Google officially released the next version of Android this week, bringing what appears to be some solid evolution to the mobile platform.
New features for Android 2.0 include useful-looking improvements to the way contacts can be accessed. Developers can play with the platform now, but the first device expected to have it is the Motorola Droid, which is slated for release in November.
It used to be that mobile network operators had a strict control over what applications can be there on your phone. Yes, the phone handset for which you paid and you keep paying every month for service. This model was painful for developers and consumers alike. And then iPhone came along with its App Store.
As I wrote before this new model provided incentive for developers to innovate and offer their products to the end users more quickly and with less obstacles. In my view this distribution model has really changed the ecosystem of mobile device applications. More and more value has moved to the application layer. The phone (network) companies are trying to figure out how to get back to where they add value. As Nokia CEO said: The ‘wow’ comes from the combination of the device with services.
Here are some choices available today:
Among companies announcing new online stores at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona were Nokia, Microsoft, French wireless carrier Orange, and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom. They’ll sell everything from simple applications that tell you the weather to more complex navigation software to help you find your way.
The pricing of applications is another tricky question. On iPhone the most popular price is $0.99. How much will you pay for an app? Does Rs. 100 sound right?
Looking at this trend, many universities around the world have started incorporating mobile application development in their course work. I wonder how many universities in Pakistan have adopted this trend and what is the outcome? What role can the Industry here play? How many developers do we have here?
Let’s discuss ideas to promote mobile application development in Pakistan. If you are mobile application developer share your experience here.
As indicated in previous fun post by Babar, Huawei Technologies, a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications network solutions worldwide showcased its first Android-powered smart phone at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This smart phone will be commercially available in the third quarter of 2009.
Huawei is delighted to showcase its much anticipated first Android-powered smart phone. As a terminal solutions provider with all-round capabilities, Huawei has an acute insight into the drivers of the communications industry and in-depth understanding of operators.A pioneer in mobile broadband devices, we look forward to expanding a compelling mobile communications experience for end-users whilst providing customized services to our operator partners via the Android smart phone.
Mr. James Chen,
Director of Huawei Terminal Marketing Department
With things coming from China, technology will definitly get cheap. “Sab China” :)
[ Source: Huawei ]
Locale is a location based application which runs on Google’s Android OS. Its specialty is to change the phone’s (sound and other) settings based on your location. It runs in the background and ‘learns’ as you move around and change the phone settings. Locale was one of top 10 winner of Google’s mobile application competition. More about how Locale was created is at Technology Review. Locale can help those of us who forget to turn the ringer off in the Mosque.
For example, a phone might be set to change its ring to vibrate at the office but play a pop song when the user is at a favorite hangout. Not only does Locale control a phone’s standard settings, but it can be extended to govern settings for other third-party applications as well.
Google Latitude is a new feature in Google Maps mobile application to track people you know and to share your location information with them. It works on Google’s G1, most BlackBerrys, most Windows Mobile devices and some other smart phones. Google says it will soon work on the iPhone and Sony Ericsson phones. It is opt-in-only feature, so you have to sign up for it. A few major features:
This is not the first one but I think based on Google maps popularity, it is a big one. There are many location-based apps (like Loopt.com and Where.com) already which have the functionality to track people on a variety of mobile devices ranging from basic cellphones to iPhones. These apps get location information from three major sources: GPS satellites, Wi-Fi or cellular towers. Once these apps help you to find your favorite person they allow (or rather encourage) you to find nearby attractions, local information or social networks.
More from an article in WSJ (image also courtsey of WSJ):
Along with their locations, friends can share other information on Latitude by updating a status line or changing their picture, which appears as a tiny representative icon on a map. Changes to one’s status or picture will be reflected in Google Talk, Google’s instant-messaging tool, but this doesn’t integrate with other status-related social-networking programs like Facebook or Twitter, and thus may saddle people with another status entry to update.
