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ABI Research Blog (91)

Successful Platooning in Spain

May 28, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​Volvo just announced the successful conclusion of the first "road train" test on a public motorway near Barcelona. Part of the SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) project, the train consisted of 3 Volvo cars and a truck following a lead truck. The train drove over 200 km (~125 miles) at about 85 km/hr (~53 mph) and maintained a gap of 6 m (~20 ft). The project manager was pleased to report no problems with the technology as it operated the vehicles among other road users.

The project uses wireless communications so that the vehicles in the platoon mimic the acceleration, braking, and turning of the lead vehicle using autonomous control technology developed by Ricardo. On-board ADAS adds another level of safety.

The concept of platooning allows more efficient traveling on existing roads by allowing vehicles under automated control to travel closer together so that they use less space. Further experiments are underway to measure the aerodynamic benefit to fuel consumption of the road train concept. I suspect the vehicles will have to be closer together than 6 m apart to see significant fuel economy improvement.

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​M2M into White Space Spectrum

May 24, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Developed in the U.K. and targeted soon as an available spectrum cleared by UK terrestrial TV, Weightless is an evolving air interface specification designed to provide M2M device connectivity within white space spectrum.

The key premise of weightless is that it can provide M2M coverage at a lower cost than rival network topologies - either short range wireless can provide to nearby gateway devices or embedded cellular connectivity leveraging already deployed cellular networks. Aimed at cellular operators, the technology can use the same base stations to provide coverage. Although this is a technology that can be leveraged across a range of M2M applications, the Weightless SIG's initial focus is the U.K.'s ongoing smart metering rollout.

Although white space spectrum has yet to be cleared in the United Kingdom, the U.K. regulator Ofcom has already championed its potential and has decided that the spectrum will remain unlicensed and that the first commercial applications in the U.K. could be as soon as 2013.

Although Weightless has been trialed in a project in Cambridge, U.K., the first silicon is expected to become available later this year. The technology will need to draw not just governments to free the spectrum but also MNO’s, chip manufacturers, device vendors and service support players and others. It is an enormous task and one that will require more than a competent technology alternative. The Weightless SIG has developed a number of use-case scenarios and there is plenty of information about the technology at the group's website.

On top of that, Weightless has to change how MNO’s look at the potential of M2M. Currently, the appeal of the bourgeoning M2M communications market is that a new generation of cellular connected devices brings new applications, customers, and revenues to their existing networks. The Weightless SIG's proposition asks MNOs to move away from that incremental notion of M2M and instead plan for many millions of connected M2M devices supported by a new and separate wireless network.

Weightless's proposition calls for significant rethinking and reinvesting and the Weightless SIG will have to prove that there is value in changing course for these players. At present, it is looking to do this well ahead of the expected exponential rise of M2M device deployment. The advantage of Weightless may be in far greater capacity without impacting existing cellular networks, but planning for that level of M2M capacity right now may be beyond the most far sighted of MNOs.​

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Phablets will surpass 208 million device shipments annually in 2015

May 19, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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ABI Research forecasts 208 million phablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Note, will be shipped globally in 2015. Despite the slow start for phablet smartphones in 2011, ABI Research believes the market is at the dawn of the phablet era. HTC, LG and Sony will each introduce phablet smartphones in 2012, joining the ranks of Samsung’s Galaxy Note and Nexus. Additionally, the release of the Samsung Galaxy S3 by the end of May, we will see another phablet smartphone.

In a recent report on phablet smartphones and super smartphones, ABI Research examines the potential opportunities for these new smartphones, and defines phablets with a touch screen size between 4.6 to 5.5 inches. Global shipments for phablets will increase by a factor of 10 in 2012 from 2011, and will exceed 208 million phablets in 2015.
With the predicted boom of phablet devices over the next 2-3 years, media tablet manufacturers may be worried. In 2011, 65 million media tablets were shipped globally. The media tablet market has grown at an astounding rate since the iPad was first introduced to the market. Over 100 million media tablets are projected to be shipped globally in 2012. ABI Research believes hybrid smartphone/tablet will compete only with the smaller media tablet (below 7 inches). These smaller media tablets are forecasted to remain the smallest segment of the total media tablet market.

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ABI Research Teardowns Shows New Wolfson Microelectronics Parts in New Smartphone Models

May 17, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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A recent review of the ABI Research teardown products showed that Wolfson Microelectronics is expanding its presence in smartphones with a number of new product lines. It's interesting to see three new parts appear in recent teardowns:

  • The WM7130, a MEMS microphone
  • The WM8915, a multi-channel ultra-low power audio hub for high quality voice and Hi-Fi quality multimedia playback and recording
  • The WM1830, a low power audio DSP for high performance voice and multimedia enhancement

The first part was found in the Motorola Droid 4 and the second two in the Blackberry Bold 9790.

