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Sony's booth- Control your living room with the S Tablet

After a few hectic days at CES, I have finally had the opportunity to sit down and gather my thoughts about all that CES had to offer this year. As always, it was a pleasure returning to Las Vegas for the show, we hope they don’t plan to change the location anytime soon! Looking at the large consumer brands like Samsung, Sony, Panasonic and LG, we saw a large number of televisions and portable devices. The televisions focused on were once again 3D TVs and Smart TVs but they had a new perspective this year – the Connected Lifestyle.

This year it was all about sharing content between devices, using one device to make the experience on the other better. For example, Sony had several displays to show how you can “control your living room” with the help of their new tablet, the S. Similarly, Samsung unveiled their new “N Service.” Now, some consumers, such as FiOS TV users, will have access to live streaming channels on their different Samsung devices. Further, the Cloud is a very important aspect of this Connected Lifestyle. Samsung’s 2012 Signature Services includes giving customers cloud storage, so that they can view their content on multiple devices. Haier also displayed their cloud and content sharing options through their service “Share.” The televisions also came with several special apps related to aspects like calendar, notes and fitness. Panasonic displayed their fitness app, in-built in their TVs: ifitLive. It helps monitor your calorie burn and keep track of your workouts. And while we are on the subject of fitness, have you checked out the Motoactv? We don’t really know what to make of this product yet- what are your thoughts? They did have a very interesting booth set up for this product.

Nokia's new Lumia 900 phones

Among tablets and smartphones, we definitely saw a lot more tablets all over CES, rather than phones. In fact, it seems that almost every company is making tablets, especially Android tablets, including Pierre Cardin! We had a chance to play around with Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus phone, running Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich OS. The OS looks more like Honeycomb than Gingerbread, and the camera speed on this phone was very impressive! Toshiba also had some good-looking tablets, which were displayed in a variety of sizes, starting at around 5 inches. We were also fairly impressed with the new Moto Razr. It was a very elegant looking and for an LTE phone with 21 hours of talktime, it was indeed very thin. The Windows phones were also very impressive- we really liked the font being used by the OS, simple but classy. We definitely see a future here! Accessory companies like iLuv now have special portfolio cases for tablets- you can put in a keyboard in one side, and the tablet turns into what is essentially a netbook.

LG Ultrabook

Ultrabooks were also found in plenty all over CES – LG, Intel, Toshiba, Samsung etc. They were all sleek and everything you can imagine an Ultrabook would look like. We had the chance to play around with an LG Ultrabook, which also had a touchscreen- pretty cool!

Finally, apps were everywhere to be found! Everyone seemed to have their own host of apps for their devices. Intel also had an exhibit to show their “Connecting Apps.” We were also impressed by the car navigation systems. Mercedes “mbrace2” boasted features like a Facebook app and convenient Google search. Of course, the car

Audi's Urban Car concept design

themselves were pretty distracting- the concept design for an Urban Audi definitely caught our attention!

We are excited to see how all the products will do in the market as they are launched through this year and the next. What were you excited by at CES this time?

With the proliferation of screens and devices competing for our attention – how do content creators, device makers and mobile ecosystem players stand out from the crowd?

In the earlier era, branding alone could help an entity to stand out from the array of consumer choices. However, with the democratization of the screen space – with apps, notifications, widgets, etc, the importance of a simple yet engaging UI re-appears as a key differentiator.

How often have you tried to change / delete / add / re-order objects inside an app and were left with either no choice or forced to follow a number of cumbersome steps?

On the other hand, there are those applications that just seem to get it. Frequently performed tasks are accessible in one-click. Complexity of the user experience is traded away by the complexity of the design (which can be hidden from the user). Sometimes, a bottom up approach with budgets for icons, menus, menu lists forces the designers to think about what is important, thereby creating a better user experience.

For aspiring UI designers, there is a huge array of reference material available today. The next time you come across a pleasing UI experience – pause to think about what makes it so – colors, layouts, simplicity, prioritization of features? I bet all of them combine to create that superior experience.

Happy Holidays to All! The author is busy focusing on the small screen this season.

