Mobile infrastructure must catch up with user needs and demands. Ubiquitous mobile computing is all around us, not only when we use smartphones to connect with friends and family across states and countries, but also when we use ticketing systems on buses and trains, purchase food from mobile vendors, watch videos, and listen to music on our phones. As a result, mobile computing systems must rise to the demand. The number of smart phones will exceed the number of PCs in 2014.

“Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014” was the huge headline from years back that has come true. We’re now past the mobile Tipping Point as this report from comScore shows: There are are more mobile connected mobile devics than PCs connected to Internet. The Internet as a whole is growing, led by developing countries of course, and mobile is growing faster.

Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years (versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years).It means that mobile industry can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year. After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet: Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015.

For some years smart phone market has been bigger than PC market. The world’s largest PC maker sells more smartphones than PCs. The number of mobile users forecasted to exceed desktop in 2015 or there had already been more mobile users than PC users in the end of 2014, depending on who’s statistics to believe.

Almost half a billion (497 million) mobile devices and connections were added in 2014 (smartphones accounted for 88 percent of that growth). Global mobile devices and connections in 2014 grew to 7.4 billion.

People also spend more time with their smart phones. Nielsen: More Time On Internet Through Smartphones Than PCs article says that that US adults spent on average 34 hours per month using the mobile internet on smartphones and they spend 27 hours on the PC internet. Mobile commerce has seen a 1,875% increase in the past 4 years, from a $2.2 billion market in 2010 to $42.8 billion in 2014.

Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014. Global mobile data traffic reached 2.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2014.  Mobile video traffic exceeded 50 percent of total mobile data traffic by the end of 2012 and grew to 55 percent by the end of 2014. More people are watching videos on smaller screens:  Half of YouTube’s views now come from phones and tablets.

It seems that 4G has really become the new high speed mobile standard widely wanted during 2013. 3G will become the low-cost option for those who think 4G option is too expensive, not everyone that has 4G capable device has 4G subscription. How the situation changes depends on how operators improve their 3G coverage, what will be the price difference from 3G to 4G and how well the service is marketed.

Mobile data increased very much last year. I expect the growth to continue pretty much as projected in Mobile Data Traffic To Grow 300% Globally By 2017 Led By Video, Web Use, Says Strategy Analytics and Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017 articles.

When 4G becomes mainstream, planning for next 5G communications starts. I will expect to see more and more writing on 5G as the vision what it will be destined to be clears more.

4G mobile phones are now mainstream and planning of 5G has started. Year 2015 started with lots of news on 5G development.

The shifting from “dumb” phones to smart phones continue.

2013 was the year when the inevitable happened: worldwide sales of smartphones surpassed sales of the more basic (and generally cheaper) feature phone devices for the first time, according to Gartner’s latest market estimates. More and more people bought smart phone insead of feature phone as cheap Chinese made Android phones sold very well.

The existing biggest smart phone players will continue to rule the markets. Google’s Android will continue to rule the markets. Samsung made most money in 2013 on Android phones (in 2013 in West only Samsung makes money from selling Android), and I expect that to continue. In 2013 Apple slurped down enormous profits but lost some of its bleeding-edge-tech street credit, and I expect that to continue in 2014.

Android kept the clear first position in mobile OS market and Apple iOS second. The platform “war”, it seems, has essentially now been won by Android. Its share is now at 83.1% on sales of 250 million units. Apple trails well behind in second place, while Windows, BlackBerry and “Other OS”‘s all continue their declines. Android and iOS take 96% of smartphone OS market in Q4 and calendar year 2014.

Android 5.0 Lollipop was probably the biggest Android release ever. Android 5.0 will power Android Wear, Android TV, and Android Auto. The OS has turned into Google’s de-facto operating system, serving as the basis for Google Glass and the Chromecast. Even Chrome OS has started running Android apps now.

iOS 8 was announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014 on June 2, 2014. It provided many features including HealthKit and HomeKit. iOS 8 received mixed reviews.

Apple performed well in 2014 on generating money, but as there were some signs of market eroding , questions raised “Can Apple Halt Its Eroding Market Share?” There was good news in the end of year: Apple and Apps Dominated Christmas 2014.

Samsung did quite well in the beginning of the year, but towards end of 2014 Samsung saw some marker shrinking as Chinese smartphone makers like Lenovo and Huawei have been gradually eating away at Samsung’s Galaxy sales thanks to a range of low-cost handsets. Samsung’s crash caught the most headlines, since the giant is clearly No 2 in the overall market – by some distance – and has the furthest to fall.

Watch out, Samsung! 3 of top 5 smartphone makers are now Chinese. Fast growing China’s Xiaomi Becomes World’s 5th or 4th Largest Smartphone Maker

Time of mobile business hyper growth seems to be over: Smartphones are not exactly a mature industry but their growth rates are slowing. The global smartphone market also saw strong demand in Asia and Africa, and sluggish volumes in North America and Europe.

The bloodbath continues for smartphone vendors, results from the leading Android vendors have confirmed in the past week. While it’s a great time to be a buyer, in saturated Western markets, only LG can show black ink on its earnings statements. Sony, Samsung and HTC also reported and the pages were awash with minus signs, parentheses and red ink. One big issue was Western market saturation, where Android has matured nicely but hardware vendors lack a compelling differentiation. The only profit growth can be found in expanding markets, particularly India and China, which haven’t reached saturation yet in 2014.