This demonstrates that Wolfson in now starting to see a return on the investment it made purchasing MEMS microphone specialist Oligon in 2007. Winning a slot in a prestigious handset such as the Droid 4 is no mean feat, especially as it is up against the main incumbent Knowles and a whole host of more recent arrivals in the market such as STMicroelectronics. This is a fast growing market, expected to reach over 500 million units per annum by 2014 in the smartphone market alone (See Mobile Device Semiconductor Markets: Platform ICs, MEMS, Wireless Connectivity ICs, and Audio ICs).

Wolfson have long been a major supplier of audio ICs to the mobile handset market, the inclusion of its WM8915 and WM1830 shows it is continuing to develop compelling solutions for this market. When this is combined with MEMS microphone capability it makes Wolfson an interesting partner for smartphone OEMs.

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Is Apple Really Dropping Google Maps for iOS6? Really?

May 13, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Over the weekend, unofficial news that Apple will use its own in-house mapping for iOS 6 has broken. Inevitably, a lot of pro-Apple websites were hailing the 3D element as revolutionary. When we get over the immediacy of this breaking news, it is hard to see how Apple has developed a solution that can compete with Google and Nokia/Microsoft, covering the many facets that make up a complete, worldwide mapping service. Information is still very limited. Is this a full-blown mapping solution or 3D city imagery? Is it US focused or worldwide? Can it support search and navigation? Is this even true?
Certainly, the acquisition of C3 technologies was a very good one, and will bring the wow factor that Apple is so good at producing. Siri is a great example of this. Google has a much stronger position on both search and voice recognition technologies, yet Apple stole the headlines with what has turned out to be an often frustrating experience for users. But ultimately, it is unlilkely coverage extends far beyond major cities, given the time and costs involved.
And won’t someone please think of the developers. It would seem Apple is unlikely to drop Google maps in such a short space of time (assuming iOS 6 launches in September), given the number of applications that use it. The most likely scenario is a separate 3D imagery service, available to developers as a separate API alongside Google Maps. This will no doubt enable unique features and it will be interesting to see what they have done on indoor imagery.
Although it seems unlikely, how could Apple fully replace Google Maps in time for iOS 6? This of course is pure speculation based on a severe lack of facts, but the most likely answer is TomTom/TeleAtlas (or possibly OSM). Although it has been quiet on the consumer front of late, especially on indoor mapping, TomTom sits on one of the best worldwide mapping databases. In 2012, Samsung has partnered with TomTom/TeleAtlas on mapping for Bada devices, illustrating its capabilities as a Google alternative. It is very unlikely that Apple is going to go out and spend the time and money creating the necessary base maps and geolocation databases. Instead, innovating on top of (or even acquiring)TomTom’s solution is a far better proposition, especially given Apple’s ability to negotiate very favorable licensing terms. From TomTom’s point of view, this would be a major step on the road to recovery.

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Dish Auto Hop aims to get customer attention, regardless of service lifespan

May 10, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Dish Network today announced a new Auto Hop feature , which will enable customers to play a video without commercials starting the next day (1 PM EST) after recording of content. This feature works on its PrimeTime Anytime service – the capability to simultaneously record the four major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox). Technically, it appears to have technicians / editors manually entering (or verifying automated detection) of commercial breaks from an operators center.

Skipping ads in DVRs is nothing new - TiVo’s original implementation of commercial skipping (via a 30-second jump) was changed into a fast-forward to provide customers with some exposure to advertising. Just over a year ago (in May 2011), Dish and Echostar settled their patent dispute with TiVo, giving them rights to use this technology.
Dish Executives, in a conference call about the feature, appear to be looking for a compelling message to resonate with consumers. Dish was successful at adding a significant number of subscribers in the first quarter (104K subscribers), although it experienced a significant drop in profits. Further – its current subscriber count is still lower than that of a year ago (14.056 versus 14.191M), despite an overall growing satellite market in the US and worldwide.
It is clear that this feature will raise the ire of broadcasters (and their advertising customers) – and they will pursue legal challenges to the feature. Dish appears ready to fight this – although another legal fight will further drag down profit unless it is highly successful at attracting new customers. Cable and Satellite companies rely on the good graces of broadcasters, notably during retransmission consent negotiation. Dish will find itself unwelcome at the table by taking the customers’ side in this battle.

