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ot-Triumph of a new design paradigm
By Karen D. Schwartz, Illustration by Carie Henry -- 12/1/2002
Electronic Business
Special Editorial Section: Sponsored by Motorola
To paraphrase Tom Hanks' famous analogy in the movie "Forrest Gump," life in the cell phone industry is like a box of chocolates—you never know which company you're going to find inside. While the label on the handset may say Alcatel, Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens or Sony, the design probably was supplied by either little-known companies like Bsquare Corp. or major chip makers such as Infineon, Intel, Motorola or Texas Instruments.
In fact, the reliance of original device manufacturers (ODMs) and their OEMs on outsiders for cell phone designs is staggering. Several tier-one OEMs, including Motorola Inc., Schaumburg, IL, and LM Ericsson, with U.S. headquarters in Plano, TX, have put their names on cell phones designed by others, according to industry analysts (see table, below). The consultants add that the cell phones made by second-tier OEMs—LG Electronics, Panasonic, Philips, Siemens and Sony—are almost all based on designs produced by others. As you might expect, the third-tier ODMs in Asia also are dependent on designs from others.
"I suspect most of the seven Taiwanese and 20 Chinese cell phone makers are using [third-party] designs or derivatives thereof," says David Carey, CEO of Portelligent Inc., a consumer electronic consulting firm in Austin, TX, that has studied cell phone designs extensively.
The focal point of the dramatic shift in cell phone development is called a reference design or a platform. Two years ago, Infineon, Motorola and Texas Instruments just offered simple chipsets and some design schematics to OEMs and independent design houses (IDH) that wanted a fast and low-cost way to get a particular type of cell phone to market. Now the big chip makers, and a host of other reference design suppliers around the globe, offer increasingly sophisticated and complete packages. These reference platforms typically specify a processor, memory, I/O, user interface, radio-frequency circuits and core applications software. In some cases, reference platforms include the software to handle e-mail and Internet surfing. The ODM or OEM handset engineer then customizes the reference design to meet customer specifications. Typically, the OEM or ODM adds 20% of a device's functionality. Designers customize the user interface to include, for example, the name of the cellular service provider.
Even though most firms are using reference designs, the companies don't want to acknowledge it. Many OEMs and ODMs contacted for this article refused to acknowledge the use of externally developed designs.
"It's partly an issue of competitive advantage and partly because none of these ODMs or OEMs wants people to think they are simply using a generic pre-existing design," explains Carey. "They want to be seen as innovators of technology, whether they are starting with a chipset or a full design."
In denial
The "Forrest Gump" irony of this denial is that the cell phone industry is just following the pattern set by the PC industry during the past decade. Top-tier PC manufacturers originally created their own designs and did their own manufacturing, but because of market pressures they migrated assembly offshore, notes Tony Sica, vice president and group marketing director of Santa Clara, CA-based Intel Corp.'s wireless communications and Computing group.
"What's happening in the wireless handset market today is much like the path the PC industry took during the past decade."
—Tony Sica, vice president Intel Corp.
And history is about to repeat itself, Sica predicts. "Today, most large PC OEMs are marketing organizations, where their only product is a marketing spec, and that's what we're starting to see in the cell phone business," he says.
Cost, time-to-market and software complexity are the three market drivers behind the shift by OEMs and ODMs to rely on third-party designs. "It's cheaper to manufacture when you start with a reference design," says Allen Nogee, a senior analyst in the Wireless Component Technology division of In-Stat/MDR, Scottsdale, AZ. (In-Stat is a division of ELECTRONIC BUSINESS' parent company, Reed Business Information.) That's especially true with low- and mid-level cell phones, where cost is particularly important, he adds.
Sometimes a low-cost reference design enables an ODM or an OEM to channel limited financial and engineering resources on a key added feature. Financially struggling Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, London, used a reference design from Ericsson Mobile Platforms of Lund, Sweden, as the foundation for a cell phone-camera combination (see story, "Last hope for Sony Ericsson?" below).
"None of the ODMs or OEMs wants people to think they are simply using a generic pre-existing design."
—David Carey, president, Portelligent Inc.
As the cell phone business has taken on the whimsical attributes of the fashion industry, it has become crucial for OEMs and their customers—the cellular service providers—to quickly deliver new designs. However, many OEMs are at a disadvantage because of their 18-month development cycles. Adopting a reference-design-based business model cuts the cycle by one-third to two-thirds, claim chip makers and their customers.
"We've seen our early adopters go from a development time of 12 to 18 months down to a six- to nine-month time frame," notes Ed Valdez, director of platform marketing for Motorola's Wireless Broadband and Systems group.
Denmark-based RTX Telecom, which traditionally develops its own designs, is testing a reference design from Motorola for an Internet-enabled device to be made for a Russian telecommunications equipment manufacturer. Jens Jungersen, director of sales and marketing at RTX, estimates that the reference design model could help shave off about three months of the typical nine-month development cycle.
San Diego- and Beijing-based eAnywhere Tech Inc. uses chipsets and reference designs from Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, to create more specialized, modularized reference designs. eAnywhere cofounder Wayne Huang says his company helps OEMs, other ODMs and its own designers reduce development time to as little as six months. "The modular approach helped us significantly with time-to-market," Huang says.
The real cell phone design battleground these days is features that rely on software, and reference designs, which include the latest software-based bells and whistles that are in demand. "More and more, we are embedding applications for things like Internet accessibility, voice recognition, locator services and gaming," says Tom Pollard, worldwide marketing director of the wireless chipset business for Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc.
Adds Kent Hellebust, a senior vice president of Bsquare, "there has been an explosion of new device types that have both voice and data capabilities, along with new form factors, designs and display capabilities, all optimized for different market segments." The Bellevue, WA, application developer creates wireless handset designs using chipsets from various chip makers.
Indeed, companies that haven't used reference designs until now are taking their first tentative steps toward adopting the philosophy for products that depend heavily on unique functionality driven by specialized software development. Earlier this year, Taiwan-based BenQ Corp., one of the largest wireless handset ODMs, licensed Motorola's i.250 reference platform for a cell phone with Internet capabilities. While BenQ has never relied on a reference design for a handset, executives struck the deal knowing that the day may soon come when it will need to do so.
"We have a lot of investment in our R&D, so we like to use it whenever possible," says Irwin Chen, BenQ's vice president of Business Group Networking and Communication. "But we have to prepare for the time when we'll be dealing with a totally new technology, chipset or software platform. When that happens, we will be ready to use a reference design."
Drawbacks
Of course, OEMs and ODMs understand that relying too much on a reference design could destroy the ability to maintain a decent profit margin via differentiation. Adopting a reference design means walking a tightrope between too much customization, which would destroy the design's efficiency, and too little, which might cause customers to assume the design is too basic and mass-produced.
"Many of the chips [used in reference designs] today are so integrated that much of the functionality is in the main chip, almost as if the chip was designed for that particular reference design," says Nogee of In-Stat/MDR. "If you pick and choose too much, it almost eliminates the benefit of the reference design in the first place."
Helping bridge the gap between too much customization and too little are reference design providers that function as intermediaries between the chip makers and the OEMs/ODMs. Bsquare, for example, partnered with Intel to develop a reference design for power users of handheld cell phones that also function as personal digital assistants.
Some OEMs, especially the ones with significant market share and the expertise to develop their own designs, continue to follow the traditional business model of doing everything in-house. Such companies retain control of the design as well as the intellectual property. That's especially true of Nokia, with U.S. headquarters in Irving, TX, which claims nearly half the market for cell phones.
However, even mighty Nokia is borrowing a few pages from the reference-design playbook. It has developed a method of wireless handset production that relies on internally developed templates—in essence, internal reference-designs. "We try to use a design in as many similar products as possible to leverage that design," says Adam Gould, chief technology officer of Nokia's CDMA business.
Ultimately, Nokia may be part of a very small minority of the entire electronic industry. Eventually, experts say, reference designs will dominate the marketplace in many or all sectors—not just cell phones.
"The point at which ODMs have the economies of scale that end up being superior to that of tier-one players is the point at which reference designs will become commonplace," Motorola's Valdez predicts. Valdez says he expects that point to come five to 10 years from now.
It's a matter not only of time, but also of acceptance, Bsquare's Hellebust says. "The technology is there now, and we're seeing some organizations willing to work this new way," he notes. "There are still some, however, that aren't yet comfortable with giving up the old ways."
Karen D. Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in technology and business issues. She has written articles for CIO, InformationWeek, Mobile Computing & Communications and Business 2.0. She can be reached at karen.schwartz@bigfoot.com.
Some reference-design providers and their customers Reference-Design Provider Sample Customers
Ericsson Mobile Platforms Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Microcell Telecommunications Inc., GVC Corp.
Motorola Inc. BenQ Corp., Eastern Communications Co., Sewon Telecom Co. Ltd.
Bsquare Corp. Motorola Inc.
Texas Instruments Inc. GVC Corp., Nokia
Infineon Technologies AG eAnywhere Tech Inc., Konka Telecommunications Technology Co. Ltd.
Sources: ELECTRONIC BUSINESS and International Business Strategies Inc.
culater
Cutting the ties that bind
Sep 19th 2002
From The Economist print edition
Better than Bluetooth or WiFi, a robust new wireless scheme promises to deliver multimedia around the office and home without cables or fuss
Chipset for network video
PERSISTENT protests from America's Department of Defence, Federal Aviation Administration, satellite-radio companies, and firms hawking GPS (global positioning system) equipment have managed to curb the development of ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless technology for more than three years. They all leaned on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), saying that UWB—which is, among other things, a nifty way of dispensing with the cables connecting home-entertainment gadgets to one another—would interfere with their navigational-guidance systems, radar and satellite transmissions. The big mobile-phone companies even warned the FCC that ultra-wideband transmissions would block telephone calls.
Caught in the middle, a couple of start-up firms trying to build chipsets for sending and receiving rivers of data using ultra-wideband have responded to each of the new technical hurdles in the hope of being given approval to sell their equipment to the public. Their patience paid off earlier this year, when the FCC at last approved the unlicensed use of the UWB spectrum (3.1 to 10.6 gigahertz).
One of the first to celebrate was Martin Rofheart, co-founder of XtremeSpectrum of Vienna, Virginia. Dr Rofheart has been busy showing off his UWB chipset's performance to consumer-electronics manufacturers from Japan and elsewhere, beaming flawless video and audio between various devices at speeds approaching 100 megabits per second. For applications where more than mere battery power is available, UWB can transmit data at speeds up to 500 megabits per second.
XtremeSpectrum has designed a chipset the size of a business card that electronics firms can incorporate into their own products. The development has proceeded in fits and starts. At one point, the FCC wanted to prevent ultra-wideband from being used in handheld devices. Because of their peripatetic nature, regulators feared that mobile gadgets would interfere with sensitive communications at airports or military installations. But handheld devices such as MP3 players are essential to ultra-wideband's consumer appeal. The technology will allow users to swap thousands of music tracks in seconds instead of minutes or even hours. A compromise was worked out, limiting the frequencies inside which XtremeSpectrum's chipset can operate.
The history of ultra-wideband differs from other wireless schemes, such as Bluetooth and the increasingly popular 802.11 protocol. Bluetooth is a low-power option for transmitting data over short distances at less than one megabit per second, while the 802.11 family offers maximum speeds of either 11 megabits per second or 54 megabits per second. But all three members of the 802.11 family consume too much power and are too expensive for battery-powered devices. In addition, neither Bluetooth nor the 802.11 family are ideal for handling the vast amounts of data exchanged between digital home-entertainment devices or battery-powered MP3 audio players.
However, both are being promoted by industry groups, and have been making inroads as alternatives to traditional hardwired forms of data transmission. Bluetooth's role is as a replacement for wires connecting computers to their peripherals and mobile phones to laptops. And 802.11b, a variant of the standard that has been given the more user-friendly name WiFi, is becoming popular for wireless computer networks in homes, offices and public spaces.
By contrast, ultra-wideband came out of the defence industry. Its origins go back to the 1950s, when military radar technicians were trying to improve existing equipment. Two decades later, their research led to something called “ultra-wideband synthetic aperture radar”. Spy planes and satellites use this kind of radar to see through dense ground cover to locate enemy troops and camouflaged equipment on the ground. It works by showering the target with rapid pulses of broad, low-frequency signals that punch their way through solid objects.
XtremeSpectrum has begun shipping its Trinity chipset to select customers. Dr Rofheart expects leading lconsumer-electronics firms to begin embedding the chipset into DVD players, VCRs, video-game consoles and home-theatre equipment in time for Christmas 2003. Industry watchers predict that the burgeoning home-networking market will reach $4 billion by 2006. That should leave plenty of room for XtremeSpectrum and its only competitor, Time Domain, which will unveil its own ultra-wideband chipset, called PulsON, later this year.
With their effective broadcasting range limited to only ten metres or so, ultra-wideband chipsets would appear to do what Bluetooth does and more. Apart from linking gadgets together wirelessly, the turf that Bluetooth had staked out for itself includes setting up spontaneous “personal area networks” that allow, say, a smart card in a person's pocket to buy a subway ticket automatically on the way past the barrier. However, with hundreds of times the bandwidth, ultra-wideband has a hefty advantage.
But there could still be room for both. Without the raw speed for swapping video and audio files, Bluetooth would be restricted to the home as a handy wireless-form of “wiring” for low-data-rate connections between computers and their peripherals. Meanwhile, UWB would do the heavy lifting when video and audio needed to move wirelessly around the building.
http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1324769
culater
Gateway Sings for Its Supper
The PC maker's deal with Pressplay makes online music a more realistic proposition and could revolutionize consumer expectations.
By Jimmy Guterman, December 11, 2002
The press gave little coverage last week to a deal PC maker Gateway (GTW) made with digital-music distributor Pressplay. Reporters are missing an important story.
Gateway, the struggling hardware seller, has partnered with Pressplay, one of the major-label-blessed (it's a joint venture between Sony (SNE) and Vivendi Universal (V), and it licenses music from the other big three labels) attempts to sidetrack Kazaa and whatever Napster spawn comes next. Under the arrangement, people who purchase Gateway computers will have Pressplay software preinstalled on the hard disc and receive a free three-month pass (the service usually costs $9.95 per month for unlimited streaming and downloads).
So far this doesn't seem all that different from a pact Gateway made last month with Listen.com, another digital-music distributor. Under that agreement, consumers who purchase new Gateway PCs get a free month of Listen.com's Rhapsody service. But what's different here -- and what may alter PC buyers' expectations -- is that as a result of last week's deal, new Gateway computers come with not only Pressplay software but also 2,000 songs loaded onto the hard drive. That's more than you can fit on some versions of Apple's iPod. At a time when the computer-hardware industry is looking for new ways to convince us that we need to upgrade our home outfits and the similarly moribund record industry is desperate for new means of distribution, this may point to what the PC of the future might look like.
Previous attempts at entertainment-PC convergence (including Gateway's bulky Destination line) have failed; this move seems more likely to satisfy existing entertainment needs for PCs. And since broadband penetration has yet to arrive at the levels predicted by sundry telecoms and their VCs, having 2,000 music files -- by popular performers like Eminem and Bruce Springsteen, not by the usual unknown artists grateful for the exposure -- will save Gateway customers countless hours that might have otherwise gone to downloading music via dial-up modem. People are more interested, after all, in devoting time to listening to music, than to downloading it -- especially since, according to Forrester Research, 46 million U.S. households have dial-up connections to the Net, compared with a mere 19 million with broadband access. Downloading a song simply isn't that enticing if it takes half an hour. Preloading the songs solves that problem.
Gateway has been trying to differentiate itself in recent months with music-related ads. (Just try to forget the image of Gateway CEO Ted Waitt singing along with a cow to a homemade CD. I can't -- and I've tried.) The ads made the company look foolish, in part because the service being offered was no different from that available from dozens of other computer manufacturers. But the Pressplay deal gives Gateway a terrific point of differentiation, not only from rivals like Dell (DELL), but also from Apple (AAPL), which positions itself as the PC maker most closely attuned to the needs of media-hungry consumers. Gateway has a huge mountain to climb -- it announced recently that it's unlikely to meet fourth-quarter projections, which weren't all that great to start with -- but this is the first strong signal in a while that its media strategy might work.
http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,45898,00.html
culater
Speech Goes Mobile
By Alan Schwartz
What is the value of speech technologies in mobile devices? On its face the answer is obvious: Speech is the most natural of all user interfaces. Humans are genetically engineered to talk and listen, so unless human genetics changes sometime soon, Speech is and always will be the most natural interface between humans and machines. Add to this the fact that, because of their small size, keyboards are generally not available on mobile devices, and the case for speech technologies—including speech recognition, text-to-speech and speaker verification—on mobile devices gets even stronger.
So, why isn’t speech on every device? There are a number of reasons. Let’s start by looking at speech recognition. Large vocabulary, speaker independent recognition that requires minimal or no training is a recent phenomenon. Based on their success deploying powerful speech applications in large network-based environments, companies are now migrating them into the embedded space. The result is speech recognition with large dynamic vocabularies (e.g., up to 100,000 words) that allow users to buy a mobile device, synchronize it with their Outlook™ or Notes™ and then be able to immediately access the stored contacts using only their voice. This is a big step forward from the tedious “voice enrollment” that is currently required on most speech capable mobile phones today.
On the speech generation side, new technologies from TTS (Text-To-Speech) engines like have improved the quality of synthetic speech to the point where it is now nearly indistinguishable from recorded prompts. This dramatic improvement in naturalness offers many new options for phone services. Using high quality TTS, mobile devices can now offer an intelligible voice that users would actually enjoy; making it now possible to have the device read emails, play back a list of contacts in an address book, or read out song titles on an MP3 player, without annoying the user.
The second barrier to embedded speech technologies has been the limited processing power of mainstream devices. This is now changing with the introduction of platforms such as Texas Instruments’ OMAP™, Intel’s xScale™, Hitachi’s SH-Mobile and Motorola’s MobileGT™. Limited memory and CPU speed are no longer a serious obstacle to getting powerful speech recognition and TTS engines onto these platforms. While it may take a few years for these platforms to dominate mainstream mobile devices— as the cost of the chips and related memory are still an issue—the platforms are on the market today and device manufacturers are beginning to incorporate them.
The third hurdle to getting speech onto mobile devices is customer adoption. Although speech may be the most natural of all interfaces, it is not the only interface. For consumers to really feel the need for speech interfaces, speech needs to relieve a very real “point of pain” in an existing user interface. One example is recent hands-free legislation that bans the use of cell phones in cars by limiting drivers’ access to their cell phones. The Gartner Group estimates that 49.5 percent of all cell phone calls are made from the car, and with legislation being reviewed in over 20 states banning the use of phones in the car, speech represents a viable solution. Using speech, drivers can access contacts and dial phone numbers using their voice, allowing them to keep their eyes on the road, their hands on the steering wheel, and ultimately reducing driver distraction.
Navigation devices with all their good intentions suffer from a similar point of pain, as users have trouble entering a destination quickly and easily. One can argue that navigation devices would be more widely used in rental cars if the driver were able to easily input the destination information. Rather than typing in a destination on an awkward keypad, the driver could say, “New York Marriott Marquis”. In fact, the reigning quip for most navigation systems on the market is that users can generally arrive at their destination before they are able to finish entering it on the device.
Similar conclusions about the importance of speech can be made about accessing the hundreds of songs listed on an MP3 player or making public kiosks, ATMs and other devices accessible to the blind. In all of these cases, speech uniquely solves a problem in the user interface that many other technologies cannot.
