Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » TAG: Mobile devices

March 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Take the smarts out of smartphones

TAGS: Mobile devices

Last week's IBM-Sprint Nextel announcement left me dazed and confused.

According to the announcement, the Lotus Expeditor software platform will be adopted by Sprint Nextel, which in turn will provide mobile application developers with a beta version of a "new" software platform named Titan, which can be downloaded on most Windows Mobile 6 smartphones from Sprint.

But I'm sure that is all perfectly clear to readers more technically savvy than I.

Not to pick on IBM or Sprint, but I'm just about up to here (edge of hand tapping Adam's apple) with yet another, as Bob Egan, principal analyst at Mobile Competency puts it, "discrete choice" in the mobile platform industry.

The mobile platform industry is already confusing enough.

Making sense of the mobile runaround
Parsing the IBM-Sprint Nextel release in hopes of finding clarity, we get IBM calling Expeditor a software platform for "extending desktop computing and Web 2.0 capabilities to mobile phones" and Sprint announcing a new platform, Titan, based on Lotus Expeditor, a platform unto itself.

According to a Sprint representative, this is only the beginning of what is being called the Titan client framework, which includes the IBM Java Virtual Machine, a configuration of IBM Lotus Expeditor, and the Prosyst OSGI Framework.

On the enterprise side, Titan is integrated with both IBM Lotus Expeditor and Prosyst mPRM (mPower Remote Manager).

I also spoke with Bharti Patel, director of Lotus Client Platforms, and she stressed that all of this is built on Eclipse.

"The key point here is that you are building this on top of something that is open," Patel told me.

So open that, at present, it only runs on Windows Mobile 5 or 6 smartphones and "some Symbian" devices, according to Patel.

Oh, but not according to the Sprint representative, who said it works only on Windows Mobile 6 platforms, at least on the Sprint Nextel network.

Well, my key point is that the mobile industry is trying to force IT to become mobile technical evaluators, a role that they are unlikely to be qualified for or do not have the mindset to be involved with, considering all of the other priorities IT faces today, Mobile Competency's Egan says.

Strip down your mobile strategy
If IT does detect some kind of business benefit from mobility, my advice is to wait until we see who wins out among all the providers of these discrete, siloed mobile technologies.

The three big players are, of course, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian. Oh, how could I leave out the up-and-coming iPhone?

One way to approach untangling this industry, from an IT perspective, would be to declare a companywide edict deciding on one of the above and establishing a policy that supports nothing else.

Of course, this scenario is unlikely. All the company needs is one executive to stroll into the office with the latest trendy gadget, and there goes your homogeneous environment. The best approach is instead to recognize that we live in a heterogeneous world, and stop messing around with employees' cell phones of choice.

I'm not saying there won't be great new cell phone technologies coming down the pike. But as a business tool -- one that needs to be integrated into the company network, requires support and training, not to mention the sourcing and refreshing of models -- perhaps the phone should be used only for voice and e-mail, end of story.

Yes, I know all about vertical solutions like the winery that has a custom app for growers who distribute handsets to field workers who send back reports on the quality of the vines and the grapes. That's not what I'm talking about.

Yes, it is fine if you can identify a specific group of users with a specific communications problem that needs to be addressed, as Brian Riggs, research director of Current Analysis, suggests as an interim solution.

Is there any light whatsoever at the end of this mobile tunnel?

Riggs, speaking of the IBM Sprint Nextel announcement, offered this spark:

"The difference here is there are a lot of Eclipse developers, and it just is a first step. Sprint is not the only one looking at this. Other mobile carriers are as well," Riggs says. "The key point is that people can begin to have a platform that third parties can develop interesting applications on that might work with multiple carriers and multiple devices."

I'm not so optimistic.

For me, Expeditor on Sprint as a way to create mashups on your cell phone needs to go to the back of the next-big-thing-in-mobility line behind PBX extensions to cell phones, dual-mode cell phones, WiMax cell phones, VoIP cell phones, UC (unified communications) and presence on cell phones, ERP on your cell phone, and -- did I leave anything out?

I'm sure if I did, someone will text me from their MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) video cell phone to show me what I might have omitted.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on March 25, 2008 03:00 AM

March 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Will the iPhone force Apple to change course?