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Convinced by TU Me, Unconvinced by Joyn

May 10, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​I’ve been testing Telefonica’s TU Me communication app since it hit the App Store yesterday, and I must say it has surprised me, and positively so. It is obviously still in a beta stage and has some severe minuses (doesn’t support group messaging, can’t run in the background, or doesn’t allow to delete old items), but none of that is anything that couldn’t be fixed fairly painlessly by an update or two. The upside, then, is that it offers a great VoIP quality, a smooth navigation UI, and a decent integration with the iPhone’s camera and GPS. And it stores all items in the Cloud (free at least for a year), which is a strong plus in my books. I’m genuinely looking forward to see how Telefonica will enhance/complete TU Me, and how it will pitch it to its subscriber base.

It could be argued that the launch of TU Me is badly timed, given that the telcos are finally seeing light at the end of their RCS tunnel – now that the initiative finally has a consumer-facing identity in Joyn. It’s however a right move, since betting on Joyn as its sole OTT response would have been riskier for Telefonica than going with a two-headed strategy that may cause resentment among its RCS partners.

The main problem with Joyn isn’t necessarily that it would be arriving terribly late. The first commercial launches are likely to take place within the next few months, and as far as I have observed the situation the head-start of the incumbent OTT players isn’t as major as many seem to think. By this I mean that they are by no means complete packages. WhatsApp focuses on messaging, Viber doesn’t do video, and Skype’s P2P technology is generally a bad fit for push notifications and multitasking. FaceTime and iMessage can’t communicate beyond Apple’s walled garden. Facebook doesn’t have enough real estate on smartphones for its own communication functions.

So I’d say there’s still enough time to introduce a service that unifies consumers’ all communication needs under one slick, user-friendly interface. The problem that I see is that when Joyn/RCS finally becomes available – even on a wide range of handsets, thanks to operators’ bullying efforts – its upgrade cycles will be far too long. It has taken a long time to develop, and I don’t have any reason why the forces behind it would be more agile when it comes to taking it further. Cloud storage, an iOS app, tablet support? Anytime soon? Keep on dreaming.

That’s the likeliest reason why Telefonica has decided to hedge its bets with TU Me, which has been released only about six months after the company set up its relatively separate innovation arm in London. It will be able to move faster, release and experiment on products in beta, and kill off unviable projects early on. That’s something what most telecoms operators, let alone a consortium of them, simply won’t be able to do.​

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Highlights of the First Weightless Plenary Conference

May 10, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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Yesterday (9th May 2012), I had the opportunity to attend the second day of the Weightless SIG’s first plenary conference in Cambridge, England. In total, around 40 people were present with most of them representatives of the SIG’s membership base. Interestingly, representatives from a number of non-member companies such as Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone were also present, illustrating that MNOs are paying close attention to the development of the Weightless standard and the use of white space in M2M applications.

The day consisted of presentations madeby chairmen of the SIG's six sub-groups (Applications, MAC, PHY, Regulatory, Security and Testing & Certification),each of whom provided an update on their “chapter” of the Weightless standard specifications. Following several rounds of healthy debate among the assembled technophiles, agreement was reached to move the standard from version 0.6 (released during the inaugural meeting of the SIG back in September 2011) to version 0.7. With plenaries due to be held every quarter, the SIG aims to advance the standard by 0.1 on each occasion, culminating in the release of version 1.0 in Q1 2013. At this time the SIG plans to deliver the standard to ETSI for formal ratification.

Some further revelations made by the SIG, as well as important facets of the evolving standard are as follows:

  • Weightless aims to be a global standard that is application agnostic. There is no intention to create application-specification profiles like the ZigBee Alliance has done.
  • Smart metering is likely to be one of the very early applications for Weightless. Other target applications include healthcare, asset tracking and automotive, to name but a few.
  • PSKs (pre-shared keys) with AES-128 encryption will be used to ensure security in the link layer (the connection between base stations and terminals).
  • Peak data rates have been improved by 7 per cent due to an increase in signal bandwidth from 3.75 MHz to 4 MHz.
  • Testing and certification is to cover base stations and terminals.

One of the main talking points of the day involved the issue of algorithm longevity (with respect to AES-128 encryption) and whether it will become disreputable during the time period in which a terminal/base station is deployed. As such, algorithm replacement was mooted and it remains to be seen whether a different level of encryption will be incorporated into the standard at subsequent plenaries. Another point likely to be discussed in the future is the issue of whether the SIG will allow other bodies to carry out testing and certification of products. Given the presence on the day of companies operating in this field, it would seem likely.

All in all, the sessions were very interesting with delegates extremely enthusiastic about the future of white space in the M2M space. One, in particular, remarked that he expected to see the first large-scalecommercial white space M2M deployments within the next 24 months. ABI Research is certainly keeping a close eye on this market, with a research report dedicated to the topic due later this year.