A final point on user adoption is the emergence of a combination of speech and visual display on mobile devices—often referred to as multimodal user interface. Although multimodal applications are not mainstream today, many platform providers have begun to successfully deploy multimodal solutions on portable devices and a number of carriers are evaluating the technology. These are important steps in getting users to adopt speech as part of a more complex user interface. Some multimodal applications that are being evaluated today include the following:
·Motorola has recently completed a successful trial of a multimodal user interface with SpeechWorks on its iDen phone;
·Kirusa has begun the first GPR trial of multimodal applications with French mobile operator Bouygues Telecom’s in France; and
·Orange Services (Imagineering) is working with Lobby7’s multimodal x/mode platform.
The SALT forum, founded with the hope of creating a standard for multimodal application development, should begin to accelerate the push for multimodal user interfaces. Microsoft has already released the .NET Speech SDK, a SALT-based developer toolkit that integrates into the Microsoft Visual Studio™ development environment and Microsoft’s Web server programming environment, ASP.NET, enabling application developers to incorporate speech functionality into Web applications. Microsoft’s ASP.NET for Web development currently has over one million developers. The many recent multimodal applications would seem to be a pretty good start for getting speech going on mobile devices.
Alan Schwartz, is VP of Business Development at SpeechWorks, and heads the Automotive & Mobile Device Unit. He can be reached at alan.schwartz@speechworks.com.
culater
Speech and the Automobile
By Patty McHugh
No matter where you get your car and driver news, you’ve probably seen the recent flurry of headlines reporting new implementations of voice recognition technology in cars - and not just in high-end cars, but in midrange autos such as Honda. As little as ten years ago, something like voice recognition technology in the automobile sounded positively space age to most, but today, voice and wireless technology are becoming more and more commonplace in the ultimate mobile device—the car. But will these on-board communications capabilities change the way we drive, the way we interact with our cars?
At first, voice recognition seemed to be the catch-all solution to the demand for safer, more reliable ways to help drivers keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel while enjoying the conveniences of modern technology. Yet the relatively slow uptake of some initiatives has caused consumers to wonder whether this is truly what we want from our cars. Are we ready for such a dynamic solution?
According to Forrester Research, there’s no doubt that voice recognition is the future, but Forrester also predicts that even when the technology is ready, we’re never going to let go of some of the tactile techniques with which we’re so familiar. In fact, some users will always prefer them. But perhaps in the car, where safety must be our priority at all times, voice-activated controls for things such as mobile phones, dashboard controls and GPS navigation systems will prompt us to change the way we think and use our voices above all other means of interaction. With voice recognition technology, we can utilize these systems - safely - as we drive.
And the McKinsey Quarterly report says yes, we are ready for this dynamic solution, predicting that by 2010, total annual U.S. telematics revenues could reach $40 billion and estimating industry growth at 2 to 2.5 percent yearly.
Indeed, after years of expectation, voice recognition is fulfilling its promise. Faster chip speeds and more sophisticated algorithms mean voice recognition is performing better than ever before. New speech-enabled applications are hitting the market as businesses and consumers realize that voice is the most natural way to access information as they drive. Perhaps the slow start we’ve seen so far can be attributed to a too-narrow view of speech technology as merely a cool gadget in a high-end car.
Today, as more technology is embedded into vehicles, telematics is evolving to encompass more than voice technology; it now spans wireless data services, remote monitoring and diagnostic capabilities. This is important because it expands the scope of telematics and has the potential to benefit sectors tied closely to the auto industry—sectors such as insurance and petroleum.
Finally, the auto industry is beginning to apply one of the fundamental principles of retail - that consumer offerings must be tailored to consumer needs - to the enhancements being made to on-board car technology. A recent study by Driscoll-Wolfe shows that safety (such as hands-free phone service and emergency road assistance) are the primary reasons for consumers to request telematics devices in vehicles. And today, voice-enabled applications offering hands- and eyes-free interaction for drivers are making their way into cars.
For example, Michigan-based automotive supplier Johnson Controls uses IBM voice recognition technology to implement this type of mobile communications system for DaimlerChrysler. UConnect, a Bluetooth-based communication system, will be offered in the 2003 model year, and is focused on hands-free telephoning. UConnect allows an ordinary hand-held cellphone, laid down casually on the seat, to work with systems in the car. The driver dials the phone with voice commands and carries on a conversation by talking into a receiver installed in the car. The answering voice comes through the car’s built-in speaker system. UConnect also stores up to 32 numbers in an address book, transferring a call from a built-in car phone to a mobile phone, working with multiple phones.
Diagnostics checks are also a key facet of the safety that telematics devices offer. An example of this is cars that combine in-vehicle diagnostics with interactive voice recognition technology to alert drivers to problems, such as an overheating or malfunctioning engine. If a car becomes disabled, the off-board computing software will automatically call for roadside assistance, notify the driver and download a complete diagnostic “health check” report into the computer system of a nearby service station. When the car is brought in, the station already knows exactly what needs to be fixed, eliminating guesswork for both driver and repair crew. Cars incorporating these systems will be available in less than a year.
More recently, car buyers have started asking for telematics applications such as route guidance, personal interest information and yellow pages assistance. To address this growing customer demand, Honda announced in July of this year that it will provide a voice-activated navigation system in select new 2003 model Accords. This enhanced voice recognition technology enables drivers to ask for directions to points of interest and hear responses over the existing car audio system, allowing them to easily and efficiently reach their destinations without having to look at maps or stop and ask for directions.
Voice recognition technology is clearly a fundamental component of the successful delivery of a much larger, full-featured, set of telematics services. But this requires a complex network of different industry players working together to create value for users while sharing the time and costs required to accelerate industry growth. In turn, this also requires cooperation among a diverse group that includes telematics service providers (TSPs), tier-one suppliers, wireless carriers, content providers and, of course, technology providers and auto manufacturers. Clearly, the need to integrate various software and hardware from many disparate sources demands agreed-upon and open standards.
These issues are being addressed through the formation of groups such as the Telematics Suppliers Consortium and the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration. More importantly, the concept of open systems architecture and standards, critical to the development of telematics applications and services, is gaining traction within these groups. Open Internet technologies such as XML, VoiceXML, SOAP, OSGi and UDDI allow TSPs to provide dynamic content to the customer on demand, forming a middleware infrastructure that will greatly reduce the integration costs of a TSP. Instead of developing unique integration efforts for each content provider, the TSP and its content-providing partners can communicate using published service interfaces based on open messaging formats.
The key to success for speech technology as a part of the greater telematics industry ultimately lies in the user’s perception of value gained versus the attached price tag. In essence, users must feel the need for the technology and see the benefits and usefulness of purchasing such embedded, voice-enabled devices in a car. As 2.5 and third-generation WLAN and Bluetooth technologies are deployed around the world, we will see a growing demand for this type of offering as the new generations of technologies will better integrate data and voice, making users feel more at ease with in-car systems. On an even more positive note, the formation of standards bodies and groups will accelerate development and increase customer choices and applications based on the advanced technologies needed to attract consumer demand.
Clearly, voice recognition technology in the automobile holds potential far greater than serving as a cool gadget at the high end. Linking real-time driver and vehicle information to relevant industries and agencies mean better, faster diagnostics, increased safety and better bottom lines, and the automotive industry, as well as related industries, are starting to realize that. For now, drivers are reaping the benefits of a nascent industry. They’re getting vital real-time information and navigational aids. Other top priorities include safety and reliability. Implementing the right set of services to accommodate these needs now will drive the ongoing and future success of voice recognition technology in the telematics industry.
Patty McHugh is the director of PvC Telematics for IBM Pervasive Computing.
culater
CSR's BlueCore Heads For 3G, Wi-Fi, and Telematics Apps
By Mark Long -- 12/10/2002
e-inSITE
Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) has introduced the newest member in its BlueCore2 family of single-chip Bluetooth devices, which represents the company's first radio-only Bluetooth device.
Implemented in a 0.18-micron CMOS process, the BlueCore2-CDMA has been specifically designed to work in tandem with Qualcomm's MSM5100 Mobile Station Modem (MSM) chipset.
'We used the same radio and control architecture as the other devices in the BlueCore2 range, which account for 57 percent of v1.1 qualified end products, then optimized it for co-existence with the MSM series devices,' said product manager John Halksworth in a prepared statement.
Featuring a low component counts well as a footprint of as little as 50mm2 for the total Bluetooth design, the product is targeted at high-volume, cost-sensitive applications in 3G mobile handsets. Supplied in a small chip scale package (CSP), the Bluecore2-CDMA device is already sampling, with volume shipments expected to begin in 1Q03.
CSR has also announced a collaborative effort with Intersil and SMART Modular Technologies governing the production of a mini-PCI card that employs CSR's channel skipping technology to minimizes interference between the Bluetooth and 802.11 radios. The mini-PCI card reference design, which is available for licensing from Intersil, is expected to provide the requisite development resources for enabling a PC or PDA with both Bluetooth and 802.11b communications capabilities.
According to the company, the channel skipping technique improves the throughput of the Bluetooth radio by as much as 50 percent over other methods that rely on MAC level signaling. Beginning next month, SMART expects to begin sampling the card, which combines Intersil's 802.11b PRISM 3 chipset with CSR's BlueCore2 chip. The resulting reference design reportedly will offer very low power consumption in a mini-PCI standard form factor that can be integrated into notebooks, PDAs and other compact battery-dependent portable devices.
SMART's mini-PCI card will offer Class 2 Bluetooth functionality, as well as a receive sensitivity better than -82dBm and a typical power output of +2dBm. In addition, the 802.11b radio receive sensitivity is expected to be better than -85dBm, with a typical power output of +16dBm.
Car maker Audi has tapped CSR's BlueCore technology for use in a Bluetooth-enabled GSM car phone and a cordless Bluetooth handset. Audi's Bluetooth-enabled Telematics Control Unit (TCU) will integrate an embedded GSM and Bluetooth modules with a CPU and Multi-Media-Interface (MMI) that connects through an optical MOST Bus system. In addition, the system will be equipped with an in-car rechargeable cordless handset that will allow passengers to place and accept hands-free calls in Audi vehicles. In addition, the system will feature the ability to connect a Bluetooth-equipped portable PC or PDA to enable passengers can exchange emails or surf the Internet via a cellular system while connected through the TCU.
To foster future Bluetooth inroads into the automotive space, CSR says that it will be implementing new automotive profiles for vehicle diagnostics, streaming video and MP3 file streaming for multimedia and info-entertainment. In addition, the company reports that it will be working CSR to further extend the guaranteed temperature range of its BlueCore2-External and future products to meet the more stringent demands of future automotive and telematics applications.
culater
Music to Their Ears
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 12/9/2002
Impulsesoft has introduced new low-cost Bluetooth reference designs that are targeted at developers of developing CD / MP3 player, Audio system, in-car entertainment systems, TVs, Mobile phones, Multicasting for Conference, laptops, PCs / PDAs, and gaming devices.
Based on the company's embedded Bluetooth stack (iBTStack), the new iWish hardware/software platform features the Bluetooth SIG's Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) profile. The iWish is a plug-in
device for existing audio systems enabling that enables the wirelessly transmission of stereo quality audio to stero headsets and other wireless devices. The offering features support for a variety of codecs, including subband, MP3, and WMA. In addition, the offering includes advanced capabilties such as intuitive MMI, a power-saving system and noise filtering.
The company's iBTStack is an embedded Bluetooth protocol stack
that has been optimized for achieving size reductions as well as performance gains when implemented on the targeted RTOS and processor platforms. The offering is designed to enable developers to create applications such as wireless PCs, headsets, LAN Access Points, Modems, cordless & VoIP phones, and telemetry and telemarketing applications.
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Wi-Fi goes to Washington
A new technology could not only restart economic growth but also help connect everyone, everywhere to the Internet—at low cost.
Reed E. Hundt, Stagg Newman, and John E. Richards
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2002 Number 4
Remember when technology-based start-ups were going to put established companies out of business? The surviving incumbents are now having a last laugh. But their schadenfreude may be short-lived in the telecommunications industry because a new technology called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) is threatening the business models of the mobile carriers, the phone gear makers, and the providers of high-speed DSL and cable modem services.
Wi-Fi—known among techies as 802.11, a reference to its underlying technology standard—is an alternative means of Internet access. Simply hook up an inexpensive Wi-Fi base station (chip plus transceiver) to a high-speed Internet connection such as DSL, a cable modem, or a T1 line and place this base station within a couple of hundred feet of a house. All users in the vicinity who have a very inexpensive Wi-Fi device in their PCs or PDAs can then share low-cost, high-speed access to the Internet, without having to pay individually for more expensive dedicated DSL or cable modem service.
Even better, with exciting new technologies such as mesh and ad hoc networks, improved Wi-Fi devices could create overlapping Wi-Fi networks in hotels, airports, office buildings, and malls. Strings of linked Wi-Fi networks can stretch through apartment buildings, campuses, and neighborhoods. Forget about digging up streets for fiber to every building or about erecting forests of towers; Wi-Fi can stretch the fabric of Internet connectivity, cheaply and painlessly, over any community to points where traffic is aggregated onto high-speed fiber backbone networks.
Wi-Fi exploits the spectrum used by gadgets such as cordless telephones and microwave ovens—airwaves that haven’t been auctioned or allocated to an exclusive user. This is the proverbial free lunch of spectrum. At last, Internet access can be easy, cheap, always on, everywhere. And Wi-Fi access is fast: indeed, with a fiber rather than a DSL or cable modem connection from the backbone network to the Wi-Fi base station, the transfer speed of Wi-Fi can be faster than the typical speeds of those technologies.1 A fiber connection of this sort would make it easy to download, stream, and swap movies—or vast volumes of corporate data—not only to computers but also to a new generation of flat screens equipped with Wi-Fi chips. Users will be able to make telephone calls by speaking into microphones in their lapels or on the edges of their computer screens. Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless communication, will have the last laugh on Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
What’s the rub? Telephone companies could find that Wi-Fi will replace the additional, or "discretionary," phone lines that residential and business customers have had installed to supplement the traditional single "lifeline" connection. That change alone would probably make every telephone company in the United States unprofitable. Mobile carriers too could lose a substantial portion of their revenues (particularly future wireless data revenues) to Wi-Fi networks.
For the mobile and wireline phone companies, the market-based reaction would be to embrace the new technology and extend its applications. But the likely alternative—though one that would poorly serve the economy and consumers—is for those companies to use the power of governments to slow or thwart Wi-Fi’s advance. Already, in Taiwan only communications providers licensed by the government can operate commercial Wi-Fi networks. Some European countries appear to have similar, albeit ambiguous, regulations. Under such rules, Starbucks, which has put Wi-Fi connectivity into many of its shops, may not be able to charge an additional nickel a cup to patrons who want to have the Internet along with their coffee. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, regulators in effect prohibited service providers from offering commercial Wi-Fi services but recently took the wise course and reversed this rule, and BT has already indicated that it will offer them.
Wi-Fi might also be squelched if governments decided to favor other industries that use the same radio frequencies. In Florida, one ham-radio operator has gone to court to shut down a Wi-Fi operator on the grounds that the apartment dwellers using this form of wireless Internet access were interfering with his radio. The electrical-lighting industry has petitioned the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to permit the use of the spectrum in a way that would create difficulties for Wi-Fi. And satellite operators have complained that Wi-Fi broadcasts will obstruct signals to and from satellites.
Such spectrum battles are chronic at the FCC. Each of them will give the government a choice: to promote Wi-Fi or to restrain it. Even if the FCC sided with Wi-Fi on all issues of competing use, consumers would still have to reckon with the possibility that the government might protect existing communications services by forcing Wi-Fi to meet regulatory requirements for the security of signals and the quality of service. Actually, meeting these standards would be a laudable goal, but it should be achieved through competition and innovation, not government mandates. Imposing such requirements is a time-tested regulatory way of deterring competition and delaying change.
Finally, the biggest risk is simply that the FCC might fail to allocate enough spectrum for free, unlicensed Wi-Fi and its many offshoots. If this new technology sweeps the country and the globe, as experts claim it can, spectrum auctions might become unnecessary to promote competition. Looking beyond auctions for revenues, the US Treasury Department might have to settle for reasonable taxation of a newly burgeoning information sector. But if governments become addicted to auction revenues, they may resist the allocation of free airwaves to Wi-Fiers.
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Change is the elixir of growth in any economy, especially in the high-tech and innovation-driven economy of the United States. Now is the time for the US government to embrace Wi-Fi and, for that matter, many related new technologies. Let inventiveness again lead the country to new plateaus of high growth and to new solutions for the problem of bringing everyone into the Internet age.
culater
By: sricket
08 Dec 2002, 02:55 PM EST Msg. 1086308 of 1086312
Investors making play for bankrupt DataPlay Inc.
By Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News
December 6, 2002
DataPlay Inc.'s Boulder offices, silent and empty since the company closed in late September, could soon fill again.
An as-yet-unidentified entity has made an offer to buy the assets of the bankrupt 4-year-old data storage company, and apparently plans to reopen the business.
DataPlay expects to have a sale agreement some time next week, said DataPlay attorney Glenn Merrick in a Thursday hearing in the company's Chapter 11 reorganization case.
Merrick declined to identify the buyer, but he did say it was an entity formed specifically to do this deal.
It's likely that the entity includes at least one of the company's many investors, who poured about $120 million into DataPlay during the company's four-year history.
The potential buyers also are negotiating with DataPlay's landlord, Flatirons North LLC, which owns the two 50,000- square-foot buildings that housed the company, lawyers at the hearing said.
"They intend to take the company back up and operate it, they even have a term sheet for raising capital," said Duncan Barber, the Denver-based attorney representing DataPlay investor Silicon Valley Bank.
In the months before the bankruptcy, existing investors, including Boulder-based Sequel Partners, which owns 17 percent of the company, gave DataPlay an interim loan of more than $15 million.
Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Donald Cordova would have to approve a sale, and other entities could still bid to buy the defunct company's assets.
DataPlay has less than $90,000 in cash, including Merrick's $80,000 retainer, Merrick said. It expects to collect about $600,000 more during the coming months, as it liquidates its interest in manufacturing facilities in Singapore and Japan.
The sale price for the assets hasn't been determined, but it would likely be enough to pay off more than $1 million to lender Silicon Valley Bank and $90,535 in property taxes owed to Boulder County, he said.
In addition, the sale would allow the company to pay at least some of the more than $215,000 in back pay and severance it owes former employees, and leave about $200,000 for the company's unsecured creditors, Merrick said. Bankruptcy documents list the total owed to unsecured creditors at about $140 million.
The company hoped to revolutionize the way consumers listen to music, watch movies and access other data, using tiny disk drives and quarter-size disks.
When it became obvious in September that the company was in dire financial straits - it let the last of its workers go after failing to raise an additional $50 million - analysts speculated that perhaps another company would want to buy the technology.
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InterVideo announces its first DivX support
By Ana Letícia Sigvartsen
InfoSatellite.com
December 05, 2002
InterVideo said in a joint announcement with DivXNetworks that it is integrating DivX video technology into its DVD and video software products. The two companies talked about the newly released WinDVD Platinum, result of a licensing and marketing agreement between the two.
DivXNetworks and InterVideo announced a few weeks ago that they had a new and comprehensive software licensing and marketing partnership. The information was posted today in DivXNetworks's website. Under the agreement, they said, InterVideo has licensed DivX and DivX Pro video compression technology for the its line of digital video and audio multimedia software products.
WinDVD Platinum is said to be the first InterVideo product to feature DivX technology, and the company revealed that it plans to integrate DivX and DivX Pro encoding technology into future versions of other products. The solution includes several new features such as SRS Headphones, Movieffecter filter for improved video quality and Dolby Virtual Speaker Technology for surround sound on only 2 speakers. Users are now able to play back full-screen DivX video files.
Also a first, Scandinavian manufacturer of DVD products KISS Technology announced last October the DP-450 as the "first DVD player to offer compatibility with certain versions of DivX video technology."
Jordan Greenhall, co-founder and CEO of DivXNetworks. "We're dedicated to partnering with great companies like InterVideo to integrate DivX video technology into a wide range of software applications that empower consumers and provide high-quality, complete convergence and home entertainment solutions."
