A Standard(s) CTIA

Monday March 28, 2011 – Stewart Wolpin

After an event such as the just concluded CTIA in Orlando, I am invariably asked, "So, whaddya see?" meaning "what cool gadgets did you see that I may want to buy or at least drool longingly over?"

And, yes, this CTIA show produced some cool gadgets – 3D phones from Sprint/HTC and AT&T/LG, for instance. I stumbled across some other interesting gadgets and apps.

And of course, the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile mating was a prime topic of useless speculative conversation, the very definition of much ado about nothing – at least until the regulators get their politically-motivated mitts into it.

These varying devices, apps and deals were, to me, not the most drool-worthy things I "saw" at CTIA. What impressed me are a half dozen emerging standards, each of which could radically alter our lives and behaviors and the industry more than any individual gadget.

I won't be able to delve too deeply into any of these, but I've supplied links to each of the SIGs.

• Femtocell: Femtocell is a cable modem-sized device (and getting smaller all the time) that plugs into a home or office router to connect it to a carrier, to create a personal cell tower radiating high-speed voice and data spectrum over around 5,000 square feet. Not only do consumers get bullet-proof no-call-dropping reception, but it removes heavy users from the increasingly burdened networks, making connections easier for everyone else. Carriers are beginning to identify high-volume users and making femtocell deals with them to ease network congestion. Femtocell is an open standard overseen by the Femtocell Forum, so anyone can play.

• mHealth: An entire section of the show floor was dedicated to this topic, which could have far reaching consequences in not only how we live our lives – and if we can live our lives – but on government policy, national economics and the creation of new infrastructure and industries. There isn't one mHealth "standard" per se (okay, so I'm cheating a bit), but an ecosystem being slowly and deliberately built with 4G networks and healthcare system interfaces key pieces. The best place to follow this emerging business area is the mHealth Alliance.

• MHL: That's Mobile High-Definition Link, which combines an HDMI connection with mobile device charging. In other words, a tablet or smart phone can be connected to an HDTV via an MHL HDMI or microUSB-to-HDMI cable to stream full 1080p video/7.1 surround sound and charge the mobile device at the same time. Both the mobile and the HDTV have to include the MHL chip, but a microUSB male/HDMI female adapter will be available. The Samsung Galaxy S II phone, Sprint HTC EVO 3D phone, and HTC View 7-inch tablet are the first mobile devices to be MHL'ed and the MHL Consortium, which includes HDMI licensor Silicon Image, hopes many more will follow, along with cable makers.

• NFC: Morphing a cellphone into a wallet has been a long-gestating objective, but most of the pieces have finally reached critical mass and maturity. All that seems to be missing is the "no, you go first" impetus from someone to get the NFC snowball rolling. The ecosystem completion challenges are similar to the drive to create digital TV standards – a lot of conflicting and competing entities including cellphone makers, operating system programmers, banks and other financial institutions, credit card issuers, app developers, chip makers, pay terminal makers and especially carriers at loggerheads over who controls what pieces and who pays for what. But everyone seems to think NFC's potential will push someone forward to open up the mobile wallet Cumberland Gap this year – perhaps Apple, the one company with the juice and control over all its phone pieces, with the iPhone 5, will play NFC's Daniel Boone. Follow the trailblazing action at the NFC Forum.

• Qi/WiPower Wireless Charging: Believe it or not, there's a wireless charging format war underway. On one side is Powermat, the leading wireless charging system, along with Qualcomm and Duracell, with a standard called WiPower (pronounced WEE-power). On the other side is Qi (pronounced "chee," the Chinese concept of power aura usually spelled "chi"), promoted by the Wireless Power Consortium, which includes Best Buy, Black & Decker, BlackBerry, Energizer, HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung and Texas Instruments. Even though Powermat dominates the market with about 80 percent share, Qi's quantity and quality of partners – and the fact WiPower's web site has nothing on it – probably gives it an edge.