The biggest stories of the year 2013 outside the Samsung/Apple duopoly were the sale of Nokia’s mobile phone business to Microsoft and the woes of BlackBerry. BlackBerry had an agonising year and suffered one of the most spectacular consumer collapses in history, and I can’t see how it would get to it’s feet during 2014. Nokia made good gains for Windows Phones during 2013, and I expect that Microsoft will put marketing effort to gain even more market share. Windows Phone became the third mobile ecosystem, and will most probably keep that position in 2014.

Windows got clear third position on the smart phones, but it’s market share was tiny compared to Android and Apple.  In real terms, Windows sales were nearly flat over a year ago on 9 million units.

Blackberry problems continued.

New players try to enter smart phone markets and some existing players that once tried that try to re-enter. There are rumors that for example HP tries to re-enter mobile market, and is probable that some other computer makers try to sell smart phones with their brands.

For example Lenovo, LG, Asus and Acer have all smart phone product lines.

In the Android front there will be new companies trying to push marker (for example OPPO and many smaller Chinese makers you have never heard earlier).

There are very many new Asian smart phone brands that push to market. China’s Xiaomi Becomes World’s 5th Largest Smartphone Maker.

Jolla is pushing Sailfish OS phones that can run Android applications and also pushing possibility to install that OS to Android phone. Mozilla will push on with it’s own Firefox OS phone. Canonical will try to get their Ubuntu phone released. Samsung is starting to make Tizen powered smart phones and NTT DoCoMo could be the first carrier to offer a Tizen powered device. None of those will be huge mainstream hits within one year, but could maybe could have their own working niche markets. The other OS brands combined do not amount to 1% of all smartphones sold in 2013, so even if they could have huge growth they would still be very small players on the end of 2014.

Despite the continued dominance of Android and iOS in the smartphone market, new players are emerging that serve as credible threat to Google and Apple’s legacy. None of them was a huge success.

Jolla celebrated some success, but it’s sales volumes were tiny compared to bigger players. Jolla releases tablet and celebrates tablet’s success with price cut for its phone.

Several companies released Firefox OS phones for cheap phone market, but those were not huge success because people seemed to want more advanced smart phone features more than cheap price.

Ubuntu attempted to raise $32m via crowdfunding for its Ubuntu Edge smartphone. It didn’t make it.

Samsung Launches First Tizen Phone. But it seems that the ambitions for Tizen has shifted: Samsung’s Tizen operating system will power all the company’s smart TVs in 2015 and Tizen is used in smart watch products.

As smartphone and tablet makers desperately search for points of differentiation they will try to push the limits of performance on several fronts to extremes. Extreme inter-connectivity is one of the more useful features that is appearing in new products. More context-aware automatic wireless linking is coming: Phones will wirelessly link and sync with screens and sensors in the user’s vicinity.

IoT started to became popular. Sensors that use BLE communications work with smart phones.

Various vendors have made iBeacon-compatible hardware transmitters – typically called beacons- a class of Bluetooth low energy devices that broadcast their location to nearby portable electronic devices.

You can also expect extreme sensor support to offer differentiation. Biomedical sensors have lots of potential (Apple already has fingerprint sensors). Indoor navigation will evolve. Intelligent systems and assistive devices will advance smart healthcare.

Healthcare applications were starting to appear in 2014. They hit the headlines more in beginning of 2015.

Several smartphone makers have clear strategies to take photography to extremes. 40 megapixel camera is already on the market and several manufacturers are playing with re-focus after shooting options.

The cameras got more megapixels in 2014, but it became clear that the next wave of smartphone cameras aren’t going to focus on the most megapixels — software is what matters now. Nokia Refocus breathes new life into smartphone cameras in 2014: The Nokia Refocus app enables Lytro-style refocusing by taking multiple photos at different focal points and stitching them together in software. The end result is some really cool photos that can only be shared through Nokia’s special web embed service. Nokia’s not the only company working on this software. For example HTC One features always-on “refocus” using two cameras.

Also 4K video shooting came to the the high end smart phone feature list in 2014.

In high-end models we may be moving into the overkill zone with extreme resolution that is higher than you can see on small screen: some makers have already demonstrated displays with twice the performance of 1080-progressive. Samsung is planned to release devices with 4k or UHD resolutions. As we have seen in many high tech gadget markets earlier it is a very short journey to copycat behavior.

Also smart phone chips that can handle 4K have been introduced. Smart phones that can shoot 4K video became available in large numbers – There Are Now Over 20 Cell Phones that Shoot 4K Video. It seems that 4K recording is more than just a gimmick – There are actually many advantages to recording in 4K. The simple fact is that Samsung’s Galaxy S5 is poised to become the most popular 4K acquisition device on the planet: its 16MP camera will shoot 3840 x 2160 video at 30fps, using h.265.

One of the recent pop-trends amongst smartphone manufacturers is the strive towards higher resolution screens and higher pixel densities. Historically, smartphone screens have got that little bit better every season. The trend would suggest, therefore, that 4K displays will be commonplace within the next two or so generations of flagship phone.

In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a jump from HD (1280 x 720) to FHD (1920 x 1080), to this year’s QHD (2560 x 1440). We still have to wait when tiny 4K displays end up to smart phone products (that did not happen in 2014). But there were signals like “Sharp reportedly working on a 4K (4096 x 2160) resolution smartphone display panel“. The tech will be ready for mass production some time in 2016 and will be used in 5- to 6-inched displays (a 5.5″ screen, loaded with a 4K resolution will result in a pixel density of 842 PPI). It seems that we are pretty close to get smart phone 4K display in summer 2015.

