In year 2016 it will be sold over 1.4 billion smart phones. Mobile is the new central ecosystem of tech. The smartphone is the single most important product, which will determine the development of the semiconductor market. Smart phone centre of innovation and investment in hardware, software and company creation. The smart phone market is huge. Today, there are well over 2bn smartphones in use, and there are between 3.5 and 4.5bn people with a mobile phone of some kind, out of only a little over 5bn adults on earth. With billions of people buying a device every two years, on average, the phone business dwarfs the PC business, which has an install base of 1.5-1.6bn devices replaced every 4-5 years
Smart phone market is no longer fast gowing market. Expect single-digit worldwide smartphone growth in 2016. According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC ) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , 2015 will be the first full year of single-digit worldwide smartphone growth. IDC predicts worldwide smartphone shipments will grow 9.8% in 2015 to a total of 1.43 billion units. The main driver has been and will continue to be the success of low-cost smartphones in emerging markets. China has been the focal point of the smartphone market – now China has largely become a replacement market and there is economic slowdown in China.
Apple & Google both won, but it’s complicated – both Apple and Google won, in different ways. Android won the handset market outside of Apple, but it’s not quite clear what that means. Microsoft missed the shift to the new platform so Windows Mobile is on life support.
We will continue to see a globalization of the mobile landscape in 2016, as new China brands shake up the smartphone markets with new designs and business models. Expect continuing growth from China brands like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei. Huawei says it sent in 2015 to more than 100 million smartphones and its now firmly among the world’s three largest suppliers. Samsung is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, but it looks that it’s production volumes are shrinking because of cheaper Android phones coming from China.
Last year’s CES had a conspicuous lack of killer smartphones, and O’Donnell expects this year to be very challenging for handset vendors – Apple included. It is getting really hard to differentiate from a phone perspective. In the smartphone market changes happen slowly, and for the challengers it is difficult to penetrate the market.
Apple’s position in smart phones is not currently a threat really none. The volumes of the iPhone does not come close to the Android camp in the unit sales figures, but it is clearly not Apple’s target at all – it targets to high-end phones. Apple made record sales in 2015 holiday season, but it is possible that Apple is going to have a tough year in 2016. Some Wall Street analysts predict an end of iPhone sales growth, shrinking iPad sales, and a tough year ahead for Apple. The high cost and the markets getting full are met weigh the Apple iPhone phone sales.Wall Street expects iPhone sales for the fiscal year ending in September will barely budge — and might even decline — from last year. That would be the worst year for iPhone sales since the device was introduced in 2007. If realized, the forecast significantly affect Apple’s value. Despite recent reports of cuts by iPhone suppliers, Apple remains most profitable company in S&P 500. Fortunately for Apple, most of its smartphone competitors are struggling.
Microsoft got the third mobile ecosystem market position, but it’s market share is pretty low: Microsoft’s market share was only 1.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2015. It is very possible that Microsoft will cut Lumia production significantly in 2016. Microsoft’s long-rumored Surface Phone is coming in the second half of next year, reports Windows Central. Windows 10 phones are not dead yet even from other manufacturers as Acer, Alcatel OneTouch just made some new ones. The key feature in the Jade Primo is support for Microsoft’s Continuum feature, allowing you to use the phone like a PC when connected to a larger display – though limited to apps that run on the device’s ARM processor. The idea, claims Acer, is that you can leave your laptop at home, but what’s the demand for PC phones? It is hard to get winning much traction in a market dominated by Android.
Microsoft says the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will begin early 2016 to select existing Windows 8 and 8.1 phones. Microsoft could not update the smart phones in 2015 despite the fact that the operating system had originally been set to launch alongside the desktop version of the software in July. Microsoft has had a longstanding “chicken and egg” problem: Too few people have Windows phones for developers to care about making apps for the platform, and customers don’t want to buy Windows phones because they don’t have enough apps. Microsoft tries to help his problem With Windows 10, apps that developers write for the PC will also work on Microsoft’s phones. It could have some positive effect, but is no silver bullet. Microsoft’s biggest problem: The 10 most-used apps of the year in the U.S. were all made by three companies — Facebook, Google, and Apple.
It’s only been 15 years since the first camera phone came out. Today smartphones are giving consumers enhanced photo and video capabilities with 8-16 megapixel class. Smartphone cameras are great, or at least close enough to great that you don’t notice the difference. We’ve reached the point where you’ve got to work pretty hard to find a phone with a mediocre camera. Compared to a DSLR, smart phone cameras are lousy because they use tiny sensors, but still the camera in your pocket is crazy good considering the limitations manufacturers work under. The vast majority of top-tier smartphones use Sony sensors for their main cameras. The molded plastic lens elements in many cameras have reached the point where they’re essentially perfect.
For new smart phone camera technologies you could see array of lenses to enable Lytro-like refocusing, create 3-D depth maps, and improve image quality in low light. Some manufacturers are also exploring new areas, such as 3D cameras, massive megapixels (80MB), cameras that can take 360 degree panoramic images and video and cameras that can shoot 1,000 frames a second. 4K Ultra HD for mobile is another move to watch in 2016 as it becomes more common feature. Smartphones have decimated the point-and-shoot camera segment.
Smart phones are increasingly used to shoot videos. Smart phones are already deployed in many newsrooms for mobile journalism video shooting as it is easier (and cheaper) to learn how to film and edit on your phone than it is to use a big camera.(check for example step-by-step guide to shooting iPhone video). Live streaming video from smart phone becomes mainstream. Periscope was one of the first apps to really make live streaming events simple and easy enough that people wanted to do it. Many other apps are following the trend. Facebook begins testing live video streaming for all users.
Smart phones have already replaced many separate technical gadgets already, and this trend will continue. Smartphone have increased screen sizes and have finally become mobile TVs: Smartphones have overtaken the tablets as the most popular mobile device for viewing videos. The most watched content were targeted at teenagers videos and animation series for children.
Mobile display will be more accurate than eye in 2016 in high-end smart phones. Few enjoys a 4K-quality image even in his living room, but by the end of 2016, the same accuracy can be your smartphone. ETSI is preparing for development at ETSI CCM working group (Compound Content Management). Scalable 4K signal requires a very high dynamics (HDR, high dynamic range), as well as the WCG wider color space (Coloc Wider gamut). Such HDR / WCG techniques has only slowly been add to TV broadcasting. One can of course ask whether UltraHD- or 4K image are planting a cell phone make any sense, but they are coming (Sharp already announced that it would launch 4K-level mobile phone).
So device manufacturers need to support user expectations for downloading larger files for apps, movies, photos, videos and other materials, more frequently and more quickly. Networking speed is an area where we will see companies start to push the envelope in 2016, such as new creative strategies for caching, spectrum hopping and managing the Internet of Things.
The quality of LTE modem can make or break your smart phone product. Smartphones consist of two main components: Modems and application processors. Application processor performances of several smartphone brands are widely published, but LTE modem performance measures are much more difficult for the average purchaser to assess. Consumers have generally ignored the importance of connectivity in smartphone purchases, but device performance and positive user experiences are driven by best-in-class connectivity. There are 5 LTE smartphone modem chip makers currently shipping in mobile devices and besides U.S.-based Qualcomm, they include: HiSilicon (China), Intel (U.S.), Leadcore (China), MediaTek (Taiwan), Samsung (Korea), and Spreadtrum (China).
