Mobius 2007 Amsterdam: Day One [Archive]

Jason Dunn

11-30-2007, 01:00 AM

The first couple of hours were a round-the-room set of introductions. Rather than the traditional "stand up and say your name" scenario, John Starkweather (the Microsoft person who runs Mobius) invited us to do something which was done for the first time at the last Mobius in Boston: we'd each introduce ourselves and give a short demo of a device we were carrying. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/mobius-day1-01.jpg" /> Figure 1: John Starkweather from Microsoft, Mobius host. I spoke about the AT&T Tilt I was using, and the 80 GB Zune I brought with me. Perhaps surprisingly in a room full of phone enthusiasts, more of the questions were about the Zune. It was interesting seeing short demos from other people and the devices they were using. <!> The attendance list was as follows: Rafe Blandford <a href="www.allaboutsymbian.com">www.allaboutsymbian.com</a> Paul O'Brien <a href="www.modaco.com">www.modaco.com</a> Nghia Nguyen <a href="www.pdafrance.com">www.pdafrance.com</a> Arne Hess <a href="www.theunwired.net">www.theunwired.net</a> Guido Bonati <a href="www.solopalmari.com">www.solopalmari.com</a> Remo Knops <a href="www.pocketinfo.nl">www.pocketinfo.nl</a> Eldar Murtazin <a href="www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml">www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml</a> Philip Berne <a href="www.infosyncworld.com">www.infosyncworld.com</a> Shane Chiang <a href="www.ppcsg.com">www.ppcsg.com</a> Paul Matt <a href="www.phonedaily.com">www.phonedaily.com</a> Jenneth Orantia <a href="www.roam-magazine.com.au">www.roam-magazine.com.au</a> Andrew Shuttleworth <a href="www.windowsmobileinjapan.com">www.windowsmobileinjapan.com</a> Atushi Koyanagi <a href="www.htc-fan.jp">www.htc-fan.jp</a> Mauricio Freitas <a href="www.geekzone.co.nz">www.geekzone.co.nz</a> Matt Miller blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer Ryan Block <a href="www.engadget.com">www.engadget.com</a> Jason Dunn <a href="www.pocketpcthoughts.com">www.pocketpcthoughts.com</a> Michael Oryl <a href="www.mobileburn.com">www.mobileburn.com</a> Judie Lipsett <a href="www.geardiary.com">www.geardiary.com</a> Eric Lin <a href="www.phonescoop.com">www.phonescoop.com</a> Vincent Nguyen <a href="www.slashphone.com">www.slashphone.com</a> Dieter Bohn <a href="www.treocentral.com">www.treocentral.com</a> The second presentation was from Jason Langridge, better known as “Mr. Mobile”. He talked about the latest home screen designs: the Neo interface on the T-Mobile Shadow, the TPP (terminal platforms program) interface on the Vodaphone Palm Treo 500v, and Vodaphone’s Samsung SGH-i620 a.k.a. “Sangria”. He talked a little about Office Mobile 6.1: it now offers ZIP support (both unzipping of attachments and zipping), support for Office 2007 file formats, and is available as a free upgrade for users with Office Mobile 6.0. The new 6.1 version will be available for purchase from Handango at some point in the near future – Langridge said they were in the midst of figuring out the price point. Let’s hope it’s not too ridiculous – I think anything over $29.95 is too much. <a href="http://www.handstep.com/composite-526.htm">Team Calendar</a> was another application that Langridge talked about – it looks like a very useful application for individuals and small business owners who don't have Exchange solutions in place, but it also offers improvements over Exchange due to the fact that it will automatically search for free time slots in everyone's schedule. Another interesting application, <a href="http://www.oopsimlate.com/">Oops I’m Late</a>, looks at your current GPS location and sends a text message to the person you have a meeting with, giving them an estimated arrival time based on your GPS location. Neat idea! Windows Mobile: What's Next We saw the next version of Windows Mobile, and here's what I can tell you about it: it's an update and not an upgrade (it's not Windows Mobile 7). The update will be provided to device manufacturers in Q1 2008. I saw it running on current hardware (something released within the past 18 months), and it was snappy. As part of the "handshake NDA" at Mobius, none of us are permitted to write about the details of what we were shown, only our impressions of what we saw. My impression was extremely positive – not jaw-dropping, "How did they do that?" positive, but a lot of head-nodding and "Finally!" positive. I definitely wanted to have the update on my phone, that's for sure – I saw a great increase in functionality that will make any Windows Mobile user happy. Mobile Marketplace Trends <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/mobius-day1-02.jpg" /> Figure 2: Paul Jackson from Forrester Research. Paul Jackson, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, presented a boatload of mobile-related data. Some interesting points I culled from his presentation (apologies for the death by bullet points): • India's mobile market is primed to ramp up heavily in the next year • Using the "mobile Internet" outside of Japan is still "geek behaviour" – 11% of the US market will browse the mobile Internet (basically anything outside SMS messaging) • In Japan, weather, transport times, news, and entertainment (in that order) are the top usage scenarios for mobile Internet usage • Handsets are powerful enough today to handle most scenarios • Storage costs are trending toward zero – 2 GB SD for £7.41, the cost per MB is nearing zero • In Europe, most of the network and bandwidth humps have been solved. EDGE and GPRS is near-ubiquitous, operating competition is driving data costs down • User interfaces are catching up with demand. Input via pen, touch, scroll wheel, roller