TAGS: Mobile devices

If you say your product is "enterprise-ready" within earshot of anybody who works for InfoWorld, you'd better be able to prove it. So when Apple claims "IT professionals" will be able to seamlessly integrate the iPhone into their enterprise environments, a great many questions need to be answered.

[ For more on the iPhone in business, see "IT's guide to the iPhone." ]

The fact is, Apple, at least up until now, has focused on delivering well-designed products that are basically self-service. Let's start with that premise.

The problem as I see it is this: Apple has been, in essence, a "unified experience" company (controlling the hardware and user experience with its own UI, operating system and support software) pushing out products that are basically plug-and-play within the Apple environment.

The enterprise is about applications; Apple is not
I don't think anyone can claim that Apple is an applications company.

But the iPhone presents a new challenge for Apple, in that it will require the company to provide mobile applications support. When that happens, a whole new set of services will be required of Apple.

For example, as much as those in IT complain about the high cost of maintenance and support from the likes of Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and IBM -- and I've heard those complaints firsthand -- the truth is, IT couldn't live without those companies' supports services.

These companies could probably give away their software and still maintain a healthy profit thanks to maintenance contracts rather than acquiring new licenses. Oracle's acquisitions of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and so on had a lot to do with that calculation of revenue from maintenance and support contracts.

So now we come to Apple. It delivers products that usually deliver a great user experience and set a high design bar for integrated technology systems.

What it is not is an applications software company with a huge network of system integrators, consultants, and VARs, nor does it have a homegrown network able to support a huge enterprise-level customer base.

And let's face it, if enterprise companies buy computers in the hundreds at a time, given the right product, these companies may buy handsets by the thousands.

Making it even more difficult is the fact that even hardware-only companies are now also required to beef up their services. Witness Dell. A few years ago, Dell survived on sending boxes out to the enterprise. But over the past few years, as PCs and servers have become commodities, Dell was forced to look to services to keep investors happy.

My guess is this is the reason why Hewlett-Packard finally surpassed Dell in sales. Once PCs became a commodity, it was HP that had a very long history of support services.

Application software is even more demanding. The major software companies typically have anywhere from three to four support people for every salesperson at the company.

Backing the iPhone's business claims
Yes, the next iPhone OS revision is promised to include a great many enterprise features such as built-in Cisco IPsec VPN and Microsoft Exchange support, as well as remote data wipe and push e-mail, calendar and contacts.

But is the iPhone a consumer product that adds a few enterprise features, or is it a truly enterprise product that can be supported by an ecosystem of service providers? Because that is what it will need to survive in the enterprise.

Is Apple prepared on a huge scale to help its new enterprise customers integrate the iPhone with their existing infrastructure? Will the device be able to extract and process data from the back end? That's certainly not an application you should expect to see sold through the iTunes store, Apple's current venue.

Or does Apple intend to leave that type of support to AT&T, a telecommunications giant that is not exactly comfortable in dealing with the high-tech needs of the enterprise, either?

And then there's the nitty-gritty:

Can Apple build a consumer product that satisfies the needs of companies that want to prohibit their employees from downloading YouTube videos on the phone?

Can users multitask on the iPhone? Will programs run in the background or retain state when the iPhone rings?

Can IT do more than remotely wipe all data from an iPhone? What about blocking use of Bluetooth radio?

At the moment, the answers to these questions are no, the iPhone cannot control these components, it does not multitask, nor does it retain state.

Of course, these are issues that can probably be resolved over time, perhaps with the next SDK.

The bigger issue, however, is whether Apple will develop the necessary business model to back up its new business claims. Is it prepared to invest the time and money in becoming an enterprise-level company that understands the needs of large companies and meets those needs head on?

Related articles:

• Special report: IT's guide to the iPhone
• Apple iPhone SDK upends mobile market
  Eight months ago, Apple was a nonplayer in the mobile space. Now, according to Apple, iPhone is the second most popular smartphone solution after BlackBerry.
• iPhone SDK exceeds developer expectations
  Apple also bolsters the iPhone's enterprise chops with ActiveSync, remote data wiping, and better VPN support
• Sun: We'll put Java on the iPhone
  Sun readies virtual machine to make Java apps run on Apple's mobile platform
• How to make the (new) iPhone work at work
  Apple's new SDK and iPhone updates should make it even easier to add the popular device to your enterprise. Here's what you need to know.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on March 18, 2008 03:00 AM

February 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)

The looming battle over wireless broadband

TAGS: Mobile devices

The war over which standard will become the dominant architecture for broadband wireless infrastructure seems to have ended -- but now there's a new fight.