Author: Somnath, VP of Business Dev

As smartphones, tablets, e-readers and other connected devices become mass-market products, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the various details of wireless technologies. The wireless ecosystem in particular, is a complex system with multiple mobile network operators, devices, OS’, apps and wireless standards all co-operating to provide a mobile experience.

To add to this mix, operators are aggressively positioning themselves as leaders in “4G” (i.e. 4^th generation wireless standards) with announcements of trials, network rollouts and devices.

Technically, as defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standards, there are only two types of 4G standards: LTE Advanced (Long Term Evolution Advanced) and WiMax Release 2. However, last December (2010), ITU relaxed its definition of 4G to include newer 3G standards such as HSPA+, LTE and WiMAX, that offered a significant improvement over the first generation of 3G standards. Most mobile operators in the US have announced rollouts of 4G based on phased deployments of HSPA+, LTE and WiMAX networks. A whole slew of smartphones and tablets based on these standards have been released in the market.

While the theoretical peak bandwidth of these networks are high, a typical user can expect mobile bandwidth in the range of ~10s Mbps with these technologies – significantly faster than any existing wireless access technology. What does this mean to users? Faster access to media, apps and information from their device. New network intensive applications in gaming, collaboration, messaging and media will especially benefit from 4G.

However, even with 4G networks, the mobile networks will not be able to cope with the overload of data from smartphones, tablets and other connected devices. Mobile operators will have to complement their 4G networks with a WiFi offload strategy to manage this data, as well as maintain a consistent Quality of User Experience (QoE). With most portable devices having built-in WiFi radios, WiFi is here to stay. Mobile operators that offer the most consistent user experience will emerge the winners, rewarded with loyal customers, who will increasingly consume more services on their mobile devices.

Author: Somnath, VP of Business Dev

In the world of converged devices, there is an overwhelming number of smartphones to choose from, especially in the last few years. However, if this was not enough, we now have the option of tablets, as well. E-Readers like the Kindle and Nook are a slightly different range of devices in terms of their usage; however, it is a choice nevertheless. The choices keep coming up in recent office conversations, especially when it is time for someone to buy a new device. The conversation seems to be divided though, and more often than not, based on generation. Turns out, we could have just been a sample size for a recent Nielsen survey.

According to this survey, as recently as last summer, tablets and eReader owners “tended to be male and on the younger side” (Nielsen). A survey conducted in August of this year showed a very different trend. 56% of tablet owners are over the age of 34 and in fact, 19% are over the age of 55. The diagram below shows the demographics of connected device owners:

Information about why each demographic chooses their particular device is very subjective; however on the basis of some of the discussion we had the in the office, it may be as simple a reason as the size of the screen and usage pattern. Someone in the office pointed out that if you do a lot of browsing, a tablet is very much more comfortable to read on. While I agree with that, I still find that browsing on smartphones is also pretty comfortable, especially through mobile versions or app versions of certain websites. At the end of the day, these demographics may provide data about either the increased adoption of devices by the older generations or it may point to a preference, and judging by my personal experiences, it is probably the latter. It is difficult to predict which devices will emerge as winners, or if they are competitors at all. However, this continues to be a good thing for consumers, the more options we have, the more we can find a device to fit our life, age and preferences.

What devices do you own? And why did you make that choice? You might end up revealing something about yourself through your choice of device!

We are very excited to share this article with you! Our CEO, Sudipta Sen, has been featured in the magazine Popular Photography (available for sale since June28th). Encouraged by his father, photography, amongst several other things, has been a hobby of Sudipta for several years. We have always appreciated his skills (one of his photographs hangs proudly in the reception area of the office) but are very pleased to see his photographs in a magazine of this caliber! Congratulations Sudipta, and we hope to see many more such articles!

WiFi Offload is becoming an increasingly interesting topic as data consumption continues to increase, especially mobile data consumption. We find that it is of particular interest to us, since one of the features of our software is to facilitate intelligent radio handover in mobile devices, which in turn guarantees intelligent WiFi Offload.