• Wi-Fi Certified Hotspot Program: IMHO, the most important announcement of the week was the announcement of this certification program from the Wi-Fi Alliance. The aim of the standard is to make accessing Wi-Fi as easy and ubiquitous as cellphone roaming. The alliance hopes to create a set of specifications by mid-2012, which would promote partnering of cell carriers and hotspot providers similar to the reward deals between airlines, hotels and car rental firms. So, when someone enters any Wi-Fi hotspot, their Wi-Fi device automatically connects to a Wi-Fi hotspot provided by a partner of your cell carrier, which handles all the billing. At some point, "Wi-Fi" will be an additional cellphone plan option along with data minutes and texting. No more drilling through 20 available networks to find an open one, no more interstitial Web pages some mobile browsers can't handle, no more signing up and re-signing up for a X-hour(s) of Wi-Fi use. All connected, all the time.

Each of these standards face an uphill climb toward, well, standardization. But hopefully at some point, we'll be able to buy a mobile device that can always automatically connect either via cellular or Wi-Fi, check our vital signs, connect to an HDTV and stay powered, replace cash and credit cards, and recharge without having to be plugged in. Now that's cool and drool-worthy.

Stewart Wolpin is a senior analyst for Digital Tech Consulting.

Analog to Digital: Slow but Steady

Monday March 21, 2011 – Myra Moore

For those of us who live in the developed world and are accustomed to a cornucopia of digital TV riches, it’s easy to assume that everyone has easy access to digital TV delivered over multiple platforms and to all our TVs and gadgets.

The truth is not all parts of the world have the digital abundance found in the developed world. There are hundreds of millions of people who rely on analog broadcasts for their entertainment, news, and information programming. In fact, less than one-third of the world’s nations are transmitting digital terrestrial TV (DTT) signals today.

Source: DTC

Those countries that have not completed their DTT systems can benefit from the experience of countries that have built their systems. Unfortunately, a wholesale transfer of the building blueprint from one country to less developed parts of the world won’t work because infrastructure, political, economic and policy conditions can be vastly different from region to region.

That’s why the banding together to create pan-regional groups when planning and building a DTT system is a trend that should be adopted in many places yet to make the transition. Europe’s adoption of a common transmission standard (DVB-T) helped to build certain operational, equipment and human capital efficiencies as it has rolled out its DTT infrastructure over the last 12 years. Southern Africa recently made a similar call when a regional task force, Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) which consists of Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, chose the DVB-T2 standard for pending roll outs of DTT systems (South Africa’s system is already in operation).

It’s time for other parts of the world to make similar moves as smaller (in land mass and/or population) countries can benefit greatly from common platforms that present economies of scale. Central America and the Caribbean are perfect examples of the next regions that could benefit from pan-regional plans. Getting individual countries to agree on common standards and technical specifications is a daunting task, but not an unprecedented one.

Blu-ray Media Streamer Mutations

Monday March 14, 2011 – Stewart Wolpin

What in the name of Warren Lieberfarb has happened to the DVD player or, more specifically, the Blu-ray disc (BD) player?

It used to be that a home video machine, starting with the VCR, was a single-function device. You put a tape or disc in, hit "play," sat back and became a sofa spud.

But in these digital days consumers have a wider variety of home video acquisition options, and Blu-ray manufacturers are teaming up with the streaming media providers – Netflix, iTunes, CinemaNow, et al – to include access to their programming via BD devices.

So how far will BD device makers go to make the packaged media playback feature of their players, well, just a feature? The most mutant Blu-ray/media streamer graft has just come from Panasonic. Like many current BD decks, the new Panasonic models (BDT310, BDT210) include 3D and built-in WiFi, and offer an array of streaming content sources; in Panasonic's case, Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand (VOD), CinemaNow, Vudu, YouTube, Twitter, Pandora and Picassa.

New BD players from several suppliers also offer two additional media streamer attributes allowing you to access your own content: the capability to connect and access content stored on an external hard drive, and DLNA, which enables the BD player to grab content from a Windows PC (DLNA is not Mac compatible). Similar streaming services, built-in WiFi and external content access options also are available on BD decks from Sony, Samsung, Sharp, LG, Toshiba and others.