Steve Ro, founder and CEO of InterVideo commented: "DivX is one of the coolest things happening right now in video, especially on the web. Adding DivX to WinDVD makes WinDVD Platinum the absolute best way to watch any DivX movie. We also plan to add DivX technology to our other video products to for new ways to handle DivX video."
According to InterVideo, WinDVD Platinum is available for purchase at www.intervideo.com and will be available in retail outlets starting later this month.
culater
ot,ot-Computer Scientists Transmit Physical Feeling via Internet
By Michael Drudge
LONDON (voa) - American and British computer scientists have announced a breakthrough that allows physical sensation to be felt through the Internet in what is known as computer-generated "virtual reality."
In "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," Paul McCartney sang about "hands across the water," and now, decades later, that image became a virtual reality this week, with scientists from the United States and Britain using the Internet for what they describe as a "trans-Atlantic handshake."
The new technology allows researchers sitting an ocean apart to use robotic handles to feel each other's manipulation of a small box on a computer screen.
Joel Jordan is pursuing a doctorate degree in computer science at University College London, where he participated in the experiment. Across the Atlantic, a student named Jung Kim sat at a computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, outside Boston.
"We have a virtual room set up with a cube inside," explained Mr. Jordan. "And we will see his cursor moving around inside, in 3-D basically, as we move around ours. And then together we will be able to push against the cube, on opposite sides in an upward direction to try to lift it together."
Mr. Jordan says scientists are considering various practical applications for the new technology, particularly in the training of medical students. "They certainly are already looking at using this for surgery so that they can actually train with virtual bodies, so you can feel around a body, which does not really exist," he explained. "Of course, with the Internet capability as well, then you can have experts from around the world who might not be able to get over, perhaps into your country, to help you train, but of course they can help you from wherever they are."
In other applications, artists around the world could use the technology to collaborate on a virtual sculpture.
And without connecting to the Internet, the French army is teaching soldiers how to clear land mines by practicing on touch feedback computers.
But it will be some time before ordinary computer users will be able to reach out and touch someone through the Internet. First there is the cost. The robotic stylus that passes on the touch sensations costs $20,000.
And the long-distance touch experiments are now restricted to the high-speed Internet2 which is accessible only to academic researchers.
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Tech Giants Announce National Wi-Fi Network
By Jay Wrolstad
Wireless NewsFactor
December 06, 2002
http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/20176.html
The ultimate goal of the new Wi-Fi network is to have hot spots within a five-minute walk of any business in an urban setting, or within a five-minute drive in rural areas.
Technology giants AT&T, Intel and IBM on Thursday unveiled plans to promote nationwide wireless broadband with the formation of Cometa Networks, a company that will sell Wi-Fi service wholesale through ISPs (Internet service providers), cable operators and wireless carriers.
Cometa has the lofty goal of setting up some 20,000 Wi-Fi access points, or hot spots, at big-name national and regional retail chains, hotels, universities and businesses in the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas in the next two years.
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'World-Class Service'
Wi-Fi, a term that encompasses both the 802.11b and 802.11a wireless standards, has drawn a lot of attention with its promise of enabling high-speed Internet access anywhere, anytime, especially among mobile professionals. Cometa has targeted these "windshield warriors," as well as consumers looking for wireless Internet connections that can enable fast downloads of music, video and games.
AT&T will provide the network infrastructure and management, while IBM will contribute site installations and back-office systems. Intel will offer technical assistance and funding, with other financial assistance coming from venture capitalist firms Apax Partners and 3i.
"We are creating a world-class service coordinated with the latest Wi-Fi technology and with an experienced team," company CEO Lawrence B. Brilliant said. Through Cometa, users can keep their existing e-mail addresses, IDs, passwords and billing arrangements, he said, regardless of their ISP.
The ultimate goal, said Brilliant, is to have hot spots within a five-minute walk of any business in an urban setting, or within a five-minute drive in rural areas.
Over the Rainbow
Company chairman Ted Schell said that establishing a national Wi-Fi footprint as an integrated offering will be particularly attractive to enterprises seeking to extend their corporate networks. "Businesses understand that Wi-Fi can boost productivity in a number of ways," he said.
The formation of Cometa follows months of speculation regarding "Project Rainbow," a rumored partnership including such wireless carriers as AT&T Wireless (NYSE: AWE) and Cingular in addition to the three founding members of the new venture.
IDC analyst Keith Waryas said Project Rainbow was expected to sell Wi-Fi service directly to end users, and that the wholesale approach was somewhat of a surprise. "It could be the best strategy, because they have set themselves up as a for-profit cooperative that sells to everyone, not just to wireless carriers," he told NewsFactor.
Partners' Selling Power
In building its own network, said Waryas, Cometa will have to be cautious about roaming arrangements and security issues, and Wi-Fi site acquisitions could pose problems, in that there is potential for a massive uptake by customers leading to network management difficulties.
"But the company has solid backing and a lot of selling power through the partners that are involved," Waryas said. He pointed out that Intel especially has been aggressive in promoting Wi-Fi and will create additional demand for wireless broadband through the upcoming launch of its Banias chipset with 802.11 capability.
Crowded Space
While company officials were mum on pricing for their service, Waryas speculated that end users will pay about US$10 to $20 per month, based on existing Wi-Fi offerings from companies like Boingo.
Others in the Wi-Fi space include Verizon, which recently said it will establish service for businesses with an eye toward nationwide coverage, and Cingular, which has an agreement to provide access in the Starbucks coffeehouse chain.
Cometa Networks will have offices in San Francisco and New York.
culater
I’m With the Band
Reader Reflections on Peer-to-Peer and Big Media
By Robert X. Cringely
For a column about technology, what’s interesting about the reader response to last week’s effort was that hardly anyone had much to say about technology. There was little doubt among readers that peer-to-peer file sharing systems COULD influence and even replace much of Big Media over time, but there was a lot of debate over the artistic and business issues -- all of it quite interesting, and some of it quite valid.
The response I found amusing came from several inventors of systems for intellectual property distribution and author compensation. These varied a bit, but the general idea was that authors and artists would throw their stuff into a machine where users would find and buy it, facilitated by third-party salespeople who would be compensated for their efforts by the authors and artists. It’s a great idea, except there is no enforcement mechanism to make use the system. Maybe it would work if all the artists and authors simultaneously and exclusively distributed their stuff through the big engine, but that simply isn’t going to happen.
Other people thought the existing enforcement mechanism --- rabid lawyers employed by large media companies -- would be a far greater discouragement of peer-to-peer than the kids at Microsoft Research anticipate. Here’s one especially eloquent respondent:
“There is a chap, perhaps you know him, Ashleigh Brilliant, who has a nice little business going on with his aphoristic potshots, illustrated postcards and other creations. I should have said ‘litigious chap’ because he's ready to sue at the utterance of one of his copyrighted sayings -- and after all, he has trademarked ‘Brilliant Thoughts’ and is ready to sue anyone who tries to outbrilliant Ashleigh.”
“From his website: ‘My copyrights have been tested in U.S. Federal Court, and found to be ‘valid, subsisting, and enforceable.’ (Brilliant v. W.B. Productions Inc., U.S. District Court, Los Angeles, Civil Action #CV 79 1893-WMB. Judgment entered 10/22/1979. See also Richard W. Stim, ‘Copyright Protection for Literary Phrases,’ in New Matter [Official Publication of the State Bar of California Intellectual Property Section] Vol. 14, No. 4, Winter 1989, pp. 7-12).”
“An editor friend first told me about Brilliant's rabid (and successful) pursuit of copyright violations. All Brilliant had to do whenever he encountered one of his aphorisms used without permission was to write a letter to the publisher, citing the judgment in the above quotation, and demanding $500 in lieu of a lawsuit. Invariably the publisher paid off. A nice sideline. I had a vision of a gaggle of Brilliant bounty hunters who would track down violations for a cut of the take (more likely a Google than a gaggle -- Bob).”
“Big media has the power to bring these kinds of lawsuits and no doubt will. (These are not SLAPP suits, because they're backed by copyright law.) It's one thing to sue Napster and win -- Napster had a lot of resources to fight the lawsuits and still tanked. But Big Media can and will start suits against ISPs and colleges and in fact any business or institution --or individual-- who can be shown to violate copyright. Microsoft by the way does this all the time -- for example, sending letters to school districts giving them 60 days to come into compliance, then dispatching a team of technicians to find out whether the district is using unlicensed MS software. Dire consequences. ‘Legal action won't be enough,’ say the folks at Microsoft Research. Well, ask those who have been touched by the heavy hand of Microsoft's own legal enforcers.”
“I think it's amusing that the MS kids in Redmond...think that ‘critical mass’ will make enforcement impossible, hence resistance futile. I think that's typical of the grandiose thinking of young people whose only real power is purchasing power. Young people whose only experience with repressive societies was high school.”
“It should be pretty clear that Big Media owns the territory and we're just sharecroppers. They own the politicians, they own the enforcers. And the geeky wannabes who get heavy into filesharing have no clue about the power that can be brought to bear. They can be pauperized in a Hollywood minute -- their parents can be financially wiped out.”
Sad, but on many levels, true.
On a simpler and less dreary note, many readers pointed out that it is hard to argue with the printed book as an inexpensive and versatile data store. It is cheap, persistent, can go with you to the bathroom, is readable in daylight, still works on the ninth day of a backpacking trip, and most of us can afford to have as many open on our desks at the same time as we want. True, it isn’t easily searchable, is limited to the words installed during manufacture, and doesn’t allow cutting or pasting, but how likely are we this decade or next to even partially replace it with something else?
There were those who argued that Moore’s Law probably DID mean that their kid will be able to make a photorealistic version of Citizen Kane on their desktop in 2023, to which I can only reply that while they might be able to make the movie, it is doubtful that they would be able to write it. Notwithstanding the guy who programmed a computer to write a bad novel in the style of Jacqueline Suzanne (that is, a bad rendition of an already bad genre -- could two bads make a good?), I don’t think machine writing is much of a threat to anyone who makes his or her living by the keyboard.
Then there are the frustrated musicians who would like to see a better path through digital technology, but can’t:
“You know, I remember a time only 10 to 20 years ago,” wrote one reader. “The big music companies were treading the musicians underfoot and producing only me too, bubble gum pop. At that time, the cost of recording equipment was such that with a smallish bag of money, anyone could set up a recording studio at least to tape, in their homes. The quality wasn't as good as from a real studio, but that actually was used by some bands to show that their music was more real. (In fact, some of the big labels actually reduced the quality of the final mix on their groups to make it feel more like ‘real’ music.) I remember this being heralded as the start of a new revolution for musicians. They could control their music and get all of the money.”
“Well, that didn't pan out. But during the same time, some people were pooling their smallish bags of money into modest bags of money and actually setting up a full to CD recording studio. These ‘independent’ labels were also heralded as the savior of all musicians. They got better quality, some marketing muscle, but more control over their music and more of the money coming in.”
“As you can tell from today, both of these much heralded gains for the artist in the music world have failed. Why should the Internet change that? I think, and this is now sliding into opinion, that these two trends from the late 80s and 90s didn't ‘fail’ completely. In many cases, I think they succeeded locally and failed globally. That is, as long as the band had a local following, they could make money this way. As long as the independent labels had contacts into the local radio stations, bands could make money.”
“But it is very hard for a band to sell, by themselves, to several cities; you have to have a fan base to sell to and tell their friends about your to generate more sales. Building a fan base isn't, usually, done by playing one gig a quarter in a city. It generally requires playing every weekend for a while so the buzz about your band gets out and attracts more people. While you do this in one city, you can't really sell in your ‘old’ city.”
“Independents ran into similar problems. The definition of ‘local’ could have been wider than it would be for a band alone. But the independent labels would be working the record stores and radios stations, rather than gigs. So, they start running into the major labels' marketing. Most local radio stations will showcase local talent, and listen to local independent record companies, after all, it's of local interest. But they would normally not listen to independents from out of state, say, because the local interest isn't there.”
“Of course, some independent companies have flourished. But guess what, most have been bought by a major label to be used as their unproven talent agency. Those that didn't have grown up to become larger labels, with the additional management, marketing, etc., and have started to act just like the major labels.”
“Given that, what exactly can the Internet do? If I am part of a band, certainly I can put my music out on a web site, but how will anyone know that it is there? I could use something like MusicMatch's radio feature to push my music into the ‘air’ but with thousands of such internet radio stations, who will tune in?”
“Unfortunately, it all comes down to marketing. You say that we need someone willing to ‘trad[e] 15 percent of $30 times 100,000 copies for 100 percent of $0.50 times 1 million copies.’ This is fine, but somehow, you still need to get one million people to buy, which means probably about two million people to try. How is a single band going to do that? How can the buzz for a band get spread out over an Internet flooded with thousands of other bands? I would love to have bands, actually any artist, be able to make money this way. But, turning this personally, I don't see how I'll find out about new bands, writers, poets, etc., when I already don't have, or want to take, enough time to follow those groups, etc., I do know about.”
It sounds to me (this is Bob again) like there is a lot of angst in the garage band community. But what this reader cites isn't a problem of art or technology, but of marketing. The big labels have all the money, all the airtime, all the connections, etc. -- what's a poor band to do? First thing I'd recommend is to stop whining (not the writer, of course, but the poor beleaguered bands).
How many superstars can there be? Is there room for one more superstar? Sure. Is there room for 1,000 more superstars? No. So I'd say there is a limit on how many rich musicians can be supported by ANY economy, whether it is local or national or international. Why can't all the good musicians be superstars? Because there just isn't enough money to go around, that's why.
Yet it is possible for a local band to succeed locally. If I am a hard-working band in a major market like New York or L.A. (or even a middle market like Portland or Milwaukee), can I make a living doing what I love? Yes. I can play -- for money -- every weekend. I can sell my CDs locally and at my gigs. During the week, I can work on new songs, shoot music videos with my buddies, whatever I want to do. I just can't be very successful if I go out of town.
What's wrong with that? They still get the chicks.
How many local bands are there for every national/international band? Has that ratio changed at all in 40 years? Why should we expect something like the Internet to make it change? If the historic ratio is 100-to-1 and we find that among those local bands striving to break out only one in 100 makes it, why should that be so surprising?
But there is something else going on here -- something that also has nothing to do with art or technology: Most bands are lousy at self-promotion. They do the same old things that have led to a 100-to-1 national/international success ratio AND EXPECT IT TO BE DIFFERENT FOR THEM. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. This is insane.
If playing at local clubs, selling local records, and getting airplay on local radio stations works for supporting bands on a blue collar basis, why do we expect that the same efforts should EVER lead to broader success? Typically, they only do so if the right scout from the right record company drops by on the right night. That's too much reliance on coincidence for me. While we can complain that what never really worked before still doesn't really work in the age of the Internet, this has nothing to do with the Internet.
The second most popular independent movie of all time (after "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") was "The Blair Witch Project," a cheap horror movie that was made in a week and succeeded primarily because of a clever Internet marketing blitz. THEY DID SOMETHING DIFFERENT, and it was a success. Yes, the Internet was involved (and that might be a good model), but the important part was to do something different.
The only way that new bands are going to reliably break the 100-to-1 mold is by doing something different, whether or not it involves the Internet. And if they do, then what is their likelihood of success? It might be two to three times as good, but still lousy just because the Stones are still touring and people buy tickets for KISS concerts leaving not much space on the charts for new groups. There is only so much money to go around. None of this has to do with the Internet. What the Internet can do is reach a widely distributed audience of interested people, but generally those people are already in contact with each other. Maybe they all went to the same school. Maybe they tend to be in the same industry. Maybe they abuse the same drugs. Whatever the connection, affinity groups create themselves, and the key to marketing to them is to identify the group and learn how to share the communication channel they are already using. Do bands use this technique, which was invented by the Grateful Dead? Not very much. Why not? Beats me.
I think the Internet CAN be a successful medium for new artists. But it won't happen if they wait for the success to come to them, if they do what everyone else has always done with little success. What the Internet can do is lower the cost of distributing and promoting good music, but it can't make bad music good, and it can't do anything without a big effort not just at being energetic, but also at being smart.
I don't think we have seen very much clever local music promotion on the Internet. There is the prospect of listeners (and buyers) all over the world, but only if you can get them to try. How do you do that? I don't know. But what I DO know is that it can be done and when it is done it will be using techniques that are new, not old.
End of rant.
These issues will resolve themselves in time, of course, but it could happen so much faster if we could come up with ways of doing business that make sense for all parties. Certainly the movie, recording, and print industries are taking the wrong approach to the problem. With every new generation of technology comes the need for a different business model. History has lots of examples of firms that faltered because they could not adjust.
What if you were a record company going into business today? What if you sold most of your product over the internet -- how would you run your business? Here’s one thought from a good friend of mine. I did not think this one up.
The typical retail cost of a CD comes to about $0.18 a minute. If you eliminate the publication and distribution costs maybe you could get the price down to $0.10 a minute.
Kids love creating their own mixes of songs. What if they could legally buy songs by the minute? Their form of payment would be a prepaid music card, similar to the prepaid phone cards that are so popular now in the U.S and abroad. A $10 card could buy 100 minutes of music. The average kid cannot afford to buy a dozen CDs to make his/her personal mix of songs. They can afford a $10 to $20 investment to download the songs they want.
If you consider a different business paradigm, then new ways to encourage legal behavior become possible. If your business model is based on downloads and mixes, then you can do some things with the software and file formats to make it even easier and more attractive to the consumer.
What if you were at a party and really enjoyed the selection of music. Your host could e-mail you their "play list". The play list would not contain the actual music, but would be an intelligent file with links to the music source. You could surf it, pick the songs you liked, and build your own mix.
What if kids were exchanging play lists instead of MP3 files?
If the cost is REASONABLE and it’s EASIER to build your own mix than to trade CDs, you'll probably have a successful and sustainable business model. Once you have a new business model, then go back and find ways to include the traditional distribution channel.
What was it Rodney King said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
culater
ot-Intellectual property: Partnering for profit
Companies could earn up to 10 percent of their operating income from the sale of patents and proprietary processes. But how?
Jeffrey J. Elton, Baiju R. Shah, and John N. Voyzey
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2002 Number 4 Technology
Companies whose reported earnings didn’t clearly flow from actual sales and real assets found themselves punished by investors in 2002. Paradoxically, however, some companies face a different challenge: making use of assets that could generate revenues but haven’t been fully exploited. These neglected assets take the form of intellectual property—patents, proprietary technologies, and processes—that could be sold or licensed to others. Certain sectors, including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications, have made the licensing of intellectual property a way of life. But most of the 40-plus companies we studied had projects to develop, manage, and commercialize such assets. In general, these companies have failed to capture their full value, because management hasn’t been paying enough attention.
Nonetheless, many companies—some far removed from pharmaceuticals, high technology, and other knowledge-based industries—could make substantial sums by transferring technology from a core business activity to outside industries. One consumer products company, for example, licensed a food additive as a cleansing agent in toxic-waste spills, thus recouping what had been an uncertain investment. An automaker found markets for its technology in heavy construction and health care, thus opening the door to a sustainable licensing business. Similar opportunities are more available than most executives realize.
As a rule of thumb, any company that owns at least 450 patents and spends $50 million or more a year on R&D—and several hundred companies in the United States alone fit the bill—possesses enough intellectual property to bring some of it to market; typically, 10 percent of the patent portfolio could be put to work in this way. Our study of current intellectual-property practices and valuations1 suggests that such assets could generate 5 to 10 percent of these companies’ operating income, equivalent to the improvement that might be expected from a 20 percent cut in expenses or from a successful acquisition, with little capital investment. Yet only a small number of the companies we looked at earn more than 0.5 percent of their operating income from licensing. Unlike the top performers, which on average do at least one intellectual-property deal a month and earn licensing revenues of more than $10,000 annually for each active patent, most companies in our survey complete only one or two deals a year and average less than $1,000 per active patent. The good news is that some companies have closed that performance gap quickly by changing the way they manage their intellectual property.