Devicescape’s Q2 2011 WiFi report highlights some interesting trends in the world of WiFi. Some of the key findings are that most respondents (polling Devicescape users) increasingly use WiFi outside their home or office daily or several times a day, and they rely on this connectivity being available. Additionally, data caps plays a huge role in customer satisfaction and may alter usage patterns. Customers are willing to change their usage habits and rely on WiFi if they are faced with data caps. The report also indicates that WiFi is considered a necessary feature by most users.

For more details check out Devicescape’s press release here.

In the past couple of years, India has become one of the fastest-growing mobile markets in the world. Mobile services were commercially launched in August 1995 in India. For five to six years, the average new monthly subscribers were around 0.05 to 0.1 million and the total mobile subscribers base stood at 10.5 million in December 2001. After several proactive initiatives by regulators and licensors, the monthly mobile subscribers increased to around 2 million per month during 2003-2005. The third generation of communication technology, namely 3G, which has theoretical data transmission speeds of up to 3 Mbps, was launched in 2008. Government-owned telecom providers, BSNL and MTNL, were allotted spectrum much before the release to private players. BSNL has access to 360 cities and close to one million 3G subscribers. MTNL, a service-provider for the cities of Delhi and Mumbai has close to 2.5 lakh subscribers.

Nine players have entered the market since then, namely Aircel, Bharti, Airtel, Idea, Reliance Telecom, S Tel, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone and Videocon Telecom, creating a competitive environment.. New features are one of the most important differentiators in this crowded market. It is projected that India will have over 200 million 3G subscribers in the next three years and is likely to sell 395 million 3G handsets by 2013 (Source: Evalueserve). With such a rapid growth rate, we can expect an overloaded spectrum in the near future in India. Therefore, technology with the potential to support this huge data traffic will be required and is being demanded by all the players in this ecosystem.

Offloading 3G network traffic on to the WiFi network is not a new phenomenon and has been implemented by operators in other countries.

It is safe to assume that the current spectrum band will be unable to handle all the data traffic in the future. The focus now is on how to manage this traffic, and indicators point towards WiFi Offload as a solution. An identifiable trend in the Indian ecosystem is the introduction of WiFi services, by providers, along with GSM/CDMA connections. As is with most free markets across the world, customers are becoming educated about their needs and the options available to them. We believe that management of data traffic will become an important differentiator, especially with the recent introduction of mobile phone number portability. This is definitely going to be an interesting time in the telecommunications world in India!

In preparation for CTIA 2011, we thought we would take a moment to look over some of the key themes at MWC this year. SNRLabs released two press releases during MWC, one on our QoE metric “SNRGrade™” and the other on our newest product “Vergere™,” based on our Convergence Management Suite (CMS) technology.

Three key themes really stood out to us at MWC. There were several announcements surrounding Near Field Communication (NFC) being incorporated into devices and the GSMA initiative to develop standards for NFC. We can probably expect to start seeing deployments in 2012. There was also a lot of focus on policy control and profitable management of network (definitely our kind of news – we have a solution!). Several large to small vendors showed various centralized policy control, traffic management and network optimization schemes. Finally, Silicon was another central theme at MWC. Dual-core processors are becoming the new standard for application processors, and we see this with processors from Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia and ST-Ericsson.

Android was everywhere! In addition to having their own booth, with a conveyor belt displaying all of their 150-something phones, we noticed Android statues in a lot of booths, holding little candy bowls. They were also handing out swag like collector’s edition Android pins.

We cannot write a post without talking about some of the exciting mobile devices we saw at MWC! Samsung Galaxy S II, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, HTC ChaCha, HTC Salsa and LG Optimus 3D were only some of the smartphones on display at the tradeshow. We were pretty impressed with the tablets, as well – Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, HTC Scribe, Optimus Pad and the HP TouchPad. Companies like Huawei, INQ, Alcatel and ZTE also announced some notable products. Of course, an MWC post would be incomplete without any mention of Nokia’s decision to use Windows Phone OS as its primary smartphone OS. Some of the other collaboration between the two companies includes the OVI store being rolled into the WP7 marketplace, and combining Nokia’s OVI maps with Bing search.

Alcatel-Lucent also unveiled some ground-breaking technology, in terms of silicon. Their new antenna and RF basestation measures a mere 2.5 inches X 2.5 inches in size, replacing racks of hardware into a small cube. They hope to start by replacing the big towers with smaller elements, therefore reducing costs for operators. The antenna is also software configurable, which means a carrier can switch from 3G to 4G service with just a software upgrade.

