New Technologies for Handheld Devices
AMD has launched an expanded portfolio of products and technologies to enable such popular, media-rich applications as mobile TV, 3D games and high-fidelity audio, delivering immersive entertainment to tomorrow’s mobile phones and handheld devices.
AMD has enhanced its line of innovative, open-standard handheld device technologies with upcoming AMD Imageon processors, as well as next-generation 3D and vector graphics cores available for licensing. These new AMD offerings are designed to allow device manufacturers and network operators to support today’s most popular applications, as well as cutting-edge applications that will thrill tomorrow’s mobile consumer.
According to analyst firm iSuppli, premium mobile content such as music, games and video is gaining momentum as a key revenue driver for network operators. In fact, mobile content now surpasses messaging as the largest data segment, representing 51 percent of total data revenue.
“In many mobile phone markets worldwide, voice and messaging services are beyond the point of saturation,” said Pam Tufegdzic, analyst, iSuppli Corporation. “To continue to grow their subscriber base and increase return on their investments, network operators no longer see premium mobile content as a value-added competitive advantage, but rather as a mainstream service necessary for market entry.”
The latest technology offerings in the family of AMD Imageon processors will include:
*The AMD Imageon D160 mobile TV solution — a complete hardware and software package that will enable OEMs to design cutting-edge mobile devices that receive over-the-air broadcast TV signals transmitted in the DVB-T and DVB-H standards, currently used in various markets worldwide. This turnkey, antenna-to-display solution also will enable mobile TV functionality to be designed in a USB-powered device for watching live television on notebook PCs, PDAs, portable media players and other USB-enabled handheld devices.
*The AMD Imageon M210 audio processor is designed to enable a high-definition, fully integrated audio subsystem capable of delivering more than 100 hours of music playback in airplane mode. This new audio processor will be ideal for both multifunction, mainstream mobile phones and portable music players.
In AMD’s graphics line-up will be:
* The AMD Z180 OpenVG 1.x graphics core which offers the only available hardware-accelerated native vector graphics solution for advanced user interfaces, navigational systems and portable devices optimized for animation and Flash-style content.
*The AMD Z460 OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics core which delivers fully programmable shader models for realistic 3D graphics, designed to upgrade the mobile gaming experience for portable devices.
These new AMD handheld technologies will be available for OEMs and silicon supplier licensees to sample beginning this month. Features enabled by these new products and technologies are expected to start appearing in mobile devices in late 2008 and 2009.
Aiming for Mobile Services Integration
While it was still dealing with the fallout from its rejection of Microsoft’s offer, last week Yahoo! Unveiled “Yahoo! oneConnect,” a new mobile communications service that will combine integrated mobile messaging with a socially-connected address book. The Yahoo! oneConnect service features will include:
*A socially-connected address book — This will provide users with the capability to integrate activity from popular social networks, professional networks and communities into their address book, keeping it always in sync. OneConnect users will be able to view status updates, photo uploads, and the recent activity (“pulse”) of contacts across all their networks.
*Integrated mobile messaging — Will offer seamless integration of IM and SMS, including threaded conversations. Any messaging service will be able to use Yahoo! oneConnect’s open APIs to plug into the application’s messaging feature — enabling consumers to access a wide range of popular services, such as Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger.
*Favorites — Will keep the people Yahoo! oneConnect users interact with most, at their fingertips. Users will be able to set up messaging shortcuts to make reaching out as quick as possible.
*A social contact card — Will allow users to aggregate the most relevant information on any given contact, including archives of past communications, detailed pulse history and one-click ways to initiate communication.
*Location-sensing technology — Will provide new ways to locate, chat with and exchange contact information with nearby Yahoo! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify consumers when a contact enters their vicinity.
*An open communications platform — Gives users the functionality to communicate via multiple communications tools. Widgets will provide users with the capability to access their e-mail across major e-mail providers.
Yahoo! OneConnect is basically an attempt to integrate lots of mobile services — in other words to create a mobile portal for the social Web. How well it succeeds will become clear when Yahoo! oneConnect becomes available in Yahoo! Go 3.0 and Yahoo!’s new mobile home page in Q2 2008.
Pakistani Telecoms Lead the Way
How can you send a message using your mobile phone if you are illiterate? Turn to a new mobile application — Voice Messaging. An alternative to SMS, Voice Messaging offers a simple and unobtrusive way to send a message to another mobile phone user. The service is of great value worldwide, especially in countries with lower literacy rates and character-based languages, which makes texting, with a standard alphanumeric keypad, time-consuming and inefficient. To send a voice message, the caller simply dials a code (usually the star button) before the recipient’s number and records a message lasting up to 30 seconds. The recipient is notified by a text message, which often has a one-touch link to a recording of the message.
Pakistani mobile providers, Telenor Pakistan and Ufone, with support from voice messaging vendors Mobile Arts and Kirusa, successfully trialed interoperable voice messaging between October and December 2007 — the first successful multi-operator and multi-vendor voice messaging trial anywhere in the world. As part of the trial, when a Ufone subscriber sent a message to a Telenor Pakistan subscriber, the message went from the Kirusa Voice SMS solution in Ufone to the Mobile Arts solution in Telenor Pakistan. The Telenor Pakistan subscriber got an SMS from the Ufone subscriber, and listened and replied to the message with the same user interface and pricing as if the message had been sent by a Telenor Pakistan subscriber. The reply was sent back to the Kirusa Voice SMS solution in Ufone network. Kirusa and Mobile Arts developed the software that allowed this interoperability between Ufone and Telenor Pakistan. Now, Telenor Pakistan and Ufone plan to launch the world’s first interoperable voice messaging, or Voice SMS, this year, as a general subscriber offering.
“Mobile operators have launched voice messaging services commercially in Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, giving their customers a fast and simple way to communicate when a conventional two-way voice call isn’t necessary,” said Alex Sinclair, CTO, of the GSM Association. “We hope our work on interoperability will significantly enhance the usefulness of voice messaging by enabling users to reach friends and contacts on other mobile networks.”
The GSMA project to develop the specification for interoperable voice messaging services and to manage the voice messaging trials has been led by Telenor of Norway, with support from Telenor Pakistan, Ufone and Warid Telecom, all from Pakistan, Grameenphone from Bangladesh, VimpelCom from Russia and Digi Telecom from Malaysia. The project has also been supported by several vendors of voice messaging technology, such as Kirusa, Mobile Arts and Bubblemotion.
