Providing the rocket doesn’t blow up, Mobile Broadcasting Corp. here, and SK Telecom in Korea should start a 70-channel satellite-to-mobile S-Band (2.6GHz) broadcasting service this June. We sort of wrote this company off last year, but Samsung’s announcement that it is developing a cell phone for the service has peaked our interest a little.
As component shortages build for high-end and camera-enabled mobile phones, Toshiba looks as if it is coming up trumps with a brand new CMOS/ DSP VGA module that the company claims is one of the smallest around, ready for ramping this March. Also take a look at recent news item ‘Mobile Phones Enter 2-Mpixel Era’ Here noting a Complementary Oxide Comeback, with chips on the side, for camera phones.
The difference between walking the walk and talking the talk was painfully clear at last week’s 3G Mobile Forum 2004 conference held but a home run away from Tokyo Disneyland’s Magic Mountain. The four-day event hit the airwaves running with a keynote from NTT DoCoMo’s Keji Tachikawa, who was able to reconfirm DoCoMo’s solid plans for FOMA through the year. But given the surplus of inertia that’s dragging 3G launches– actual and putative– the conference swayed on the tides of optimism and not a little understated recrimination between carriers, contents providers, business platform providers and engineers about the potential if not the reality of 3G outside of Japan, Korea and (possibly?) the UK.
This viewpoint hoists the petard on our exclusive video interviews with mobile phone inventor and 4G actualist Martin Cooper, who tells us about the potential and pratfalls of the wireless world as he sees them 30 years after he made that first call. We also have Playboy.com’s Markus Grindel telling us about the potential for adult content in the wireless environment, and last but definitely not least a high-paced program with prolific author and analyst Tomi Ahonen, a man who single-handedly lends a new meaning to ubiquity; he seems to be just about everywhere in the wireless space, and boy, is he always switched on. We’ll have this terrific triptych of programs up in the coming weeks, but first, let’s take a look at some interesting points at last week’s conference.
The mobile phone industry will sell 150 million smartphones in 2008, 15 times this year’s sales, with the Symbian OS leading the smartphone operating system market, according to a report published this week by ABI Research. The report projects strong growth for high-end mobile phones, with Microsoft’s market share trailing behind Symbian, and Linux bringing up the rear.
Superscape, specialists in the development of industry standard 3D technology to deliver console quality, over-the-air (OTA) games on mobile phones, will be showing the latest additions to its portfolio at the 3G Mobile World Forum to be held in Tokyo (13-16th January 2004). In addition Dr. Mike Grant, Superscape’s VP Marketing & Strategy, will be joining other international conference speakers to give a paper entitled “Bringing global mobile brands into mobile gaming.” Superscape’s Swerve engine has been selected by such industry giants as Siemens, Samsung and Motorola as their 3D enabling technology of choice.
Samsung is shipping a high-end smartphone powered by embedded Linux from Mizi Research that supports both Chinese and English. The device is being distributed in China, initially, where it works with #2 China wireless provider Unicom’s CDMA2000 1x network. The Samsung SCH-i519 offers an impressive range of high-end PDA and smartphone features, including sophisticated voice-control capabilities. It currently sells for about $750.