It seems that amount of memory on high-end mobile devices is increasing this year. To be able to handle higher resolutions smart phones will also need more memory than earlier (for example Samsung lpddr 4 allows up to 4 GB or RAM on smart phone as now high-end devices now have typically 2GB). As the memory size starts to hit the limits of 32 bit processors (4GB), I will expect that there will be some push for chip makers to start to introduce more 64 bit processors for mobile devices. Apple already has 64-bit A7 microprocessor in iPhone 5s, all the other phone-makers want one too for their high-end models (which is a bit of panic to mobile chip makers).

64 bit CPUs came to market from main chip suppliers.

Amount of memory in smart phone increased, 3GB of RAM is nothing extraordinary anymore.

As consumers become ever-more attached to their gadgets – variously glued to PCs and tablets, and, after-hours, laptops, game consoles and mobiles – the gigantic digital businesses are competing with each other to capture and monopolise users’ screen time on internet-connected devices. And all of the contenders are using many monumentally large data centres and data vaults.

Cloud services became closely interlinked to mobile devices. Apple and Google provide cloud services to support the smart phones hat use their operating systems.

The Internet as a whole is growing, led by developing countries of course, and mobile is growing faster. Mobile, mobile, mobile. Marketers were are all going mobile in a hurry in 2014. Consumer preference for mobile apps vs mobile sites should also be thought through as part of mobile strategy. Data from Nielsen on mobile media time shows the consumer preference for mobile apps which account for 89% of media time in mobile as might be expected from the use of the most popular social network, email and news apps. Smartphone add-to-cart and conversion rates are much lower than for desktop.

Long predicted but always seeming to be “just around the corner,” mobile payments may finally have arrived.

You will be able to keep your mobile phone during some flights all the time and browser web on the plane more widely. At some planes you might also be able to make phone calls with your mobile phone during the flight. Calls on flights have been theoretically possible, and United States has recently looked at mobile phone calls allow the flights.

Airlines routinely use satellites to provide Wi-Fi for passengers. AT&T has one of the largest LTE networks in the US, and it has signed an agreement with Honeywell to use the cellular grid to bring faster in-flight internet to air passengers.

You can use mobile devices more freely on planes. The European Aviation Safety Agency EASA decided to allow the use of mobile devices in Europe flights. Federal Aviation Administration ruled that passangera are allowed to use smartphones, tablets, and laptops during takeoff and landing.

In year 2013 there were many releases on wearable technologies. Wearable is a trend with many big companies already in the space, and more are developing new products. It seems that on this field year 2013 was just putting on the initial flame, and I expect that the wearable market will start to heat up more during 2014. The advent of wearable technology brings new demands for components that can accommodate its small form factor, wireless requirements, and need for longer battery life.

Smart watches took first steps in 2014. The wearables bandwagon rolled into town this year – heralding the arrival of glossy and expensive new wearable timepieces. Android Wear and Apple’s iWatch have grabbed most the headlines. Just 6.8M smartwatches sold in 2014 at an average price of $189. Unsurprisingly, the market leader was Samsung, which has taken something of a shotgun approach in the smartwatch market, releasing multiple models and even multiple platforms. Pebble 2nd in sales numbers.

On the wearable technology space in the beginning of the year Google Glass was a hot topic that faded over the year 2014. Google Glass and other smart specs are proving to be a flop with sceptical consumers: Google Glassholes haven’t achieved ‘social acceptance’ – And this is why smartglass sector IS A FLOP… for now. The situation is so that currently only the arsiest of Glassholes are comfortable wearing smart glasses, and rest of us are a bit uncomfortable with having cyborgs for dinner guests. Even though Google’s head-worn computer is going nowhere, the technology is sure to march on. There are and will be successors that could make it if they play their cards right. Smart glasses continue to raise privacy and safety concerns from many consumers and government bodies.

Interest in mobile virtual reality started in 2014. Google’s road to virtual reality begins with Cardboard. How could this piece of cutout cardboard with a phone in it possibly work as a virtual reality headset?  Not only is Google’s Cardboard virtual reality experience more enjoyable than I imagined, but also Cardboard is much more than just a DIY toy.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will evolve into the Web of Things, increasing the coordination between things in the real world and their counterparts on the Web. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets and consumer items such as cars and televisions. Gartner suggests that now through 2018, a variety of devices, user contexts, and interaction paradigms will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable.

Expansion to the cars and televisions happened. Internet of Things was taking it first growth steps, but we are still far from Web of Things vision. Today’s IoT systems are too often one manufacturer wallet garden silos.

Technology giants Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are about to expand their battle for digital supremacy to a new front: the automobile. The Android vs. iOS apps battle is coming to the automotive industry in 2014

Connected car concept  really took off: Increasingly, Connected Cars (and especially electric cars) are taking advantage of the rise of smartphones, and apps are available to interact with the car from any distance: Users can unlock their cars, check the status of batteries on electric cars, find the location of the car, or remotely activate the climate control system.

On January 6, 2014, Google announced the formation of the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA) a global alliance of technology and auto industry leaders committed to bringing the Android platform to cars starting in 2014. The OAA includes Audi, GM, Google, Honda, Hyundai and Nvidia. Android Auto was announced on June 25, 2014.

Apple CarPlay on launched to the public on March 3, 2014, at the Geneva Motor Show: CarPlay (previously announced as iOS in the Car) is a standard developed by Apple Inc. to allow devices running the iOS operating system to function with built-in display units of automobile dashboards.