But Panasonic has gone more rogue, however, adding Skype video telephony. Connect the BD player, attach the optional camera/mic array, and any TV now becomes a video phone. No need to buy a whole new special Skype video-enabled HDTV.

The Selling Proposition

Having a connected Blu-ray/streaming content Swiss Army knife is good – consumers generally don't like adding extra boxes to their AV stack. And the BD-as-media streamer means one less Ethernet or WiFi connection, and one less input change on the HDTV or AVR to get to the streaming attributes.

The problem is, how do you sell this suddenly schizophrenic device?

Why schizophrenic? There is a growing technology generation gap that these new BD/media streamer decks exemplify. According to a recent Pew "Generations and Their Gadgets" study, game console ownership (for example) drops from 63 percent for 18-46 year olds to 38 percent for 47-56 year olds to 19 percent for 57-65 year olds. There are similar, albeit somewhat less extreme slides for MP3 players and laptop PCs.

In other words, older folks aren't as techno-familiar as their kids and grandkids. This is a problem since boomers comprise the largest buying demographic). Boomers understand single function VCRs and DVD players as described in this blog's lede. VCRs morphed from their original recording TV show function to mere playback because living room devices tend to be dumber than the devices in an office because boomers want to be dumb in front of the boob tube.

A media streamer, however, skews much younger, appealing to a multi-tasking texting streaming/ripping-savvy generation who only used VCRs for peanut butter receptacles when they were toddlers and never experienced a world without the Internet.

You say "Hulu" or "Vudu" to an older tech buyer, and the sales person is likely to hear a quizzical "Huh, Lulu? Guru?"

Combining the older-skewing packaged media player with the younger-skewing internet connectivity is like marketing gangsta raps by Lil' Kim sung by Celine Dion (actually, maybe not a bad idea considering how well songs by Little Richard sold when sung by Pat Boone 50 some years ago – but I digress).

Age isn't the only challenge in selling these media BD streamers. At Panasonic's Blu-ray/Viera TV press expo last week, I asked an exec about consumers who bought both a connected HDTV and a connected BD player – do they connect both? I was told consumers most often connect only the HDTV.

Only the HDTV? This struck me as odd since connected BD players offers something HDTVs don't – BD Live. So if Blu-ray player makers can't push the benefits of BD Live over – well, a not BD Live HDTV, how will they sell…you know.

I still think these new streaming BD players are a great idea, but I wouldn't want to be a retail training manager right now.

Digital TV Overview: Receiver growth forecasted to continue into the foreseeable future

Monday March 7, 2011 - Maya Jasmin

Although digital TV has been widely deployed throughout most of the developed world, many digital TV receiver suppliers can count on future growth within certain product categories and markets.

Yes, receiver sales are moderating for the cable and DTH satellite segments but digital terrestrial TV (DTT) receivers will sustain overall healthy growth as millions of households will add set-top boxes (STBs) or integrated digital TVs (IDTVs) as large swaths of the world’s population experience the end of over-the-air (OTA) analog TV transmissions or will have access to OTA digital TV channels for the first time.

DTT receiver growth will outpace the more mature pay TV categories. DTC expects digital TV receiver shipments, in the aggregate, to grow steadily through 2015 and beyond. In fact, of all the categories listed, digital cable is the only category expected to see any kind of decline; and the decline forecasted here can be considered more of a leveling off, with shipments of nearly 50 million expected in 2015.

IDTVs are expected to experience the most growth in our forecast as countries continue to transition to OTA digital TV and for the integration of DTT tuners in TVs becomes more widespread, DTC estimates that 179 million IDTVs will ship in 2015. China is perhaps the best example of a wide open market ripe for explosive IDTV growth. With many of the world’s major developed markets now trying to figure out how to market HDTVs and 3D HDTVs, the Chinese TV market still has a sizeable analog TV component.

According to DTC’s latest domestic Chinese television market research in conjunction with Chinese-based RedTech Advisors, 45 million digital sets were sold into the domestic Chinese distribution network in 2010, of which roughly 70% or over 31 million, were from top domestic suppliers. Only a small percentage of these sets contain DTT tuners. With China having approximately 385 million TV households and with OTA digital TV transmissions just beginning, there’s plenty of opportunity for blockbuster IDTV sales.