Because so few companies have made good on their earnings potential in this area, we can’t propose a best-practice list for others to emulate. But our observations and our conversations with executives in the field do permit us to offer a blueprint for best practices in the future. The heart of the emerging strategy is an outside-partner network that can increase the frequency and value of intellectual-property transactions.
The current state of play
To profit from intellectual property, companies must know whether it can be usefully and valuably applied in other industries and, if so, whether sales deals can convert that potential into revenue. At present, the market knowledge and deal-making infrastructure of most companies come up short because they rely on their internal business-development staffs and on narrow technical specialists to manage the sales of their intellectual assets. Much as companies look outside their own organizations to find the lawyers and bankers who manage their stock offerings, so too should they look outside to find the experts who can identify market applications for intellectual assets and convert these ideas into revenues.
Engineers at chemical companies, for example, aren’t likely to know that the materials and processes they use to separate atmospheric gases could help semiconductor manufacturers reduce the time and money needed to manufacture the high-value integrated circuits that use ceramic rather than plastic bindings. (Ceramic can withstand more heat than plastic and thus allows for smaller sizes and higher densities.) Yet one midsize chemical company, helped by an external network of technologists, discovered that its process could cut the production costs of these chips by up to 20 percent, or more than $200 million.
Most companies will be out of their depth in striking intellectual-property deals on their own, because without personal contacts and experience in other industries they probably won’t be able to identify the likely buyers or know how to extract the best terms. Some companies simply list themselves on Internet exchanges, wait for buyers to call, and let their lawyers or business-development managers negotiate sales. By contrast, the midsize chemical company, having little knowledge of licensing arrangements beyond its own industry, didn’t pretend to know what the rights to its gas-separation process might be worth; instead, it brought in specialists to test the market, find a buyer, and transact a deal.
Building an intellectual-property network
Companies will need to build networks consisting of two kinds of experts: knowledge partners, who assess the possible applications and potential value of intellectual property for a range of users, and conversion partners, who sell the assets. Some companies already have certain components of such a network, but we are not aware of any company that systematically uses a complete one. What follows is a user’s guide to building these networks. Based on the early experience of the companies we studied, it outlines the role of each of the participants, their likely terms of engagement, and the keys to managing each relationship.
Knowledge partners
Companies aiming to extract the maximum value from intellectual property should begin by reviewing all of their patents, processes, and technologies and be prepared to do so at least once every three years. They will need two types of on-call knowledge partners—broad-based technologists and industry specialists—to suggest applications for their technologies across a range of industries and then to confirm that each application is viable and to estimate its business impact in every relevant industry. That process should yield an A-list of ideas warranting immediate attention.
Broad-based technologists. Generalists with the experience needed to think up applications across many markets are a rare breed. Typically based in technical societies, universities, and research laboratories such as Battelle Memorial Institute (Columbus, Ohio) and Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Illinois), these generalists conduct fundamental research across a wide range of industries. To review each technology in the portfolio, a company will need access to several broad-based technologists.
Procter & Gamble, for example, used a panel of technologists, including academics and representatives of small technical firms, to generate new applications for its Olestra molecule. When Olestra first appeared, it was hailed as a low-fat ingredient for snack foods, but unpleasant side effects (since corrected) caused sales to fall flat. Stuck with a multimillion-dollar plant equipped to produce the molecule, Procter & Gamble sought other applications for it. Internal technologists came up with a shortlist of ideas, mostly for consumer products such as lotions, but outside experts generated many more. The winning application so far is environmental remediation: poured on contaminated soil or sludge, the Olestra molecule binds itself to pollutants, which can then be removed easily. Thanks to these alternative applications, Procter & Gamble has salvaged its investment in research and infrastructure.
The technologist’s task is twofold: to produce a summary of all a technology’s possible applications, ranked according to technical and business feasibility, and to estimate the economic impact of each application (for example, the savings semiconductor manufacturers could realize from the gas-separation process). Such estimates are especially important when companies negotiate terms with potential buyers.
A company should secure enough of these advisers’ time to have them available as needed but refrain from engaging them full-time or from limiting their ability to work with other companies; a large part of the value of such people lies in their exposure to cross-industry knowledge, which can come only from working with a variety of companies on common technologies. Advisers are usually paid through project fees or retainers (perhaps $2,500 to $5,000 a day) but seldom have a financial stake in a project’s outcome.
Industry specialists. Experts with a knowledge of applications in specific markets can often be found in the same institutions that employ broad-based technologists. Most companies will need a roster of specialists in a dozen or more fields to refine and validate ideas the technologists bring to light.
One carmaker, for instance, learned that a magnetostrictive sensor in its steering mechanisms could have several unexpected applications. The most promising of them was a system to test the strength and stability of the poured concrete used in bridges and roads. (The sensor responds to changes in pressure and then sends electromagnetic signals that can be read as the concrete cures.) To test the technology’s potential value and performance requirements, the company interviewed more than 20 industry specialists: engineers for construction companies, professors of materials sciences, entrepreneurs in related markets, and employees of the transportation departments of several US states. By saving time and improving compliance with industry codes, these specialists said, the device could save construction contractors and transportation departments billions of dollars a year. The carmaker should realize more than $17 million in annual licensing revenues from this unexpected application.
Academics, engineers, and other professionals don’t routinely sell their services on the open market. Such experts might be prepared to donate their time to pursue the intellectual challenge of assessing the market demand for a new technology or of surmounting the technical barriers to its success. But when the commercial validation of an idea and the development of performance specifications take center stage, most of these people will expect to be compensated. Their fee arrangements are comparable to those for broad-based technologists.
Conversion partners
When a company has identified its marketable assets and assessed their approximate value, a network of conversion partners—intellectual-property brokers, consolidators, and business builders—can help it strike licensing and equity deals with buyers. The dozens of mostly small firms that occupy this fast-growing niche have pushed US licensing revenues to an estimated $100 billion a year.
Each type of partner can assist the intellectual-property owner in a different way, and sometimes the same firm serves different clients in different capacities. Like investment bankers, conversion partners can price and market a property, provide industry contacts, and, occasionally, offer a portfolio of existing intellectual assets (from other companies and institutions) that enhance a company’s offerings. It rarely makes sense for the owner to maintain such conversion specialists on its own staff unless it expects to conduct ongoing deals in a specific industry.
Brokers. Intellectual-property brokers use the technical specialist’s initial assessment to judge how much a buyer would be likely to pay for an asset. Like their counterparts in commercial real estate, they can draw on a wealth of potential purchasers.
Brokerage firms are usually boutiques, often started by former business-development leaders of large corporations. (Competitive Technologies, NineSigma, and Chipworks are among the leading names in the United States.) Such a firm generally enters the game when patents or processes are well established and have a clear market value, though the owner doesn’t care to develop them further. For example, researchers in Monsanto’s electrochemical-sciences group developed a flexible color display. The project, far removed from the company’s core business, was about to be dropped, but the office supplies company Avery Dennison had an interest in just such a technology, which could be used in retail displays and in packaging for consumer goods. Competitive Technologies brokered a deal between Avery and Pharmacia (Monsanto’s parent), and the first products are expected to reach the market early next year.
An owner of intellectual property should identify the broker with the best track record in each target market (medical devices, transportation, or consumer goods, for example), give all of the company’s business to that broker, and hold it to strict performance standards, such as the number of interested buyers approached and of discussions held during a given time period. The owner should also arrange an exit option in case of nonperformance.
Brokers usually receive a commission of 10 to 30 percent of the transaction price, though for less well-developed or more speculative assets they could command up to half of it. They might also require a retainer to offset early expenses; if so, they should contribute some up-front value by helping to refine an application for intellectual property, reassessing its value, and suggesting specific companies and managers to target.
Consolidators. Some companies see the activities of intellectual-property consolidators as the moral equivalent of telemarketing, for they will call, uninvited, to generate business. Even so, don’t hang up on them. Consolidators, often backed by private equity firms, purchase selected properties from a variety of players—even before patents are secured—and assemble packages that could be used to launch new businesses or sold to strategic buyers. Sometimes consolidators also conduct additional research to develop the full package or to show how different patents complement one another. These firms are most useful to organizations that have intellectual assets with limited stand-alone value and that aim for quick sales rather than continuing participation in ventures.
Certain deals can provide both, however. The intellectual-property division of the law firm Greenberg Traurig bundled five patents from three universities and licensed the package to a pharmaceutical company that was developing cancer treatments. The package is worth up to $300 million to the drug company, with the universities sharing the royalties. Other consolidators, including firms such as British Technology Group (BTG) and Research Corporation Technologies (RCT), play a similar role.
When working with consolidators, owners of intellectual assets may receive compensation in forms ranging from up-front payments to royalties.
Business builders. Business-building partners, which help companies create new ventures based on patents or technologies, are usually private equity firms, such as Accel-KKR and Milcom. A firm of this kind focuses on a particular end market and provides industry-specific management talent and operating skills.
Companies should use business builders when technologies could serve as growth platforms for other products or services or as the foundation for self-contained businesses. McDonald’s, for instance, developed its own point-of-sale software for its cash registers and order-tracking and other systems. In 2001, Accel-KKR helped the company launch eMac Digital to sell software and services to the global restaurant industry. Unlike a consolidator, which cherry-picks one or two ideas from a company’s portfolio, a business builder wants all relevant assets in a given area. It looks for ideas in the early stages and assumes most of the risk, usually acting as the lead investor in any new venture.
Occasionally, an intellectual-property owner will contribute financing through its corporate venture capital arm. It then typically becomes an equity partner with a minority (usually less than 20 percent) stake in the venture and provides in-kind support, such as access to developers of the technology. There are dividends only after the business is profitable, and the exit comes with the venture’s sale to a strategic buyer or a financial investor or with an equity placement. Intellectual-property owners should maintain only two or three business-building partnerships at a time: given the longer-term involvement, these are the most demanding relationships to operate and maintain.
Managing the network
The most successful companies see their intellectual-property programs as one of several business processes—including internal R&D, mergers and acquisitions, and in-licensing—that drive growth and innovation. To that end, these standouts build a dedicated, cross-functional intellectual-property organization. But such organizations are rare; most companies, if they have any intellectual-property unit at all, usually staff it with a few patent attorneys working alone. Ideally, the team should be small (no more than ten people) and accountable for its performance, with pay tied to the unit’s annual financial goals. In general, half or more of the team should be drawn from the product-development, business-development, and R&D departments and work with the technical experts; the lawyers on the team should oversee the conversion partners.
Above all, the team must be independent—that is, it must constitute a separate unit led by the chief of R&D or some other senior manager, for without the visible involvement of high-ranking corporate leaders, the effort will founder. (Such advice has become standard for any kind of change initiative, but because the commercialization of intellectual property involves noncore activities and is rarely anyone’s top priority, the effort will die on the vine if not supported at the highest levels.) Furthermore, management backing and organizational autonomy are needed if the unit is to avoid a host of political pitfalls: unless managers define clear decision-making rights, for example, organizational lobbying will influence choices about what or what not to sell, and to whom. The provision of top talent and adequate resources calls for high-ranking leadership as well.
Finally, the involvement of senior executives can help a company avoid one of the problems of network management: the possibility that the intellectual-property team will cede control of the process to its outside partners, particularly those who help it value a technology. Teams should have a sense of the value of any application before negotiating an arrangement with brokers or consolidators and especially before dealing with business builders. (Knowledge partners, as independent advisers with no stake in a deal’s outcome, can help make this assessment.) Likewise, companies should be extremely cautious about negotiating value-sharing deals or other terms favored by their conversion partners; in lucrative licensing arrangements, the difference between a 4 percent royalty and a 4.5 percent one can actually be millions of dollars.
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Ultimately, managers must understand that uncommercialized intellectual property is a wasted corporate asset. They must make the sale of these assets a way of life, giving the unit responsible for it a clear place in the company’s strategy and wide latitude to make deals. When this unit can find no use for patents, it should have the authority to reduce the cost of unproductive assets by retiring them. Exploiting intellectual property to the fullest extent is certainly difficult—that is why most companies are not capable of doing it alone. But those willing to build the kinds of networks that are now emerging will be in a strong position to deliver real and reliable growth in the years ahead.
culater
I don't think Flash vs. Microdrive makes a difference.Edig can more likely than not add the same features to either. However,I don't believe the MXP100 was direct encoding,but I think the Classic player was.culater
Gil-one is flash based & one is microdrive-Also no Voicenav-I posted that one because the multicodec,voice recorder,direct encoding info peaked my interest.culater
ot-Dawn of the Superchip
Tech companies are racing to put whole systems onto a single processor--a feat that will reshape the industry
The past two years have been brutal on tech companies. Lots of promising ideas have died, underfunded, on the vine. Despite that climate, on Oct. 15, IXI Mobile Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., landed $15 million in venture capital to push ahead with some snazzy gadgets of the future. These included a wristwatch that can receive e-mails and surf the Web and a ballpoint pen that can take photos and wirelessly transmit them over the Net.
All very James Bond, except for one thing. These aren't pricey, one-off prototypes for spies or millionaires. IXI's devices will hit the market early next year for as little as $30 apiece, plus another $150 for a slim router that can power them all from your coat pocket. The key: The gadgets run on a single Texas Instruments Inc. chip that's half the cost and one-quarter the size of previous designs. With a price like that, says CEO Amit Haller, "the response [from cell phone makers] has been overwhelming."
In the chip biz, less is turning out to be more. And raw horsepower is no longer the be-all, end-all of chip design. These days, semiconductor powerhouses such as Intel (INTC ), Texas Instruments (TXN ), and STMicroelectronics (STM ) are racing to usher in a generation of chips that can replace whole colonies of present-day processors by combining all their functions into one sliver of silicon, a "system on a chip."
To be sure, the push to combine functions is as old as the integrated circuit itself. But these systems represent a new stage. Industry insiders say that in the next few years, the rollout of powerful all-in-one chips will strengthen the hand of the behemoths at the expense of the industry's lesser players. "Just a small number of companies have the capability," says STM CEO Pasquale Pistorio.
For consumers, there is no downside: Single chips mean smaller, cheaper, and less-power-hungry devices. Some manufacturers, however, will struggle to survive in an era when the number of chips in every gadget is shrinking. The likely outcome is a market share battle of unprecedented intensity.
In fact, it has already begun. In the market for wireless chips, for example, deep-pocketed chipmakers are racing to combine on one semiconductor all the functions of a cell phone. Next up will be other high-volume gadgets such as digital cameras, MP3 players, and even personal computers. All of this is devilishly difficult to do, requiring the smarts to integrate a hodgepodge of functions onto one chip and the capital to crank them out in big numbers using the most advanced manufacturing processes. But those who can execute will gain a significant competitive advantage, says G. Dan Hutcheson, president of San Jose (Calif.) Consultancy VLSI Research Inc.
With the chip sector in such dismal shape, the whole move to systems on a chip has the air of a crusade. As demand for new tech gear has waned, total chip sales plummeted to $139 billion in 2001, from $204 billion in 2000. That has left the industry riddled with excess manufacturing capacity and desperate for growth. At the same time, the only way to shore up prices--which have been falling even as customers have begun restocking--is by pushing chips to do more. "I look at this as survival," says Michael A. Yonker, chief wireless technologist at TI, which is planning a single-chip cell-phone design for late 2004.
Nowhere is the competition tougher than in cell phones. Half a dozen wireless chipmakers are spending billions to build a superchip that will drive the cheapest possible phone. TI thinks its design--which reduces the total number of components in a cell phone to 25 from 185 today--will streamline assembly and cut handset prices in half. That would boost sales in developing markets such as India and China. "By lowering the cost, we can find the next billion users for wireless," says Richard K. Templeton, TI's chief operating officer.
TI's competitors are drawn to the same alluring economics. Intel Corp., the leading supplier of memory chips for handsets, is developing a single-chip cell phone with which it hopes to chisel away at TI's lead in processors. TI, meanwhile, expects to add enough memory to its single chip that handset makers will no longer need to buy it from Intel. And ST, a leader in analog and memory design, is pumping 70% of its $1 billion research budget into developing systems on chips for cell phones and other products.
The all-in-one chips should do more than just cut manufacturing cost and time. They also promise to rev up the introduction of technologies that bring with them bigger opportunities for profit. At Intel, for example, engineers have accelerated plans to build wireless modems into many of the company's chips by mid-decade. The result will be inexpensive broadband modems, digital audio receivers, portable game players, and video recorders that can connect wirelessly to the Net. "Every chipset, every processor, every memory device literally can become a radio," says Intel Chief Technology Officer Patrick P. Gelsinger.
Meanwhile, the chip wizards at TI are planning to embed global positioning systems into their cell-phone chips within a few years, helping emergency services locate distress calls and enabling advertisers to target customers by their location. Toshiba Corp. (TOSBF ) and IBM (IBM ) are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to design the all-in-one chips necessary for Sony Corp.'s (SNE ) next-generation PlayStation. "This is the technology that will set us apart from the others," boasts Yoshihide Fujii, vice-president of semiconductor operations for Toshiba.
The race will be hard on small chipmakers. In the scenarios of some forecasters, only the largest vendors will be able to shrink the filigreed circuit lines on chips beyond today's superdense limits. And companies must mix analog and digital parts so that real-life signals from voice and pictures can be processed by the same chip. Engineers will also need to isolate elements such as radio transceivers that can interfere with delicate digital circuitry and add complex software that can deftly manage these multitaskers.
Most single-chip designs will require the use of cutting-edge lithography techniques that can create transistors only 90 nanometers wide, a big reduction from today's thinnest lines of about 130 nm. Intel expects to be operating at 90 nm in its factories by mid-2003, and TI, IBM, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD ) are also close. But only a handful of other chipmakers will be able to afford to join them, according to Hutcheson, who cites ST, Motorola (MOT ) , Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSM ), and Samsung as the most likely.
Systems on a chip, in other words, may spell the demise of smaller, specialized chipmakers over the next few years. Intel, for instance, contends its efforts to integrate wireless networking into all its chips will render existing modem chipmakers obsolete. "If that's your domain, I suggest you move on," warns Intel's Gelsinger.
Some small players are sure to find ways to ride the industry's wave toward fewer and fewer chips. Silicon Laboratories Inc. (SLAB ) in Austin, Tex., which outsources production to TSMC, has managed to shrink the radio transceiver used in cell phones from 100 parts a year ago to 21 today. Next year, it will roll out a chipset with just one piece of silicon that will take up one-eighth the real estate of typical chipsets. With fast-growing customers such as Samsung Electronics and China's TCL Mobile, the upstart's quarterly revenues have soared 156%, to $41.2 million.
Growth is one thing. Profits are another. Analysts point out that the virtue of the do-it-all chip is that it allows semiconductor companies to siphon profits not just from niche chipmakers but from the packaging specialists that now assemble chips on boards, as well as other bit players in the electronics manufacturing food chain. TI says that when its single- chip design reaches volume production, it could boost its share of total cell phone revenues by 50%. "The system on a chip is a new market accelerator," says Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering Group. Right now, any acceleration would be welcome.
By Andrew Park in Dallas, with Cliff Edwards in San Mateo, Calif., Andy Reinhardt in Paris, and Irene M. Kunii in Tokyo
culater
ot-An Uphill Stream
By Carlo Longino, Nov 19 2002
MPEG-4 has been made the de facto mobile streaming standard. But is it the best choice?
(5 recommendations)
Carlo Longino
The holy grail of 3G has been to put video in everyone's pocket. But the delay in the build-out of third-generation networks and unforeseen emerging technologies may bring mobile streaming video to consumers much earlier than previously thought. Of course, whether they'll want to pay for it is a different matter completely.