For app development HTML5 will be on rise. Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. It will also work on many mobile applications as well.

HTML5 became mainstream technology durong 2015. In the beginning of 2015 article HTML5′s “Dirty Little Secret”: It’s Already Everywhere, Even In Mobile  tells that while HTML5 has never really lived up to its potential, due a problem with marketing as awell as VisionMobile posits, this is partly a problem with performance and partly a question of tooling. but HTML5 has spread somewhat quietly very widely – it is nowadays is is almost everywhere.

I did not see this coming but I sould have: Doctors find new Digitillnesses – ‘text neck’ and ‘telepressure’. The issue is that people spend an average of two to four hours a day with their heads tilted over reading and texting on their smart phones and devices, and the ergonimics of using smart phone for long time stresses neck.

Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years (versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years).It means that mobile industry can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year. After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet: Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015.

It seems that 4G has really become the new high speed mobile standard widely wanted during 2013. 3G will become the low-cost option for those who think 4G option is too expensive, not everyone that has 4G capable device has 4G subscription. How the situation changes depends on how operators improve their 3G coverage, what will be the price difference from 3G to 4G and how well the service is marketed.

Mobile data increased very much last year. I expect the growth to continue pretty much as projected in Mobile Data Traffic To Grow 300% Globally By 2017 Led By Video, Web Use, Says Strategy Analytics and Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017 articles.

When 4G becomes mainstream, planning for next 5G communications starts. I will expect to see more and more writing on 5G as the vision what it will be destined to be clears more. Europe’s newly-minted 5GPPP Association plans to launch as many as 20 research projects in 2014, open to all comers, with a total budget of about 250 million euros. The groundwork for 5G, an ambitious vision for a next-generation network of networks that’s still being defined, and the definition will go on many years to come. No one really knows today what 5G will be because there are still several views. Europe’s new 5GPPP group published a draft proposal for 5G. 5GPPP is not the only group expected to work on standards for next-generation cellular networks, but it could become one of the most influential.

The shifting from “dumb” phones to smart phones continue. In USA and Europe smart phone penetration is already so high levels that there will not be very huge gains on the market expected. Very many consumers already have their smart phone, and the market will be more and more on updating to new model after two years or so use. At the end of 2013 Corporate-Owned Smartphones Back in Vogue, and I expect that companies continue to shop smart phones well in 2014.

The existing biggest smart phone players will continue to rule the markets. Google’s Android will continue to rule the markets. Samsung made most money in 2013 on Android phones (in 2013 in West only Samsung makes money from selling Android), and I expect that to continue. In 2013 Apple slurped down enormous profits but lost some of its bleeding-edge-tech street credit, and I expect that to continue in 2014.

The biggest stories of the year 2013 outside the Samsung/Apple duopoly were the sale of Nokia’s mobile phone business to Microsoft and the woes of BlackBerry. BlackBerry had an agonising year and suffered one of the most spectacular consumer collapses in history, and I can’t see how it would get to it’s feet during 2014. Nokia made good gains for Windows Phones during 2013, and I expect that Microsoft will put marketing effort to gain even more market share. Windows Phone became the third mobile ecosystem, and will most probably keep that position in 2014.

New players try to enter smart phone markets and some existing players that once tried that try to re-enter. There are rumors that for example HP tries to re-enter mobile market, and is probable that some other computer makers try to sell smart phones with their brands. In the Android front there will be new companies trying to push marker (for example OPPO and many smaller Chinese makers you have never heard earlier). Nokia had a number of Android projects going on in 2013, and some former Nokia people have put up company Newkia to follow on that road. To make a difference in the market there will be also push on some smaller mobile platforms as alternative to the big three (Google, Apple, Microsoft). Jolla is pushing Sailfish OS phones that can run Android applications and also pushing possibility to install that OS to Android phone. Mozilla will push on with it’s own Firefox OS phone. Canonical will try to get their Ubuntu phone released. Samsung is starting to make Tizen powered smart phones and NTT DoCoMo could be the first carrier to offer a Tizen powered device. None of those will be huge mainstream hits within one year, but could maybe could have their own working niche markets. The other OS brands combined do not amount to 1% of all smartphones sold in 2013, so even if they could have huge growth they would still be very small players on the end of 2014.

As smartphone and tablet makers desperately search for points of differentiation they will try to push the limits of performance on several fronts to extremes. Extreme inter-connectivity is one of the more useful features that is appearing in new products. More context-aware automatic wireless linking is coming: Phones will wirelessly link and sync with screens and sensors in the user’s vicinity.

You can also expect extreme sensor support to offer differentiation. Biomedical sensors have lots of potential (Apple already has fingerprint sensors). Indoor navigation will evolve. Intelligent systems and assistive devices will advance smart healthcare.

Several smartphone makers have clear strategies to take photography to extremes. 40 megapixel camera is already on the market and several manufacturers are playing with re-focus after shooting options.

In high-end models we may be moving into the overkill zone with extreme resolution that is higher than you can see on small screen: some makers have already demonstrated displays with twice the performance of 1080-progressive. Samsung is planned to release devices with 4k or UHD resolutions. As we have seen in many high tech gadget markets earlier it is a very short journey to copycat behavior.