5G will be talked a lot enven though standardization is not ready yet. Just five years after the first 4G smartphone hit the market, the wireless industry is already preparing for 5G: cell phone carriers, smartphone chip makers and the major network equipment companies are working on developing 5G network technology for their customers.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a smartphone is also a telephone. Nearly half of all phone users today employ their mobile phones as their primary voice connection (a number sure to grow). That the voice features in cell phones also advance. Very early on, the standard for human voice transmission was set as the “voice band” located between 300 Hz and 3.3 kHz (to put this in perspective, the natural frequency span of human voice during speech ranges from about 50 Hz to nearly 10 kHz). These standards were carried over for cellphone audio quality. Now that there are about about as many cellphone subscriptions as there are people on earth, one would think that there really shouldn’t be any more technological excuses for poor voice quality. New standards branded as HD Voice and VoLTE promise the eventual extension of voice transmission frequency range up to 7 kHz. There are also other major challenge preventing great sounding calls – especially noise challenges facing cellphone users. To get good sound quality we need to develop algorithms that isolate the person speaking from all other sources of noise.
Financial Services needs to get over its reluctance and go mobile in 2016, but it might not happen in large scale this year. Compliance concerns have long prevented financial services businesses from adopting mobile capabilities as quickly as other industries. Yvette Jackson of Thomson Reuters argues that technology advancements have made compliance worries of the past now obsolete.
Mobile payments are finally taking the momentum in North America, Japan and some European countries in 2016. Every second consumer is expected to smartphone or wearable device purchases to pay in few years. There are now types of mobile payment technologies in use. Some of them will turn to be interim techniques.
Despite many tools available mobile application development is still hard work in 2016. Mobile developer report shows growing back-end challenge: 33.9 per cent spent more than half their development effort on back-end integration. This effort includes creating and debugging APIs, finding documentation for existing APIs, and orchestrating data from multiple sources. iOS and Android dominate as target platforms. The disappointment for Microsoft is that all its hoopla about the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) does not seem to resonate here. What about making money? Only just over 60 per cent of those surveyed are primarily out to make money from apps themselves, with others aiming for goals such as customer loyalty and brand awareness. In-app purchases are the most effective method, followed by advertising and app purchase. Application landscape is changing: Single-function applications no longer meet the everyday life needs on mobile devices.
Web standards are becoming promising for mobile use but they are still far from making mobile apps obsolete in 2016. There’s a litany of problems with apps. There is the platform lock-in and the space the apps take up on the device. Updating apps is a pain that users often ignore, leaving broken or vulnerable versions in use long after they’ve been allegedly patched. Apps are also a lot of work for developers. Use the Web and the Web browser can sometimes help in solving some of those problems while creating other different set of problems. For example updates to HTML apps happen entirely on the server, so users get them immediately. Also HTML-based platform and a well-designed program that makes good use of CSS, one site could support phones, tablets, PCs, and just about anything else with one site. Currently HTML5 standards are advancing rapidly in the area of mobile Web applications. Web standards make mobile apps obsolete? I don’t think that it will happen immediately, even though many big tech companies are throwing weight behind a browser-based world (backed strongly by Google and Mozilla). So app or web question will still very relevant for mobile developer in 2016.
Google appears to be lining up OpenJDK – an open-source implementation of the Java platform – for future Android builds. Android runs apps written in Java on its Dalvik engine, and lately, its Android Runtime virtual machine. These apps require a Java class library, as well as various Android-specific bits and pieces, to work. Now it seems the next big releases of Android will use not the heavily customized Harmony-derived library but instead OpenJDK’s core libraries.
Android, which is controlled by Google, is one of Facebook’s biggest markets. Facebook has a contingency plan in case the company falls out with Google, according to The Information: a way to deliver app updates without going through the Google Play Store — currently the only way to update apps — and has a way of handling in-app payments. Amazon, which makes Android-based tablets, has a similar system: The app acts as a new store front from which other apps can be downloaded and updated, without Google Play.
There will be fascinating conversation in tech about smartphone apps and the web – what can each do, how discovery works, how they interplay, what Google plans with Chrome, whether the web will take over as the dominant form and so on. Ask the question: Do people want to put your icon on their home screen?
Mobile Internet continues to be important also in 2016. There is place for both Internet pages and apps. The internet makes it possible to get anything you’ve ever heard of but also makes it impossible to have heard of everything. We started with browsing, and that didn’t scale to the internet, and then we moved to search, but search can only give you what you already knew you wanted. In the past, print and retail showed us what there was but also gave us a filter – now both the filter and the demand generation are gone.
There is hunt for a new runtime, and a new discovery layer. Could it be messaging, Facobook or something else? Facebook and Google try to make mobile publishing platforms faster. Facebook has Instant Articles platform that aims to make articles loading fast on mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is Google’s plan to make pages appear super-fast for those using mobile devices. Fast-loading pages may also mean fast-loading ads, with advertising platform support for AMP that’s been announced. I expect that first those plaforms will make loading the articles faster than traditinal pages, but over years those systems, if they catch, will be bloated to be slow again.
Maybe in 2016 we should stop talking about ‘mobile’ internet and ‘desktop’ internet - it’s like talking about ‘colour’ TV, as opposed to black and white TV. We have a mental model, left over from feature phones, that ‘mobile’ means limited devices that are only used walking around. Get over it. For 15 years the internet was a monolith: web browser + mouse + keyboard. The smartphone broke that apart, but we haven’t settled on a new model. Mobile’ isn’t about the screen size or keyboard or location or use. Rather, the ecosystem of ARM, iOS and Android, that has bigger scale than ‘Wintel’.
Dick Tracy had it right. Wearable devices are becoming more of any every day item as they proliferate across markets. Wearable market is still immature and growing in 2016. While many new fitness bands, smartwatches, and other wearable devices have entered the market, most have under-whelmed prospects and users. It is quite clear the wearable industry is in its infancy and fraught with growing pains. You can expect the top five vendors will not only shift places, but come in and drop out on a quarterly basis. Wearables grew 197.6% in Q3 2015 when mobile companies shipped a total of 21.0 million wearables worldwide.
Whereas the smartphone is the ultimate convergence product, we are learning that wearables are inherently divergent products. It seems that super-duper smartwatches loaded with full-blown phone/email/camera/voice assistant capabilities together with all other bells and whistles are not necessarily winning recipe like it was for smart phones. Many consumers want instead simplicity, ease of use, and instant actionable feedback. As an embedded developer of wearables, not only do you have the challenge of addressing battery life issues, but also architecting and developing a system that takes full advantage of the underlying hardware. Heartbeat monitoring has become the must-have feature for fitness trackers. China has quickly emerged as the fastest-growing wearables market, attracting companies eager to compete on price and feature sets.
The newest wearable technology, smart watvches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce - it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Links to some other mobile predictions articles worth to check out:
16 mobile theses by Benedict Evans
Mobile 2016 Predictions from EE Times
2015 Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Trends Report: Leaders, Laggards and the Data Problem
702 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
teven Levy / Backchannel:
Pebble’s $99 Core music-streaming keychain fitness tracker will integrate Amazon’s Alexa — The keychain computer will have Amazon’s assistant. But Pebble first tested human concierges doing “anything that’s legal” for users — Last week the smart watch company Pebble announced …
Pebble’s New Core Competency is Alexa
https://backchannel.com/pebbles-new-core-competency-is-alexa-eab2c5d1d14c#.biyk6gwxn
The keychain computer will have Amazon’s assistant. But Pebble first tested human concierges doing “anything that’s legal” for users
Tomi Engdahl says:
Xiaomi Buys 1,500 Microsoft Patents, Eyes Global Expansion
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329814&
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi will purchase approximately 1,500 patents from Microsoft as it looks to expand its portfolio of intellectual property, according to a May 31 report in The Wall Street Journal.
“We believe that with this kind of collaboration and also our commitment for the long-term investment in IP, we are going to build a very strong patent portfolio.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sweden got its own luxury smart phone
Swedish luxury phone Solar will cost about EUR 12 000.
Sirin Labs (backed by Israeli investor) makes this extremely safe high-end device to those whose price does not matter.