Streaming media is already being incorporated into new mobile devices and networks - NTT DoCoMo has gained a lot of attention (although not many users) for its 3G network featuring V-Live, a streaming video service that offers movie trailers, music videos, Hello Kitty family stories, golf lessons, and even archived ping-pong matches. Audible.com has put its software into the new Palm Tungsten handhelds and the Orange SPV smartphone, allowing users to access and download audio files from its library of books-on-tape, newspaper summaries, and other programming. The SPV also features PacketVideo's pvPlayer application for streaming media. RealNetworks' RealOne Player is included with Nokia's 9200 series Communicators, and is also available for the PocketPC platform. And of course Microsoft includes its Windows Media Player software with all PocketPC devices, including mobile models like the O2 XDA and Audiovox Thera.
So although in its infancy, streaming media has arrived. But what technologies best enable it?
Square MPEG in a Round Hole
Industry bodies have been hard at work to define standards for streaming media in the interest of interoperability. The clear choice for multimedia has been the MPEG-4 standard. Developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group, the same group within the International Standards Organization that came up with the successful MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards, MPEG-4 was based on Apple Computer's QuickTime technology to take advantage of its extensibility - the ability to combine various media (not only audio and video, but also 3D objects, sprites, text, and so on) - and scalability, the ability transport a media at any bit rate.
For audio, the MPEG-4 standard uses Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC, developed by many of the same companies behind the popular MP3 and AC3 Dolby Digital codecs. Think of AAC as a souped-up version of MP3: the bottom line is that it offers improved compression that results in better sound quality with smaller file sizes, but also importantly for mobile devices, allows for more efficient decoding, requiring less processing power.
MPEG-4 offers a number of benefits when used in a mobile application, the least of which are the available "profiles" which segment the standard for different applications. Most appropriate for mobile streaming are the simple and simple scalable profiles, which offer efficient, error-resistant encoding.
Any mobile streaming technology needs to be extremely error-resilient, thanks to propagation problems, interference, and handoffs, not to mention high latency. Errors can occur at the physical or link layers, as well as in the network layer, and there may also be packet loss due to network buffer overflows.
Non-real-time data such as e-mail can make a trade-off of delay for error control. Network protocols are used to guarantee the accuracy of the data, but often involve delays in doing so. Streaming media and other applications like videoconferencing, however, cannot accept this, and although network protocols can help the stream along, errors must be dealt with by the player application.
The MPEG-4 standard offers several features to help with this. Errors can be constrained in the data stream by using resynchronization markers placed in the video by the video encoder. This breaks the stream up into "video packets" which can help contain and conceal errors. It also uses motion-compensated concealment techniques, which separate motion and texture information. When there are errors in the texture information, the image can be decoded and created using only the data associated with motion vectors; should there be errors in the motion data, estimation can be used to recover the lost data, and then the recovered data is used to conceal the error.
Another problem in streaming on mobile networks are the variable bit rates of user connections. Packet delay often occurs, having a direct impact on user throughput. MPEG-4 deals with this limitation by scaling itself to the throughput, adding enhancement information via additional encoded frames to a base layer of video. It also utilizes spatial scalability, in the simple scalable profile, by encoding information to enhance images within a frame.
MPEG-4 production and player applications are already being developed and delivered. RealNetworks recently announced its Helix Mobile Producer, powered by an encoder from Envivio, which gives content creators a single encoder that will output 3GPP and 3GPP2 as well as RealAudio and RealVideo content. It also has live and on-demand encoding designed for the small screens of mobile devices, and supports MPEG-4 as well as other formats like AAC, N-AMR, and H.263.
Take 'Em Down an MPEG or -4
But as has been the case in the tech world time and time again, the biggest standard, or the one with the most support, may not necessarily be the best. Mobile streaming media is no different, and several companies have developed codecs and algorithms they say outdo MPEG-4.
The Nancy code, developed by Japan's Office Noa, has already been incorporated into Japanese models of the Sharp Zaurus PDA, and is used by J-Phone for its Video Sha-Mail video messaging service. Nancy's main strength is its compactness. Office Noa says its algorithm requires significantly less CPU power than MPEG-4; in fact, less than 1%. An MPEG-4 chip that could decode 15 frames per second at 174x144 would require about 20 million transistors; at 200,000 transistors, Nancy can decode 30 frames per second at 320x240.
The codec uses a proprietary algorithm called "Structured Meta Scale Polygon," which divides images into blocks of different shapes and sizes for compression, ranging from 1 pixel up to 32x32, depending on the images' complexity. MPEG-4 uses motion-estimation and a discrete-cosine-transform algorithm; Nancy uses only the four basic arithmetic operations and comparison and bit-shift operation. Accordingly, its codec only requires 30 to 40k of memory and operates at a tenth of the power of a comparable MPEG-4 operation, the company says.
Pulsent, a US-based company, has developed a compression technique that eschews the block-based methods used in MPEG standards and RealVideo and Windows Media formats in favor of an object-based scheme. Whereas block-based method simply segment an image into blocks, then look for matches from frame to frame, Pulsent's method breaks an image down into objects and tracks and predicts their movement from frame to frame. The company says this cuts down on errors and needed bandwidth when compared to standard block-based methods.
Vector quantization is another method gaining ground. This technology was used by Scottish company Essential Viewing in Orange's HSCSD videophone product of a few years back, and is the method favored by Oplayo, which recently launched a streaming content portal with Finnish marketing firm Soprano Communications. Oplayo's technology is extremely attractive in the mobile space because it is plug-in-free, meaning that it's displayed through a Java applet that can be sent to the receiving device along with the stream.
Vector quantization works by creating a "codebook" of tiny image patches. The video stream then tells the decoder which patch to call up and where to place it for each frame, creating a mosaic of the patches to approximate the original image. Oplayo says its motion vector unitization-based system can stream at ten times faster than MPEG-4.
And of course the big dog's not standing still, either. Microsoft has inked deals with PacketVideo and Emblaze to integrate its Windows Media technology into their players, meaning users with devices running operating systems apart from Microsoft's will be able to access Windows Media-encoded material.
While MPEG-4 may have a lot of traction, some of these other technologies seem like they'll have an impact, although another high-tech lesson has been that the best method or product isn't necessarily the most successful. That may be the case in streaming technology, certainly when digital-rights-management-hungry content producers exert their influence.
culater
ot-Mobile Mickey
By Dan Briody, Nov 20 2002
Walt Disney is tapping into wireless as the next frontier.
Dan Briody
Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney’s legendary cartoon character, turned 74 years old on November 18th. Since Mickey was born – originally conceived as Mortimer Mouse, a name that was summarily dismissed my Mrs. Disney – the wispy, squeaky little guy has undergone many, many changes. But never in his wildest imagination could Walt Disney have predicted back in 1928 that someday his rascally rodent would be zipping through thin air, a central character in the still-unfolding drama that is the wireless industry.
For two years now, the Walt Disney Company has been on the leading edge of wireless content licensing, signing an astounding string of deals with wireless carriers and phone makers from around the world. The deals cover everything from the timeless Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to the latest newcomers to the Disney family, Lilo and Stitch. And they range from simple sports scores and stock quotes from Disney companies ABC and ESPN to content and characters from Disney movies. It’s an all-Disney-all-the-time strategy wireless providers can’t get enough of.
And while wireless has proven to be an excellent way for Disney to extend and burnish its world famous brands to a whole new generation of customers, the strategy has proven to be a potential money maker for the company. However, doing business in this medium has not come without its frustrations for Disney. Waiting for wireless companies to sufficiently market next-generation wireless services and provide platforms that can handle Disney’s content has made making money anywhere but Japan a difficult task. Welcome to the wacky world of wireless, Mickey.
A Wireless Whirlwind
It all started innocently enough back in 1999, when Disney launched what is now seen as primitive text-based content. The service basically consisted of some limited informational blurbs from ABCNEWS and ESPN. It was rudimentary stuff to be sure, but Disney was one of the first major media outlets to embrace the still-emerging wireless medium. From these modest beginnings, Disney launched a litany of deals that has covered virtually every significant mobile market in the world.
“At first we looked at it as an extension of our Internet presence,” explains Larry Shapiro, executive vice president of business development at Walt Disney Internet Group, the subsidiary of Walt Disney that handles electronic distribution of the company’s content. “But it has evolved to beyond a simple brand extension into content offerings tailored to the unique attributes of mobile.” Shapiro points out that most of those attributes are, of course, “negative, like small screen size or limited keypad.”
Despite the early challenges of the wireless market, Disney pressed on. The first deal of import was in August of 2000, when the company launched a Disney-branded content service with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and its wildly successful i-Mode wireless phone service. Called Disney-i, the content included features like “Character Town,” with daily character screen savers; “Melody Palace,” a daily Disney song that plays as a ring tone; and “Game World,” in which users can search a virtual Disneyland for cartoon characters. It was like a tiny little amusement park right in the phone. But Disney didn’t stop there.
They signed deals with SBC Wireless in the U.S. to do interactive gaming through ESPN.com, in which users participate in a daily contest to win $1000. They arranged with Sprint PCS to provide content from ESPN.com, ABCNEWS.com, and Go.com for weather, white pages, lottery and horoscope information. Next it was AT&T Wireless and a contest that encouraged users to pick the winners of the U.S. college basketball tournament. Then they brought their content to Nextel in April of 2001. And then to OnStar, the wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors that provides in-car wireless services. Disney was just getting started.
The company’s international business really started to take off, and Disney realized that while they were based in Hollywood, the most advanced wireless markets were outside of the United States, like that of Japan. That’s when the international deals started to rain down. First it was Hong Kong carriers CSL and Hutchison, then it was Taiwan’s TCC (Taiwan Cellular Corporation). And Disney went back to Japan to sign up J-Phone and their J-Sky wireless Internet platform. Not to be left out, Disney hooked up with T-Mobile in Europe, SK Telecom in South Korea, and Djuice, the mobile Internet service provider in Scandinavia. Suddenly, Disney was everywhere.
Mickey Mouse Operation
Disney’s reasons for going wireless have changed over time. In the beginning, the company saw wireless as a good way to market what it Shapiro calls “the three key brands”: Disney, ABC, and ESPN. But within those key brands, Disney owns dozens, possibly hundreds, of sub-brands, like Mickey Mouse, many of which are better known and equally important to its business. Sending images of those sub-brands, along with content from ABC and ESPN, throughout the wireless airwaves was a great way to increase their exposure. The cost was minimal – in most cases carriers and phone companies pay Disney to license their content and resell it – and the opportunity was ripe. It seemed like a no-brainer.
And it was. In the U.S. market alone, there are Disney animated ringtones (think “It’s a Small World” theme), screensavers, and wallpapers. There are games ranging from Disney’s Lilo & Stitch’s Space Escape to EXPN Snowboarding. The data services cover everything from news headlines to daily soap opera updates. It’s safe to say the brand has been sufficiently extended. Disney was covering its costs on their wireless marketing efforts, but it wasn’t exactly adding to the bottom line.
But then something started happening that wasn’t quite expected. They started making money. Currently, Japan is the only market in which Disney is bringing in significant revenues. The company does not break out its revenues by sector, so it’s impossible to say how much Disney is making from wireless. But Since Disney Mobile launched in Japan in August of 2000, they have grown their portfolio to 32 different content offerings on three carriers (DoCoMo, J-Phone, and KDDI), and have more than 3 million paid subscriptions at between 100 yen and 300 yen a month. The business has taken off, and given Disney, and other content providers, a glimpse of the true value of wireless as an outlet for their products.
“In Japan this is a significant business for us,” says Shapiro. “And in the rest of the world, we are in the beginning of this adventure.” Shapiro explains that the difference in Japan versus the rest of the world is that the infrastructure, wireless service, and billing are in place to offer the types of animated clips that Disney can actually make money from. Frustratingly, the company is in a holding pattern in the rest of the world, and doesn’t intend to stick its own neck out on the front lines of wireless progress. “We are waiting for some things to fall into place,” says Shapiro. “The carriers have to have the billing platforms, and they have to be willing to market the services. But we’re not going to invest the massive dollars to find the Holy Grail in wireless. It’s the carriers that have to enable the customer relationship.”
In many ways, it is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. The carriers often claim that it is content that is going to drive the market forward to next-generation services. But content providers complain that if the devices and service can’t handle multimedia, than they are just going to wait until the technology is ready. Not surprisingly, little gets done.
Keeping it Safe
There are other concerns that content provider have however, and among the most pressing issue facing Disney at the moment is how to protect its valuable brands. It is alarmingly easy to download a game, image, or ringtone, and send it along to dozens of friends, violating any number of copyright and digital rights laws. In particular, using Bluetooth, an end user can beam just about anything to other users or on to multiple devices. As such, Disney cannot allow its content to be downloaded onto Bluetooth devices, and has no deals with devices that carry the Bluetooth capability.
“We have to take an active interest in protecting our library,” says Shapiro. “It is very easy for a consumer, once they have bought a piece of entertainment, to send it along to someone else. So we’re working with the industry to find way to allow this business to expand, and develop a way to protect our property.”
Shapiro says there are only a handful of devices that Disney won’t do business with, out of hundreds of different handsets it will. But just like the Internet did years ago, and in many ways is still doing, wireless will need to solve the sticky problem of digital rights management if content providers will ever feel comfortable ponying up their stuff.
Disney is looking at different ways to expand its wireless presence, but they are cautious and measured in their approach. Some things that have seen early success, like SMS interaction with TV, have not gotten the execs at Disney excited. Of Sprint PCS’ deal with Fox Sports, which encourages Sprint customers to use their phones to vote on coaching decisions and trivia questions while they watch the World Series or NFL games, Shapiro says simply, “That’s just Sprint buying advertising, and we’re more focused on subscription-based services.” But Disney can go as slow as it wants, limiting its risk, and maximizing it reward, because no matter how fast or slow wireless data takes off, there will always be a demand for mobile Mickey.
culater
ot-Pump Up the Volume
By Peggy Anne Salz, Nov 27 2002
Combine music with lifestyle services, viral marketing and a new twist on an old technology and you?ve got a real showstopper. Starting this year mobile music is not only going to rock the industry, it's going to send tremors through the mobile value chain.
(6 recommendations)
Peggy Anne Salz
Experience shows that the most successful mobile services are actually based on what users do in their "fixed" lives. Users read newspapers and magazines - and so they are comfortable with scanning news and sports snippets on their handsets. They communicate by email - and so they have eagerly embraced SMS, and given the mobile industry its first, and so far only, "killer app." But consumers, youth in particular, also like to listen to, talk about, look like and dream about music artists. Music isn't just about songs; it's a billion-dollar lifestyle industry ranging from fan magazines to fashion. More important, it's a passionate and personal interest around which communities congregate. So why isn't mobile music a hit?
One reason could be the industry's preoccupation with gadgets. Despite all the lip service paid to criteria such as simplicity and usability, the industry still isn't quite over its love affair with technology. The temptation to create an "all-in-one" dedicated device is great, but many observers suggest that this new breed of mobile devices will be too clunky and costly to compete with existing technology and methods such as CD burners and file-sharing.
To complicate matters, the ability to download and playback music files over a mobile phone is an embryonic and uncertain market. Against this backdrop, it's best to build services with the technology and tools that exist. As Dario Betti, an analyst with Ovum in the UK, puts it: "The new devices aren't the market opportunity. The money is in harnessing the power of music to enhance existing services."
Express Yourself, Baby
The advent of polyphonic ringtones, which incorporate 16 tones rather than one, will drive revenues and allow operators to build new business models around musical content, according to Ovum. It estimates that the market for personalization through ringtones, logos and screensavers in Italy, Germany and the UK alone will be worth $673 million in 2002, and receive a considerable boost when more handset makers can support them. One company in this space is Musiwave, Europe's leading provider of mobile music services and the first to enable downloadable ringtones with original music.
The company, which distributes its music services and platform through customers including T-Mobile in the UK and Germany, Orange in France and Optimus in Portugal, recently teamed up with Telefonica Moviles to launch a similar service in Spain. In addition to ringtones, the company supplies a turnkey solution that includes games, contests, SMS alerts and an assortment of other value-added services focussed on music artists. It also offers "Musimail," a dedication service allowing users to text a tune to a friend together with their own recorded message.
Musiwave, which has a partnership with handset manufacturer Sagem, is close to Nokia and "expects to announce relationships with at least two other manufacturers by the end of 2003,"according to Guillaume Decugis, Musiwave VP, Technology & Operations. "Music and mobile are a perfect fit. But software modifications are necessary so that the user can just turn on the phone and use [these] music services." Musiwave also cooperates with music labels to reduce some of the red tape around digital rights issues. To this end Musiwave recently sealed a deal with BMG to make its music catalogue available through Musiwave's services. BMG, which belongs to German media giant Bertelsmann, owns more than 200 record labels worldwide.
The Power of Love
Tj.net, a Bertelsmann wholly-owned subsidiary based in Italy, is determined to be the wireless equivalent of MTV. Rather than focus on technology, tj.net has quietly and quickly built up an interactive music service based on simple IVR (interactive voice response) that counts over 1.6 million registered users in Italy making it Europe's largest mobile music service. "We want users to play with the music rather than just play music," says Paolo Roatta, tj.net CEO.
The service, which works like a remote control, allows users to interact with music by pressing a number on the keypad. They can send a song to a friend by pressing 8; they can buy the CD of the artist they are listening to by pressing 3; they can vote for the music by pressing 9. And so on... "Kids don't only want to listen to music, they want to share it, they want to send it to a boyfriend or girlfriend and say 'hey, I'm thinking about you,' or 'hey, I know you're having a bad day so here's something to cheer you up,'" Roatta says. "It's just another way to call and say 'I love you.' "
An "unexpected success" is the community that has grown up around a new service users can access by pressing 7. The idea was to allow users a chance to not only comment on the music, but also reply to other user's comments about music. When this happens, the user who left the original message gets an SMS alert and can call in to hear what others are saying. The service, which is growing virally, is "more like a talk show than a chat room," Raotta explains. Tj.net, which launches a new service every two weeks, plans to extend its reach to other countries and operators across Europe.
They're Playing our Song
A new kid on the block is Shazam Entertainment, a UK company with a unique proposition. It's developed the world's first-ever ubiquitous song identification service available to mobile operators. "We thought it would be great if there were a service that could identify a song at the exact moment you hear it," notes Chris Barton, Shazam Business Development Director. "Since there wasn't one we decided to build it."
Shazam's technology is able to match a noisy audio sample (15 seconds in length) captured over a mobile phone against a database of more than two million songs in a fraction of a second. The search works even with background noise such as people talking or street noise. When a user hears a song he likes, he dials a four-digit number from the mobile and holds hold up the phone to capture 15 seconds of music. The service then compares this "fingerprint" against Shazam's own database. Once the matching segment of the matching song is found the service responds with an SMS to the user's phone that not only identifies the song, but the artist and the CD as well. The user can then interact with the song in three ways.
The so-called "Tag" feature allows users to identify a song and tag it, both through an SMS and via a personalized web site with a list of identified songs. This web site allows the user to track the songs he has requested and purchase the CDs via the Internet through affiliates such as Amazon.com. The service's "Send" feature let users forward a song clip to a friend. This is sent via a free text message with a link to the IVR short dial, which is charged at a premium rate. Finally, the "Buy" feature allows user to purchase the CD - a transaction involving Shazam partner on the site.
Looking ahead, Barton envisions a service that will "be a bit like instant messaging." The service would link users to their buddies with the best taste in music. "It would allow you to get the same cool song your buddy gets or recommends - and the 'follow-me' aspect of the service means it would market itself." The service could also be expanded to let users get the picks and tips that their favorite club and radio DJs recommend.
Last Friday, Shazam officially launched with four UK operators. The company is also "in conversations" with three German operators and involved in more "concrete negotiations" with Japan's three mobile operators as well as "one of the major trading houses in Japan," Barton reveals. Other players in the mobile space, including tj.net, have also confided that they would be interested in partnering with Shazam to complete their music offerings. "We like the technology a lot, and music recognition is definitely a service that music lovers would appreciate, but we wouldn't want to invest the money to develop it (the technology) on our own," Roatta commented.