It seems that amount of memory on high-end mobile devices is increasing this year. To be able to handle higher resolutions smart phones will also need more memory than earlier (for example Samsung lpddr 4 allows up to 4 GB or RAM on smart phone as now high-end devices now have typically 2GB). As the memory size starts to hit the limits of 32 bit processors (4GB), I will expect that there will be some push for chip makers to start to introduce more 64 bit processors for mobile devices. Apple already has 64-bit A7 microprocessor in iPhone 5s, all the other phone-makers want one too for their high-end models (which is a bit of panic to mobile chip makers).

As consumers become ever-more attached to their gadgets – variously glued to PCs and tablets, and, after-hours, laptops, game consoles and mobiles – the gigantic digital businesses are competing with each other to capture and monopolise users’ screen time on internet-connected devices. And all of the contenders are using many monumentally large data centres and data vaults.

You will be able to keep your mobile phone during some flights all the time and browser web on the plane more widely. At some planes you might also be able to make phone calls with your mobile phone during the flight. Calls on flights have been theoretically possible, and United States has recently looked at mobile phone calls allow the flights.

In year 2013 there were many releases on wearable technologies. Wearable is a trend with many big companies already in the space, and more are developing new products. It seems that on this field year 2013 was just putting on the initial flame, and I expect that the wearable market will start to heat up more during 2014. The advent of wearable technology brings new demands for components that can accommodate its small form factor, wireless requirements, and need for longer battery life.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will evolve into the Web of Things, increasing the coordination between things in the real world and their counterparts on the Web. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets and consumer items such as cars and televisions. Gartner suggests that now through 2018, a variety of devices, user contexts, and interaction paradigms will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable.

Technology giants Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are about to expand their battle for digital supremacy to a new front: the automobile. The Android vs. iOS apps battle is coming to the automotive industry in 2014: car OEMs aren’t exactly known for their skills in developing apps and app developers don’t want to develop so many different versions of an app separately (for Ford, General Motors, BMW, and Toyota). I am waiting for Google’s response to Apple’s iOS in the Car. Next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Google and German auto maker Audi AG plan to announce that they are working together to develop in-car entertainment and information systems that are based on Google’s Android software. The push toward smarter cars is heating up: Right now, we are just scratching the surface.

For app development HTML5 will be on rise. Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. It will also work on many mobile applications as well.

The phone feels pretty much like a combination of Android smart phone and Linux computer you can hack yourself. Here is the picture of the phone on my hand with the Linux console showing on the screen (I wanted to show something special instead of main screen photos you see on every magazine article talking on Jolla phone).

Here is a close-up of the Linux console screen showing the processes running on the device.

At my quick hands-on the phone gave quite positive feeling. Jolla promised quite a lot and it seems that they succeeded well in delivering what they promised. The Android compatibility worked as I expected: Most of Android applications tested worked very well on the device, but some applications failed to work.

Nokia was running several Android projects on both Lumia models and Asha phones, reveals the New York Times and The Verge sources. So Nokia had already been active in the Android project, and it also had a surprisingly broad. Nokia could have released Android phones towards the end of 2014.

Information may be Microsoft and Nokia’s marketing a new light. Microsoft was getting into a bad situation. Nokia was frustrated with Microsoft’s ability to bring Windows Phone for lower price so it began to test the use of Android in the Asha models. Microsoft was aware of Nokia’s Android project and Android projects made Nokia the more interesting in buying other companies. This confirms the view expressed in the past that Microsoft began to run low on options. If Nokia would have moved to Android, it would have meant the death of Microsoft’s more than 15 years of telephone projects.

For more background on this check the comments on my earlier Microsoft to buy Nokia’s phone business posting. There you can find links and excepts from many articles that touch this topic.

The story of Android developments done inside Nokia might not end with Microsoft buying, because some Android developers from Nokia are putting up a new company called Newkia. They might try something similar to what Meego developers did with Jolla company that develops Sailfish OS smartphone that can run Android applications.

Jolla smartphone is the first handset to run Jolla’s Sailfish OS, which is essentially a reworked version of Nokia’s now defunct Meego OS. The Sailfish OS is compatible with Android apps.

In the there is request for bloggers to write about this, so this is my contribution to this Finnish company.

4G mobile device speeds becomes the new standard. As competition move to that end, there will be fast growth there. Shipments of ’4G’ LTE devices, that is handsets, dongles and tablets, reached almost 103 million units in 2012, according to figures published by ABI Research. It interesting that almost 95% of the devices shipped went to North America and the Asia-Pacific.

3G will become the low-cost option for those who think 4G option is too expensive. What is interesting to note is that not everyone who upgraded to an LTE-capable device last year took out an LTE subscription; in fact, only around half of LTE device owners also have an LTE subscription.

The shift to 4G can take many more than year to fully happen even in USA. ABI expects the rate at which 3G subscribers with LTE handsets upgrade to LTE connections will gather pace over the next two years. And even longer in Europe. Carriers should not be panicking. And 3G will live and expand besides 4G for quite a long time. For many of those living outside cities, 3G internet connections are still hard to come by.

Apple and Samsung will continue to make money this year as well as people rate Apple and Samsung more highly than ever. Accountant Deloitte predicts that Smartphone sales to hit 1bn a year for first time in 2013.

Samsung is currently the world’s leading seller of phones and televisions. Those leaders should be careful because competition is getting harder all the time. Samsung boss has given warning on this to employees. Remember what what happened to Nokia.

Deloitte expects that the number of active phones with either a touch screen or an alphabet keyboard to be two billion by the end of the year.

Android will dominate smart phone market even stronger than before. Digitimes Research: Android phones to account for 70% of global smartphone market in 2013.