Whether it becomes a mere skirmish and is squelched quickly or it becomes an all-out conflagration remains to be seen.

Of course I am talking about LTE (Long Term Evolution), a 4G (fourth-generation) technology that comes out of the cellular telecommunications world versus WiMax, which has its roots in high tech.

Most carriers are settling on LTE

Following years of GSM versus CDMA and the divergent evolutionary path followed by wireless carriers, LTE is the technology upon which most carriers appear to be converging.

LTE’s first iteration is promised to deliver downlink speeds of anywhere from 3Mbps to a peak of 10Mbps, and uplink speeds of 1.5Mbps to 3Mbps. But of course that depends on the amount of bandwidth a carrier allocates to the service. It can go much higher.

LTE also gives carriers a chance to settle on a single technology worldwide as they move from the multiple 3G technologies to LTE as the replacement 4G technology. With LTE, for example, companies such as Verizon in the U.S. and its part owner Vodafone in Europe could easily offer a single phone with a single technology that will work just about everywhere, unifying the networks at both the radio and core network layers. Today, Verizon uses CDMA and Vodafone uses GSM, so to continue with Verizon as my example, Verizon could only support wireless roaming onto other networks outside the U.S. using a dual-mode CDMA/GSM phone. That limited support would no longer be necessary after it moves to LTE.

It's true that a few carriers -- notably Sprint PCS -- have decided to stick with CDMA2000, a 3G cellular technology. But the adoption numbers for CDMA2000 are not in its favor: A recent Gartner report estimates that there are 2.1 billion GSM connections worldwide (or 79 percent of the market) versus 325 million CDMA2000 connections (12 percent of the market).

So LTE is clearly the future for cellular networks.

Or is it?

WiMax may beat LTE to the punch

Although the carriers are largely converging on LTE as their next-gen cellular technology, a new challenge is emerging from an entirely different camp: Wi-Fi, which Intel and computer equipment makers have been pushing. Although WiMax has been promoted for years, its actual deployment finally seems imminent.

The battle between LTE and WiMax reminds me of the current presidential Democratic primary. Only a few short months ago, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was the expected Democratic presidential candidate. Then the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, took the mantle from her almost overnight. Obama is to WiMax as Clinton is to LTE.

For companies that want high-speed broadband mobile access now, advantage WiMax. This spring trials will begin in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. There are 260 carriers deploying WiMax in 110 countries. Add to this the fact that Intel is incorporating WiMax into its CPU chipsets, which will be available this spring.

In the meantime, LTE is not expected for another two years.

Out of the box, the performance advantage appears to go to WiMax as well. If a carrier uses a 5MHz bandwidth channel, WiMax's performance is about 10Mbps to 15Mbps, which can be divided in any way the carrier decides for uplink and downlink. With a 10MHz channel you are talking about 20Mbps to 30Mbps.

That brings us to Sprint, which has not signed up for LTE but instead announced more than a year ago that it would deploy a near-national WiMax network. Sprint owns a wide channel of spectrum, between 100MHz and 190MHz of bandwidth, depending on the area. With this bandwidth, Sprint could deliver amazing performance as the updates to the IEEE 802.16e and its follow on 802.16m standard behind WiMax increases how much that bandwidth can be used.

Next year, we may see ratification of the 802.16m standard that would let WiMax use even wider bandwidths and increase performance up to 100Mbps to 200Mbps.

To be fair, there is still some question as to whether or not 802.16m will be backward-compatible with 802.16e. Such compatibility issues could slow down WiMax's deployments as Sprint waits, or cause Sprint to forgo 802.16m for its next round of capital investments. But the WiMax Forum, an industry association that imposes its own interoperability standards on members beyond the IEEE's looser requirements, is guaranteeing backward compatibility, notes Mohamed Shakouri, a vice president of the WiMax Forum and vice president of strategy at Alvarion, a mobile equipment manufacturer.

Of course, commercial deployments of 802.16m is about two years away — just like LTE.

