apart from a network update section, which allows the unit to update its system software from Sony i.e. your WiFi connection must connect to the Internet). However it is rumoured that the Opera browser is being ported and there’ll be a firmware update for that, email and calendaring.
The system looks like a USB memory device when attached to a PC (which basically gives access to the Memory Stick) and you can store audio and video on it. Sensibly, Sony support MP3 directly on the PSP, though it will also support ATRACplus encoded music. Interestingly, if someone decides to produce UMD music disks, they only support ATRACplus and linear PCM). Video is H.264/MPEG-4 AVC on the UMD and MPEG-4 SP, AAC on the memory stick.
The CPU runs up to 333MHz and seems to have the grunt when needed.
Multiple languages are supported (including system, video, subtitles, etc) but it seems that game menus are hardcoded by the manufacturer, so if it’s say, a Japanese game, it will have Japanese menus even though the system settings are in English.
Media Center
Once the PSP has real Internet capability it will be a media powerhouse, the screen size is about right for watching movies on the go. You could do this now by converting a current MPEG-2 (DVD) to MPEG-4 and storing it on the memory stick (ignoring all legal ramifications), but in future it’s more than likely you’ll be able to stream movies (or audio) directly to the unit. Sony as a music publisher and movie house, is likely to want to sell its content to a market of portable viewers – it owns both ends of the stick.
Of course, Internet is the key, as stated previously the only utility Sony provide, is to update the firmware of the PSP itself, it’s completely automatic (once WiFi has been configured). The unit goes to Sony’s site, pulls down the new firmware to the memory stick and then loads it into the unit from there.
We’ve published another piece by Steve, where he covers How-To get your Sony PSP to access the Internet.
Look out for a further piece that we’ll be running over the next few weeks on the pros and cons of importing a PSP.
29 April, 2005
Sony RDR-GXD500 Review: DVD Recorder With Freeview
As the number of digital TV-enabled households continues to rise and the analogue switch off looms ever closer, it seems strange that Sony’s RDR-GXD500 is the first DVD recorder to come equipped with a built-in digital TV tuner.
Over 60% of UK households can now receive digital TV, but trying to record the content can involve nightmarish battles with endless cables and component boxes.
Sony’s RDR-GXD500 is a one-stop solution that’s easy to set up and use, with its all-in-one functionality letting users view Freeview digital channels, make digital recordings and play discs all from a single compact unit.
The included ‘learning’ multi-function remote control lets you jettison your TV remote too, leaving one less thing to have to find on a drunken Saturday night.
Setting up the recorder is a breeze: plug it into your telly, turn it on and then let it automatically scan for channels.
The unit’s onscreen interface is simplicity itself, with the eight-day electronic programme guide (EPG) banishing those video timer nightmares forever – this puppy is so simple, even a granny overdosed on Christmas sherry would have no problem setting up a recording of Des and Mel.
Selecting programs to record is as simple as clicking on the programme you wish to record from the EPG and that’s it. Easy!
Things look pretty good under the hood too, with the unit sporting high quality components such as a 12-bit/108Mhz DAC and both digital and analogue tuners, allowing you to record one channel while you watch another.
Conveniently, the RDR-GXD500 offers simultaneous record/playback and chase play (this lets you begin watching a recorded programme before it’s finished) as well as a veritable armoury of advanced editing, archiving and organising functions.
In use, the Sony performed flawlessly. Memories of long hours endlessly fast forwarding and rewinding video tapes looking for a programme, were banished forever thanks to the recorder’s indexing and multi speed search facilities.
The digital reception was crisp and sharp and infinitely superior to the vintage On Digital box lurking downstairs. Images were rock solid, the black is Bible black, and the colours are vibrant and richly balanced.
A range of recording quality modes let you increase recording time at the expense of image quality.
The highest setting (HQ) produced copies that were indistinguishable from the original broadcast, although this brought the recording time down to a just over two hours.