Windows Phone 8 situation is a question mark. Digitimes predicts that Shipments of Windows Phones, including 7.x and 8.x models, will grow 150% on year to 52.5 million units in 2013 for a 6.1% share. There is one big force against Windows Phone: Google does not bother doing services for Windows Phone 8, Google’s sync changes are going to screw Gmail users on Windows Phone and there are issues with YouTube. Does Windows Phone even have a chance without Google? For active Google service users the changes are pretty that they get this phone.

Competition on smart phones gets harder. It seems that smart phone business have evolved to point where even relatively small companies can start to make their own phones. Forbes sees that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, will all introduce branded mobile phones.

Patent battles are far from over. We will see many new patent fights on smart phones and tablets.

Mobile phones still cause other devices to become redundant. Tietoviikko tells that last year mobile phone made redundant the following devices: small screen smart phones (4 inch or more now), music buying as individual tracks or discs, navigators (smart phone can do that) and a separate pocket size camera. Let’s see what becomes redundant this year.

Many things happens on Linux on mobile devices. Ubuntu now fits in your phone. Firefox OS phones from ZTE will come to some markets. ZTE plans to make Open webOS phone. Meego is not dead, it resurrects with new names: Samsung will release Tizen based phones. Jolla will release Sailfish phones.

Cars become more and more mobile communications devices. Car of the future is M2M-ready. Think a future car as a big smart phone moving on wheels.

Nokia seemed to be getting better on the end of 2012, but 2013 does not look too good for Nokia. Especially on smart phones if you believe Tomi T Ahonen analysis Picture Tells it Better – first in series of Nokia Strategy Analysis diagrams, how Nokia smartphone sales collapsed. Even if shipment of Windows Phone 8 devices increase as Digitimes predicts the year will be hard for Nokia. Tristan Louis expects in Forbes magazine that Nokia abandons the mobile business in 2013. I think that will happen this year, at least for whole mobile business. I have understood that basic phone and feature phone phone business part of Nokia is quite good condition. The problems are on smart phones. I expect that Windows Phone 8 will not sell as well as Nokia hopes.

Because Nokia is reducing number of workers in Finland, there are other companies that try to use the situation: Two new Finnish mobile startups and Samsung opens a research center in Espoo Finland.

Finnish mobile gaming industry has been doing well on 2012. Rovio has been growing for years on the success of Angry Birds that does not show slowing down. Supercell had also huge success. I expect those businesses to grow this year. Maybe some new Finnish mobiel game company finds their own recipe for success.

Late addition: Wireless charging of mobile devices is get getting some popularity. Wireless charging for Qi technology is becoming the industry standard as Nokia, HTC and some other companies use that. There is a competing AW4P wireless charging standard pushed by Samsung ja Qualcomm. Toyota’s car will get wireless mobile phone charger, and other car manufacturers might follow that if buyers start to want them. Wireless charge option has already been surprisingly common variety of devices: Nokia Lumia 920, Nexus 4, HT, etc. We have to wait for some time for situation to stabilize before we see public charging points in cafeterias.

• many people who know mobile phones are looking for new jobs (business of many mobile phone companies not going that well)
• architectural changes (application processor communicating with separate ready communication processor+rf module instead of one processor trying to do everything)
• there are many reference platforms for smartphones you can start your own designs
• there are ready operating systems you can use with small modifications on your products (Android being most successful in this but not the only one)
• there are companies that can design whole phone to you
• you can outsource all your manufacturing
• etc…

So nowadays with relatively reasonable mount of R&D it is possible to make your own smartphone. This change has for example created very many new mobile phone manufacturers in China.

The situation that Nokia is going down fast with Windows Phone seems to have created place for some new mobile phone companies in Finland. Two new mobile phone companies have been started in Finland quite recently. Behind both of them there are people that have previously worked for Nokia.

Jolla is developing Meego based smarphones. Jolla has big plans in China: it wants to become an alternative to iOS and Android. The company aims to build the third smartphone ecosystem in China around Nokia’s rejected MeeGo operating system. The new version of Meego for that will be called Sailfish. Finnish Jolla Mobile wants to develop a better smartphone, which is now a lot of applications. Phone natively support HTML5 and Qt-based applications. The company’s secret weapon is that it can also run Android applications under Meego with ACL technology.

Finnish mobile phone company Jolla is going to present its new smartphone operating system “Sailfish” in Helsinki next month at Slush event in 21 to 22. November. “Our user interface is more modern than the Android and iPhone. They have remained static time point for five years, but can do better”.

The ex-Nokians are almost ready to reveal their MeeGo/Sailfish based smartphone. Jolla’s first Meego phone will be based on a reference circuit boards and integrated software platform. The 4G phone is on the way. For some more details my Meego blog article comments where I have posted many news related to Jolla.

Update: Jolla Sailfish “teaser” video

Another new smart phone start-up in Finland is Adaia. Adaia smart phone is aimed at outdoor enthusiasts. Adaia team got fed up wrapping our smartphones in a plastic bag or protective cover every time we went outside to have some fun. They asked: Was our lifestyle too harsh or smartphones too fragile? They began to suspect the latter. Then they decided to do something about it. They started to imagine what the perfect smartphone would be like: our smartphone should be shockproof, dustproof, waterproof down to 10 meters in seawater and able to gain MIL STD 810G certification. It should be able to connect even outside cellular network coverage, thus allowing satellite texting.