Solar-mobile phone comes in two different modes: the standard Android status, as well as the security mode, where all calls and messages is a secret 256-bit AES encryption. Encryption mode may be switched on at the touch of a button the phone back.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4526&via=n&datum=2016-06-03_11:29:34&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
In the past, the smart phone had three connectors: charge, data and audio.
Micro-USB for charging and data reduced connectors to two: USB and audio.
USB-C connector makes it possible to have only one connector.
Chinese LeEcon Le Max2 smartphone was the first device, where all the functions are successful in one, C-type USB connector.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4527&via=n&datum=2016-06-03_11:29:34&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google launches business-friendly tool that tests your website mobile-friendliness & page speed — Google announced on the Google Small Business blog that they have released a new landing page to test your website’s mobile-friendliness and page speed for desktop and mobile all in one place.
Google launches business-friendly tool that tests your website mobile-friendliness & page speed
http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-business-friendly-tool-tests-web-site-mobile-friendliness-page-speed-250960
Google’s new user-friendly tool should make it easier for small businesses to see how their sites rank in terms of being mobile-friendly and fast.
Google announced on the Google Small Business blog that they have released a new landing page to test your website’s mobile-friendliness and page speed for desktop and mobile all in one place.
https://smallbusiness.googleblog.com/2016/06/test-your-site-with-google-and-see-how.html
The new tool, available over here, will test this all at the same time. The unique aspects of this tool are:
(A) Get all three scores on one page.
(B) Google will email you a more comprehensive report for you to share with your webmaster team.
(C) Google will now give you a 0 out of a 100 score for how mobile-friendly your website is, as opposed to if it is mobile-friendly or not.
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Pay enters Europe with launch in Spain
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/6/3/11843408/samsung-pay-begins-european-rollout-spain
Samsung Pay continues to expand with a launch today in Spain. This marks the first country in Europe that’s able to use Samsung’s mobile payments platform, following launches in the US, South Korea, and recently China.
Samsung Pay has been relatively successful as a mobile payments system thanks to its ability to work with both NFC terminals and traditional magnetic terminals.
At launch, Samsung Pay will be available on Galaxy S6 and S7 variants
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s HoloLens now has apps for email and your calendar
Check your inbox with augmented reality, if you’re into that
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11848192/microsoft-hololens-outlook-email-calendar-apps-ar
Augmented reality promises many things, from turning your living room into a video game to transforming how we see and experience the world. But first, it has to do the basics, and no company knows this better than Microsoft. So today, the company announced the release of dedicated HoloLens AR apps for its Outlook email service and calendar. They look… well, like your standard email and calendar apps, just rendered using blasts of light on your retina.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Facebook is disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger — Facebook is removing the messaging capability from its mobile web application, according to a notice being served to users: “Your conversations are moving to Messenger,” it reads.
Facebook is disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/03/facebook-is-disabling-messaging-in-its-mobile-web-app-to-push-people-to-messenger/
Facebook is removing the messaging capability from its mobile web application, according to a notice being served to users: “Your conversations are moving to Messenger,” it reads. Welcome news to the millions like me who switched to the web app in order to avoid Messenger in the first place!
I’m a little worried about this, because surely the mobile site is much used by people who have good reason not to download the app. People whose phones don’t have official clients, for instance, or who can’t upgrade to the latest version of an OS, and must access via the web.
And really, it strikes me as quite a hostile move, as it did before when they axed messaging from the main app. If, as everyone in the company is constantly repeating, mantra-like, that they want to connect the world, shouldn’t a diversity of access options be part of that?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fact: Huawei now outspends Apple on R&D
We told you the Chinese were coming. And all you did was make a lousy Watch.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/huawei_outspends_apple/
“Samsung should be very concerned at what Huawei might be demonstrating in two to three years’ time. So should everyone else,” I wrote at MWC 2014 – to general derision. Two years ago you couldn’t even get a 4G Huawei phone. And while the Ascend P7 was a design statement, it was still compromised: sluggish and with an obtuse UI.
But with the heavily promoted premium P9 now released, it’s premium where it wants to be, says Richard Yu, Huawei’s consumer chief. Yu is aiming to displace Samsung from the No.1 spot and in an interview with the WSJ, says premium phones are where the growth is. It isn’t the best phone of the year – surely in the Android category the Galaxy S7s are the clear leader – and the P9’s Leica branding may be a gimmick. But it’s now proudly in the top-end segment: zippy, with a best-in-class fingerprint sensor, excellent signal reception, and all for £100 less. (£549 for the Sammy S7 SIM-free at Carphone, vs £449 for the P9 at Huawei’s online VMall, before promos).
Huawei now spends $9.2bn a year on R&D. Apple spends $8.1bn.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultra Simple License Plate Sensor Adds Collision Protection to Any Car
http://gizmodo.com/ultra-simple-license-plate-sensor-adds-collision-protec-1778389503
Instead of then having to mount an LCD display to your dashboard, the Fender Defender communicates with an iOS or Android app over Bluetooth to provide warnings about impending collisions. Four ultrasonic sensors with a range of about 10 feet keep an eye on what’s directly behind your car, and if you’re getting close to something, visible and audible warnings will automatically let you know.
Because the Fender Defender, which is available for pre-order for about $150, is reliant on a smartphone, there are no wires to deal with during installation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia completes $190M acquisition of Withings health gadget maker
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/01/nokia-completes-190m-acquisition-of-withings-health-gadget-maker/
Back in April Nokia announced it was buying health and fitness focused gadget maker Withings for €170 million (~$190M). At the time it was expecting the acquisition to close in Q3 but it has now confirmed the close of the transaction ahead of schedule.
Following the acquisition, Withings co-founder and CEO Cedric Hutchings has been made head of a new Digital Health business unit at Nokia, reporting to Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies — the company’s R&D and IP licensing division.
Withings makes of range of mostly fitness focused gadgets, such as its Go activity tracker, which has an e-ink screen and tracks steps, sleep, running and swimming and boasts an eight-month battery life, and its Activité range of fitness tracking watches (which sync with a companion app); along with more specialist health tech gadgetry — such as a wireless blood pressure monitor, a wi-fi connected thermometer and a connected baby scales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Wants to Assure You It’s Not Listening to Your Conversations
http://time.com/4355425/facebook-microphone-listening-eavesdrop/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter
Facebook said it’s not using your microphone to eavesdrop
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joshua Chambers / GovInsider:
UK’s Government Digital Service decided apps were too expensive to build and maintain, went with responsive websites; Treasury says $8.2B was saved over 4 years
Why Britain banned mobile apps
Interview with Ben Terrettt, former design chief at the GDS.
https://govinsider.asia/smart-gov/why-britain-banned-mobile-apps/
“That sounds horrendous,” says Ben Terrett, the former head of design at the UK Government Digital Service.
GovInsider has just told him about the Indonesian city with a target of 300 mobile apps built by government per year. As citizens increasingly use smartphones, officials believe this is the best way to reach them.
“We banned apps at GDS, I just said no,” Terrett says. The UK GDS was the first government digital service in the world, and is held up as a global pioneer for its award-winning approach. As the founding head of design, Terrett is responsible for creating services that have been mimicked across the world.
So why did the GDS ban apps? It wasn’t because they weren’t technically savvy enough to build them.
Cost, he says. Apps are “very expensive to produce, and they’re very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes,” Terrett says. “I would say if you times that by 300, you’re suddenly talking about a huge team people and a ton of money to maintain that ecosystem”.
How did the UK reach an increasingly mobile population? Responsive websites, he replies. “For government services that we were providing, the web is a far far better way… and still works on mobile.”