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TMo USA decides to go with incumbent network suppliers for LTE

May 8, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​T-Mobile USA, the last of the mobile operators in the US to announce LTE upgrades has decided to continue using NSN and Ericsson as its suppliers for their LTE upgrade network. The network will be rolled out in 2013and will cover 37,000 base stations. NSN and Ericsson have been supplying T-Mobile USA with 2G and 3G network equipment. Ericsson has been its prime supplier for 3G network upgrade which began in 2006 and NSN has been supplying its Flexi Base Stations for the AWS spectrum bands. T-Mobile has since acquired more AWS spectrum from AT&T as a result of the failed bid from AT&T. Based on the past relationship it can be assumed that Ericsson will continue to be the prime supplier while NSN will be the secondary supplier, mainly for the AWS bands.

From a competitive standpoint this isn’t good news for Huawei or Alcatel-Lucent. Huawei has struggled to get a foothold in the US, although it has seen some success in Canada. This is was probably the last opportunity for Huawei to make any headway with any of the large operators in the US. The next upgrade cycle will happen in 3-4 years time when LTE-Advanced comes along. Alcatel-Lucent is well entrenched into Verizon and also AT&T, but it would be disappointed not being able to convince T-Mobile of using its newfangled lightRadio solution for LTE.

T-Mobile USA would have been an ideal candidate for Alcatel-Lucent to show off lightRadio LTE capabilities, both for metro cells and active antennas. In terms of LTE timing T-Mobile is late relative to its competitors, but is well synced with the release window of new heterogeneous and small cell solutions like those from Alcatel, Huawei, NSN and Ericsson.

At the end of the day T-Mobile wanted to keep things simple as use existing suppliers to take them through the LTE upgrade process. They will however be using newer solutions like NSN’s FlexiZone, Ericsson’s Antenna Integrated Radio (AIR) and possibly also its new LTE pico eNodeB. Also T-Mobile’s LTE network will be Rel 10 compatible, using some of the advanced schemes like carrier aggregation, using relay nodes, multi-antenna uplink and SON enhancements.

It will also be interesting to see how T-Mobile USA brands the LTE network, as its current HSPA+ networks are already branded 4G. Carrier aggregation could be something worth keeping an eye on as T-Mobile looks to LTE-Asooner than Verizon and AT&T and with its network already being Rel 10 capable it would have an upper hand to some extent.

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Samsung Galaxy SIII Unveiled

May 8, 2012 12:00:00 AM / by Admin

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​The Samsung Galaxy SIII was unveiled last week in Earls Court, London. The glitzy launch event, Samsung Unpacked 2012, went to plan and the large European and Korean audience seemed impressed with Samsung’s latest smartphone. British television presenter, Suzi Perry, hosted the event and Samsung’s President of Mobile Communications, JK Shin, revealed the new smartphone by plucking it from his jacket pocket on stage.

The hype and publicity around the new Samsung Galaxy S3 has been significant. Numerous rumours have spread around the industry and now it’s time to put them all to rest. ABI Research highlights the new features and specifications of the new smartphone:

  • The smartphone screen size has been increased from 4.3 inches to 4.8 inches, however, it should be noted the overall handset size has not increased substantially and the handset design is curvier than the rectangle shaped S2.
  • The S3 dimensions: height - 136mm; width - 70mm; and depth – 8.6mm. The smartphone weighs 133 grams.
  • The handset will be available in pebble blue or white marble rather than the simple black or white offered for the S2.
  • The smartphone’s primary camera remains 8 megapixels, however, the camera does offer some new features; Best Shot, which takes 8 pictures and picks the best photo out of the 8 shots.
  • The processor has increased to a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor matching the HTC One X and Huawei Ascend. Additionally, the smartphone’s memory has increased from 16GB to 32GB.
  • A new feature called S Voice allows users to command their S3 for initiating calls, sending texts/emails, requesting songs, setting reminders, taking photos and even snoozing their alarms. The handset accepts commands in 8 languages.
  • Additionally, the phone had a motion recognition proximity feature which allows users to highlight a contact and simply lift the phone to their ear and the phone will automatically begin ringing the selected contact.
  • Smart Stay uses the front-facing camera to detect if the user is looking at the screen and keeps the display from timing out.
  • Buddy Share automatically forwards your group photo to your friends using face-recognition. The face-recognition software will identify the subject’s face and send the photo to them via text message or email.
  • Smart Alert catches missed messages and calls and notifies the user of these missed statuses by vibrating when picked up after being idle.
  • The new S Beam feature combines NFC technology with WiFi Direct and allows users to share a photos, videos and music with other Samsung Galaxy SIII. Users need only touch phones and the items can be transferred over without Wi-Fi or cellular signal.
  • Finally, Samsung’s AllShare Cast and Play software lets users wirelessly connect to other Samsung Galaxy S3s, televisions, tablets or PCs, and share content. This new feature is based on the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) guidelines which enable device owners to share digital media between key electronic devices.

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