To realize the dream the Adaia company contacted several design companies to do it: BMW DesignworksUSA for industrial design and Elektrobit for what goes inside and makes the phone tick. Adaian phones should are expected to run Android operating system. Adaia so far have not revealed the release phones for sale or supply schedule.

Let’s wait to see what comes out of those companies in next few years.

There are many predictions. I started looking for information from Twelve 2012 Predictions For The Telecom Industry and Top 12 Hot Design Technologies for 2012 articles. Then I did some more research on what is happening on the field and decided to make my own list of what is expected this year. You can go to the original information sources by clicking the links to see where all this information comes from.

The global telecommunications services market will grow at a 4% rate in 2012 (was 7% in 2011).

Mobile growth does not stop. The number of global mobile subscriptions will pass the 6 billion mark in February. India will pass China to become the world’s largest mobile market in terms of subscriptions.

The mobile handset market will surpass the $200 billion mark. Smartphones are most heavily used by people under 45, and that age group increasingly sees the smartphone or tablet as a portal to Facebook and Twitter, among other social networks. The demand for the chips that generate and process that data in smartphones is increasing (sales of smartphone applications processors surged to $2.2 billion in the third quarter of 2011). Six Companies Want Supremacy On The Smartphones Chip Market! Qualcomm Look Out!

There is lots of competition on mobile OS marker, but I expect that thing continue pretty much as 2011 ended: Android continues to boom, RIM and Microsoft decline. Symbian’s future is uncertain although Symbian started and finished 2011 as the undisputed king of mobile OSs (33.59%). Windows Phone will try to get to market and Leaked Windows Phone Roadmap gives us a peek into the future. Java Micro Edition making a comeback according to the NetApplications report because large number of low-cost feature phones. The real mobile application battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5.Tizen open source project tries to push to mobile Linux market (first version Q1 2012) with ideas from Meego, LiMo and WebOS. Cars and smartphones start to communicate using MirrorLink technology to allow new features.

Mobile campaigns to be hot in 2012 presidential race article tells that though mobile advertising not seen much on the campaign trail, mobile strategy is expected to be important for attracting younger voters. Social networks played an important role in the last U.S. presidential election, but the explosive growth in smartphone usage and the introduction of tablets could make or break the candidates for president in 2012. Expect to see specialized apps to help campaign groupies follow the candidates.

Text messaging has been very profitable business for mobile phone operators and making them lots of money. Text Messaging Is in Decline in Some Countries tell that all signs point to text messaging’s continuing its decline. There has been already decline in Finland, Hong Kong and Australia. The number of text messages sent by cellphone customers in USA is still growing, but that growth is gradually slowing, “SMS erosion” is expected to hit AT&T and Verizon in this year or next years. The fading allure of text messaging is most likely tied to the rise of alternative services, which allow customers to send messages free using a cellphone’s Internet connection.

EU politicians want to ban roaming charges according to Computer Sweden magazine article. If the proposal becomes law in the EU, it takes away slippery roaming charges for mobile data (could happen earliest at summer 2012, but I expect that it will take much more time). Roaming robbery to end – 2015 article tells that the goal is that the mobile roaming fees should be completely abolished the 2015th.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is becoming available in many mobile phones and new flexibility via organic materials can help in implementing NFC. NFC-enabled SIM cards are expected to become a worldwide standard. Electronic wallet in smartphones probably takes a step forward with this. Google, opened the game with Google Wallet service. According to research firm ABI Research estimates that in 2012 NFC phones is growing 24 million to 80 million units. There is still years to wait until mass market on NFC wallets starts. ABI Research estimates that there is 552 million NFC enabled devices at year 2016.

The 4G technology WiMax will see the beginning of its end in Asia. Like operators in other regions, Asian operators will opt for the rival 4G technology LTE instead.

The number of active (installed) PCs worldwide will pass the 2 billion mark. Broadband penetration continues to increase. Broadband penetration of the world’s population will pass the 10% mark globally. IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) penetration of the world’s population will pass the 1% mark. Broadband technologies are fundamentally transforming the way we live. UN wants two-thirds of the world online by 2015.

Today’s Cable Guy, Upgraded and Better-Dressed article tells that the cable guy is becoming sleeker and more sophisticated, just like the televisions and computers he installs. The nearly saturated marketplace means growth for cable companies must come from all the extras like high-speed Internet service, home security, digital recording devices and other high-tech upgrades.

Ethernet displaces proprietary field buses. As Ethernet displaces proprietary field buses to facilitate the operation of the digital factory. Ethernet switches are the ubiquitous building block of any intelligent network. Ethernet has also become the de facto networking technology in industrial automation even in mission-critical local networks. Modern Ethernet switches have added significant new functionality to Ethernet while decreasing port prices. Ethernet for Vehicles also becomes reality largely to serve the expected boom of camera-based applications in cars.

Operators’ growth will increasingly depend on their having a cloud computing strategy, an approach for the high-growth IT service market and a clear value proposition for the enterprise market. Data center technologies will be hot topic. 10GBase-T Technology will become technically and economically feasible interface option on data center servers. 10GBase-T Technology allows you to use RJ45 connectors and unshielded twisted pair cabling to provide 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, and 10Gbps data transmission, while being backward-compatible with prior generations.

