Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
(North Hollywood, Calif.) Virtual Concepts Corp., a multimedia marketing
firm, announced on Thursday that it has partnered with USA Technologies to
develop a cashless vending machine that dispenses DVDs, CDs and video
games. The "CineMachine" is being targeted at movie theaters and their
patrons, as well as airports and hotels, where consumers could use a
credit card or their cell phone to purchase movies, music or games at a
machine that requires no employees to operate.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020307/neth012_1.html
http://www.usatech.com/cinemachine/cinemachine.htm
Nokia, Symbian score blockbuster Samsung phone win
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 06/03/2002 at 23:09 GMT
ExclusiveAccording to our most reliable sources, who have proved very
reliable indeed recently, Samsung has signed a deal with Nokia to license
the latter's Series 60 user interface for smartphones.
Samsung has been the only significant brand to sign-up for rival
Microsoft's SmartPhone platform, and it represents a major breakthrough
for Nokia in establishing its credentials as a software licensing company.
The Series 60 deal could mark a turning point in the battered fortunes of
Symbian, as the UI, formerly known as "Pearl", runs on top of the Symbian
OS. The Korean giant's expertise in building CDMA phones gives the
anti-Microsoft camp a major boost in the US market.
Symbian endured a calamitous GSM Congress a fortnight ago, coming days
after the resignation of its CEO Colly Myers. Interviews were cancelled at
the last minute, and no stand-ins were made available.
But the announcement of Ericsson/Sony's P800 imaging smartphone earlier
today helps deflate the Redmond spin that Symbian is all but a distant
outpost of the Nokia empire these days. While it's true that the Finns do
call many of the shots, it doesn't follow that the rest of the industry has
shunned the platform. Far from it. Sony has its own "Stork" Symbian based
smartphone in the pipeline, and is already introducing Sony technology into
the P800 successor, "Linnea 2"; and Motorola has based its Paragon
smartphone on Symbian too. Panasonic has yet to announce its Symbian
7-based mediaphone.
Smartphones have always been interesting in their own right: they're very
personal converged data devices; but politically, they pitch Microsoft's
most two powerful antagonists - Nokia and Sony - in opposition, and
neither opponent needs to give Redmond any quarter.
A twenty-strong team of Samsung engineers has been working on the
smartphone since late last year, we understand.
A spokesman for Symbian in London declined to comment. ®
Radio Free Intel
Henry Norr
Monday, March 4, 2002
Just weeks after Radio Free Afghanistan went on the air,
chipmaker Intel last week disclosed plans for Radio Free
Intel.
No, it's not a new vehicle for delivering propaganda to or
from the Santa Clara chipmaker -- the phrase itself is "just
a play on words," according to a company spokesman.
But the initiative it denotes is a big bet for the company,
and if successful it could have a major impact on the way
we live and work.
As described by Pat Gelsinger, the company's newly
anointed chief technical officer, in the closing keynote at
last week's Intel Developers Forum, Radio Free Intel is a
new plan to begin building into the company's chips
"silicon radios" for wireless networking.
And not just some of its chips, but all of them -- every last
processor and other product the company builds.
Starting from research it funded at several universities,
Intel thinks it has figured out a way to make complete
radios, including amplifiers, antennas and all other
necessary components, out of the same kind of silicon it
now uses to make Pentiums.
If so -- and Gelsinger acknowledged it's not a 100-percent
certainty yet -- such radios could be fully integrated into
Intel chips in as little as five years. "We want to get to the
point where the radio is nothing more than the corner of
the die," he said.
In case the all-silicon vision doesn't work out, there's a
back-up plan that's almost as neat: assemble the radio
out of futuristic minimachines -- MEMS, or
micro-electro-mechanical systems -- on a silicon
substrate, then build that device into a common ceramic
package with a conventional silicon chip.
Either way, these radios would be capable of three
different kinds of wireless networking, instantly switching
frequencies and protocols to handle each as needed:
-- PAN (personal-area networking), the industry term for
connecting devices about your person or around your
desk -- linking a handheld organizer or digital camera to a
mobile phone, say, or a PC to a printer or portable music
player.