Sites can adapt to any screen size, work on all devices, and are open to everyone to use regardless of their device. “If you believe in the open internet that will always win,” he says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developed in Oulu Oura-wellness ring will be on sale next week, the telecom operator Elisa’s flagship store. Ring got the beginning of the year Innovation Award in Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show.
Oulu in the spring of 2013, arising from the Oura smart ring has attracted a lot of interest around the world. Oura is a ring compact integrated computer, which measures the quality of the recovery of activity and sleep. In addition to the ring needed to a smart phone.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/06/suomalainen-alysormus-tulee-myyntiin/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Britain banned mobile apps
Interview with Ben Terrett, former design chief at the GDS.
https://govinsider.asia/smart-gov/why-britain-banned-mobile-apps/
That sounds horrendous,” says Ben Terrett, the former head of design at the UK Government Digital Service.
GovInsider has just told him about the Indonesian city with a target of 300 mobile apps built by government per year. As citizens increasingly use smartphones, officials believe this is the best way to reach them.
“We banned apps at GDS, I just said no,” Terrett says. The UK GDS was the first government digital service in the world, and is held up as a global pioneer for its award-winning approach. As the founding head of design, Terrett is responsible for creating services that have been mimicked across the world.
So why did the GDS ban apps? It wasn’t because they weren’t technically savvy enough to build them.
Cost, he says. Apps are “very expensive to produce, and they’re very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes,” Terrett says. “I would say if you times that by 300, you’re suddenly talking about a huge team people and a ton of money to maintain that ecosystem”.
How did the UK reach an increasingly mobile population? Responsive websites, he replies. “For government services that we were providing, the web is a far far better way… and still works on mobile.”
Sites can adapt to any screen size, work on all devices, and are open to everyone to use regardless of their device. “If you believe in the open internet that will always win,” he says. And they’re much cheaper to maintain, he adds, because when an upgrade is required, only one platform needs recoding.
Key to the GDS’ approach is designing for user needs, not organizational requirements, Terrett says. “That is how good digital services designed and built these days. That is how everyone does it, whether that’s google or facebook or British Airways or whoever.”
The problem is that public sector agencies tend not to design with citizens in mind. “Things are just designed to suit the very silos that the project sits in, and the user gets lost in there,” Terrett adds.
For example, opening a restaurant might require multiple permits from different agencies. A good digital service should combine them all in one place.
How does Britain measure digital success? It isn’t necessarily the popularity of a digital service, Terrett says. “It’d be nice if they like it, don’t get me wrong, but liking is not really a useful metric.” Instead his team looked to see if users have completed an online transaction, or stopped halfway through.
Agile then allows this team to quickly build prototypes in a few weeks that they can test out on volunteers and see if it’ll work. Once they’ve gathered feedback, they can quickly scale things up, he adds.
This approach will save significant sums of money, Terrett says. “You’re not spending money on huge IT contracts or huge teams of people, so a team of 12 might be replacing a team of 100. And you’re not building features that no one wants and no one uses and you’re not wasting time duplicating.”
The GDS believed that central controls were crucial for saving money and reducing duplication of service provision. “Some of it you just have to say: ‘Sorry it’s just got to be. I know you all had your own thing, but now we’re going to have one’.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
BlackBerry Priv is faring worse than expected
http://www.cnet.com/news/blackberry-priv-may-have-done-worse-than-we-thought/
An executive at carrier partner AT&T admits the Priv phone is “really struggling” and suffers a disappointing rate of returns.
BlackBerry’s supporters are starting to waver.
An executive at AT&T, one of BlackBerry’s longest allies, didn’t pull any punches in an assessment of the latest flagship phone.
“The BlackBerry Priv is really struggling,” the high-level executive, who asked not to be named, said last week. “We’ve seen more returns than we would like.”
Early indicators were already shaky. BlackBerry in April reported selling 600,000 phones in its fiscal fourth quarter that ended February 29, well below expectations of 850,000 for the quarter — and below the 700,000 it sold in the preceding quarter. Still, BlackBerry insisted that the company was still on the path to profitability this year.
“There isn’t much volume growth in the premium segment, where Apple and Samsung dominate,” the executive said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Display rollable OLED prototype
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX3_sSwiWIk
A prototype rollable display device demonstrated by Samsung Display at SID 2016 in San Francisco, CA. This sort of screen could one day be featured on a pocket-friendly smartphone or tablet, collapsing down to a small stick form-factor, but then expanding to reveal a 5.7-inch panel.
Watch Samsung’s rollable display in action
http://www.slashgear.com/watch-samsungs-rollable-display-in-action-24441409/
Shown off for the first time at SID 2016 in San Francisco this week, the 5.7-inch screen takes Samsung Display’s OLED technology and furls it up into a very pocket-friendly form factor.
Opened out, it’s a 5.7-inch screen running at 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution, for a total pixel density of 386 ppi. It’s just as bright and the colors just as vivid as we’ve come to expect from the company’s displays on production devices like the Galaxy S7 edge,
the panel is just 0.3 mm thick, and weighs 5g. It has a rolling radius of 10R (10mm radius)
That 0.3 mm thickness is before you add in a touch layer
What Samsung Display isn’t saying is just how many roll-ups and unrollings the OLED could handle before it might be expected to crack or otherwise break.
It’s not the only flexible panel Samsung Display has at the show. Less dramatic, arguably, but just as technically impressive is a 5.7-inch flexible screen running at 2560 x 1440 resolution and 420 nits of brightness.
It too is 0.3 mm thick, and comes in with a pixel density of 551 ppi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartwatch Apps Developer Guide
http://intersog.com/blog/smartwatch-developer-guide/
To date, there’re actually two types of smartwatches – one that is paired with a smartphone and one that works as a standalone device with functionality independent of any external gadget. Yet, it can be a real dilemma to choose which type / platform to build your apps for. Here’s our review of the 4 key smartwatch development platforms to help you better plan your strategy of entering the global wearables market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson’s bad-ass IoT forecasts
Responded telecommunications operator ConsumerLabin Ericsson’s latest research, consumers believe that the various ingested or placed under the skin sensors already commonplace within five years. Huge forecast is included in the company’s Wearable technology and the internet of things clarification.
43 percent of respondents believe smartphones replacement wearable technology. 38 percent believe that it will happen within five years.
In addition, 42 percent believe that the wearable technology to replace the passport IoT era.
Most unwanted devices and features include a study indicated that:
Personal panic button (32 percent of respondents would like this feature)
Wearable (28 per cent)
Wearable tracking device (27 per cent)
he electronic authentication (25 per cent)
Portable water purifier (24 per cent).
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/09/ericssonin-hurjat-iot-ennusteet/
Report: http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2016/consumerlab/wearable-technology-and-the-internet-of-things-ericsson-consumerLab-2016.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
The first augmented reality smartphone
Lenovo uses Google’s Tango-technology PHAB2 Pro phone promises to bring augmented reality accessible to users
The phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor and Dolby Audio Capture 5.1 and two 13-megapixel camera.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/10/ensimmainen-lisatyn-todellisuuden-alypuhelin/
More:
Lenovo Unveils World’s First Tango-Enabled Smartphone – PHAB2 Pro
http://news.lenovo.com/news-releases/lenovo-unveils-worlds-first-tango-enabled-smartphone–phab2-pro.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google is offering app developers the same revenue-sharing terms Apple just announced — with one big advantage
Unlike Apple, the Play Store split would take effect immediately.
http://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11889298/google-apple-subscription-app-revenue-share
On Wednesday, Apple detailed major shake-ups coming to its powerful app store. Those include a new revenue-sharing model that would give developers more money when users subscribe to a service via their apps — instead of keeping 70 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, publishers will be able to keep 85 percent of revenue, once a subscriber has been paying for a year.
