Vision - May/June 2008 - (Page 17)

this year. The first dip will occur in 2013, when 550 million applications will be shipped worldwide, down from 552 million in 2012, he projects. New Uses One of the emerging functions to be integrated in more cell phones is GPS navigation. “We believe in coming years the GPS attach rate in mobile phones will begin to explode,” says Tom Van Kampen, business development manager in the mobile and personal business unit of NXP Semiconductors in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. NXP is a leading provider of baseband processors and accessory chips for functions including GPS, FM radio reception, display optimization, TV reception and MP3 playback. Despite the availability of dedicated personal navigation devices (PNDs), full GPS functionality will become common in cell phones in the next two years, McEwen predicts. “It’s just too much of a commodity that it won’t happen,” he says. Case in point: Garmin International introduced the Nuvifone, which it describes as the first to combine 3.5G mobile phone capability with personal navigation, Internet browsing with integrated Google local searching, data connectivity and personal messaging. Docking the phone in its car mount automatically turns on the GPS and activates the navigation menu. The Nuvifone will be available in the third quarter of this year. Wireless networking technologies including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and UWB also will be increasingly integrated in single chip systems, along with seamless hopping from one to the other, McEwen says. A true universal radio for these technologies is only four or five years away, he adds. Additionally, an emerging short-range wireless networking technology named Near Field Communications (NFC)—which requires its own dedicated chip—is expected to be widely available in cell phones by late 2009, says David Holmes, business development manager for NFC at NXP Semiconductors in Vancouver, Wash. Co-invented by Philips and Sony in 2002, NFC facilitates short-range communication between consumer electronics devices such as cell phones, computers and audio/video equipment, and also retail kiosks or vending machines. There are three possible modes: www.ce.org card emulation mode, in which the cell phone acts as a credit or debit card for making purchases; peer-to-peer mode, where the phone communicates with other phones to pass information such as music play lists, to initiate a three-way phone call, or to pair with another device, such as a Bluetooth headset; and reader/writer mode, in which the phone can retrieve information from a “smart object” merely by touching it. In the last mode, for example, an NFC-enabled cell phone could be used to get a movie trailer merely by touching an advertising poster containing embedded NFC technology. In January, Sprint Nextel began a fourmonth pilot test of NFC technology with BART (the San Francisco metro commuter train system) and area Jack in the Box res- surround sound audio from stereo sources for playback through headphones, and also widens the soundstage produced by standard cell phone speakers. The first phones to feature Dolby Mobile are the Sharp FOMA SH905i and FOMA SH905iTV, which are available in Japan through NTT DoCoMo. But at the Mobile World Congress trade show in February, Dolby announced an agreement with chipmaker RMI Corp. to implement Dolby Mobile in RMI’s Alchemy platform for PMPs, and demonstrated a prototype with Dolby Mobile built on Texas Instruments’ OMAP platform. Finally, the biggest variety of new uses An emerging short-range wireless networking technology named Near Field Communications (NFC)— which requires its own dedicated chip—is expected to be widely available in cell phones by late 2009. — David Holmes, business development manager for NFC at NXP Semiconductors, Vancouver, Wash. taurants. The first trial of its kind in the U.S., it encompasses 230 participants who can use specially equipped Samsung A920 cell phones to purchase BART tickets by touching the phone to a reader located on the top of a BART fare gate. Plus, by holding their phones up to Jack in the Box “smart advertisements” on BART station walls, participants can download directions to the nearest restaurant. At the restaurant, the phone can be used to pay for the meal. The phones in the trial are equipped with NFC chips from NXP. Holmes says NXP also is in talks with automakers about using NFC to connect cell phones to a vehicle’s sound system for hands-free calling, similar to how Bluetooth is used. Surround sound audio is another feature expected to proliferate in cell phones thanks to a new generation of chips. Dolby Laboratories Inc. has introduced Dolby Mobile—a suite of audio post-processing technologies for cell phones and portable media players (PMPs) that is embedded in a digital signal processor (DSP) chip. Among other enhancements, Dolby Mobile produces 5.1-channel for a smartphone may yet be for the Apple iPhone. Apple has announced a new software development kit (SDK) to allow third-party developers to create new applications for the device, and the new App Store, where developers can sell Apple-approved applications to consumers and businesses. The store is accessible directly from the iPhone, and developers, who set the prices for their own applications, retain 70 percent of their sales revenues. Apple also has pledged to cover all credit cards, Web hosting, infrastructure and DRM costs associated with offering applications on the App Store. And to help budding third-party software developers get started, Apple has partnered with the leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to launch the “iFund”. It is a $100 million venture fund that will invest in companies creating applications, services and components for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Doherty declares, it could be this combination of the new SDK, the App Store and the iFund that most impacts the evolution of the smartphone. “Apple is six months away from there being iPhone, and everything else.” • May/June 2008 17 http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - May/June 2008

Vision - May/June 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In This Issue The Economist C4 Trends Visionary Making the Smartphone Truly Intelligent Shipping Strategies for CE Companies IP in BRIC Countries CEA Newsline Tech Speak Eye on Business Tech Policy Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - May/June 2008

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