With the lowest quality mode, SLP (super long play) time-rich viewers could squeeze in up to six hours of recording with that old school ‘snow storm’ dodgy video feel.
DVD playback was pretty damn good on the machine, with a stable image output providing very little in the way of ‘smearing’ and digital artifacts.
Overall, the Sony RDR-GXD500 gave a consistently good account of itself in all areas, and as such, this is a DVD recorder I can wholeheartedly recommend.
Highly recommended
Pros: Great all round performance, integrated digital tuner and simple Cons: The baffling lack of progressive scan video capability
Specifications:
Size (WxHxD): 49x9x38cm
Weight: 5.1kg
Recording formats: DVD-R/-RW, DVD+R/+RW
Playback formats: DVD, DVD-R/-RW, DVD+R/+RW, CD, CD-R/-RW, VCD
Video outputs: Component, SCART (RGB), S-Video, composite, RF
Audio outputs: Line out, optical digital, coaxial digital
Street price: Under £400 (~US$762 ~€591)
Sony RDR-GXD500
29 April, 2005
Treo 650 Smartphone: UK PalmOne Launch
PalmOne has formally launched its Treo 650 in the UK – more than six months after jammy Americans got their mitts on the keenly anticipated smartphone.
We’re not quite sure what ‘formally launched’ means, because there’s still no UK telecom networks offering them and you can’t officially buy them anywhere.
There was, however, a man from Orange at the press launch, wildly enthusing about the Treo’s capabilities. When pushed for an actual, real-life release date on the Orange network, the best we could get out of him was “Soon.”
It’s all rather frustrating because the presentation had thoroughly whetted our appetite for the Treo.
The updated version of the hugely successful Treo 600 offers a higher-resolution 320×320, 65,000-colour screen, a removable battery, 312MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor, 32MB of Flash memory (21MB available to the user), Palm OS 5.4 ‘Garnet’, an enhanced VGA digicam and – finally – Bluetooth.
The handset includes useful quad-band GSM/GPRS connectivity for voice and data, with the bundled VersaMail email application supporting a single Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ActiveSync account and multiple IMAP and POP accounts.
Anyone who’s ever battled with the complexities of hooking up email services on a mobile will appreciate the mass of preloaded server settings for local ISPs and other email providers built into the Treo. So long as your ISP is listed, setting up a new account takes a matter of seconds.
One thing noticeable by its absence was WiFi. Although palmOne offers an optional WiFi SDIO card for some of its Tungsten PDAs, it currently doesn’t work with the Treo 650.
I asked François Bornibus, vice president for palmOne EMEA, about this oversight, and was told that “drivers were being written” for the Treo, although he couldn’t give me a definite release date.
He also said that a Treo with a fully integrated WiFi “was on the roadmap”, although he wasn’t mindful of giving me a peek at this map.
Even with WiFi, Treo users will still be missing out on the killer VoIP application, Skype, so I asked if there were any plans to introduce a version for the Palm platform.
With a Gallic shrug, Bornibus suggested that it would be up to Skype themselves.
(PalmOne’s Senior Systems Engineer, John Walker, later told me that the current WiFi SDIO Card doesn’t have VoIP functionality anyway, so Treo users can forget all about joining in with the VoIP revolution for a while.)
Finally, I told Bornibus about the countless rumours of a windows-based Treo (sometimes called the Treo 670) that had been circulating around the Internet and asked him if there was such a device in the pipeline.
With an enigmatic smile, he answered, “Anything is possible” – make what you will of that!
Despite attending an official product launch, I left none the wiser as to when the Treo will actually be available or what other network carriers (apart from Orange) will be offering the phone. Naturally, there wasn’t a peep about pricing plans either.
Despite the somewhat UK shambolic release timetable, reviews across the Atlantic have generally been very enthusiastic, and as soon as we finally get our grubby mitts on a Treo, we’ll be posting up a full review.
Treo 650
28 April, 2005