Now Google plans to up the ante at its app store: It will also move from a 70/30 split to 85/15 for subscriptions — but instead of requiring developers to hook a subscriber for 12 months before offering the better split, it will make it available right away.
Sources said Google has already been testing the new split with some entertainment companies (so has Apple, to some extent).
Google has already tried differentiating itself from Apple by giving app developers the ability to handle payments themselves and keep all of the revenue. Apple requires any payments made within the app to go through Apple’s iTunes billing system – a point that still irks many publishers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Glenn Fleishman / Macworld:
Apple confirms that any app, not just content and services, may qualify for subscriptions, but apps will need to “make sense” by providing “ongoing value”
App Store subscriptions don’t solve problems for most developers
While any app has the potential to offer subscriptions under Apple’s new guidelines, most apps can’t take real advantage.
http://www.macworld.com/article/3081367/ios/app-store-subscriptions-dont-solve-problems-for-most-developers.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Intel wins contract to supply modem chips for some iPhones — Qualcomm to remain provider of chips in China, Verizon phones — Qualcomm CEO had said he expected major customer to diversify — Apple Inc.’s next iPhone will use modems from Intel Corp., replacing Qualcomm Inc. chips …
Intel Gets Chip Order From Apple, Its First Major Mobile Win
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-10/intel-said-to-get-chip-order-from-apple-first-major-mobile-win
Apple Inc.’s next iPhone will use modems from Intel Corp., replacing Qualcomm Inc. chips in some versions of the new handset, a move by the world’s most-valuable public company to diversify its supplier base.
Apple has chosen Intel modem chips for the iPhone used on AT&T Inc.’s U.S. network and some other versions of the smartphone for overseas markets, said people familiar with the matter. IPhones on Verizon Communications Inc.’s network will stick with parts from Qualcomm, which is the only provider of the main communications component of current versions of Apple’s flagship product.
Orders from Apple represent the first major win for an Intel mobile chip program that had struggled for relevance and racked up operating losses. The shot in the arm for the world’s largest chipmaker further dents the dominance of Qualcomm in baseband processors that connect phones to networks and convert radio signals into voice and data. While Qualcomm is losing some orders, it’s retaining a major chunk of Apple’s business,
Orders from Apple represent the first major win for an Intel mobile chip program that had struggled for relevance and racked up operating losses. The shot in the arm for the world’s largest chipmaker further dents the dominance of Qualcomm in baseband processors that connect phones to networks and convert radio signals into voice and data. While Qualcomm is losing some orders, it’s retaining a major chunk of Apple’s business,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Konstantin Kakaes / MIT Technology Review:
Why no high tech, high volume gadget like the iPhone can be made entirely in the US: cost, manufacturing capacity, and China’s hold on rare earth elements
The All-American iPhone
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601491/the-all-american-iphone/
Political candidates opposed to free trade say Apple should make phones in the United States. Let’s see what that would look like.
Donald Trump says that if he becomes president, he will “get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China.” Bernie Sanders has also called for Apple to manufacture some devices in the U.S. instead of China.
Neither candidate could instantly make that happen. As Steve Jobs once told President Obama when he asked why Apple didn’t make phones in its home country, the company didn’t hire manufacturers in China only because labor is cheaper there. China also offered a skilled workforce and flexible factories and parts suppliers that can, Apple believes, retool more quickly than their American counterparts.
But set that aside for now, and imagine that Apple persuaded one of its Chinese manufacturers to open factories in the United States or did that itself. Could it work? Apple could profitably produce iPhones in America, as some high-end Mac computers are produced, without making them much more expensive. There’s a catch, though, that undermines Trump’s and Sanders’s arguments.
According to IHS, a market analyst, the components of an iPhone 6s Plus, which sells for $749, cost about $230. An iPhone SE, Apple’s newest model, sells for $399, and IHS estimates it contains $156 worth of components.
Assembling those components into an iPhone costs about $4 in IHS’s estimate and about $10 in the estimation of Jason Dedrick
Dedrick thinks that doing such work in the U.S. would add $30 to $40 to the cost. That’s partly because labor costs are higher in the U.S., but mostly it’s because additional transportation and logistics expenses would arise from shipping parts, and not just the finished product, to the U.S.
This means that assuming all other costs stayed the same, the final price of an iPhone 6s Plus might rise by about 5 percent.
What benefits would this bring to the U.S.? Apple says its suppliers employ more than 1.6 million workers. But final assembly of the phones accounts for a small fraction of that.
What, though, if components were to be made in the U.S. as well?
Almost half—346—of Apple’s 766 suppliers (counting those making parts for iPhones, iPads, and Macs) are in China. Japan has 126, the U.S. 69, and Taiwan 41.
Many of these chips are made under contract, so it’s hard to know exactly where they are produced.
For example, GlobalFoundries, a major contract manufacturer, produces microchips for companies like Qualcomm in Germany, Singapore, New York, and Vermont.
“U.S. factories would be uncompetitive for most of these goods and run at low volumes, raising the differential with Asia even higher,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IPhone Deal Would Boost Intel
Rumored LTE win would make Intel #3
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329885&
Intel Corp. could move into third place as a provider of smartphone modems if a growing number of reports are accurate it has won a substantial portion of sockets for LTE baseband chips in Apple’s iPhone 7. Such a deal would be a significant shot in the arm for Intel’s wireless business which took cuts in applications processors in the wake of a massive reorg announced in April.
Intel will provide more than 20 million LTE chips for iPhone 7 handsets for AT&T, according to a report from Bloomberg
Qualcomm dominated the 1.3-billion unit smartphone baseband market last year with a 57% share, followed by Mediatek at 25% and Spreadtrum at 6%, according to Strauss. Samsung was in fourth place at 3% and Huawei’s had a 2% share with a chip from its HiSilicon division used only in its own phones and not for sale in the merchant market. Intel shared last place at 1% with Leadcore and Marvell.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China Dominates Smartphone Suppliers List
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329884&
China-based smartphone suppliers represented eight of the top 12 slots for smartphone IC suppliers in the first quarter of 2016, according to a report from IC Insights. Chinese companies Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi were all in the top five suppliers.
“most of the Chinese smartphone producer’s sales are to Chinese customers.”
Although Samsung and Apple surpass all other companies in total smartphone shipments by a long shot, both companies are forecast to have slight decreases in overall shipments by the end of 2016. Five of the eight Chinese companies ranked by IC Insights are expected to increase their shipments by at least 5% compared with 2015.
Overall, global smartphone shipments fell 3% to 335 million units in the first three months of this year from the same period a year ago
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson Reports Love/Hate Relationship With Wearables
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329865&
A new report from Ericsson shows a love ‘em and leave ‘em relationship with wearables: consumers are increasingly connected to their wearable devices, but still feel underwhelmed by what the device delivers.
“Two in five users of wearables say they feel naked when not wearing their device,” the Ericsson ConsumerLab Report on Wearables stated. “[One] in 10 said they no longer used their wearable devices, with one third of these owners abandoning them within a couple of weeks of purchase.”
That paints a complicated picture for wearables’ place in the growing Internet of Things [IoT] marketplace.
“[Respondents] feel that the industry still needs to find the use case that resonates with all consumers and 2020 was the timeline consumers have chosen for most wearable ideas to go mainstream,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
Apple’s app-based, device-centric approach for Siri appears less expansive than Google’s and Amazon’s efforts
Can Apple Think Outside the Device?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/technology/can-apple-think-outside-the-device.html
More than any other company in tech, Apple prizes physical objects — expensive, perfectly designed, self-contained nuggets of aluminum and glass that you buy today, use for a couple years and replace.
Until recently, that view worked quite well. Over the past decade, through its own products and the many copycats that piled on, Apple’s device-centric aestheticism has made computers easier to use and more accessible to more people around the world — and raked in eye-popping profits while doing so.