End the battle before it begins? Probably not

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Vodaphone CEO Arun Sarin called on the standards groups involved with LTE and WiMax to merge. Both technologies do have a lot in common. Both are IP-based and both to some extent use OFDM radio technology, for example.

However, from my talks with folks at the WiMax Forum, I don't think that will happen any time soon. Using 802.16e, they have about a two-year head start on LTE, and my guess is they are not inclined to relinquish that competitive advantage to merge technologies.

The fight for customers is at the heart of this battle. Manufacturers of all stripes realize that users want the same performance for their applications and services when mobile as when they are tethered to a desk. And they all want to be the one to provide it, which usually means being first. There are not too many second chances in today's market.

I'll never forget that when I was in high school, my social studies teacher told the class that whichever country wins the race to the moon will win the Cold War. "The world of undecided nations will be so awed by such an achievement they will want to emulate the winner, whoever it is," she claimed.

There's no denying that she called that one pretty well.

And so the fight over standards is a race to give users the same level of performance when mobile as they have when tethered to the desk. Whoever can do that first will win the hearts and minds of customers.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on February 26, 2008 03:00 AM

December 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple, AT&T sued over iPhone use of patented voice mail technology

TAGS: Communications, Mobile devices, Telecom

Do Apple and AT&T routinely infringe on patents in the knowledge that it may take years for the case to drag through courts and in the meantime they get the benefit of a technology which is not theirs and for which they didn't pay?

Is this the way to run a legitimate business?

It all starts with Klausner Technologies, a company that holds numerous telecommunications patents. Klausner is suing both Apple and AT&T for patent infringement on its voice mail management technology.

The suit isn't the first time Klausner has brought giants in the communications industry before the bench for similar patent infringement.

In 2005 the company slapped AOL with a $200 million suit stemming from AOL's use of a visual display to retrieve voice mails, one of 25 patents Klausner's company holds in the area of remote retrieval of voice messages.

Klausner settled with AOL/Time Warner and AOL signed an agreement to pay licensing fees for use of the technology.

In 2006, Klausner was back again this time suing Vonage Holdings, asking $180 million in damages for a similar patent infringement.

Vonage also settled with Klausner for an undisclosed sum for a patent license.

In the latest suit brought by Klausner Technologies, the company is asking $360 million from Apple and AT&T.

The law suit also claims that Skype, Comcast and Cablevision Systems have also infringed on its patents, in particular US Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818, according to Vnunet.com, a British technology Web site.

The question that needs to be asked here is, is it possible that Apple and AT&Ts legal departments were unaware of the Klausner patents and blindly used another company's property?

I kind of doubt it. Which leads to the next question. If they did know of the Klausner patents why did they ignore them? What was to be gained?

Anyone out there with a good legal mind that might have an answer?

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 4, 2007 01:00 PM

November 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone, What is good for U.S. is not good for Europe

TAGS: Communications, Mobile devices, Telecom, Wireless

When the iPhone launches tomorrow in France and across the rest of Europe there will be one distinct difference between that market and the U.S. market. Europeans will be able to buy an unlocked iPhone from Orange, the France telecomm carrier.

That’s the law in most of Europe where the option for an unlocked version must be available.

Of course, consumers will have to pay dearly for the right to have a warranted, unlocked iPhone. Some, like techno savvy users here, may want to just unlock it themselves.

An unlocked iPhone in France is expected to sell for 650 euros, $964, U.S. and for a whopping 1,000 euros, $1,484 U.S., in Germany.

With a two-year contract, locked, iPhone buyers will see a saner, but not inexpensive price tag of about 399 euros, about $592. U.S.,plus the monthly voice and data charges that start at 49 euros per month, about $73 U.S.

Orange says it expects to sell about 100,000 devices in the first month, a not unrealistic number according to Vincent Poulbere, senior analyst at Ovum.

However, Poulbere says there’s a great deal of competition in the European market, especially for similar devices that are more highly subsidized.

“There won’t be any queues at the stores to buy an iPhone,” said Poulbere.

The European market will share one similarity with the U.S. market, said Poul-bere, users can expect a price reduction at some point in 2008, especially if a new model is introduced.

With the exchange rate extremely favorable to European shoppers some may get creative and fly to the U.S. buy an iPhone here, take it back and hack it so it can be used in Europe with a local SIM chip.

Technology is fun, isn't it?

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on November 27, 2007 08:42 AM