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ABI Research Blog (101)

Cisco's BNI Video acquisition to improved Service Provider CDN

Oct 21, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Yesterday (Oct 20, 2011), Cisco announced it acquired BNI Video. BNI video was a venture-funded company, launched in 2009, that had raised $17 million in venture funding from the venture arms of Comcast, Cisco, Time Warner as well as leading Boston area VC firms. BNI’s products are focused on better managing multi-screen delivery – specifically back-office (OSS/BSS) management of a modern internet-oriented Content Delivery Network (CDN) as well as CDN analytics. BNI’s offerings will be rolled into Cisco’s Videoscape solutions, which are aimed at reinforcing Cisco’s Telcos wins for IPTV solutions, as well as providing cable companies a bridge from legacy QAM solutions to IP video solutions. Cisco plans to provide further integration of BNI’s solution into its internal CDN (CDS – for Content Delivery System), as well as continuing to support integration with other CDNs.

As we described in our recent report on Video on Demand and Content Delivery Network Hardware , service providers are rapidly adopting CDN technology to better deliver internal multiscreen / TV Everywhere solutions as well as manage external bandwidth costs (for YouTube and Netflix video). Many CDN solutions aim to be ‘transparent’ to the content – which can be problematic for protected content. BNI’s solution is custom designed for cable providers, and therefore is built with these solutions from the ground up. In a call yesterday, Kip Compton (Cisco’s VP of Product Marketing in the Service Provider Video Group) and Conrad Clemson (CEO and founder of BNI video) spoke about the solution being built on “internet scale” – that is, the ability to run in data centers and centralize management of a host of functions throughout the network in legacy solutions.

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Emerging WSN Market Segment

Oct 21, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Manufacturer of solar micro inverters and monitoring systems for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, Enecsys Ltd , announced on 3rd October that it had partnered with Ember to bring ZigBee wireless communications to roof-top PV systems. Aimed at helping householders and businesses better monitor and optimize their systems’ performance, the tie up raises the possibility of a potential wireless sensor network (WSN) market deriving from smart energy and marrying itself into the home automation market.
Enecsys has integrated Ember's ZigBee system-on-chip (SoC) and ZigBee PRO software into its SMI series of micro inverters, which convert the DC output of solar panels into AC for connection to the electricity grid. Unlike conventional centralized string inverters, Enecsys' micro inverters connect to each module of a solar PV system, or each pair of modules in the case of the "Duo" product. This approach renders benefits such as delivering better energy harvest, higher reliability, longer life expectancy, and greater solar PV design flexibility. Each Enecsys micro inverter has Ember's ZigBee technology built-in to communicate detailed performance information of each solar module, which string inverters cannot do.

This new beneficial partnership opens up a significant opportunity for a WSN market. The PV market has grown at a staggering rate over the last five years, from under 6GW annually installed in 2005 to almost 20GW annually installed by the end of 2011. Furthermore, PV micro inverters are a shooting ray of light in the PV inverter market and its market penetration of approximately 1% now is anticipated to increase to 8-10% by 2015. This new addressable market for WSN is good news.

With energy mandates driving greater adoption in the PV markets, ABI Research views micro inverter as a key enabler to better efficiency and reliability alongside advances in technology innovation in the realm of PV cells, PV modules and overall system design. WSN integration in micro inverters will enable users to take a more proactive role in managing their energy generation and consumption from their in-home displays, and mobile devices.
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Emerging market series: Etisalat Nigeria's unique competitive strategy

Oct 21, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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In a recent interview the CEO of Etisalat Nigeria, Steven Evans, highlighted his plans for competing in the largest telecommunication market in Africa. Currently, Etisalat is ranked fourth in Nigeria in terms of subscriber market share, behind MTN, Glo Mobile, and Zain. One of the methods Evans mentioned was using his company's financial muscle to wrestle market share from incumbents - improving QOS by building the 3G network rapidly and aggressively. Another idea is totarget customers in more active commercial areasin the south and southeastern regions of Nigeria.

