Microwave Engineering Europe - March 2008 - (Page 16)

16 WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE — MOBILE INTERNET Mobile world set to reshape the internet By Junko Yoshida ARCELONA, Spain — The recent Mobile World Congress which took place from February 11th to 14th, saw three deﬁnitive trends: global positioning, full web browsing including YouTube videos and high deﬁnition video encoding/decoding capabilities on a cell phone. Such trends underscore serious battles brewing among various technology suppliers, as they jockey for position in a mobile market where the separation of cell phones from consumer electronics devices is fast disappearing. Such battles come in various mutations including: Nokia versus Google on GPS-enabled Internet; ARM, Texas Instruments and others versus Intel on Mobile Internet Devices; Apple versus Google pitting iPhone software developers against future application developers for Google’s Android platform. Behind a big push for GPS in every cell phone, for example, is Nokia’s naked ambition to “reshape the Internet” by adding context — such as time, place and people. Google, too, is expected to give a big push to GPS on its emerging Linux kernel-based Android platform. “Freeing the Internet from the limitations of the desktop,” is how Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of Nokia, described another thrust that emerged at the Mobile World Congress. Full Internet access, instead of an operators’ walled garden Internet, is inevitable, but the success of Apple’s iPhone has made the full native web browser a new requirement for cell phones. Then, there is Intel’s aggressive plan for an X86-based Mobile Internet Device (MID). By calling MID a new class of connectivity device designed to bring the full Internet into every pocket — not just a Web subset — Intel is encroaching on a mobile embedded market where ARM has always been dominant. ARM, by arguing that error-free browsing is an software issue, not a hardware one, now claims that “browsing on ARM equals browsing on Intel.” And then 720 line progressive scan highdeﬁnition video encoding and decoding capability is a third phenomenon this year for mobile handsets — with all the key chip vendors — including Texas Instruments, Broadcom and Qualcomm — racing for the converged mobile phone/portable multimedia B ARM demonstrates an Android platformbased prototype phone using the ARM 9 core. device market. Fueling the trend is the idea that HD video shot on a relatively low-cost camera phone should be transferrable to a large-screen living room TV. GPS as a fabric of the Internet Nokia, whose global mobile handset market share reached 40 percent late last year, believes that it, not Google, has the best shot at redeﬁning the Internet. Abhijit Kabra, partner at Accenture, pointed out: “Nokia is now openly stating that it’s an Internet company.” But how does Nokia presume that it can reshape an Internet so ﬁrmly established? Nokia’s answer lies in Maps 2.0, which the company claims enables the development of a “context-aware Internet.” Combining multimedia features, the Internet and assistedGPS, “We can bring a more relevant and powerful context” to users browsing on the Internet, said Kallasvuo. “Location is no longer an application but it becomes a fabric of the Internet,” added Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software, at Nokia. With Nokia’s Maps 2.0, whose beta version becomes available this month, Nokia’s CEO claimed, “We are taking navigation out of a car and bringing it to a sidewalk for pedestrians.” For example, for any picture taken on a camera phone, GPS coordinates can be simultaneously stored in a metadata ﬁle. In a separate scenario, instead of calling friends to see where they are, the handset’s map can automatically display “where your friends are,” he explained. Marc Cetto, executive vice president of European chip company NXP BV, said that NXP is expecting that the GPS attach rate will reach 75 percent within the next ﬁve years. To NXP, that means that “GPS will see a 100 percent attach rate in feature phones and high-end phones,” said Cetto. Separately, SiRF Technology Inc. rolled out a multifunction platform called SiRFprima at the show. Building on its heavy-duty location engine, SiRF’s engineering team has integrated an ARM11 core, a game-grade 3D graphics core from Imagination Technologies and other multimedia processing capabilities into SiRFprima. SiRF, Google’s Android platform partner, sees itself as playing a critical role in folding “location-awareness” features into mobile devices. “Within a year, people will be doing YouTube and Facebook on their handsets,” predicted Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at ARM. Describing ARM11 as “a tipping point,” Coombs said the ARM11 core has already “opened the door” to people’s ability to read email on their cell phones. With the ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 2008 heralds an even bigger leap in performance in handset devices, he said, allowing a phone to “boot CNN in seconds,” for example. On2 Technologies launched at the show a multi-format conﬁgurable hardware decoder. The new RTL decoder, dubbed Hantro 8190, lets mobile phone designers add various video decoding capabilities, including mobile video (H.264; VC-1), Internet video (Adobe Flash Microwave Engineering Europe ● March 2008 ● www.mwee.com 016_017_MWEE.indd 16 20/02/08 11:56:49 http://www.mwee.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Microwave Engineering Europe - March 2008

Microwave Engineering Europe - March 2008 News Contents Comment Wireless Infrastructure: A Direct Conversion I/Q Demodulatordrives Favorable Basestation Cost-performance Metrics Wireless Infrastructure: Mobile World Set to Reshape the Internet RF Amplifiers: Latest Advances in RF Amplifiers Include a CMOS PA Operating at 77 GHz and Significant Advances in PAs for WiMAX and Broadband Applications Many Applications Still Require Unique Performance Benefits of BeO ACE Automated Circuit Extraction Returns to Real Design by Exploring Design Alternatives and Changes in Seconds Exceeding the Standard for Wireless Sensor Networks Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.