For more information on DTC’s digital TV receiver forecasts, you can go to here to see a table of contents for our Network Connected Receivers report. More information on DTC’s domestic Chinese LCD TV tracking service, please go here.

Has Apple Become Big Brother?

Monday February 28, 2011 – Stewart Wolpin

For years, Microsoft was the company everyone loved to hate, the big bully monopolist that controlled every aspect of our desktop, whose founder is one of the world's richest people. What an easy target for our enmity. A veritable parlor game sprung up picturing Bill Gates twirling a handlebar mustache and chortling diabolically like a geeky Snidely Whiplash.

But Bill Gates is in the midst of a John D. Rockefeller-like make-over from plotting tycoon to beloved philanthropist, his company's grip on the PC desktop has been loosened by several court rulings and Google, and its relevance in the red-hot smartphone market has lagged. This has actually recast the company as an underdog.

Nature abhors a vacuum. If we can't hate Microsoft anymore, where can we now aim our thoughtless enmity?

Apparently Apple has been nominated. Increasingly, the Cupertino giant, now the world's most valuable tech company, is being labeled the Big Brother its 1984 Super Bowl commercial attacked, with many in the media gleefully marking the irony to the point of cliché.

Yes, the press has taken potshots at Apple before, but usually with good reason, such as its heavy-handed reaction to its stolen iPhone 4 prototype, iPhone 4 antennagate, and its non-LTE Verizon iPhone 4. But more recent reporting smacks of knee-jerk, pitchforks and torches fetching mentality, a vitriol usually reserved for true trust-shattering types such as BP, Richard Nixon and Barry Bonds.

Greedy Apple?

Clues to the media's attitude shift toward Apple come from reports about the "disappointing" sales of the Verizon iPhone, reports that then went viral without additional checking by normally more circumspect publications. First, of course, no one really knows what the "expectations" were and the initial reports were denied (yes, maybe the lines at Verizon were shorter – but what other new smartphone release results in lines of any kind?). But reports on iPhone 4's "disappointing" sales and shorter lines may be a result of Apple's history of hype.

More indicative, perhaps, was the reporting on last week's two seemingly connected (at least by less discerning eyes) but in actuality disparate iPhone/iPad app e-commerce policy events.

First came Apple's rejection of the Sony Reader ebook app resulting from Sony selling content from within the app. The rejection was followed by much aggrieved huffing-and-puffing threats to withdraw from iTunes by Sony (a threat itself subsequently withdrawn).

A few days later, Apple announced its content app subscription policy, which included language describing Apple's usual 30 percent cut.

In each case, Apple correctly applied its well-defined policies, which have not varied either in degree or enforcement.

Yet many in the media, including reporters and publications who should have known better, jumped to some ridiculous conclusions. They somehow merged the two events, then postulated these "new" or "newly-enforced" policies defined a new greed by Apple that would force many apps providers such as Kindle or Netflix out of iTunes. The 24/7 and easy viral nature of “web news” is alive and well in all sectors but Apple’s bullseye tattooed on its back makes it particularly susceptible to high volumes of this treatment. (You can read my more detailed report on the media's mis-reporting on these policies here.)

Big Bad Apple

What happened? Everything, it seems. Once on the verge of bankruptcy a decade ago, Apple has grown to become one of only two companies in the world valued at more than $300 billion. The other is the even more despised Exxon-Mobile. Apple dominates either true market or perceived mind share (or both) in music retailing, online movie downloading, smartphones, smartphone apps, tablet PCs and digital music players.

It's true. Apple has become the monolith it once successfully marketed against, but it’s odd that this riches-to-rags-to-riches roller coaster Apple has been on is reviled rather than viewed as a success story.

And it's not that Apple is being newly perceived as "evil" in the same way Microsoft was. Microsoft's domination had a bitter after-taste; we were resigned to tolerate its clunky yet inescapable desktop ubiquity. Our relationship with Apple is more voluntarily masochistic – we have chosen to be dominated by a velvet dictator.