P(l)ay that Tune
While mobile music has what it takes to be a killer app, it's important to remember that it's an emerging market where many players risk being sidelined. Unlike most other wireless content, operators and providers actually have little ownership and control over music content. This lies in the hands of record companies and a handful of rebels who create and distribute their own music compositions. Music is also not the kind of content that operators can tuck their own rather dull and mainstream branding campaigns and logos. The user is loyal to the artist - not the operator.
And, while music companies are all aware they should harness the mobile channel to market their stockpile of content, they are also know they deserve top billing. Indeed, EMI recently drew the line and told ringtone providers some of its biggest chart hits were off-limits. This has sparked speculation that it plans to launch its own ringtone service. To further complicate matters, the issue of digital rights management (DRM), licensing and copyright will require the value chain to make plenty of room for a slew of content aggregators and legal middlemen who will also want their share of the revenues.
But that shouldn't intimidate providers. Mobile music is not a new market, but it does require a totally new approach that builds on personalization, community and communication. Companies in this space shouldn't dwell on tough topics such as devices, downloads and DRM. They should get down to the business of testing and developing music services that integrate existing technologies and applications. They should also start partnering with content owners and teaming up with the artists for access to exclusive content. Otherwise, providers may find themselves peddling, the cheap seats, the bootleg CDs and the (un)official memorabilia. And that's an offer music fans can definitely refuse.
culater
ot-Mobile Music - Giving Vendors New Hope
By Niall McKay in Silicon Valley , Nov 18 2002
Following its acrimonious divorce with the Internet (a la Napster), the music business, in search of a new love and cash cow, is flirting with wireless industry. Last month at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association’s annual knees-up in Las Vegas, the two new lovers stepped out together. If the marriage is fruitful, its first child will be musical ringtones, their second will be music clips for multimedia messaging and promotional purposes, and their third will be mp3 music files.
Indeed, it could be argued that all three children are on their way now. Ringtones have only recently arrived in the US, AT&T and others are using music for multimedia messaging, and every major phone and PDA manufacturer has licenses of the dominant mp3 software players from vendors including RealNetworks and Microsoft. Of course, listening to music while on the move is not a new concept. It’s been around since the transistor radio, and for years, Walkmans, radios and minidisk players have been enormously popular. But what is changing is that digital music (albeit primitive) can now be delivered over the cellular infrastructure and played or stored on cell-phone like devices. As Apple iPod and other mp3 player users will tell you, once you get used to listing to an artist one song at a time, it is very hard to go back to listening to an artist one CD at a time.
Ring My Bell
Ovum, the London-based high-tech consultancy based, predicts the global mobile entertainment market will be worth $3 billion by 2005. The CTIA says that by 2006, US consumers will spend in excess of $13 billion on mobile devices and $8 billion on wireless games. Other consultancy firms such as the Yankee Group, poo poo such wildly optimistic predictions, citing a survey conducted last month in which 82 percent of US cellular subscribers said that the did not want or need mobile Internet connectivity and that current services were too expensive and too complicated to use.
So while some US consumers might find mobile e-mail and text messaging a bit of a yawn, the industry hopes that they will be turned on by downloading ringtones. European and Japanese users spent $1.3 billion on ringtones last year, accounting for a decent chunk of the music industry’s total revenue of $33 billion, senior EMI vice president Jay Samit told CTIA attendees last month.
These ring tones will become the gateway drug to wireless music and entertainment services, and the music industry hopes the public, once hooked, will keep coming back for more. It’s not just another whistle or bell, they believe, it is the “on switch” for a money machine. However, those who have watched a similar situation develop with the Web will realize it takes a great deal longer for content to become king than even Bill Gates predicted. Although he made his famous “content is king” speech back in 1996, only now is paid Web content taking off in large numbers.
That said, who would have thought ten years ago that these little jingles would become a billion-dollar business? Companies like Faith West and Moviso have built sizable businesses around providing ringtones, animations, games and content services in Europe and Asia, but a problem is that current wireless infrastructure is not good enough to enable users download the original sound files.
So technology vendors are coming up with innovative ways to circumnavigate this problem by providing sound reproduction software. Beatnik, a digital music software vendor founded by former pop star Thomas Dolby, has a novel way of recreating the music.
“Rather than sending an audio file, what you actually send is what is akin to the sheet music,” says Jeremy Copp Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing of Beatnik. “Software on the device then recreates the music. Of course, other elements, such as the voice of Britney Spears, have to be sent separately.”
If one looks at the progression of technical gadgets over the last decade, we can certainly see how devices such as laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones have become fashion statements and status symbols. It’s a bit like the way wristwatches and sunglasses were status symbols for the previous generation. But now the landscape is changing again, because the data that we store on them becomes a statement in itself.
“When you consume music on the TV or the radio, you consume it for yourself,” says Tapio Anttila, mobile entertainment analyst with Brauning, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based research consultancy. “When you consume mobile entertainment such as ring tones, you consume it for those around you.”
Apart from demonstrating your uniqueness, customizing your ringtone can have practical advantages too. It can prevent the other 100 people in the room from reaching for their phones every time one rings. Furthermore, most phones allow you to customize the ringtone for each entry in your address book so you know who is calling. Childish, perhaps but nonetheless useful.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
However, as Anttila points out, the use of ringtones and screensavers and animations fall somewhere between a fashion statement and a bumper sticker.
“There is a big change taking place here,” says Anttila. “These are their lifestyle or genre statements.”
Therefore, the creative types are trying to figure out how the public will want to consume this new content, or more importantly, what they will be willing to pay for. One could, for example, subscribe to a hip-hop or R&B portal such as Urban World Wireless which provides a news service, ringtones, screensavers, and the like for urban hipsters. The Ministry of Sound, one of London’s big rave clubs in the city’s Elephant and Castle district, now has large rave culture portal offering an online radio station, a magazine, listings, and chat. It is also prime candidate to become a lifestyle portal.
AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group and AT & T are working on another possibility. They have formed a partnership to create "Warner Music" which will deliver song clips, artist information and other materials via wireless devices. Subscribers will be offered 30-second music clips, artists images, screen savers and musical ringtones, for a fee. Indeed they are not the only ones; most of the record labels are contemplating similar services, generally some type of MMS offering.
Meanwhile, similar arrangements are springing up in Europe. The Foo Fighters, for example, are promoting their new album, One by One, with and MMS service that includes a 30-second audio clips of tracks, as well as interviews with band members and images that customers can access for about 75 cents per minute. The deal was promoted through a spam message sent to 1.6 million O2 wireless customers across Europe.
Perhaps you think that you have heard it all before – well, you have. There was a lot of nonsense talked about lifestyle portals and the Internet. So what’s different this time? Better content. In 1996 the content available digitally was… mostly rubbish. Ringtones have a limited life span too, however, music is compelling content.
“Ringtones are certainly where all this media consumption starts,” says Jim Griffin, CEO of Cherry Lane Digital, and a founder of Evolab, a wireless media deliver technology company. He’s also testified before the US Congress on peer-to-peer computing. “Audio is to the mobile device what video is to the stationary computer.”
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
To Griffin, who describes Evolab as the provider of a celestial jukebox, wireless mobile audio will be more popular than the car radio.
“However, we won’t see any huge changes until we can stream 32k content,” he says. “That will be the turning point when mobile devices add personal stereo as a option.”
There is no doubt in Griffin’s mind that cell phones or personal communicators will become music delivery gizmos. “We have too many gadgets as it is, too many chargers, and too many cables,” he says. “I think that we work to get more functionality out of the gadgets we have.”
Nokia, Sanyo, and SonyEricsson, to name but a few, seem to think so. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of a device that could play the role of personal stereo better than the cell phone. Many phones in Japan now some with a built-in camera, so they already have the necessary storage capacity.
Furthermore, battery life is not really a problem, as personal audio devices such like mp3 players use little power, and Bluetooth functionality can make uploading, downloading, and swapping data easy. Music players will, in time, just become another function, like a clock or calendar. Nokia has already integrated an FM radio in some of its models, and last year Sony had a range of memory stick phones on sale in Japan, as did Panasonic, Sanyo and other vendors. However, so far, cell phone/mp3 audio devices have been a failure in Japan largely due to the ridiculous digital rights management software. Sony software, for example, will only allow the user to transfer each track a given number of times before the license expires.
“There is really no reason for digital rights management software to be so onerous or psychotic,” says Ty Roberts, CTO of Gracenote, which runs on online CD information database. “The music industry got lucky last time, and were able to charge people to change from the tape or LP to CD. But they are not going to get away with charging users more than once for a particular piece of music.”
However, Roberts believes that there are plenty of workable solutions. For example, rather than buying the actually bits and bytes that make up the a artist’s track, customers could buy the rights to play that track and download it as-needed from a service like Evolab or Gracenote. The CD database, for example, has technology that can analyze the sound wave patterns and recognize the piece of music.
Griffin says that what seems like shortsightedness on behalf of music industry, in reality, just owns up to the fact that we live in the age of Tarzan economics. The record companies will not let go of one vine, the one that pays their salary, until then next vine appears.
But the music industry sees wireless as that next vine, as EMI’s Samit told the crowd at CTIA: "The music industry will save wireless,” he said, “and wireless will save the music industry."
culater
ot-Mobile Music - Giving Vendors New Hope
By Niall McKay in Silicon Valley , Nov 18 2002
Niall Mckay
Following its acrimonious divorce with the Internet (a la Napster), the music business, in search of a new love and cash cow, is flirting with wireless industry. Last month at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association’s annual knees-up in Las Vegas, the two new lovers stepped out together. If the marriage is fruitful, its first child will be musical ringtones, their second will be music clips for multimedia messaging and promotional purposes, and their third will be mp3 music files.
Indeed, it could be argued that all three children are on their way now. Ringtones have only recently arrived in the US, AT&T and others are using music for multimedia messaging, and every major phone and PDA manufacturer has licenses of the dominant mp3 software players from vendors including RealNetworks and Microsoft. Of course, listening to music while on the move is not a new concept. It’s been around since the transistor radio, and for years, Walkmans, radios and minidisk players have been enormously popular. But what is changing is that digital music (albeit primitive) can now be delivered over the cellular infrastructure and played or stored on cell-phone like devices. As Apple iPod and other mp3 player users will tell you, once you get used to listing to an artist one song at a time, it is very hard to go back to listening to an artist one CD at a time.
Ring My Bell
Ovum, the London-based high-tech consultancy based, predicts the global mobile entertainment market will be worth $3 billion by 2005. The CTIA says that by 2006, US consumers will spend in excess of $13 billion on mobile devices and $8 billion on wireless games. Other consultancy firms such as the Yankee Group, poo poo such wildly optimistic predictions, citing a survey conducted last month in which 82 percent of US cellular subscribers said that the did not want or need mobile Internet connectivity and that current services were too expensive and too complicated to use.
So while some US consumers might find mobile e-mail and text messaging a bit of a yawn, the industry hopes that they will be turned on by downloading ringtones. European and Japanese users spent $1.3 billion on ringtones last year, accounting for a decent chunk of the music industry’s total revenue of $33 billion, senior EMI vice president Jay Samit told CTIA attendees last month.
These ring tones will become the gateway drug to wireless music and entertainment services, and the music industry hopes the public, once hooked, will keep coming back for more. It’s not just another whistle or bell, they believe, it is the “on switch” for a money machine. However, those who have watched a similar situation develop with the Web will realize it takes a great deal longer for content to become king than even Bill Gates predicted. Although he made his famous “content is king” speech back in 1996, only now is paid Web content taking off in large numbers.
That said, who would have thought ten years ago that these little jingles would become a billion-dollar business? Companies like Faith West and Moviso have built sizable businesses around providing ringtones, animations, games and content services in Europe and Asia, but a problem is that current wireless infrastructure is not good enough to enable users download the original sound files.
So technology vendors are coming up with innovative ways to circumnavigate this problem by providing sound reproduction software. Beatnik, a digital music software vendor founded by former pop star Thomas Dolby, has a novel way of recreating the music.
“Rather than sending an audio file, what you actually send is what is akin to the sheet music,” says Jeremy Copp Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing of Beatnik. “Software on the device then recreates the music. Of course, other elements, such as the voice of Britney Spears, have to be sent separately.”
If one looks at the progression of technical gadgets over the last decade, we can certainly see how devices such as laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones have become fashion statements and status symbols. It’s a bit like the way wristwatches and sunglasses were status symbols for the previous generation. But now the landscape is changing again, because the data that we store on them becomes a statement in itself.
“When you consume music on the TV or the radio, you consume it for yourself,” says Tapio Anttila, mobile entertainment analyst with Brauning, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based research consultancy. “When you consume mobile entertainment such as ring tones, you consume it for those around you.”
Apart from demonstrating your uniqueness, customizing your ringtone can have practical advantages too. It can prevent the other 100 people in the room from reaching for their phones every time one rings. Furthermore, most phones allow you to customize the ringtone for each entry in your address book so you know who is calling. Childish, perhaps but nonetheless useful.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
However, as Anttila points out, the use of ringtones and screensavers and animations fall somewhere between a fashion statement and a bumper sticker.
“There is a big change taking place here,” says Anttila. “These are their lifestyle or genre statements.”
Therefore, the creative types are trying to figure out how the public will want to consume this new content, or more importantly, what they will be willing to pay for. One could, for example, subscribe to a hip-hop or R&B portal such as Urban World Wireless which provides a news service, ringtones, screensavers, and the like for urban hipsters. The Ministry of Sound, one of London’s big rave clubs in the city’s Elephant and Castle district, now has large rave culture portal offering an online radio station, a magazine, listings, and chat. It is also prime candidate to become a lifestyle portal.
AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group and AT & T are working on another possibility. They have formed a partnership to create "Warner Music" which will deliver song clips, artist information and other materials via wireless devices. Subscribers will be offered 30-second music clips, artists images, screen savers and musical ringtones, for a fee. Indeed they are not the only ones; most of the record labels are contemplating similar services, generally some type of MMS offering.
Meanwhile, similar arrangements are springing up in Europe. The Foo Fighters, for example, are promoting their new album, One by One, with and MMS service that includes a 30-second audio clips of tracks, as well as interviews with band members and images that customers can access for about 75 cents per minute. The deal was promoted through a spam message sent to 1.6 million O2 wireless customers across Europe.
Perhaps you think that you have heard it all before – well, you have. There was a lot of nonsense talked about lifestyle portals and the Internet. So what’s different this time? Better content. In 1996 the content available digitally was… mostly rubbish. Ringtones have a limited life span too, however, music is compelling content.
“Ringtones are certainly where all this media consumption starts,” says Jim Griffin, CEO of Cherry Lane Digital, and a founder of Evolab, a wireless media deliver technology company. He’s also testified before the US Congress on peer-to-peer computing. “Audio is to the mobile device what video is to the stationary computer.”
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
To Griffin, who describes Evolab as the provider of a celestial jukebox, wireless mobile audio will be more popular than the car radio.
“However, we won’t see any huge changes until we can stream 32k content,” he says. “That will be the turning point when mobile devices add personal stereo as a option.”
There is no doubt in Griffin’s mind that cell phones or personal communicators will become music delivery gizmos. “We have too many gadgets as it is, too many chargers, and too many cables,” he says. “I think that we work to get more functionality out of the gadgets we have.”
Nokia, Sanyo, and SonyEricsson, to name but a few, seem to think so. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of a device that could play the role of personal stereo better than the cell phone. Many phones in Japan now some with a built-in camera, so they already have the necessary storage capacity.
Furthermore, battery life is not really a problem, as personal audio devices such like mp3 players use little power, and Bluetooth functionality can make uploading, downloading, and swapping data easy. Music players will, in time, just become another function, like a clock or calendar. Nokia has already integrated an FM radio in some of its models, and last year Sony had a range of memory stick phones on sale in Japan, as did Panasonic, Sanyo and other vendors. However, so far, cell phone/mp3 audio devices have been a failure in Japan largely due to the ridiculous digital rights management software. Sony software, for example, will only allow the user to transfer each track a given number of times before the license expires.
“There is really no reason for digital rights management software to be so onerous or psychotic,” says Ty Roberts, CTO of Gracenote, which runs on online CD information database. “The music industry got lucky last time, and were able to charge people to change from the tape or LP to CD. But they are not going to get away with charging users more than once for a particular piece of music.”
However, Roberts believes that there are plenty of workable solutions. For example, rather than buying the actually bits and bytes that make up the a artist’s track, customers could buy the rights to play that track and download it as-needed from a service like Evolab or Gracenote. The CD database, for example, has technology that can analyze the sound wave patterns and recognize the piece of music.
Griffin says that what seems like shortsightedness on behalf of music industry, in reality, just owns up to the fact that we live in the age of Tarzan economics. The record companies will not let go of one vine, the one that pays their salary, until then next vine appears.
But the music industry sees wireless as that next vine, as EMI’s Samit told the crowd at CTIA: "The music industry will save wireless,” he said, “and wireless will save the music industry."
culater
ot-Mobile Music - Singing a New Tune
By Niall McKay in Silicon Valley, Nov 22 2002
Will record labels dominate the wireless music world?
Niall Mckay
In May of 2000, Finnish girl band Nylon Beat broke new ground by releasing their song “Not Guilty” as a mobile ringtone before it was available on album, tape or CD. Within a few days, thousands of fans downloaded the ringtone for about a dollar a pop.
Of course, many artists are now using mobile culture to promote their music. In Europe last month, the Foo Fighters launched a promotional MMS service, and another Finnish rock group, called Kemopetrol, offers mobile users Java-based video clips of their new song Goodbye. Meanwhile in the US, rapper Nelly followed in the footsteps of Japanese boy bands, perhaps for the first and the last time, by selling a personalized cell phone tabbed the “Nelly Celly,”. Which features games and “Nelly-ized” ring tones. Furthermore, the rapper’s voice is used for voicemail greetings.
It’s the record industry’s wet dream – a new revenue stream. No only do mobile revenues look set to compensate for declining record sales, ringtone production costs are a relative pittance. So are musicians singing their way to the bank? Not very likely. They’ll get a pretty thin slice of this multi-billion dollar industry.
Still, one would be forgiven for thinking that artists may make a killing when the cell phone infrastructure becomes good enough to either stream or exchange high-quality audio files. Again this is unlikely, since artists are still having a hard time fighting for a decent slice of the digitally distributed music pie. Currently, artists that do not publish their own music make less than $2.00 per CD. So can they cut out the middlemen? Er, no. It seems that the record industry won that battle too, but on the Internet.
There is little doubt that that artists are getting hip to the mobile revenue stream which has often promised but seldom delivered massive wealth to those aiming at the youth market. Sooner or later, the cell phone will probably become part of the music distribution cycle – either as an MP3 player, or as a streaming music distribution, but until then, the music industry will have to be satisfied with ringtones.
Ringing Up Value
While musicians may not earn millions from these little cell phone jingles, they can ill afford to ignore them. Ringtones have now been firmly established as part of the market machine, and record companies like EMI, Warner, and Sony now all produce them as par for the course.
In Japan, for example, there are about 200 new ringtones produced each month, and there are dozens of related Web sites and services. In fact, JASRAC, a Japanese record industry licensing group, collected 3.8 billion yen (about USD 32 million at current exchange rates) in royalties in fiscal 2001 on behalf of its artists and music publishers. Artists get roughly the same revenue per ringtone as they do for sheet music versions of their songs, working out to be between 7 to 10 percent of the tone’s retail price, which is then split with the music publisher.
