I saw an article today in Wireless Week that CTIA will be rebranding its fall show. Those of you who frequent MobileBizBuzz will know that I normally attend the CTIA shows and do a few posts afterwards about the trends I saw while there. CTIA actually has both a spring and a fall show each year, each having a different focus. Both are well attended, with the fall show being the smaller of the two still drawing 15,000+ attendees. In my opinion, these shows represent the best places to go to understand where the wireless industry is going overall, as well as what major trends currently have the industry’s attention.
It’s not groundbreaking news that the fall show has been rebranded. This has happened a couple of times before in its 15 year history. What is groundbreaking is the fact it is being rebranded as CTIA Enterprise and Applications. In their press release, CTIA said they were making this change to reflect “the growing use of mobile technology in business and new opportunities for developers”. While many of us in the industry have been touting mobile business applications for quite some time, it is important to the mobile industry that CTIA is making this shift.
“Why is it so important?” you ask. The fundamental reason is that CTIA is a reflection of its member companies. Wireless carriers large and small, device makers, network technology providers, application developers, industry consultants, and others make up their impressive membership list. What this means is the industry as a whole is starting to understand the relevance of developing applications for the business market. That bodes well for all of us in the business of delivering mobile applications for business, but it also bodes well for businesses who leverage mobile technology.
The Wall Street Journal has an article today discussing an anticipated announcement by Sprint at CTIA next week. CTIA is the primary association for all things wireless. According to WSJ, Sprint will be announcing a new WiMax smartphone. The article is worth a quick read. With a little searching on the Web, you can even find some images of the device. There are two interesting things about this upcoming announcement.
The first is, if you have never experienced WiMax, you are not going to believe what you are in for. I got to see it in action as CTIA last Spring and was blown away by the speed. It has the potential to do for mobile devices what DSL and Cable Modems did for the home when we moved from dial-up.
Second, I think it is very interesting to note that they first phone that will be WiMax capable in the US will be and Android phone. I’m sure part of that is because HTC is the company who will build it, and they provide a lot of devices for cobranding in the wireless world. But just a couple of years ago HTC was churning out Windows Mobile Devices, and now they have a huge focus on Android as does much of the wireless market.
Regardless, we are all in for a game changer when WiMax and other 4G technologies arrive.
One of the technologies that was scattered out across the exhibitor area at CTIA, is a device called a femtocell. What is a femtocell, you ask? Think of it as a miniature cell tower connected to your broadband connection at home. Here’s how it works. You connect the femtocell to your cable or DSL modem at home and then you throw away your land line. That’s right, open up the trash compactor, toss in your old home phone, and turn the compactor on. You don’t need it any more.
Now turn on your cell phone. In fact, everybody at your house can turn on their cell phone. As long as you are in the house, the femtocell works as your cell tower. You can make and receive regular cell calls, but instead of going over the regular cellular network, they go to the femtocell, and then over your broadband connection. I bet several of you already using parts of this technology. At my house we all have cell phones, and we contract with our cable provider for our home phone service which goes over our broadband connection already via a technology know at Voice Over IP (VOIP). So we have the two end pieces, but not the device that lets us use our cell phones over that broadband connection.
So why would you want to do this?
- First of all, you will get better cell coverage in your house. I don’t know about you, but most folks call me on my cell anyway, whether it be for work or personal use, and I don’t get the greatest reception in my house. How would you like four bars? A femtocell can deliver that.
- You will save money. I pay about $50 or so for a home phone line that I basically rarely use. In fact, the primary people that call us on it are telemarketers. Don’t really need those calls do you? A femtocell is typically a fixed price service that is under $20 depending on how many lines will use it.
- You will save minutes on your mobile plan. As long as your are on your femtocell, the minutes typically do not count against your plan minutes.
Believe it or not, more and more people are ditching their home phones anyway. Clint posted an article a few weeks ago on MobileBizBuzz about how Oklahoma is leading the way in this trend. Oklahoma has 26.1% of households who are mobile only. That means they have no home phone (landline). That is number 1 in the nation.
What is so important about this trend? The more people ditch their home phones, the more we are drawn toward a world that is completely mobile from a technology perspective. In fact, it is already becoming a part of the fabric of our lives. Check out your teenagers, and you will see most of them communicate primarily via their cell phone via text, voice, or even Facebook. Mobility continues to move forward, and femtocells are just one more catalyst accelerating that move.
No, it’s not some Sci Fi movie, but machines were a focus of CTIA this year. In the South Hall of the Vegas Convention Center, CTIA had a sizeable area of about 30 companies involved in wireless Machine to Machine (M2M) technologies. In addition to this, other booths throughout the show had an M2M focus, and Verizon had an entire booth devoted to assisting people getting new hardware devices certified on the Verizon network (including a strong M2M focus).
For those of you who don’t know, M2M is all about a machine monitoring some set of variables, and reporting over a wireless network to another computer. Sometimes commands are sent back to the device over the cellular network so that it can take some type of action. Semi trucks have had this for a number of years. Small computers reside on many big rigs and monitor everything from speed, to when the next oil change is required. This information is then communicated over a wireless network to a computer at some headquarters location, where it is examined, and where a human will be notified if certain events or thresholds occur.
So what does this have to do with business, especially the small and medium businesses that make up the majority of our economy? Well, as devices become smaller and smaller, this type of technology will play an increasingly large role in our businesses and personal lives. Let’s assume for a moment you have a company that focuses on home healthcare. Imagine that some of your patients need more than just a daily monitoring of vitals. Maybe they ideally should be monitoried 3 or 4 times a day.
Dr. Eric Topol spoke in one of the CTIA keynotes and pointed out several M2M implementations that allow remote monitoring of vitals wirelessly through an intelligent bandage. No, it’s not Star Trek. It’s becoming reality today. The video shows an animation of how one of these types of devices works.
If produced inexpensively enough this same type of technology might monitor your air conditioner at home, and phone your HVAC repair service if problems are detected. The OnStar service provided on GM cars already provides this type of service on vehicles. Think about your own business, and imagine what you could do if you were able to monitor equipment, vehicles, people, or processes remotely. This whole world of mobility has so much to offer beyond ringtones and wallpaper for your cell phone.
I just got back from CTIA Wireless 2009 last week. CTIA is the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry. So what does that mean to you if you don’t work in the industry? Well, it’s a chance to see what is going on the industry and what types of focus you’ll see out of providers throughout the 2009 calendar year. We always send at least one person from MacroSolve to the show. I was already traveling to see some of our partners last week so it was natural for me to stop in and see what was up.
I always find the show interesting, not for specific products or technologies that are displayed, but for the trends you can see if you just pay a little attention. Since it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted, I thought I would write up a series of posts on some of the more interesting things I saw.
Let’s start it out with one of the coolest gadgets I have seen in a long time. Any of you remember the Dick Tracy watch? Well, it is alive and well in a new product from LG. Take a look at the video below if you’d like to see more about it. In a nutshell, it is a small, but very functional watch phone. It has a full color touch screen, a speaker phone, MP3 player…the works. It was actually announced at CES in January, but this was my first time to see it in person.
We focus on mobility in business in this blog, so why am I bringing the watch phone up here? Obviously it’s a really cool device, but how does it apply to business? I’m not sure it does apply specifically to business, but there is a reason for mentioning it. That reason is miniaturization. The more cellular, and related technologies shrink, the more pervasive they will became in devices other than just cell phones. Check back in over the next day or so, and I’ll have some observations on how businesses will be impacted by cellular technologies making their way into a realm known as Machine to Machine. Miniaturization is just one trend that is enabling the Machine to Machine world.