ball, and even voice. There's no common design language among manufacturers – he hates his Blackberry because his past few phones have been Nokia, and the language had to be re-learned • Mobile Web access: support for most plug-ins (i.e.: the YouTube test), screen resolution improvements, better navigation metaphors, but some compromise is always needed • Nokia is the #1 phone manufacturer in the world, Samsung is #2, Motorola is #3 <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/mobius-day1-03.jpg" /> Figure 3: Random gadget being passed around the room time! I got a bit of hands-on time with the Kindle. Interesting device, but the hardware design is ugly and awkward. The screen is sure easy to read - until you accidentally press the next/previous buttons on the side of the device and watch the screen vanish and re-draw itself. • Technology trends: display innovation (e-paper, flexible displays, mobile protection, direct retinal projection), augmented reality (hold up your phone, navigation data is overlaid over top of what your camera phone is looking at), touch and motion control (multi-touch, Wii control, haptic feedback), next-generation communication and commerce (telepresence, virtual worlds, payment presence and commerce), technology life integration (wearable technology, personal area networks, solar panels) • Consumer trends: hyper-connectivity (many protocols, many solutions, many technologies, not much intelligent network switching yet), mass mobility (no PC is necessarily involved, migrate current PC storage and "master" functions into the network cloud, key advantage in PC-shy or developing markets), true Web ubiquity (moving from the "twice daily" mobile Web to the "100 times daily" mobile Web, forget the "connect to get news" concept, multi-platform plays), mobile in the digital home (using the handset as a remote control, VOIP, remote media access) • Social computing: blogs, wikis, P2P file sharing, virtual worlds, podcasting are important to some consumers, but not all. At the top of the ladder you have creators (they create the content), below that are critics (people who comment, give input on the content), collectors (seek out cool stuff the other people create, they aggregate content and share it with others), joiners (maintain profiles on social networks), spectators (read blogs, don't comment, watch videos), inactives (none of the above). Roughly half of the population isn't doing any of this and fall into the inactives category. • Millennials (anyone born after 1980) like to receive information quickly, from multiple sources, and in real time. Like to parallel process and multitask. Like to work in peer groups, are more learner-centered with teacher as a guide. They have little patience for IT systems and prefer to "construct" their knowledge from experiences. They tend to be more visual learners, and are flexible, adaptable, and comfortable with uncertainty in a change-driven world. • Convergence vs. Divergence: will one mobile device rule the pocket? Can one device replace multiple devices today? The case for convergence is that one device means less storage, less new UI to learn, less cost, one thing to recharge. The case against convergence is that one device, when the battery is used up, means you can't do anything at all. Historically they've been weak "Jack of All Trades" devices. As devices and services prices drop, micro-segmentation occurs, which makes it even less likely that one device will suit multiple purposes. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/mobius-day1-04.jpg" /> Figure 4: Feel the energy in the room! Ok, maybe not, but we do have some good discussions. <PAGEBREAK> Qualcomm: The Biggest Company in Mobile Wireless That You Never Think Of Steve Horton from Qualcomm presented next. Qualcomm, founded in 1985, is the number one wireless chip supplier in the world – they overtook Texas Instruments this year. They're the type of company that you might have heard of, but you probably don't realize how many of their chips are in the devices that you use. They don't make handsets any longer, and they're also fabless (no factories), instead working with outside partners. They're a silicon-based solutions provider, working with LG, HTC, Samsung, and others on the hardware front, and Microsoft, Google, and others on the OS/software front. Microsoft and Qualcomm collaborated to create a porting process to get Windows Mobile onto the Qualcomm MSM chipset (7200 and 7500 chips). All of the CDMA-based HTC devices for instance run on the 7500 MSM chipset. There are 10+ Windows Mobile-based devices that are released today that run on Qualcomm chipsets, and 40+ that are coming soon. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/mobius-day1-05.jpg" /> Figure 5: Qualcomm's Steve Horton. When Qualcomm first got into this industry with Windows Mobile, they were being used as a modem only. Now, they're handling multiple duties which makes for slimmer handsets, better battery life, and lower costs in 2007/2008 phones. Anything that results in less silicon chips on the motherboard of the phone means fewer expensive components, less power required to keep those chips running, and less size and weight. The next generation of Qualcomm chips, something you'd see in a 2009 smartphone, is the QSC7x30 chip – more cost savings, less power, less overall size/weight. They've moved from 90 nm to 75nm, and have made a "first call" (no clue what that means) on a 45nm processor. John Starkweather chimed in saying that as Microsoft and Qualcomm have worked more closely together, from an operating system level they've realized many ways they can increase battery life and overall performance – and these are things we'll see in the Photon