Yet Apple’s view increasingly feels like an outdated way of thinking about tech.
Many of its competitors have been moving beyond devices toward experiences that transcend them. These new technologies exist not on distinct pieces of hardware, but above and within them. They are things like Alexa, Amazon’s ambient assistant, which lives on the internet and is ready to help you on the Amazon Echo but also on any other device that a programmer adds it to. In an era of flat iPhone sales, Apple, too, has been talking up the importance of online services, which it sees as a crucial part of its future growth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple will require HTTPS connections for iOS apps by the end of 2016
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/apple-will-require-https-connections-for-ios-apps-by-the-end-of-2016/
During a security presentation at Apple’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference, the company revealed the deadline for all apps in its App Store to switch on an important security feature called App Transport Security — January 1, 2017.
App Transport Security, or ATS, is a feature that Apple debuted in iOS 9. When ATS is enabled, it forces an app to connect to web services over an HTTPS connection rather than HTTP, which keeps user data secure while in transit by encrypting it.
mobile apps often aren’t as transparent with users about the security of their web connections, and it can be hard to tell whether an app is connecting via HTTP or HTTPS.
Enter ATS, which is enabled by default for iOS 9. However, developers can still switch ATS off and allow their apps to send data over an HTTP connection — until the end of this year, that is. (For technical crowd: ATS requires TLS v 1.2, with exceptions for already encrypted bulk data, like media streaming.)
At the end of 2016, Apple will make ATS mandatory for all developers who hope to submit their apps to the App Store. App developers who have been wondering when the hammer would drop on HTTP can rest a little easier now that they have a clear deadline, and users can relax with the knowledge that secure connections will be forced in all of the apps on their iPhones and iPads.
In requiring developers to use HTTPS, Apple is joining a larger movement to secure data as it travels online. While the secure protocol is common on login pages, many websites still use plain old HTTP for most of their connections.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Chinese tech giant just unveiled a stunning new line of smartphones
http://www.businessinsider.in/This-Chinese-tech-giant-just-unveiled-a-stunning-new-line-of-smartphones/articleshow/52681501.cms?from=mdr
In an era when all smartphones start to look alike, innovation makes all the difference when it comes to picking a device. China-based technology company Lenovo is catching on.
The company just unleashed a slew of new smartphones at an event in San Francsico, from a massive, 6.4-inch phablet that brings augmented reality to the phone like never before, to a watch-like phone
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jonathan Cheng / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung Electronics to acquire US cloud services firm Joyent; Joyent to retain name and top management, will be integrated into Samsung’s mobile division
Samsung to Buy U.S. Cloud Services Firm
Acquisition of Joyent shows device maker is pushing to beef up software and services
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/samsung-to-buy-u-s-cloud-services-firm-1466046014-lMyQjAxMTI2NDE0NjcxMzYwWj
Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday that it would buy U.S. cloud services company Joyent Inc. for an undisclosed sum, underscoring its willingness to snap up outside companies as it beefs up the software and services around its core mobile-phone business.
Samsung’s acquisition of San Francisco-based Joyent signals the South Korean technology giant’s burgeoning interest in “big data,” part of a broader effort to use powerful remote computers to bolster its data analysis and the computing capabilities of its devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
“Deleting” pre-loaded iOS apps removes them from the homescreen and deletes associated user data but the application binary remains on the device — One of the most talked about features in Apple’s upcoming iOS 10 is the ability to delete many of the apps that come pre-loaded on your iPhone or iPad.
Deleting Apple’s pre-installed apps in iOS 10 doesn’t actually ‘delete’ them
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/deleting-apples-pre-installed-apps-in-ios-10-doesnt-actually-delete-them/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung considers using Tizen in all products
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2016/06/133_206894.html
Samsung Electronics is considering expanding the use of its Tizen software in all company devices to cut its heavy reliance on the Google Android platform, a senior Samsung Electronics executive said Monday.
“If you don’t have your own ecosystem, then you will have no future. Tizen isn’t just a platform developed for use with mobile devices,” the executive said asking not to be named as he wasn’t authorized to officially speak to the media.
The global platform market is dominated by Google as its software is open-based and the Android creator is financially supporting third-party developers to expand its base. Because Apple has its own ecosystem, its in-house iOS software has continued gaining steady momentum.
The executive said Samsung Electronics was late in developing content and its own ecosystem. However, “Samsung is getting much better,” he said.
Because Samsung needs a reference to solidify the Tizen system, the company is using the Indian market as a “litmus test” by steadily releasing cheaper mobile phones.
“Samsung’s Z-branded Tizen-powered phones are popular with Indian consumers. During the first quarter of this year, Samsung sold about 64 million phones there. This means that Tizen is proving its competitiveness,” said the executive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Developer Conference: A More Open Siri, and Other Upgrades
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/technology/apple-wwdc-highlights-siri-music.html
When Steven P. Jobs ran Apple, the company’s devices were distinguished by their polished software and famous iTunes store. Today, critics and even loyal fans are taking shots at Apple’s buggy software and Apple Music, its new streaming music service.
With its hardware sales now slowing, Apple is under pressure to fix its software and online services, which have become increasingly important to consumers. So at its annual conference for software developers on Monday, the iPhone maker tried to demonstrate that it was still a purveyor of high-quality software and services.
Apple announced:
■ Improvements in the Apple Watch operating system.
■ Changes in the operating system for Apple TV, called tvOS.
■ A rebranding of its Mac operating system.
■ An expansion of Apple Pay.
■ Opening up Siri to developers.
■ Improvements in photos and maps.
■ Subscriptions through Apple News.
■ Opening up its messaging service to developers
■ A new interface for Apple Music.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The optoelectronics inside activity trackers
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4442207/The-optoelectronics-inside-activity-trackers-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160616&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_analog_20160616&elqTrackId=326d1cf5befb4774a84ae94083fe4eb2&elq=39646611715d44c99fea46d4b6665829&elqaid=32698&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28562
Today, being physically fit has become a way of life for many. Eating healthy foods, sleeping seven to eight hours a night, and exercising daily are the basic building blocks. And with the use of an activity tracking device, we can monitor our daily progress. We can easily track how many steps we take, how many calories we burn, and how well we sleep with the aid of wearable activity trackers. Wearable sensors collect, process, and display a set of personal data to help monitor and manage more and more aspects of personal health. Wearable devices can measure a wide variety of body functions, including blood pressure, heart rate, and the level of oxygen in our blood. Optoelectronic components play a key role in measuring these attributes
Heart rate is important in determining and improving your level of personal fitness. Once you know your maximum heart rate, you can calculate your desired target heart rate zone — the level at which your heart is being exercised and conditioned but not overworked. You’ll get the most from your workouts if you’re exercising at the proper exercise intensity. There are two methods used to monitor heart rate: electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG).
An EKG measures the electrical activity of your heart. With each beat, an electrical impulse (or “wave”) travels through the heart.
A PPG optically detects the blood volume change in tissue. A PPG sensing system consists of a light source and a photodetector. The light source can be either a single green LED, or a red and infrared LED.
As the name implies, a pulse oximeter performs two functions; it provides a pulse rate and measures the level of oxygen in the blood stream.