That's a role played now mostly by wired USB
connections, and one Bluetooth hopes to take over. But
by the time integrated radios are ready, Gelsinger
suggested, the wireless technology of choice for such
applications could be a promising new type of wireless
known as ultra-wideband, which received initial,
limited approval from the Federal Communications
Commission just last month.
-- LAN (local-area networking), for connecting PCs
around the office or home to each other and thence to the
Internet. In this area several wireless technologies have
jockeyed for position in recent years, but one called Wi-Fi,
or 802.11, has emerged as the clear winner, and
throughout last week's conference Intel officials endorsed
it with enthusiasm.
Specifically, they are promoting dual-band 802.11 radios,
which would implement both the current 802.11b
standard and 802.11a, a much faster alternative that's just
now appearing in products.
(In fact, even before it can deliver integrated silicon
radios, Intel hopes to persuade PC-makers to build
dual-mode 802.11 radios into every PC, not just
notebooks but eventually also desktop models, beginning
next year.)
-- WAN (wide-area networking), or connecting to the
Internet with no wired connection at all. At this level,
Gelsinger said, Intel's radios will be designed to
communicate with the cellular networks, which by then
will presumably have advanced to full 3G, if not 4G,
technologies.
In Gelsinger's vision, all these connections would be
always on, and they would be automatically updated as
you roam from place to place.
If Intel succeeds in building radios that occupy just a
corner of a chip, the incremental cost of adding this whole
range of communications capabilities to digital devices
will be nearly nil -- that's where the "free" comes in.
That means not only computers and peripherals, but also
consumer electronics gear -- TVs, stereos and all the rest.
And beyond those devices, Gelsinger suggested some
exotic new applications for the technology -- baby
blankets that monitor an infant's breathing and
temperature and automatically send an alert in case of
any abnormality; motors that report when they are
wearing out; swimming pools that announce when
something has fallen in; even "smart farms" where
sensors wirelessly report on the growth and nutrition
needs of each plant.
Technology aside, such scenarios raise a host of social
issues -- about security, privacy, spectrum management
(will every product with a chip need FCC approval?), and,
by no means least, health (who knows what effect this
jumble of new radio signals might have).
Gelsinger and his colleagues admit they don't have
answers to these questions. But if the technology moves
as quickly as they predict, we as a society are going to
have to confront them in a hurry.
House Rep's Rap: Unshackle the CD
by Declan McCullagh
Thursday, March 07, 2002 5:00 a.m. EST
WASHINGTON -- Music CDs equipped with copy protection will, if Rick Boucher gets his wish, soon be as obsolete as eight-track cassettes.
The feisty Democratic congressman from Virginia says he plans to introduce legislation banning, or at least regulating, compact discs outfitted with anti-copying technology.
Few discs sold in America currently feature the controversial scheme -- but the recording industry expects that as worries over digital piracy grow, the technique will become widespread.
"Suffice to say, there probably will be a legislative response to ensure that consumer rights will be protected," Boucher said in an interview.
Boucher's complaints are twofold: Americans may not know they're buying crippled discs, and that the new discs don't work on all players. "The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs," Boucher said. "These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players."
His remarks come as a Washington-style war of words between Boucher and the head of the Recording Industry Association of America is escalating. In January, Boucher wrote to RIAA's Hilary Rosen complaining about copy-protected discs; Rosen fired back last week by calling them "a measured response to a very serious problem facing the music industry today."
In response to Boucher's prediction of legislation, Rosen promised that the recording industry steadfastly would oppose it.
Rosen said in a statement: "The notion of copy protection is certainly not new to the entertainment industry. Even computer software already employ various technology protections as appropriate for their marketplace and their consumers. The music industry deserves to do the same. Legislation to prevent self-help technologies would be unwise and unfair."
Boucher wouldn't give details on what approach he's considering -- obvious possibilities include ordering the music industry to stick labels on protected CDs, or an outright ban of that technology. "I'm considering a proper legislative response to these concerns," he said. "I'm discussing it with a large number of individuals."