At this juncture, many might lament how clich these methods are, but anyone who understands Etisalat will know that these aren't its only strategies. Etisalat is well known for innovations. Among its tried and tested methods of gaining market share, the company has another weapon it can unleash against its competition: education.

But why education?
Education exposes people to the world of knowledge and to the World Wide Web (whether mobile or fixed). Pushing education within Nigeria creates reliance on the internet, which in turn creates demand for internet access technologies. And that's where the picture turns rosy for operators.
Education usually brings higher income with it. Nigeria has a very large grey market where operators tend to sell unauthorized products that come mostly from Asia, as well as second hand products that come from Europe and the United States. The main draw of this market is its low prices, but the goods lack warranties and are usually not as durable and reliable as their counterparts in the regular market. Higher income among Nigerians would direct consumption and demand back to authorized channels - such as Etisalat.
Besides that, education creates a common ground that brings people together and creates a need for social networking sites as well as applications or technologies for people to keep in contact with one another, SMS for example. These activities translate into increased data consumption and the need for cloud services.
But how will this all benefit Etisalat? The insight "Etisalat is driving the Nigerian telecom industry with education" will tell you the answer
PS: I am now experimenting on a"blog series" idea so as tohave amore focused blogging as well as create a platform for analysts and readersto discuss about certain topics. The first theme that I came up with is the "Emerging market" series where I cover a range of topics from emerging markets. But I need yourfeed back onyour thoughtsfor this (or probably what themes you would like to see)to decide whether tocarry on with this expermiement.
Please forward your comments to Lim@abiresearch.com. Thank you
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Brazil's Senate Approves New Pay TV Law

Oct 17, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​Brazil's pay-TV marketis likely to see significant changes following the new pay-TV regulation the country's president signed into law in August. According to the new law,

  • There will no longer be limits on foreign ownership in the cable TV sector.
  • Local and foreign telephone companies will be able to offer pay-TV services in addition to existing phone and Internet services.
  • Telephone companies will be limited to TV distribution (not including enabling content creation).
  • Operators must broadcast three and a half hours of Brazilian content every week, including significant amounts of content developed by independent producers.

Brazil pay TV penetration is less than 19%with two major pay-TV platforms: satellite and cable TV. At present, pay TV business is largely concentrated in the big cities of the country.

It is likely that more new operators will enter Brazil’s pay-TV market after the approval of new broadcasting law. Especially, more triple play and IPTV service are expected to be launched since the new law allows telephone companies to offer pay TV.

Recently, GVT owned by French Vivendi has launched satellite and IPTV hybrid offer in Brazil. Telefonica is now targeting a nationwide rollout of its satellite and IPTV services. Moreover, Oi, which is offering satellite and cable TV at present, is planning to launch IPTV service in 2012.

These new operators are challenging existing players in terms of pricing, availability, and quality of content. The new pay TV regulation is most likely to benefit Brazilian consumers with lower prices and better program selection.​

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Could NFC Offer More Than Just "Tap And Go" Applications?

Oct 14, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Broadcom’s announcement of its BCM2079x family of standalone NFC controllers was announced in September. Broadcom stated that it had developed two controllers – one aimed at the handset market and the other at the consumer electronics market, both of which have the ability to support multiple secure elements. The latter got me thinking about NFC functionality and the possibility of using the technology without the tap and go function.

For consumer electronics the market for secure elements remains limited, with most CE devices with NFC being utilized to pair devices simply and quickly by tapping them together making the CE device a type of tag. So why does Broadcom’s new controller, aimed at the CE industry give the ability to support multiple secure elements?
I think the simple ability to safely house data on a secure element has been overlooked somewhat. For example on an internet ready TV a secure element (probably a type of bridging solution such as an SD card) could store a consumers payment card details. This could enable a consumer to purchase or rent movies from their TV quickly and safely without the need to plug in a keyboard, or use a standard remote control, to manually enter payment card details.
The key in this user scenario is that although the consumer device would utilize NFC technology, it would not use the tap and go function associated with it. Instead it would use NFC to enable a secure element. NFC has some great use cases for a consumer using the tap functionality, whether this is to complete a transaction, collect coupons or loyalty points or to tap a smart poster to collect product information. Of course I am looking at future case uses, thinking about how NFC secure elements can serve a consumer by leveraging the technology for other use cases that do not necessarily require the tapping or pairing of devices.Once NFC matures and becomes established it will be interesting to see what other use cases OEMs and developers can find and how far they are able to take NFC as a technology.