40/100 Gbit/s Ethernet will be a hot topic. Carriers and datacenters have been clamoring for the technology to expand their core backbone networks. 2012–A Return to Normalcy and Pragmatic, Power Conscious 100G article mentions that in 2010 and 2011, the industry saw the first real roll-outs of 100G transport solutions based on Coherent Detection and FPGA-based Framers. In 2012 we’ll start to see 100G taking a bigger place in the build out of new and existing networks around the world. The initial deployments of 100G are clearly too costly and too power hungry to be widely deployed as the primary transport technology, so optical transport marketplace will move to much lower power and lower cost Direct Detection optical transport solutions. The average WDM link for 10G is dissipating about 3.5W per optical module, the average WDM link per 100G is dissipating about about 100W.

5 Major Changes Facing the Internet in 2012 article tells that 2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990s. This year the Internet will face or can face several milestones: root servers may have a new operator, new company could operate the .com registry, up to 1000 new top-level domains will start being introduced, additional 10,000 Web sites will support IPv6 and Europe will run out of IPv4 addresses.

No IPv6 Doomsday In 2012. Yes, IPv4 addresses are running out, but a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy won’t be coming in 2012. Of course there’s a chance that panic will ensue when Europe’s RIPE hands out its last IPv4 addresses this summer, but ‘most understand that they can live without having to make any major investments immediately. Despite running out of IPv4 addresses we will be able to continue to use IPv4 techniques (Asia depleted all of its IPv4 address space already April 2011). ISP’s and hosting companies will not run out of IPs. This only means that the price per IP will start to slowly grow. Forward thinking enterprises can spend the year preparing for the new IPv6 protocol (USA is expected run out of addresses next year). Comcast has said it will offer production-quality IPv6 services across its nationwide network in 2012.

Operators start to pay more attention to the business opportunity of “M2M” (machine-to-machine connections). Investment and innovation in M2M (think smart energy meters and fleet trackers for logistics) will follow.

Smart Grid technologies include smart power management and architecture system components are already hot. Smart meter deployment on the rise globally. The global power utilities are the next mega-market moving from analog, standalone systems to digital networked technology. The opportunities are huge in everything from wireless components in smart meters to giant power electronics. First cut of some very basic framework standards have been drafted and lots of works needs to be done (ensure safety!). Forward-looking utilities and such vendors have now put business units and plans in place. IPv6 is seen as a needed technology in implementing Smart Grid communications. IPV6 has become a buzz word for smart grid firms.

You Will See A Ton Of Hype Around “The Internet Of Things” article tells that “The Internet Of Things” is a catchy term revolving around the idea that most everyday objects around us will be equipped with internet-collected electronics, and this will open up new applications. You Will See A Ton Of Hype Around “The Internet Of Things”, and it is hard to say if The Internet Of Things will be a huge business or a passing fad. NXP Semiconductor’s vision of Internet of Things starts with lightbulbs. Wireless sensor networks will get attention. EE Times article Top ten Embedded Internet articles for 2011 gives you links to articles that help you to catch on those topics.

Security issues were talked about lot on 2011 and I expect the discussion will continue actively during year 2012. There are still many existing security issues to fix and new issues will come up all the time.

The Tizen project is hosted at the Linux Foundation and offers an operating system and an HTML5 development environment within which applications can be produced to run on multiple types of hardware. The Tizen application programming interfaces are based on HTML5 and other web standards, and it is anticipates that the vast majority of Tizen application development will be based on these emerging standards. Tizen will provide a robust and flexible environment for application developers, based on HTML5 and Wholesale Applications Community (WAC). The Tizen SDK and API will allow developers to use HTML5 and related web technologies to write applications that run across multiple device segments, including smartphone, tablet, smart TV, in-vehicle infotainment, and netbook. So the application development is expect to shift from Meego/Qt now to Tizen/HTML5.

For those who use native code in their applications (small percentage of the applications), the Tizen SDK will include a native development kit.

Tizen sounds an awful lot like WebOS to me. Why do we need more Linux OS? Will this really replace the ones it is combining together or fragmenting the market more? The situation in mobile Linux field seems to be pretty similar to what happens at xkcd:Standards comic to standards.

I visited the Assembly TV premises to catch up what they are doing this year and meeting the friends there. This year the broadcasting system was almost completely in HDTV format, including the cameras for main broadcast (seminars still used standard definition video). HDTV video editing and playback was done mainly using Apple computers (proven to work in this application better than PC based systems). Technology to transfer video between devices was mainly HD-SDI, DVI (over fiber optics) and Ethernet. Audio connections used RockNet technology. RockNet real-time, low latency audio distribution network using CAT5 cable. RockNet can link up to 99 devices into a single network comprising 160 audio channels. The network is self-healing for single connection failures.

Helsinki Hacklab had an interesting stand with all kinds of robots and electronics hacks. At the same stand there were also Tampere hackerspace 5w and Hacklab Turku. It is good to see that there are forming groups of people who hack things together. This is one robot on the stand. It is based on RC servos connected with servo card and Python program running on PC.

metku.net stand had also this year some interesting hardware hacks shows. This is one interesting case for a PC.

I met Kristoffer Lawson at Assembly. He told about his new on-line banking project Holvi. Holvi in essence is a new way to do online banking. With Holvi, small groups are able to tag each payment in certain ways so that a clear overall picture is formed and thus it helps these groups to better understand how their money is spent and received. This should pretty much makes bookkeeping redundant for smaller organizations and groups. Holvi is a great example of a team sticking to their guns and building upon their core expertise. There is much of Scred in there, but the shift in approach.

The main demo competition and 4kilobytes intro competitions were again high quality. You can find the entries at Assembly Archive. Some coders are really making wonders with their code.