To put this figure in perspective, analysts expect that 40 million of the 140 million mobile phones sold in the US in 2003 will support downloading ringtones, and further expect the average user to buy approximately 3 tones. US operators like Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless are already selling ringtones, charging about USD 1 for a standard tone and USD 2 for a ringtone with an on-screen animation.
Furthermore, record companies and artists often provide free ringtones to promote their music, says Steve Myers, a manager for mobile developer and consulantcy Layer-8 Technologies and the editor of Music Media Watch, a Tokyo-based newsletter that tracks the digital music sector. This lowers the average price per ringtone to about a dollar a pop.
Layer-8 manages the process of turning music into ringtones, and also creates musical games such as a Java program that will teach people the guitar chords to accompany the tone they’ve downloaded. Layer-8 is one of about 60 companies in Tokyo that produce both their own tones and work under contract with the record companies to turn artists’ music into ringtones.
“Typically, we will hire a musician to take a tune and turn it into a midi file,” says Myers. “Musicians can earn about $100 per midi file, which for many of them adds up to between $1,000 and $3,000 per month.”
Usually, the musician will work with a keyboard and recreate the tune in a ringtone format. Somewhat sadly, ringtones have yet to establish themselves as an art form in their own right, and most of those that aren’t created from popular tunes are gimmickcy sound effects, such as a dog barking or a fire engine In fact, according to Myers there is just one ring tone business -- called Uwasa no Indie Melo – which focuses on ring tones from up-and-coming independent label artists. Daniel Scuka, who runs another Tokyo-based newsletter, Wireless Watch, says that for the most part ringtones are still an afterthought, and while Japanese network operators such as DoCoMo seem to believe that music will produce the next wireless content revolution, they haven’t really moved beyond ringtones yet.
“The operators here are terrified that their networks will be used to share pirated music,” he says. “So DoCoMo, for example, will only work with Sony’s digital rights management package – OpenMG software.”
This means that no digital music can be downloaded via the DoCoMo network unless it is encoded in the OpenMG format, which of course requires costly software available only from Sony, Scuka says. This effectively prevents smaller and lesser-known artists from participating in this content revolution.
Business As Usual
So if you thought that wireless music, via either ringtones or MP3 files, would revolutionize the music business, taking power from the record company pinheads and putting it back in the hands of the artists, then think again.
Stephen McGarrigle co-developed and ran a San Francisco-based trip-hop and techno online radio station and Web site called X-Radio. The idea was to provide music such that was very popular among the club-going youth but that was never played by radio stations. “We showcased independent artists and labels that were more interested in the exposure and prospect of a CD sale than a royalty,” he says. “But it’s almost impossible to run a small independent Internet radio station legally.”
The site, like many others, failed. Indeed, those that did not fall by the wayside because of lack of revenue were recently dealt a blow when the US Library of Congress mandated that station owners must pay royalties of .07 cents per song per listener, pricing most of the smaller Web stations out of business. One could argue that it would be far more feasible for radio stations geared towards mobile device users (whenever they pop up in the future) to collect this charge, as they could bill their listeners through their wireless carrier.
Aaron Day, who founded a small record label, Auslander Music, believes that the only way to get around the big record companies’ stranglehold on the distribution channels is to offer copyright-free music. “We feel that there is just no way to make money from the music itself,” says Day. “In fact, most bands don't make much money from their CD sales. They make money from merchandising and concerts.”
Auslander eschews record sale revenues by offering free digital music and attempts to make money on its bands’ concerts and t-shirts, offering artists a chance to gain much-needed exposure and listeners through the free downloads.
Still, it’s hard not to regard the record companies as clueless, and their decision-making as both aggravating and greedy. The pricing breakdown for a major-label CD is something like this: about $2 for royalties, $.23 for recording costs, $0.60 cents for edition costs, $1.05 for production costs, $1 for advertising and promotion, $1.58 for distribution, $0.75 for general costs, $0.30 for taxes, and $3 for the retailer markup. That means that the virtually the only cost that could be saved by digital music would be the $1.58 for distribution. Furthermore, the $2 for royalties is split between the artist and publisher.
But nonetheless, the Universal Music Group has made an attempt to get more artists to sign away their digital distribution rights by increasing their digital royalties a whopping 25 percent – upping the payout rate from the equivalent of a single to that of a cd – and cutting bogus charges like “new media” and “packaging” fees. Very generous indeed.
culater
"We can optimistically assume that by 2010, speech input and output will be ubiquitous and available for every system that has electronics," he said.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20064.html
culater
ot-Microsoft Creating Virtual Brain
By James Maguire
NewsFactor Network
November 22, 2002
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20064.html
One of the project's chief logistical hurdles involves developing a cost-effective system with the memory capacity of the human mind.
Researchers at Microsoft's Media Presence Lab are developing a "virtual brain," a PC-based database that holds a record of an individual's complete life experience. Called MyLifeBits, the project aims to make this database of human memories searchable in the manner of a conventional search engine.
"By 2047, almost all information will be in cyberspace -- including all knowledge and creative works," said one of the project's leaders, Gordon Bell. "The most significant benefit will be a breakthrough in our ability to remotely communicate with one another using all our senses."
To enable this remote communication, Bell's group is developing a technology that he refers to as telepresence. "Telepresence technology provides for both space and time shifting by allowing a user to communicate with other users via text, graphics, voice, video and shared program operation."
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Multimedia Synapses
The core of the MyLifeBits project is an online PC-based system that holds everything that can be digitally stored about an individual. Microsoft researchers refer to it as a sort of "virtual shoebox" that holds all of a person's e-mail, home movies, meeting details and other memorabilia.
Unlike a real shoebox, say the researchers, MyLifeBits would allow a user to input a keyword like "pet" to see and hear all material relating to a childhood pet.
In effect, MyLifeBits would allow a user to run a Google search on his or her life. The database would be searchable in many ways, including by date, allowing a businessperson to find all communications associated with a given meeting, for instance.
MyLifeBits also would be capable of creating personal narratives by cross-referencing chronological material related to two or more people in an individual's life.
It's All About Me
"It sounds like weblogging run amuck," Aberdeen Group analyst Dana Gardner told NewsFactor, explaining that the current trend toward Internet self-expression sometimes veers toward the obsessive.
Yet Gardner also sees the value of MyLifeBits, especially as a time capsule for future historians.
He noted that there is currently an overcapacity problem in network fiber, storage and processing capability. "We need to find the application that will utilize the infrastructure that's available, and this sounds like a way of doing that," he said.
Guinea Pig
Microsoft researcher Bell is himself the guinea pig for the prototype system. He is uploading a massive amount of personal memorabilia, from his trips to Alaska to his biking excursions in France. All of his e-mail is stored on the system, as is his passport, all of his work documents, and recordings of all of his phone calls.
Each of his myriad media files is tagged with a verbal or written identifier, allowing them to be cross-linked to other files. His spoken tags are converted into text files to make them searchable.
Bell said he believes that in the future, this process will be streamlined. "We can optimistically assume that by 2010, speech input and output will be ubiquitous and available for every system that has electronics," he said.
Computer Memory - and Security
One of the project's chief logistical hurdles involves developing a cost-effective system with the memory capacity of the human mind.
The Microsoft researchers forecast that within five years, a 1,000 GB hard drive will cost less than $300. While this would provide enough capacity to store up to four hours of video per day for a year, it is still not enough to store all of an individual's experiences.
Ensuring the security of MyLifeBits is also a crucial concern, especially given the sensitive nature of the data to be archived. Because the system would be online, making it "hack proof" would be critical before MyLifeBits could become viable in the mass market.
Microsoft representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Work in Process
Jim Gemmell, one of the project's other leaders, described some of the problems with creating this vast archive. "Indexing and retrieval of photographs and video clips can be a headache," he said.
However, Gemmell added, "When it gets too frustrating to find something, you can always watch some of some classic movies you've captured from DVDs."
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20064.html
culater
Efforts to stop music piracy 'pointless'
History will defeat attempts to stop CD piracy
Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work.
So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft.
The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down.
They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy.
Doomed disks
The paper was prepared for a workshop on Digital Rights Management, (DRM), at the US Association for Computing Machinery's annual conference on Computer and Communications Security.
Digital Rights Management describes attempts to stop people copying music from CDs and sharing the tracks via peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and Madster.
To stop this piracy some music makers are starting to produce CDs that will not play on computers.
Websites such as the Campaign for Digital Rights are documenting which CDs will and will not play on home computers.
The music industry as a whole is also using the courts to shut down file-swapping systems and so far has enjoyed some successes.
CDs by artists such as Alicia Keys are copy protected
But Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado and Bryan Willman write that ultimately these attempts at control will fail.
The success that the music industry has had in stopping file-swapping on systems such as Napster was due entirely to the fact that many of them rely on a few people to provide most of the material being swapped.
By targeting these super-swappers the record industry could severely restrict how much music is available to the majority of members who take without sharing.
The researchers point out that the growth of consumer broadband and cheap data storage will mean the numbers of people willing to swap is growing and will soon outstrip attempts to shut them down.
The growth of instant messaging systems will also contribute to this gradual loss of control.
The rising numbers of recordable CD and DVD drives are also making it much easier for consumers to create their own music compilations and share them with friends which could also stymie anti-piracy work.
Price fix
The paper also pointed out the technical flaws in DRM systems and said that, so far, all of them have been defeated.
In one case the CD protection system designed to stop people playing the disks on a computer was foiled by using a marker pen to cover the outer ring of a disk.
The authors reserve strongest criticism for watermarking systems which put invisible markers in music that stops tracks being passed around and shared.
But the "severe" commercial and social problems inherent in such schemes plus their technical shortcomings mean that they are "doomed to failure", warn the authors.
The paper's researchers emphasise that it represents their opinions rather than those of Microsoft, but their conclusions are likely to make uncomfortable reading for music industry executives.
In essence, say the researchers, file-swapping systems have already won. The only way for music companies to compete is on the same terms by making music easy to get hold of and cheap to buy.
Evidence gathered by critics of the music industry has shown that CD prices have steadily risen over the past few years and may have contributed to the slump in sales as much as the rise of file-swapping systems.
In late September five music companies and three music retailers were fined more than $143million after being found guilty of fixing CD prices too high
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2502399.stm
culater
ot-Speech and the Automobile
By Patty McHugh
No matter where you get your car and driver news, you’ve probably seen the recent flurry of headlines reporting new implementations of voice recognition technology in cars - and not just in high-end cars, but in midrange autos such as Honda. As little as ten years ago, something like voice recognition technology in the automobile sounded positively space age to most, but today, voice and wireless technology are becoming more and more commonplace in the ultimate mobile device—the car. But will these on-board communications capabilities change the way we drive, the way we interact with our cars?
At first, voice recognition seemed to be the catch-all solution to the demand for safer, more reliable ways to help drivers keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel while enjoying the conveniences of modern technology. Yet the relatively slow uptake of some initiatives has caused consumers to wonder whether this is truly what we want from our cars. Are we ready for such a dynamic solution?
According to Forrester Research, there’s no doubt that voice recognition is the future, but Forrester also predicts that even when the technology is ready, we’re never going to let go of some of the tactile techniques with which we’re so familiar. In fact, some users will always prefer them. But perhaps in the car, where safety must be our priority at all times, voice-activated controls for things such as mobile phones, dashboard controls and GPS navigation systems will prompt us to change the way we think and use our voices above all other means of interaction. With voice recognition technology, we can utilize these systems - safely - as we drive.
And the McKinsey Quarterly report says yes, we are ready for this dynamic solution, predicting that by 2010, total annual U.S. telematics revenues could reach $40 billion and estimating industry growth at 2 to 2.5 percent yearly.
Indeed, after years of expectation, voice recognition is fulfilling its promise. Faster chip speeds and more sophisticated algorithms mean voice recognition is performing better than ever before. New speech-enabled applications are hitting the market as businesses and consumers realize that voice is the most natural way to access information as they drive. Perhaps the slow start we’ve seen so far can be attributed to a too-narrow view of speech technology as merely a cool gadget in a high-end car.
Today, as more technology is embedded into vehicles, telematics is evolving to encompass more than voice technology; it now spans wireless data services, remote monitoring and diagnostic capabilities. This is important because it expands the scope of telematics and has the potential to benefit sectors tied closely to the auto industry—sectors such as insurance and petroleum.
Finally, the auto industry is beginning to apply one of the fundamental principles of retail - that consumer offerings must be tailored to consumer needs - to the enhancements being made to on-board car technology. A recent study by Driscoll-Wolfe shows that safety (such as hands-free phone service and emergency road assistance) are the primary reasons for consumers to request telematics devices in vehicles. And today, voice-enabled applications offering hands- and eyes-free interaction for drivers are making their way into cars.
For example, Michigan-based automotive supplier Johnson Controls uses IBM voice recognition technology to implement this type of mobile communications system for DaimlerChrysler. UConnect, a Bluetooth-based communication system, will be offered in the 2003 model year, and is focused on hands-free telephoning. UConnect allows an ordinary hand-held cellphone, laid down casually on the seat, to work with systems in the car. The driver dials the phone with voice commands and carries on a conversation by talking into a receiver installed in the car. The answering voice comes through the car’s built-in speaker system. UConnect also stores up to 32 numbers in an address book, transferring a call from a built-in car phone to a mobile phone, working with multiple phones.
Diagnostics checks are also a key facet of the safety that telematics devices offer. An example of this is cars that combine in-vehicle diagnostics with interactive voice recognition technology to alert drivers to problems, such as an overheating or malfunctioning engine. If a car becomes disabled, the off-board computing software will automatically call for roadside assistance, notify the driver and download a complete diagnostic “health check” report into the computer system of a nearby service station. When the car is brought in, the station already knows exactly what needs to be fixed, eliminating guesswork for both driver and repair crew. Cars incorporating these systems will be available in less than a year.
More recently, car buyers have started asking for telematics applications such as route guidance, personal interest information and yellow pages assistance. To address this growing customer demand, Honda announced in July of this year that it will provide a voice-activated navigation system in select new 2003 model Accords. This enhanced voice recognition technology enables drivers to ask for directions to points of interest and hear responses over the existing car audio system, allowing them to easily and efficiently reach their destinations without having to look at maps or stop and ask for directions.
Voice recognition technology is clearly a fundamental component of the successful delivery of a much larger, full-featured, set of telematics services. But this requires a complex network of different industry players working together to create value for users while sharing the time and costs required to accelerate industry growth. In turn, this also requires cooperation among a diverse group that includes telematics service providers (TSPs), tier-one suppliers, wireless carriers, content providers and, of course, technology providers and auto manufacturers. Clearly, the need to integrate various software and hardware from many disparate sources demands agreed-upon and open standards.
These issues are being addressed through the formation of groups such as the Telematics Suppliers Consortium and the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration. More importantly, the concept of open systems architecture and standards, critical to the development of telematics applications and services, is gaining traction within these groups. Open Internet technologies such as XML, VoiceXML, SOAP, OSGi and UDDI allow TSPs to provide dynamic content to the customer on demand, forming a middleware infrastructure that will greatly reduce the integration costs of a TSP. Instead of developing unique integration efforts for each content provider, the TSP and its content-providing partners can communicate using published service interfaces based on open messaging formats.
The key to success for speech technology as a part of the greater telematics industry ultimately lies in the user’s perception of value gained versus the attached price tag. In essence, users must feel the need for the technology and see the benefits and usefulness of purchasing such embedded, voice-enabled devices in a car. As 2.5 and third-generation WLAN and Bluetooth technologies are deployed around the world, we will see a growing demand for this type of offering as the new generations of technologies will better integrate data and voice, making users feel more at ease with in-car systems. On an even more positive note, the formation of standards bodies and groups will accelerate development and increase customer choices and applications based on the advanced technologies needed to attract consumer demand.
Clearly, voice recognition technology in the automobile holds potential far greater than serving as a cool gadget at the high end. Linking real-time driver and vehicle information to relevant industries and agencies mean better, faster diagnostics, increased safety and better bottom lines, and the automotive industry, as well as related industries, are starting to realize that. For now, drivers are reaping the benefits of a nascent industry. They’re getting vital real-time information and navigational aids. Other top priorities include safety and reliability. Implementing the right set of services to accommodate these needs now will drive the ongoing and future success of voice recognition technology in the telematics industry.
Patty McHugh is the director of PvC Telematics for IBM Pervasive Computing.
http://www.speechtechmag.com/issues/7_6/cover/1478-1.html
culater
ot-Speech Goes Mobile
By Alan Schwartz
What is the value of speech technologies in mobile devices? On its face the answer is obvious: Speech is the most natural of all user interfaces. Humans are genetically engineered to talk and listen, so unless human genetics changes sometime soon, Speech is and always will be the most natural interface between humans and machines. Add to this the fact that, because of their small size, keyboards are generally not available on mobile devices, and the case for speech technologies—including speech recognition, text-to-speech and speaker verification—on mobile devices gets even stronger.
So, why isn’t speech on every device? There are a number of reasons. Let’s start by looking at speech recognition. Large vocabulary, speaker independent recognition that requires minimal or no training is a recent phenomenon. Based on their success deploying powerful speech applications in large network-based environments, companies are now migrating them into the embedded space. The result is speech recognition with large dynamic vocabularies (e.g., up to 100,000 words) that allow users to buy a mobile device, synchronize it with their Outlook™ or Notes™ and then be able to immediately access the stored contacts using only their voice. This is a big step forward from the tedious “voice enrollment” that is currently required on most speech capable mobile phones today.
On the speech generation side, new technologies from TTS (Text-To-Speech) engines like have improved the quality of synthetic speech to the point where it is now nearly indistinguishable from recorded prompts. This dramatic improvement in naturalness offers many new options for phone services. Using high quality TTS, mobile devices can now offer an intelligible voice that users would actually enjoy; making it now possible to have the device read emails, play back a list of contacts in an address book, or read out song titles on an MP3 player, without annoying the user.
The second barrier to embedded speech technologies has been the limited processing power of mainstream devices. This is now changing with the introduction of platforms such as Texas Instruments’ OMAP™, Intel’s xScale™, Hitachi’s SH-Mobile and Motorola’s MobileGT™. Limited memory and CPU speed are no longer a serious obstacle to getting powerful speech recognition and TTS engines onto these platforms. While it may take a few years for these platforms to dominate mainstream mobile devices— as the cost of the chips and related memory are still an issue—the platforms are on the market today and device manufacturers are beginning to incorporate them.
The third hurdle to getting speech onto mobile devices is customer adoption. Although speech may be the most natural of all interfaces, it is not the only interface. For consumers to really feel the need for speech interfaces, speech needs to relieve a very real “point of pain” in an existing user interface. One example is recent hands-free legislation that bans the use of cell phones in cars by limiting drivers’ access to their cell phones. The Gartner Group estimates that 49.5 percent of all cell phone calls are made from the car, and with legislation being reviewed in over 20 states banning the use of phones in the car, speech represents a viable solution. Using speech, drivers can access contacts and dial phone numbers using their voice, allowing them to keep their eyes on the road, their hands on the steering wheel, and ultimately reducing driver distraction.
Navigation devices with all their good intentions suffer from a similar point of pain, as users have trouble entering a destination quickly and easily. One can argue that navigation devices would be more widely used in rental cars if the driver were able to easily input the destination information. Rather than typing in a destination on an awkward keypad, the driver could say, “New York Marriott Marquis”. In fact, the reigning quip for most navigation systems on the market is that users can generally arrive at their destination before they are able to finish entering it on the device.
Similar conclusions about the importance of speech can be made about accessing the hundreds of songs listed on an MP3 player or making public kiosks, ATMs and other devices accessible to the blind. In all of these cases, speech uniquely solves a problem in the user interface that many other technologies cannot.