It’s easy to find fault in Latitude since it often spots people inaccurately, including showing my sister in Boston’s Charles River, rather than in a neighborhood along the river. It’s worth noting that tracking technology in general, including GPS, can be inaccurate. But even with these inaccuracies, my friends and I liked finding one another on our respective maps and used this geographic information to send location-specific messages to each other: I joked with my boyfriend about not leaving his house on time for a dinner and commended my sister on getting up early for church on Sunday.
Usability issues aside, location-based services like Latitude can be just plain creepy, especially when a Big Brother like Google is tracking your whereabouts. So Google incorporated easy-to-change privacy settings so that locations can be automatically detected, manually entered or completely hidden from other people. Or people can sign out of Latitude altogether.
Location-based services like Latitude are great for keeping tabs on friends and could even come in handy in other situations — such as when parents want to know where their kids are or when elderly relatives want to let someone always know their whereabouts. But I wouldn’t want to depend on them in an emergency.
As we were discussing the shift towards the smart phones in our recent posts ‘Battle for the Smart Phone’s soul‘ and ‘Making Technology Accesible for Everyone‘, news just flows in that the cellular market leader Nokia will now focus more on smartphones. And that means smart applications and better hardware. Nokia will focus on five core service areas: music, maps, media, messaging and games.
After an unexpected decline in sales and net profits in the last quater, Nokia has geared up for the smart-phone competition. As reported by Total Telecom, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo expressed,
The macroeconomic environment is a challenge, “and will remain so in 2009,” said Kallasvuo, as he lowered guidance for market volumes for this year.
Nokia now expects device volumes to fall by 10% industry-wide this year, having predicted a 5% decline just last month. However, Kallasvuo noted that the decline is likely to be steeper in the first half of the year than the second, raising hopes that a revival is not too far away.
The overall device market shipped 305 million units in the fourth quarter, down 9% on-year and down 2% sequentially, Kallasvuo said. The decline comes on the back of “weaker consumer confidence, unprecedented currency volatility and credit tightness,” said Kallasvuo.
“Our devices market share was 37% in Q4, down slightly on a sequential basis,” the CEO admitted. Nokia claimed 40% of the market in the year-ago quarter and 38% in Q3.
However, Kallasvuo expects Nokia’s market share to remain flat, on a sequential basis, in the current quarter and “we are targeting share gains in 2009,” he said.
And Nokia has identified the smartphone space as key to improving its market share.
The vendor reported a slight decline in its share of that market to 32% in Q4.
“Our smartphone volumes were down,” Kallasvuo noted. “[But] our smartphone portfolio is heading in the right direction,” he insisted, highlighting the 5800, which launched in some markets in November, and the recently-unveiled N97 in particular.
Kallasvuo reiterated his intention to expand Nokia’s smartphone presence a number of times during the presentation, including tackling new markets and a wider range of price points and consumer segments.
“Smartphones are not high-end only,” the CEO said. “And that is what you see from Nokia in 2009.” The executives on the conference call were keen to point out that smartphones are not all about the hardware.
“[We are] expanding the definition of smartphones,” and combining the devices with services, said Nokia chief financial officer Rick Simonson.
Nokia will focus on five core service areas: music, maps, media, messaging and games.
“[We will] increasingly combine those [five services] with a large portfolio of devices,” said Simonson. But these “product combos… [are] not the same thing as giving the services away for free, Simonson added.
Where as an analyst told ZDNet UK that,
Nokia’s reported sales had fallen short of analyst expectations. “I expected flat quarter-on-quarter sales rather than a drop, and that is a sign that things are tough,” she said.
Milanesi pointed out that Nokia had seen a particularly sharp decrease in device sales in the Greater China region (36 percent down year-on-year) and in the Middle East and Africa (23 percent down). “[Sales in] emerging markets are slowing down, and that’s where Nokia has a lot of market share,” she said.