A Street Performer in Barcelona

Another big thing that we like about MWC is its location- Barcelona! Unfortunately we did not have great weather, except for the last day when we were about to leave. Barcelona truly is a beautiful city and even though we have been there a few times, it fascinates us every time!

On to the next- CTIA 2011!

專注於行動裝置，提供無線通訊中介軟體方案的領導廠商SNRLabs針對行動裝置，推出能即時達成無感連線轉換及行動網路的數據流量卸載(WiFi Offload)功能的完整解決方案 -「Vergere™」。

受到智慧型手機、平板電腦等手持裝置應用量驟增的影響，通訊流量吃緊的狀況日益嚴重，儘管行動通訊業者正尋求解決之道，但是如何兼顧使用者上網品質的考驗，仍是個不易解決的挑戰。

SNRLabs針對此問題，特別研發出Vergere™中介軟體。採用日前所提出之SNRGrade™技術與度量標準，有效補足了目前手持裝置內建連線管理程式所缺乏的功能，讓裝置製造商、行動通信業者、和應用程式開發者，能提供使用者滿意的上網經驗，同時節省手持裝置電力的耗用，延長使用時間。

SNRLabs的專利Vergere™可處理所有移動裝置的通訊與連結的決策，同時達到節省手持裝置電力的效果。Vergere™能直接從裝置端強化系統業者對通訊網路的管理效能，不用額外增加無線網路基礎建設中的軟硬體成本。

SNRLabs業務副總 Somnath Viswanath表示：「我們相信在移動通訊與資料量爆增的今天，系統業者選擇WiFi Offload將是減輕通訊網路負擔的明智決策。以Vergere™為基礎的解決方案，將確保更高的使用者上網品質。」

【關於SNRLabs】
SNRLabs是無線通訊整合技術的領導廠商，提供管理行動裝置連線的系統性解決方案，滿足人類隨時隨地和世界溝通的需求。SNRLabs成立於2006年，總部設立於德州理查森市，並在台灣台北、印度班加羅爾設有辦事處。

如欲查詢SNRLabs公司最新訊息，請進入www.snrlabs.com

專注於行動裝置，提供無線通訊中介軟體方案的領導廠商SNRLabs，經長時間深度研究各類網路反應特性與使用者上網經驗的相關性後，推出全新使用者上網品質度量技術與標準，名為SNRGrade™。協助行動裝置在上網連線時，能準確有效地判別不同類型無線網路(例如: 3G、WiFi、LTE、和WiMAX)的實際連線品質優劣。
SNRLabs首席設計師 Yuan Kang Lee博士表示：「經由大規模的研究分析後所開發出的SNRGrade™，能夠直接從手持裝置，以端點對端點的方式，就連線的可使用性、服務存取時間、和實際感受到的連線速率，同時測量不同的數據網路，客觀地分析所獲得的各項參數後，總結出目前的連線品質並數值化地呈現出來。此外，此一技術具有絕佳的獨立性，不論手持裝置使用的是何種無線晶片組、驅動程式、網路協議、應用處理器、作業系統、和應用程式，SNRGrade™都能正常的運作。」

近年來行動網路上的數據流量呈現爆炸性的成長。在今年二月份的行動通信世界會議(MWC 2011)中，如何有效地達成數據流量卸載是大家所注目的熱門話題。目前SNRGrade™已經被應用在SNRLabs的Vergere™產品線中，可實現行動網路的數據流量卸載(WiFi Offload)、並確保使用者擁有當下最佳連線及無感連線轉換的絕妙體驗。
如欲索取有關SNRGrade™的白皮書，請直接與我們聯絡。

【關於SNRLabs】
SNRLabs是無線通訊整合技術的領導廠商，提供管理行動裝置連線的系統性解決方案，滿足人類隨時隨地和世界溝通的需求。SNRLabs成立於2006年，總部設立於德州理查森市，並在台灣台北、印度班加羅爾設有辦事處。

如欲查詢SNRLabs公司最新訊息，請進入www.snrlabs.com