As mentioned earlier, wearable readings are based on reflected light. This means that the emitter and photodetector are mounted on the same PCB. It is critical that the photodetector only “see” the reflected light
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple WWDC 2016: Banality and predictability
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4442225/Apple-WWDC-2016–Banality-and-predictability?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160616&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160616&elqTrackId=387f1a391e5a46bdb85eb66b35166b39&elq=c5a535eafa744991bb6c5281e0276f65&elqaid=32702&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28566
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Apple WWDC 2016: Banality and predictability
Brian Dipert -June 15, 2016
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It’s telling when one of the biggest “splashes” to come out of an event is the “news” that a pending operating system upgrade will finally (in its tenth major iteration) allow for selective uninstall of default bundled applications, followed closely by the “news” that another operating system has been renamed. That, dear readers, in a nutshell sums up the 2016 edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: this year’s iPhones will be thinner with same size displays, lose headphone jack, have improved water resistance; big changes expected for 2017 models — Tech giant plans to break with tradition of overhauling its design every two years; headphone plug likely to disappear
Apple Unlikely to Make Big Changes for Next iPhone
Tech giant plans to break with tradition of overhauling its design every two years; headphone plug likely to disappear
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/apple-unlikely-to-make-big-changes-for-next-iphone-1466526489-lMyQjAxMTI2NzIwMTcyMjE1Wj
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Windows 10 phones get NFC support as Microsoft rolls out update to Wallet, available to Windows Insiders now, will be generally available late summer — Microsoft is starting its rollout of tap-to-pay to certain U.S.-based Windows Insiders; general availability in the U.S. is ‘later this Summer.’
Microsoft adds tap to pay via Wallet for Windows 10 Mobile Insiders
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-adds-tap-to-pay-to-wallet-for-windows-10-mobile-insiders/
Microsoft is starting its rollout of tap-to-pay to certain U.S.-based Windows Insiders; general availability in the U.S. is ‘later this Summer.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Flow, an IFTTT-like tool for managing workflows, launches on iOS; Android version in works
Microsoft Flow, a tool for managing workflows, launches on iOS
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/20/microsoft-flow-a-tool-for-managing-workflows-launches-on-ios/
Microsoft Flow, the company’s recently launched workflow management tool, has now arrived on mobile in the form of an iOS application. Essentially a direct competitor to IFTTT, Microsoft Flow debuted in April on the web, offering an interface that lets you mash up up two or more cloud services in order to create workflows – like those that let you automate file synchronization, alerting, data organization and more.
Competing services, including IFTTT and Zapier, have been around longer and offer a larger list of supported connections. Microsoft Flow, meanwhile, is more focused on integrations with Microsoft’s own business tools, like Office 365, Dynamics CRM, PowerApps, and Yammer, as well as those that are used in organizations, like MailChip, GitHub, Salesforce, Slack, and others.
However, you can use Microsoft Flow to automate a number of common scenarios, like getting a text message whenever your boss emails you, saving the results of a Twitter search to an Excel file, copying files from OneDrive to SharePoint, copying photos from Instagram to Dropbox, and many more.
With the new iOS application, you can now manage your previously created “flows” from your smartphone.
For flows that are mission-critical, you can configure the app to send you push notifications when something goes wrong so you can launch the app then triage the issue in real-time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei hedges bet on Google’s Android, plans in-house OS
Like Samsung before it, Huawei hopes to have a “Plan B” should Android terms go bad.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/huawei-hedges-bet-on-googles-android-plans-in-house-os/
A report from The Information (subscription required) claims that Huawei is building its own in-house OS as a possible “Plan B” to Android. To spearhead the development of an in-house operating system—and improve its Android skin—Huawei has hired former Apple designer Abigail Brody. The report says that the non-Android OS “isn’t far along” and is a “contingency measure” in case Google’s current Android terms become undesirable to Huawei.
Huawei is the number three smartphone OEM, behind Samsung and Apple. The Chinese company isn’t a huge deal in the West, though—a big portion of those sales come from Huawei’s home turf. Huawei is often seen as being in a position similar to Samsung’s, just at an earlier stage of development. Like Samsung, Huawei is a massive company. It’s the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer, and it designs its own SoCs. Now Huawei is taking another page from the Samsung playbook and is trying to develop an Android alternative.
Samsung’s homegrown operating system is Tizen, a Linux-based OS that works a lot like Android (especially Samsung’s Android phones) but lacks the app ecosystem and developer support of Android. That’s the challenge with creating an Android alternative—can you make something that’s so much better than Android that the lack of apps becomes acceptable for consumers?
After the failure of Windows Mobile, Google pretty much has a monopoly on operating systems that are licensable to third-parties.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Report: Huawei hedges its bet on Android by developing a new non-Android operating system in-house — Like Samsung before it, Huawei hopes to have a “Plan B” should Android terms go bad. — A report from The Information (subscription required) claims that Huawei is building its own in-house OS as a possible “Plan B” to Android.
Huawei hedges bet on Google’s Android, plans in-house OS
Like Samsung before it, Huawei hopes to have a “Plan B” should Android terms go bad.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/huawei-hedges-bet-on-googles-android-plans-in-house-os/
A report from The Information (subscription required) claims that Huawei is building its own in-house OS as a possible “Plan B” to Android. To spearhead the development of an in-house operating system—and improve its Android skin—Huawei has hired former Apple designer Abigail Brody. The report says that the non-Android OS “isn’t far along” and is a “contingency measure” in case Google’s current Android terms become undesirable to Huawei.
Huawei is the number three smartphone OEM, behind Samsung and Apple. The Chinese company isn’t a huge deal in the West, though—a big portion of those sales come from Huawei’s home turf.
Samsung’s homegrown operating system is Tizen, a Linux-based OS that works a lot like Android (especially Samsung’s Android phones) but lacks the app ecosystem and developer support of Android
Huawei usually makes great hardware, and it built the Nexus 6P for Google.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Juro Osawa / Wall Street Journal:
Huawei invests heavily in R&D and patents to challenge Samsung and Apple at home and overseas; source says Apple is paying royalties for some of Huawei’s IP
China Smartphone Makers Snap Up Patents in Fight for Market Dominance
Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and others buy patents to challenge to Apple and Samsung
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/china-smartphone-makers-enlisting-patents-in-fight-for-market-dominance-1466428889-lMyQjAxMTI2NzIwMTcyMjE1Wj
China’s smartphone makers increasingly are turning to patents as ammunition as they try to reel in global leaders Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
Chinese technology giants from Huawei Technologies Co. to ZTE Corp. and Lenovo Group Ltd. are acquiring patents through licensing deals, acquisitions and hefty spending on research and development—moves that could signal more legal challenges for Apple and Samsung not just in China, but overseas as well.
Huawei, which has an ambitious goal of becoming the world’s top smartphone maker in five years, sued Samsung in the U.S. last month, claiming the South Korean company violated 11 of its mobile patents.
Last year, Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone maker and the leader in the telecommunications-equipment market, was the largest filer of international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which makes it easier for companies to file patents in multiple countries, according to the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization. Huawei was followed by U.S. chip maker Qualcomm Inc. and China’s ZTE.
Patents are also playing a role in the harsher mobile landscape Apple and Samsung are navigating in China, where regulators increasingly insist that foreign companies play by Beijing’s rules.
“We are going to see a lot more Chinese companies filing patents outside China, and more deals and lawsuits involving patents and technologies,” said Benjamin Bai, a partner at Allen & Overy LLP in Shanghai who advises Chinese companies on international intellectual-property strategies.
A single smartphone can involve thousands of patents. The issues are so complex and thorny that Apple and Samsung have been locked in patent litigation around the world since 2011 as they battle for market dominance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dev boss: What will Microsoft do with Windows 10 Mobile? Surprise – it’s for work!
‘Surface phone’ will have challenging app gap
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/24/what_future_for_windows_10_mobile_enterprise_says_microsoft_developer_chief/
One of the puzzles about Microsoft’s platform in 2016 is Windows 10 Mobile. In the run-up to the launch of Windows 10 in July 2015, the plan seemed to be that a unified operating system across PC and mobile, combined with applications developed for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), would boost Windows Phone and create a strong ecosystem of applications delivered from the Windows Store.
