ABI Research - Wireless Industry Blog Feed

Femtocell Trials to Start in Singapore

Fri, 9 May 2008 05:26:36 EDT

Singapore will have its first taste of femtocell this mid May following the announcement from its No. 2 mobile operator, StarHub. 200 of its existing cable broadband customers will test the technology over a six-month period to assess its ability to improve residential wireless coverage and consequently drives data services adoption. The trials would be an assessment to the effectiveness of the technology in Singapore dense city and buy time for the carrier to develop suitable busine ...

Goodbye Xohm, Hello New Clearwire JV

Tue, 6 May 2008 18:32:24 EDT

The WSJ is reporting that Sprint and Clearwire have reached an agreement, along with Intel, Google, and cable operators Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Brighthouse. The spun-off 4G group from Sprint and Clearwire are valued at approximately $9 billion, and with the additional $3.2 billion in financing from the additional companies that are forming this joint venture, the new company will be valued at over $12 billion.

Comcast: $1.05 billion
Intel: $1 billion
Time Warner Cable: $550 million
Google: $500 million
Brighthouse: $100 million
TOTAL: $3.2 billion

This is huge news for the WiMAX community and for the mobile network and mobile operator worlds in general, as every ...

TD-SCDMA IC design house Commit leaving the TD-SCDMA game; what lies ahead?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:28:04 EDT

The recent news that the China-based TD-SCDMA IC design house Commit will cease operations at the end of April 2008 after failing to gain revenue for its TD-SCDMA venture deals a severe blow to the TD-SCDMA community, particularly when TD-SCDMA is yet to take off.

Commit is one of the few successful companies with a full-blown dual mode TD-SCDMA/HSDPA chipset solution. In fact, handset companies such as LG, Ningbo Bird, DbTel and Lenovo showcased the capabilities of Commit’s dual mode TD-SCDMA/HSDPA solution with great success in last October’s PT/Expo Comm China in Beijing. Commit is also the only IC design house that participated in China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA trials. With such rosy results, its cessation is ...

Service Providers - Provision Your Networks Correctly

Wed, 9 Apr 2008 15:14:58 EDT

The BBC is finding that it has to argue its position against ISPs who want to charge the BBC extra because they are selling more access capacity than their network can handle. This is about wired networks, but there is of course the same issue in mobile wireless networks - for the issue being discussed it's almost irrelevant whether the access is wired or wireless.

The ISPs are trying to tell the BBC (from what I gather) that because the BBC is offering video clips on its website, this increased traffic is affecting the I ...

Sprint Delays Xohm Lauch

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 19:46:16 EDT

Sprint has decided to delay the Xohm launch from April 2008 to perhaps June 2008. At a two-hour media and analyst event at CTIA in Las Vegas last week, Sprint did not have much to say - they announced a new handset. Obviously, this was not the originally intended announcement, which was almost certainly supposed to be the April commercial launch of Xohm that was talked about for over a year. So why the delay?

There are four reasons I have heard. I cannot substantiate any of these, but these are the four I have heard:

Sprint was about to make a deal with cable companies, but the deal was only 90% there.
Sprint will make its announcement in six days, which would be sometime this week, the ...

CTIA News

Wed, 2 Apr 2008 16:34:41 EDT

Word at CTIA is that HSPA is reaching its capacity limits in Korea, with video causing degradation in voice quality. Perhaps stronger QoS is needed to prioritize voice calls over video. It is estimated that about 50,000 customer complaints per month are related to this issue.

Verizon Wireless Launches Its Open Development Initiative

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:59:13 EDT

I had the opportunity to attend Verizon's launch of its "Open Development" initiative today. There were no surprising revelations made at this event, but there was a lot of clarification as to Verizon's plans. Verizon Wireless will allow vendors to work within a retail framework, where devices are resold through Verizon with Verizon handling all of the service side, or within a wholesale framework, where vendors will purchase minutes and/or Megabytes from Verizon and handle most of the service aspects themselves.

Devices can be voice only, data only, or voice and data devices. There will be no user experience or interface stipulation, except minor ones such as roaming indicators emergency requirements. Examples of ...

Com One's Phoenix Wi-Fi Radio a Good Example of Wi-Fi's Proliferation Into CE

Fri, 7 Mar 2008 17:53:03 EST

ABI Research has always expected Wi-Fi to proliferate in consumer electronics. It has very quickly in some ways, such as in portable game devices - the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. However, Wi-Fi's attach rate has been slower going into audio and video. Understandable, for video, the newer 802.11n standard is really what is required to make HD video work flawlessly. Audio has much less of a speed requirement, so today's popular 802.11g standard is more than adequate.

Com One's Phoenix Wi-Fi Radio is a good example of a Wi-Fi enabled audio device. It's Wi-Fi radio connects it to your access point for Internet access, allowing the device to access Internet radio channels. Some of the channe ...

Symbian Achieves Strong Growth Amidst Challenging Market Developments

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:07:37 EST

“Tough times lie ahead of Symbian in the coming years”. Many, including me, agree to this statement, and quite a few in the industry said this at the start of 2007. Credit goes to Symbian that at least its results for 2007 still indicate strong growth for the company. 77.3 million Symbian smartphones were shipped in 2007, 50% more than the 51.7 million shipped in 2006. Further, the number of Symbian handset announcements at this year’s Mobile World Congress including four handsets from Nokia (N96, N78, 6210 Navigator and 6220 Classic), the KT610 handset from LG, and the G810 handset from Samsung, also indicate a strong start for Symbian in 2008.

It is understandable that Symbian’s ...

Nokia’s Plan to Acquire Trolltech Raises Concerns for Symbian

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:42:34 EST

Nokia has announced plans to acquire Trolltech stating the acquisition will enable it to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business. However, if we look beyond this initial statement, it is becoming very clear that Nokia is getting serious on Linux, signaling more challenging times ahead for Symbian. Currently, Nokia only offers Linux based MIDs (mobile internet devices) and even though it has not expressed any specific intentions so far, this acquisition is likely to lead to Nokia introducing smartphones and other handsets based on Linux in the coming years. For Symbian, it will be a big setback and their market-share of the OS ...