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Contactless Adoption In The UK Progressing Well

Oct 6, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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The UK’s contactless adoption is progressing well. A string of companies have already committed to contactless terminal rollout all at different stages of adoption. Frequent Announcements are being made with more companies making that all important commitment.

Companies committing themselves to contactless payment acceptance include, Subway, McDonald’s, Wilkinson’s, The Post Office and Cooperative, along with transport for London, which has already upgraded the London underground to accept contactless. Now First Group plans to invest in deploying approximately 8,000 contactless terminals across its fleet of buses.
This is no easy sell. The companies involved must be shown and believe in the benefits contactless can offer them. It was reported by First Group that investment totaling 27 million would be required to complete the project. This is no drop in the ocean and just demonstrates the serious amount of capital required to make that change.
Of course benefits are widely reported, not only does a contactless payment allow them to do away with cash handling and the cost implications associated with it, it also introduces the ability to integrate NFC (Near Field Communications). This further reduces investment required for standalone ticketing systems and is an opportunity that transport companies are eager to exploit.
It is good to see that there will be an array of places, which very soon will accept contactless payment cards. Currently acceptance of contactless payments remains relatively limited in the UK, announcements such as the one by First Group will be met with positivity from contactless payment card issuing banks and shows that the UK is well positioned to offer contactless payment applications on a mass scale.
I believe that the UK is doing extremely well to get everything in place to allow the Olympics to be used as a platform to increase awareness and educate on contactless abilities and showcase contactless applications and uses. Increasing the contactless terminal infrastructure will be key to allow contactless card owners to increase usage and drive the technology within the country forward.
For further ABI Research analysis on contactless adoption in the UK please see our Insights titled – Another UK Company Commits to Contactless Acceptance and Contactless Payment Wave to Hit the UK
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5 TB DVR Doesn't Meet My Needs

Oct 4, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Need time-shifting TV, but your cable operator doesn’t offer it? Toshiba announced a high end DVR featuring a 5 Terabyte Hard Drive – it supports 1 TB for your traditional DVR needs, and 4 TB dedicated to continuous recording for time shift TV of up to 6 channels for up to 15 days. The DVR includes 8 tuners, as well as a 3D Blu-ray player so you don’t need additional electronics hanging around your house.

With a a 5 TB hard drive, I’d much rather use it for a digital movie storage locker – like my old 200 disk CD jukebox . Despite its mechanical arm and the occasional disk jam, the jukebox was much more reliable than iTunes on my Apple TV – which doesn’t work with my Buffalo NAS (because its not a true authenticated iTunes server), and is spotty with my usually-on PC as the iTunes server is sometimes up, and sometimes comes across the odd log-in failure. And putting my DVD movies onto the NAS? Occasionally I can get passed the CSS and associated technologies to make a digital copy (under fair-use regulations, of course) for frequently watched kids programs – but what a nightmare.
Alas, neither of these technologies will make under my Hannukah Menorah this year – both because of the 200,000 ($2600) price tag, and because it will only be sold in Japan – where only about 10 basic cable channels support recording – so recording 6 channels continuously is an even bigger deal.
(Thanks to pocket-lint for the report)
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Apple Sets Uneasy Litmus Test for Location Sharing

Oct 4, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Today, Apple announced that it will support an iOS5 only friend/family location sharing facility. At the time of writing the exact mechanisms were unclear, but given that some Apple users trust its products and services instinctively, failure of this feature would be a clear indication consumers are not ready for this and other pervasive LBS.