That dream ended even before Windows 10 was generally available. In June 2015, former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop left Microsoft, presumably for reasons related to the announcement the following month that the company was writing off most of the value of its acquisition of Nokia’s phone business along with the “reduction of up to 7,800 positions, primarily in the phone business.”
It was a clear statement of no confidence in Windows Phone – and has been followed by further cuts – and the combination of Nokia’s removal and Microsoft’s negativity had the expected result: its small market share dwindled even further.
That said, Microsoft has not abandoned Windows Phone and is forging ahead with Windows 10 Mobile, with a significant update in preparation, aligned with the Anniversary update of the PC version.
Gallo did his best to downplay Microsoft’s pullback. “Windows Phone is fully supported. We’re fully behind it. We’re not abandoning the phone,” he said. “There’s really no change in what our direction or strategy is with respect to releasing the Windows Phone software.”
The truth is that Windows 10 Mobile is in an awkward spot, the victim of the company’s frequently changing mobile strategy as well as competition from Android and iOS. Without it, the UWP concept hardly makes sense; yet it is hard to see anything other than a small niche for the operating system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Homemade Smart Glasses shows why Smart Glasses are Hard
http://hackaday.com/2016/06/26/homemade-smart-glasses-shows-why-smart-glasses-are-hard/
[Harris Shallcross] decided to build a pair of smart glasses and recently completed a first prototype of his project ‘Ochi’ – an STM32 based, BLE-connected, OLED eyeglass display. There are of course several homebrew smart glasses projects out there; many are more polished-looking and nearly all of them also display information from a smartphone over Bluetooth. This one is interesting partly because it highlights many of the design challenges that smart glasses and other near-eye displays face. It also demonstrates the iterative development process: begin by getting something working to learn what does and doesn’t cut it at a basic level, and don’t optimize prematurely; let the process bring problems to the surface.
Ochi – Version 1
https://hsel.co.uk/2016/06/16/ochi-version-1/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scott Cendrowski / Fortune:
Xiaomi struggles to expand abroad as its smartphone sales in China decline and ecosystem growth misses forecasts, making some question its $45B valuation
Can Xiaomi Live Up to Its $45 Billion Hype?
The “Apple of China” gets a reality check as its smartphone sales slump.
http://fortune.com/xiaomi-business-china/
When CEO Lei Jun takes the stage, in distressed jeans, sneakers, and a blue button-down, he’s confident—cocky, even. You can hardly blame him. Xiaomi, the company Lei founded in 2010, has become the world’s fourth-largest smartphone seller, hawking affordable, stylish phones that cater to China’s immense middle class and its youth culture. Xiaomi has just completed a funding round that made it the world’s most valuable private startup, with an astounding valuation of $45 billion—reflecting investor excitement about not only its phones but also its “ecosystem” of online services and smart-home products, which could turn phone buyers into loyal customers for years to come.
Tech journalists have begun calling Xiaomi the “Apple of China.” The name rankles designers at the actual Apple, who grouse that Xiaomi phones are merely cheap iPhone copies. Lei begs to differ. In fact, he tells the Beijing crowd, his phones are better
Xiaomi’s tale may sound like merely another iteration of that now familiar headline, tech unicorn gallops into wall. But Xiaomi (pronounced “SHAO-me,” with the first syllable sounding like the “show” in “shower”) isn’t just any privately held, multibillion-dollar startup. It’s a rising power in a nation eager to prove that its consumer-oriented companies can compete globally. “Xiaomi’s mission is to change the world’s view of Chinese products,” Lei said last year. While Xiaomi no longer wears the most-valuable-startup crown—that now belongs to ride-hailing service Uber—its $45 billion valuation remains a powerful symbol of its aspirations, so much so that Xiaomi proudly includes it in product catalogues. (Some analysts put the figure slightly higher.)
The company didn’t attain that valuation on the strength of its phones, though those get raves in the tech press (and have even made Xiaomi modestly profitable) while selling for half the price of an iPhone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
iPhone 7 Photos Leak, Indicating Camera Improvements
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329995&
Apple’s iPhone 6s is already known to have one of the highest-quality smartphone cameras on the market, but the company is likely working to make an even more impressive camera for the upcoming iPhone 7, which is likely to be revealed in September.
Leaked photos that first surfaced on the French tech blog Nowhereelse.fr on June 25 appear to show the casing on the iPhone 7 with a much larger camera sensor opening than the previous iPhone, as well as a possible dual-camera configuration for the larger iPhone 7 Plus.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brandy Shaul / SocialTimes:
Mobcrush Officially Launches Live-Streaming Platform for Mobile Games
http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/mobcrush-officially-launches-live-streaming-platform-for-mobile-games/641258
Mobcrush announced the official launch of its live-streaming application on mobile. The app allows users to watch live streams and broadcast gameplay from mobile games.
With the Mobcrush app, users can browse new and popular live streams, as well as view content from featured broadcasters and games. Users can also search for their favorite games to view any available streams.
As a social platform, users can chat with others while watching live streams. Gamers can also follow others within the app, and they will see broadcasts from users they follow in a separate “following” feed of content. Finally, gamers can visit other users’ profiles to view their past broadcasts, as well as the users they follow.
While Android users can use the Mobcrush app to instantly broadcast gameplay, iOS users must download a separate Mobcrush broadcast app on their Macs or PCs in order to stream content.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This $4 smartphone finally has a ship date after sparking investigations
http://mashable.com/2016/06/25/worlds-cheapest-smartphone-freedom-251-release-date/?#yUbxiMpSPZqj
Chances are, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
That seemed to be the case for the Freedom 251, the world’s cheapest smartphone, announced in February. Ringing Bells, the Indian company behind the phone, sparked controversy when it claimed the smartphone would sell for just $4.
Naturally, people were very curious to know how the company could sell an Android smartphone for so little, prompting the Indian Cellular Association (ICA) to write to India’s telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to get some hard answers.
The ICA also accused Ringing Bells of potentially fraudulent claims saying even the cheapest build-of-materials would cost about $40 for a phone with barebone specs such as Android 5.1, a 4-inch screen, 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, 1,450 mAh battery, and a 3.2-megapixel back and 0.3-megapixel front camera.
it was discovered that the Freedom 251 was actually an illegally rebadged version of China’s Adcom Ikon 4, which sells for about $54. Oh, and the app icons were basically ripped right off iOS.
Fast forward a couple of months and 70 million registrations for the device later and Ringing Bells is finally gearing up to ship the first $4 Freedom 251 phones to customers on June 30, according to IANS.
“We learned from our mistakes and decided to go silent till we come out with the product. Now we have a 4-inch, dual-SIM phone ready for delivery. I feel vindicated,” Goel told IANS.
Goel says the company is losing money on every unit sold, but the goal is to allow rural and poor Indians to access the digital world.
The phone’s specs have also been updated since the original version was announced. The rear camera’s a higher resolution 8-megapixel shooter and the selfie camera is a 3.2-megapixel shooter. There’s also a larger 1,800 mAh battery.
The company plans to fulfill 2.5 million orders by the end of the month and ship 200,000 units per month afterwards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are YOU obsessed with your phone? Researchers reveal addicts touch their handset over 5,400 times a DAY
A top 10% touch smartphones 5,427 times a day – 2 million times a year
More than half of users check phone between midnight and 5 AM
People have average 76 sessions with their phone – power users have 132
Facebook is the most touched App, while Google has the most sessions
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3662555/Are-obsessed-phone-Researchers-reveals-addicts-touch-handset-5-400-times-DAY.html#ixzz4CxKcrBBU
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cody Toombs / Android Police:
Google Fit for Android updated with overhauled design, improved goals, and a configurable widget
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/06/27/google-fit-v1-57-rolls-major-visual-redesign-improved-goals-configurable-widget-apk-download/