A final point on user adoption is the emergence of a combination of speech and visual display on mobile devices—often referred to as multimodal user interface. Although multimodal applications are not mainstream today, many platform providers have begun to successfully deploy multimodal solutions on portable devices and a number of carriers are evaluating the technology. These are important steps in getting users to adopt speech as part of a more complex user interface. Some multimodal applications that are being evaluated today include the following:
·Motorola has recently completed a successful trial of a multimodal user interface with SpeechWorks on its iDen phone;
·Kirusa has begun the first GPR trial of multimodal applications with French mobile operator Bouygues Telecom’s in France; and
·Orange Services (Imagineering) is working with Lobby7’s multimodal x/mode platform.
The SALT forum, founded with the hope of creating a standard for multimodal application development, should begin to accelerate the push for multimodal user interfaces. Microsoft has already released the .NET Speech SDK, a SALT-based developer toolkit that integrates into the Microsoft Visual Studio™ development environment and Microsoft’s Web server programming environment, ASP.NET, enabling application developers to incorporate speech functionality into Web applications. Microsoft’s ASP.NET for Web development currently has over one million developers. The many recent multimodal applications would seem to be a pretty good start for getting speech going on mobile devices.
Alan Schwartz, is VP of Business Development at SpeechWorks, and heads the Automotive & Mobile Device Unit.
http://www.speechtechmag.com/issues/7_6/cover/1479-1.html
culater
ot-LSI Logic Announces Two Powerful New Codecs for PC Peripheral Video Applications
Monday November 18, 8:02 am ET
- LSI Logic introduces new codec product family to simplify creating and sharing digital video on a PC ( http://www.lsilogic.com/products/consumer/pc_vp/ ) - DMN-8150 supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 for content sharing and video streaming applications - DMN-8100 world's first chip to also provide DV-25 and real-time transcoding for DV/MPEG editing and DVD authoring - USB 2.0/1394 'BigEYE' reference design available now
LAS VEGAS, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI - News) today announced two new single-chip multi-format audio/video codecs, DMN-8100 and DMN-8150, that allow consumers to capture video content from any analog/digital camcorder, VCR or TV tuner and send it to a PC over a USB 2.0 connection. Content can then be captured, edited, and archived on a CD, DVD, Flash card, or DV tape. The DoMiNo(TM)-based product family is enabling a new class of PC peripherals that combines the functionality of multiple PCI cards into one cost-effective, plug-and-play, easy-to-use external device.
Target applications for the DMN-8150 include the conversion of any analog videotape to MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 compression formats for VCD and DVD archival. The DMN-8150 codec supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and the low bit-rate MPEG-4 compression standard that addresses consumer requirements for sharing video over the Internet. The DMN-8100 system-on-a-chip codec offers a higher level of integration by incorporating iEEE1394 link and DV codec functionality. It is the world's first chip capable of converting standard DV-25 digital video input (which is popular in today's camcorders) to high-quality MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 compression files in real time. These new solutions will be demonstrated on the LSI Logic "BigEYE" reference design platform this week at the Fall Comdex Show in Las Vegas by appointment.
"With the recent surge of DVD recordable drives in the PC space, consumers want a quick and easy way to edit their videos and author their own DVDs," said Bob Saffari, senior director of marketing and applications for Advanced Video Products, LSI Logic. "Using plug-and-play products enabled by the feature rich DMN-8100 or 8150 solutions, consumers now have capability and flexibility to create DVDs or share their videos with friends and family over the Internet. The advanced technology involved with MPEG-4 compression allows the delivery of files that were typically constrained by available Internet bandwidth."
LSI Logic's multi-format, highly flexible DoMiNo architecture delivers DV and MPEG codec technology, enabling high-quality, full-screen video, coupled with built-in AAC, MP3, and AC3 audio processing.
"The DV and MPEG codec are fundamental technology drivers for PC video editing and DVD authoring applications," said Michelle Abraham, senior market analyst for In-Stat/MDR's Converging Markets and Technologies Group. The Scottsdale, Arizona market research firm, In-Stat/MDR, is bullish on the market for a single-chip solution with DV transcode and multi-format MPEG capabilities in the PC space, predicting the market will grow very quickly to 1 million units by 2005. "LSI Logic is uniquely positioned with their DoMiNo media processor to be a major player in the video peripheral market."
The LSI Logic DMN-8100 codec is priced at $50 and the DMN-8150 codec is priced at $35 in quantities of 10,000. Both codecs are available today. LSI Logic also offers a complete reference design, "BigEYE," based on DMN-8100 or DMN-8150 to qualified customers.
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ot-National CEO: Smart gadgets, China will drive upturn
By Rick Merritt
EE Times
November 15, 2002 (6:33 a.m. EST)
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The next boom in high tech is just around the corner, said Brian Halla, the chief executive officer of National Semiconductor Corp. When it comes, it will be driven by a proliferation of smart consumer gadgets, and China will emerge as the next big market for many of those devices, he said.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker and software giant Microsoft Corp. will unveil two efforts to spur that growth in separate keynotes at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas Monday (Nov. 18).
The companies are expected to detail a new initiative based on what they call Smart Personal Objects Technology (Spot). Comdex will also mark the advent of the first so-called Mira products, detachable flat-panel displays that link to a PC over an 802.11b network.
LG, NEC, Wyse and Tatung will show Mira displays based on National's Geode X86 processor and software from Microsoft. Other OEMs may show Mira products based on Intel Corp.'s Xscale processor. A future version of the Microsoft code will allow PCs to support multiple displays at the same time.
"Virtually every OEM has some kind of [Mira] design waiting like a quail in the bush to fly up when the market picks up," said Halla. "None of them want to make the next [3Com] Audrey," a failed information appliance also based on Geode that National showed at its Comdex booth last year. "But if there is something based on a common standard, they will go for it," he said.
The Mira and Spot programs are the firstfruits of nine active programs based on a closer corporate partnership Halla has helped forge with Microsoft. "Some are not really strategic, like [one that involves] just mopping up a lot of glue inside the Xbox," Halla said. But National might provide the Ethernet media-access controller in the next version of Microsoft's videogame console, he added. In his previous tenure at LSI Logic Corp., Halla helped win design sockets in the first-generation Sony Playstation.
Recently, National was party to Microsoft's first supplier day, in which representatives of product groups from both companies met to discuss cooperative projects, an event that concluded with a one-on-one between Halla and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
"I think Microsoft really gets it now," said Halla referring to reliability and consumer improvements in Windows XP.
New connected, consumer gadgets such as the Mira displays and undisclosed systems enabled by Spot will fuel the next boom in electronics, said Halla, who said he will predict — with tongue firmly lodged in cheek — the exact date of the upturn in his Comdex keynote Tuesday (Nov. 19). The rise of the Internet will enable such devices, just as the completion of transcontinental railroads spawned new businesses like the meat-packing industry, thanks to follow-on inventions like the refrigerated box car, he said.
"The refrigerated box cars of the Internet are now being incubated," said Halla.
China represents the largest growing market for emerging consumer devices, Halla said in an interview with EE Times prior to his Comdex keynote.
"With the WTO [World Trade Organization] decision on China, we could double the number of consumers," Halla said. "Twenty-five percent of all cellular handsets — 100 million units a year — are being sold there and it's growing at 20 percent a year, which is hard to imagine for those of us in this deep, dark recession."
China now accounts for 13 percent of National's business, nearly half of which is currently in Asia. Besides being the next big market, China is also a strong manufacturing base — as well as a business threat to U.S. suppliers — potentially larger than Japan in its heyday, Halla said.
"Anyone without a China strategy at this point is just too late," he said, noting that a 17 percent value-added tax represents a significant wall that the WTO decision may not easily tear down.
Halla, who will travel to China soon after his Comdex speech, was impressed with China's growing manufacturing prowess in a tour of Shenzhen earlier this year. He described a 35,000-person industrial city run by Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. that provides workers with housing, food and shopping.
"They bring in giant rolls of sheet metal in one side and spit out PC through the other side," he said.
A pool of 650,000 technical graduates each year — compared with about 60,000 a year in the United States — is fueling China's growth as a manufacturer, he added. Returning engineers from overseas represent another powerful contingent. Shanghai chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. now employs 500 returning Chinese engineers, including a CTO from Micron. Nearby Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. has a CFO from LSI Logic, he added.
"The most capitalistic country in the world is right there, based in Shanghai, while politicians here have turned their backs on us. I think that's fundamentally because the tech industry does not have a strong voice in Washington," said Halla, referring to calls for U.S. tech companies to expense stock options and provide tighter financial controls.
"If [National] had to expense stock options it would have cost $100 million a year for three years," he said.
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20021114S0038
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Personal MP3 Players
When you won't leave home without music you've ripped or downloaded, there are portables aplenty to take with you.
By Michael Riggs
Photo by Tony Cordoza
Portable MP3 players have gone from novelty to staple item in four short years. But with popularity has come proliferation, and many MP3 players aren't just MP3 players anymore. A growing number play files encoded in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) formats as well, and the storage options are many. Some players rely on fixed memory, others use removable memory cards, and still others include both. Removable memory can come in many forms, including Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, CompactFlash (CF), SmartMedia, and MultiMediaCards (MMC). And some players, like Apple's trendsetting iPod, eschew solid-state memory for high-capacity, miniaturized hard drives.
Since the options are many, the confusion can be great—which is why we've put together this little guide. Whether you're contemplating your first plunge into the world of MP3, considering buying a player as a gift, or trying to bring yourself up to date after buying one of the first players several years ago, you'll probably want some help sifting through the possibilities.
The State of the Art
Portable players continue to be most strongly associated with MP3, which gained notoriety as the great facilitator of song sharing over the Internet, and every portable in our listings will play MP3 files. But given the considerable clout of Microsoft, which is pushing WMA, about half of them also play WMA files.
Most portables continue to rely on flash-memory storage, although hard-drive players are gaining in popularity. Flash-memory cards or chips can easily be rewritten, but a 64-megabyte (MB) one can't hold more than about an hour of music when encoded at a bit rate that provides decent sound quality—say, 128 kilobits per second (kbps). Hard drives, on the other hand, offer much more storage at much lower cost. And, since a CD can also hold a tremendous number of compressed audio files, many portable and home CD players now include playback for MP3 and sometimes other Internet-friendly formats. (CD players aren't included in the listings here, nor are MiniDisc players.) Now let's take a look at these issues in a little more detail.
The Big Squeeze
Pay no attention to that algorithm behind the curtain—the one that does the seeming impossible by squeezing high-fidelity audio bitstreams down to a fraction of their original size without turning the sound into mush. MP3, WMA, AAC, and RealAudio are all perceptual coders, or codecs. Because of the way our ears work, we can't hear the weaker of two tones if they occur very close to each other in frequency and time. And the closer the spacing, the smaller the difference has to be for the softer one to be masked by the louder one. (Think of how everyone at a party has to talk louder to be heard as more people arrive.) Codecs use models of human hearing to determine what parts of a complex sound can be eliminated without degrading the audio quality.
You'd think that removing information from a signal would have to make it sound worse. But that isn't the case if you remove only what would've been masked anyway. Consider a fly buzzing next to a jet engine. Would you hear any difference if the fly was removed? A good codec will do an excellent job of compressing signals as long as you don't reduce the data too much. But a higher data rate doesn't necessarily equal better sound. It depends on the codec. Some schemes can give you quality equal to or better than the others at lower data rates. This is one area where competitors have tried to draw attention to themselves in the face of the MP3 juggernaut.
Who's Minding the Storage?
Most portable compressed-audio players store files on embedded flash memory or removable cards. Flash memory is attractive because it's nonvolatile—which means the stored data can't be lost unless you deliberately erase it. It's also very compact and impervious to shock. So, unlike a portable CD player, a solid-state player doesn't need a complicated memory-backup system to deal with the jolts and vigorous motion of jogging or traveling.
But flash memory can be expensive. Creative Labs' Nomad MuVo, for instance, is one of the smallest MP3 players you can buy, but it can hold only a fraction as much music as the same company's hard-drive Nomad Jukebox. And the smallest Jukebox is only $80 more expensive—but 2 inches wider, 3 1/2 inches longer, an inch thicker, and 14 ounces heavier. If you like to listen to a wide variety of music and don't want to have to be frequently downloading new tunes into the player, go with a hard-drive player. If you can get all of your favorites into an hour or two of playback time and want the smallest possible player, go with flash memory.
Because of the expense, you won't be buying flash-memory cards the way you might buy blank CD-Rs, which are not only much cheaper but hold a lot more data. For example, 32-MB MultiMediaCards sell for around $35, 64-MB SmartMedia cards for around $50, and 128-MB CompactFlash cards for around $80. (You can get about a minute of music per megabyte at the 128-kbps rate.) While flash memory has gotten a lot cheaper over the past year and a half, it's not likely to hit the pennies-per-megabyte level of hard drives and removable discs. And none of the competing flash-memory formats are compatible with any of the others. Once you buy a Memory Stick player, for instance, you can only use Memory Stick cards in it.
Players with portable hard drives start at about 5 gigabytes (GB) in capacity but typically have 10 GB or more. With so much storage space to play with, you can not only download considerably more tunes than you can to a flash-memory player, but you can also use a higher bit rate to improve sound quality.
Of course, you can put any kind of data, including compressed music files, on CD-Rs, which are easy to find, dirt cheap, and hold 650 MB apiece. You can't play compressed-audio CD-Rs on just any old portable CD player, but more and more models are compatible with MP3 and the other formats. If you want to burn your own discs, though, make sure your computer can write CDs, not just read them.
And then there's DataPlay. This new format comes on micro-optical discs about the size of a half dollar and can hold about 500 MB, or about three-quarters as much as a CD. Many people could carry their entire CD collections in their pockets by compressing the music and transferring it to DataPlay discs, which use the QDX codec.
Kicking the Tires
Once you've decided whether you're going to go with a hard drive or flash memory, you'll want to check out the particular player features. Is memory built into the player, and if so, how much? (You might not need a removable card if enough memory is onboard.) Since these are portables, you'll want to consider size, weight, and playing time on one battery charge or load. Also check out whether the batteries are removable, and if the standard battery is rechargeable, whether you can use ordinary AAA or AA batteries in a pinch. Does the player include headphones or earbuds? If headphones, how sturdy are they? Does it have an FM radio? Some people will want a built-in microphone for dictation.
Check out the inputs and outputs. All portable players except Apple's iPod have USB connections, and a few have both USB and FireWire ports. A stereo analog input generally means you can rip to MP3 directly from your music system or a portable CD player. Also consider the compatibility of the supplied ripping and transfer software. Make sure the player will work with your computer. If you own a Mac, you won't want to open the box and find that the software runs only on PCs. Even Windows users might hit the occasional snag, like software that won't run under their version of the operating system. Finally, note which compressed audio formats a player can handle beyond MP3 and whether you can upgrade its internal software to support future formats or to fix problems and enhance features.
You are now armed with all the basic information you need to scan through our product listings and draft your portable-player wish list. While having so many options to choose from can cause confusion, they also create possibilities. The chances are good that a little careful research will lead you to a player with just the right combination of performance and features. And whether you're buying it for yourself or someone else, getting to play with all the latest high-tech toys while you're out shopping can be half the fun.
*** Now check out the complete product listings!
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hot_topics/articledisplay.asp?ArticleID=175
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/pdf/hot_topics/1105/mp3.pdf
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Fighting back
Nov 14th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda
EMI’s new online music service is the latest sign that the big record labels, shocked by the speed with which their market is being eroded by piracy and the illegal downloading of songs over the Internet, are determined to fight back
Kylie.com
Why pay for Kylie's songs?
STUNG by the fact that sales of pirated music are rising faster than the legal market for songs, record labels are coming to realise that the Internet is an outlet they cannot ignore. On November 13th, EMI Recorded Music, the world’s largest independent record company, announced that it was setting up a new online service that will allow music fans to download the songs of their choice. There is nothing new in this. Through legitimate websites like pressplay, a joint venture between Sony and Vivendi Universal, fans have been able to download music since earlier this year. But the songs on such sites are usually available only for a limited period (as long as users pay a subscription) and often with restrictions on how the music is used (for example, not on portable players). EMI is offering something better.
To make its service more appealing, from December 1st the company plans not only to allow music fans in America to “burn” a limited number of songs on to blank CDs; it says it will also let users listen to copyrighted recordings on portable players. To reach as wide an audience as possible, EMI is teaming up with nine distributors of digital music (among them FullAudio, Listen.com’s Rhapsody, MusicNet, pressplay, and Streamwaves). Customers will also get the chance to buy and download singles from forthcoming albums when they are played on the radio.
A snag with many of the existing websites offering copyrighted music is the narrowness of their repertoire. Worried about damaging their sales of physical CDs, record labels have so far released only a limited proportion of their lists online. This has annoyed music fans and done little to wean them off the pirate websites, which offer what they want for free. EMI says its new service will offer a range of artists, from Joe Cocker and Kylie Minogue to Coldplay and Pink Floyd. Classical music will also be available.
There is little doubt that the music business is in trouble. After a 5% decline in the sales of recorded music in 2001, the first fall in living memory, the industry is gritting its teeth for yet another drop this year. Informa Media, a research group, said last week that it reckons worldwide sales of CDs, tapes and the like could tumble by 7% to just over $31 billion, its lowest level since the mid-1990s. Worse, it could be at least three years before sales regain their peak of 2000.
Part of the reason for the decline is economic: with growth in western countries slowing, consumers have less to spend on the music of their choice. The rate of growth in the sales of CDs was bound to slow after the headlong increases of the 1990s. But that is only part of the problem, and one the industry can do little about. As worrying is the damage being done to sales of copyrighted music by counterfeiting and illegal file-sharing.
As fast as the music industry slaps down one website dedicated to the illegal sharing of digital files, another pops up. Napster, which pioneered the idea of downloading music illegally over the Internet, was finally killed off in September after a two-year court battle. Now a district court in Illinois has ordered Aimster, a Napster lookalike that also goes by the name of Madster, to prevent its users from downloading copyrighted works and to employ filters to stop them from sharing illegal files. If it doesn’t, the court has said it will take steps to shut the firm down.
The trouble is, Aimster is only one of a number of sites that have sprouted in Napster’s wake. In June, the number of users in America of KaZaA, Morpheus and Audiogalaxy, all file-sharing services, between them reached 14.4m, a million or so more than Napster achieved at its peak. So worried are the record labels that some, including EMI and Warner, have even talked about suing individual file-sharers for illegally downloading songs. This would be a last resort, for it would alienate potential customers of legitimate services. Another tactic being employed is to plant decoys on file-sharing sites. The decoys prevent sharers downloading songs and enable record companies to track down the users. Interscope, a record label, is thought to have planted a decoy when it launched Eminem’s recent album, “The Eminem Show”.
Counterfeiting is also growing in size and sophistication. Another report published this week by Informa Media reckons pirated music sales rose in value by 2.4% in 2001 to a worldwide total of $4.3 billion. Taiwan remains the biggest culprit: it has the capacity to press 8 billion CDs a year but has a legitimate demand for only 200m, says the report. Around 90% of CDs sold in China each year are pirated. But the problem is growing in western countries too. The heads of European record companies, meeting recently in Rome, estimated that 27% of music sold in Italy is now pirated; in southern Italy, the proportion is nearer half.
EMI’s new service is the industry’s best shot yet at dealing with the problem. Even so, it is late in arriving. Illegal sites like Aimster have already become so popular that they are attracting advertisers keen to market their wares to the sites’ millions of users. When users install KaZaA’s downloading software, they automatically receive a program from Altnet, another software firm. This enables advertisers to place their material prominently when users are searching for files. Whether music fans take to EMI’s new service will depend on how easy it is to use, but also on the repertoire made available. If users get what they want, they might just be tempted to pay. If they don’t, they will continue to go where they can find it for free.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1446431
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In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain “hard-core” pornography, (legally synonymous with
obscenity), “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced .
. . but I know it when I see it . . . “
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964)
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In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain “hard-core” pornography, (legally synonymous with
obscenity), “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced .
. . ut I know it when I see it . . . “
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964)
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