Instead of implicitly extracting location data from users, through terms and conditions and cleverly placed disclaimers, tech companies need to get the user get involved. Apple’s new location sharing application will have a number of user/parental-defined controls, which will restrict the whos, wheres and whens. The concept of explicit location data extraction is discussed in detail in ABI’s report, “ Location Analytics & Privacy ”. There is no better way to do this than to give users full control on how location data is shared and used. It is our belief, that if this is implemented correctly, the vast majority will embrace location and the variety of extremely beneficial applications which it enables.
From Apple’s point of view, this could represent a reversal of location fortunes, going from locationgate to cherished family protection in one application. It will also double as a phone finder application and could even be used for fleet/employee management. It also enables Apple to remain competitive with the likes of Google’s Latitude services. A major plus for Apple, is its disproportionately large installed base of early adopters who are familiar with applications like Foursquare, more comfortable with the idea of sharing location.and will give Apple every chance to succeed on this.
While this is something we kind of expected, having forecast it in our report, “ LBS: Carriers vs Application Stores ”, I have the same uneasy feeling as I do when watching footballers rolling around on pitches - are they making too much of it? Is this and Siri really the two big new features on Apple 4s? Does location really matter that much to Apple? It’s not even a new idea with the LBS path paved with location sharing has-beens.
Either way, if this fails either due to privacy fears or the lack of real benefit for many users, alarm bells should be ringing at every LBS developer. If it is a success, its limitation to iOS5 users means that for once this will be case of rising waters floating all boats. Apple has a history of getting it right so let’s keep our fingers crossed.
As for Siri, a friend was only discussing last week that the person that can properly solve ASR and STT technology will be very rich.Consideringthat Google hasn’t masteredASR and STTyet, given the time, effort and money it has spent, Iwill be veryimpresed if Apple has in a way that works and is practical for users.

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John Peel Appears on a CSR Chip!

Oct 4, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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As an admirer ofJohn Peel'swork I was amazed when ABI Research VP of Engineering Jim Mielke sent overwhat he titled his "NEW BEST LOGO".

As part of Jim's worktearing mobile phones he regularly hunts downthe cleverlogos that engineersetch intotheirICs. This one appears on Cambridge Silicon Radios Bluetooth ICs.

Thanks to the engineers at CSR and to Jim's team!

John Peel

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Apple's Lack of NFC in iPhone 4S Does Not Negatively Impact the Market

Oct 4, 2011 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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All the grand speculation, rumour, and counter-rumour, at the beginning of the year about Apple's grand plan for NFC has been answered - for now.

I am not entirely surprised by the lack of NFC in the iPhone 4S - it is a revision and enhancement of the existing iPhone 4, not an all new iPhone 5. Specific to NFC, should I be surprised, or even disappinted? After all, Apple doesn’t have a great record of driving new features or technologies itself, instead its skill is in reinventing the wheel by polishing the user experience, aided by a strong marketing message and excellant presentation. I don’t think the market for NFC has moved on enough for Apple to start down this road.

Additionally, Apple likes to own the ecosystem but the incumbent payment networks are too entrenched and so I don’t think it can do this on its own right now (or at least it hasn’t worked out the best model to proceed) However, Apple is incredibly cash rich so the acquisition of, or investment in,a payments-related company would not be out of the question. Similarly, in order to maximize NFC, and the different user experiences that it can deliver, it would make sense to feature NFC in a range of products, such as the iPad, Macbooks, etc. and these design upgrades are not yet ready.

Whilst having Apple on-board would have been a great driver for NFC – even if only for competitive reasons – I don’t think it will negatively impact the market. This continues to heat up, companies are increasingly launching devices and service strategies are being formulated. Instead of Apple, Google is the threat to MNOs and acting as the spur for others to get their acts together. NFC is progressing in other areas too, such as Windows 8 tablets, something that I expect Apple is keeping an eye on with a view to having NFC in multiple devices (which is where the “lifestyle” side of NFC can come into play). Overall, we are holding our position on NFC and expect to see this continue to develop – possibly with Apple entering a more developed ecosystem in a year or two’s time.​

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