“For China, we’re still looking at where has this all gone — so far, we haven’t seen [sales] going to other vendors,” Milanesi said. “So, either the market is getting smaller, or [manufacturers of cheap, unbranded handsets are picking it up]. When people are on tighter budgets, they will go for a phone that might look like a Nokia but costs 10 times less.”
Thats not all, in 2009 smart-phones are going to see a fierce competition as apart from the current market players rumours are in that Huawei, Motorola and Samsung are also ready to come up with an Android based smart-phone some time in the second quarter.
Lets see if this smart-phone race goes smart with cost too.
The mobile market seems to be developing by leaps and bounds across the globe, especially in the developing countries, where the use of mobile phones were not very common. New mobile markets like Pakistan, India, Brazil etc contributed widely to the growth of this sector. But still today, more than 70% mobile phone users worldwide do not make the most out of their phone. The main reasons behind this are awareness and lack of resources. A large majority makes its basic use only, i.e. Calling, while some others enjoy the benefits, like MP3 player, camera etc. Truth is that very few people in developing countries know much about mobile Internet. This scenario is not similar in European and Western countries, and the main reason for this is that majority of the people living there use mobile phones which can also be called mini-computers or well-equipped hand-held devices. They have everything, from text messaging to online streaming video access, but such privileges are not available to majority in the third world countries. The real reason behind this might be termed as ‘awareness’, but that’s not always true, since there are people who want to have all these facilities on their palm, but since they can’t afford such phones, they end-up using a low-end phone. If some of them manage to buy a feature-rich phone, they have to pay for expensive software to make the most out of it.
Now what’s the future of such people? How to make technology so cheap that everyone, from a company’s peon to CEO can have access to it? How to bridge this inevitable digital divide?
The answer of these questions are the indication of a BIG mobile revolution awaiting for us. How? Lets see.
Currently, we have iPhone and Nokia mobiles, which are considered top notch from every aspect. Other companies including BlackBerry and several others are not considered as good as them, especially the hot-baked iPhone with its apps. The normal prices of these high-end phones start above US$350, which could go upto $700 or more (You can buy a good laptop in that price with dual processors).
People living in third world countries have an average monthly income of $400-$900 (I’m talking about average) and its very obvious that they can’t afford such phones, its applications and their carrier packages, so they don’t buy it. They don’t buy it, so they also don’t come to know about the potential which lies in it, or how it can help them. So, to make technology available to everyone, Chinese mobile phones are a very good solution.
Chinese mobiles can be considered as a blessing for those who have low budget for their phones. Within US$90, you get a phone that has a web-browser using EDGE, 2.0MP Camera, games, Touch-Screen (3.5 inch), Bluetooth, FM Radio and countless apps.
Sounds good, isn’t it? But what about the software? We have everything we need in Hardware with the blessing of Chinese technology but we definitely need a good OS and some worthy application to spice up the mobile experience. The software that come with the phone or are supported are not worth using, and most of the time they end-up crashing the whole system.
This is the place where Android could kick in. Yes, Android. T-Mobile is currently selling Android phones for hundreds of dollar, the major advantage you get from this is that all applications, including its operating system is not only free, but far powerful then Leopard 10, which iPhone uses. So, if the Android gets compatible with the $90 Chinese phone, consider the possibilities that could happen. People across the globe, rich or poor, with or without resources, would be able to get their hands on a $90 (or less) phone with web-browsing, camera, Bluetooth, touch-screen, Android open source platform, document editing and I don’t know what else.
All these massive helpful tools, wrapped up in a small touch-screen mobile with a price tag of $90 will create a big dent on Nokia, apple and other vendors, but our huge digital divide, between the developed and developing nations, or rich and poor people will shrink by a large means. All we need is someone, who could provide communication between the Chinese mobile manufactures and Android developers, and If that someone is Google itself, then believe me that iPhone would be doomed with all its apps.
So, the equation of future is,
Chinese phones + Android
Digital Divide Bridged!
The writer, Hamza Zafar, is a telecom undergraduate student at NUCES-FAST and can be reached at mail2hamza [at] gmail [dot] com.
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