timeframe. SnapDragon is their chipset (QSD8250 is the HSPA version, QSD8650 is the HSPA and CDMA2000 1xEVDO Rev B) designed to target the computing and consumer market segments – think UMPC and portable media players rather than phones. No real numbers were given, but he said it was a Ghz-class CPU, 600 mhz DSP, has a northbridge and southbridge chipset, GPS, graphics with HD video decoding, WWAN, and an LCD controller. We had an interesting discussion about HD video on handheld devices – the presenter asked if we thought it was necessary to support HD video on a handheld device like a phone. My initial response was no, but after I heard comments from other Mobians, I've changed my mind: it's not that the screen size on the device will do justice to HD quality, it's that if the content is in HD already, having to wait to transcode it or not be able to view it at all is unacceptable. Qualcomm is bigger in the GPS world that I realized: with the inclusion of A-GPS in so many handsets, Qualcomm is the biggest GPS chipset company in the world, outstripping the top few GPS chipset providers – combined. There are over 300 million devices running Qualcomm GPS receivers world-wide. Adding an antenna and a few filters, and a cost of around one dollar, is all that's needed. The question is, then, why don't we see more devices with GPS? Qualcomm has a single chipset, the MDM1000, that offers transparent global connectivity – CDMA2000 1x, EV-DO, GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA, etc. This chipset would be in a laptop, the idea being that rather than buying a WWAN card from one cellular provider, you'd have a "world roaming laptop" that would be compatible with multiple networks around the world. HTC: A History of Innovation The last session of the day was John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer, from HTC. John didn't have a PowerPoint presentation (and there was much rejoicing...) and instead gave an interesting presentation on the history of HTC, and their approach to innovation. John equated HTC's approach to excellence and high-end design to that of BMW: they focus on innovating rather than copying, and on the high end rather than the low end. HTC could undoubtedly crank out a decent $99 phone, but what would the value be? They want to differentiate themselves from the other players in the market. <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/mobius-day1-06.jpg" /> Figure 6: John Wang from HTC. The topic of branding offers endless fascination for me, so I was quite interested when John started talking about the differences between brand recognition (seeing a brand or a logo and understanding who the company is, such as GM being a car maker) and brand value (seeing a BMW logo and thinking there's a company that makes quality cars). HTC, as a relatively new brand in the consumer space, is looking to build up both their brand recognition (so people recognize the HTC logo) and their brand value – John stressed that brand value is something that can't be bought; it has to be earned through quality products. I finished reading The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell) recently, and there's a story about Lexus handling a minor recall issue with over-the-top excellence in customer service, going far beyond the norm to fix the problem for customers. This helped Lexus cement massive brand value among early adopters. Thinking of the "dust under the screen" problems that HTC had for a couple of years (especially with the iPAQ and the Orange C500), I'd say they still have a fair ways to go in terms of erasing the quality problems they had in the past – yet there's no arguing that the past 12 months have seen an impressive run of trouble-free HTC devices released and there is simply no other Windows Mobile brand on the market today with the brand value of HTC. John answered a question about Google's Android platform, and he explained that he doesn't think much about particular operating systems – he thinks about experiences. So if Android delivers a certain type of experience that HTC wants to bring to market, then Android is what they'll use. HTC believes, as a business philosophy, in the perfect match, not in the perfect design. Apple (for instance) comes up with a design and says "This is your phone". HTC believes that because humans are not all alike, there have to be different solutions, different matches, and thus different products. John's talk was refreshing and honest – I wish more OEMs and mobile operators would follow his lead (I'm talking to you Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile, Vodaphone, the list goes on...). End of Day Schwag Count As always, I disclose what goodies I received from Mobius. I received a very cool <a href="http://www.skoobadesign.com/product/skooba-shuttle-34/">Skooba Shuttle backpack</a> (in blue/black), an <a href="http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(2537)-SDSDQR-8192-SanDisk_microSDHC_8GB.aspx">8 GB microSD card</a> from SanDisk, and an <a href="http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch_dual.htm">HTC Touch Dual</a>. I thought the original HTC Touch was a great device, but just not one suited to my needs (I'm really a hardware keyboard guy), so it will be interesting to see how I feel about using the HTC Touch Dual after a few weeks. That's it for Mobius day one – we went out for a nice dinner tonight, and tomorrow we'll start a whole new set of sessions...though usually day two involves some next generation stuff that doesn't amount to much in the way of article writing. I'll share what I can however! Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He swears he wasn't hit this hard by jet lag the last time he jumped a big set of time zones...