Those discussions may take a while. Boucher said in an interview last July that he would introduce a bill to rewrite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- but nine months later, he has yet to do so. This week, Boucher pledged to introduce "the bill in the not-so-distant future."
Copy protection works by encoding deliberate errors onto a compact disc. The errors make it harder to burn copies but can render the discs unplayable on many computers -- and a few stereos -- by violating the "Red Book" standard for CD-Audio that Philips and Sony created in 1980.
Only two protected CDs appear to have been distributed so far in the United States: Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves, released by Music City Records and protected by SunnComm's MediaCloQ , and More Fast and Furious, a Universal Music Group soundtrack protected by Midbar's Cactus 200 . Both discs ship with warning labels and an advisory that they are copy-protected.
Prue Adler , the assistant executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, said her group endorses Boucher's approach.
Adler said that "as consumers, their expectations are certainly that they have these rights and privileges."
Jonathan Zittrain , an assistant professor at Harvard University's law school, said that it is currently legal to sell copy-protected discs. Zittrain said, however, that manufacturers could be liable under existing law if they do not clearly disclose that the CDs are crippled.
"I actually relish the government's finally turning its attention to the copyright arms race," Zittrain said. "With full public attention focused on the issue, there's an opportunity for Congress to help generate a moderate path on the issue, rather than one tilted too far to locking everything up."
Ira Rothken, an attorney who sued (PDF) over the Charley Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves disc, thinks it's possible that protected CDs violate even existing U.S. laws.
"It could be considered a copyright misuse to not allow people access to works and to space-shift them," Rothken said. "If you told me that someone would not be allowed to listen to the music anonymously, that would cross the line. You cannot have digital-rights management technology if somebody has to give up their anonymity. People should be allowed to reasonably space-shift."
But in a decision last fall, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saw things exactly the opposite way. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled: "We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original."
This dispute over music comes as Hollywood studios, fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales, have asked Congress to require that all PCs and consumer electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce committee convened a hearing where the studios complained that Silicon Valley firms had not moved quickly enough in setting anti-copying standards.
Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has drafted, but has not introduced, legislation called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act. A version of the SSSCA obtained by Wired News would prohibit creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
Robert Zarate contributed to this report.
CEO leads cell phones to real-time rock
By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times
March 6, 2002 (6:20 p.m. EST)
Noriko Kajiki is a rarity in Japan's high-tech industry. First, she's a woman CEO. Second, she's a woman CEO with a background in marketing, not electronics. But Kajiki is leading her small, Tokyo-based company to prominence on the strength of one basic idea: "Why can't video content be sent through the existing switched telephone network?"
When Kajiki asked her staff at Office Noa Inc. that question nearly 10 years ago, the conventional wisdom held that compression technology such as MPEG was too heavy to travel over phone lines. But the quest to find a way of getting that camel through the needle's eye marked the start of the company's Nancy project, in 1993.
This month, J-Phone, Japan's third largest mobile phone carrier, has started a video-mail service enabled by this light compression technology, using current-generation cell phones. South Korea is considering using Nancy for video distribution of the 2002 World Cup soccer games with Japan over the cellular phone network. And China is pondering Nancy as the basis for a video compression technology scalable from cell phones to digital high-definition TV.
Based on the proprietary Structured Meta Scale Polygon algorithm, Nancy does all video compression by means of the four basic arithmetic operations, comparison and bit-shift operation. Eliminating the motion-estimation and floating-point calculations used in MPEG compression makes for a light encoding load — far lighter than MPEG-4, Office Noa said.
Though the mobile phone industry expects video distribution to begin with third-generation networks — NTT Docomo's new 3G network uses MPEG-4 for the job — Office Noa is promoting Nancy's compactness as a solution for current second-generation and 2.5G phones. "MPEG-4 is heavy. It is difficult for MPEG-4 to do real-time encoding by software," said Koichi Kato, chief technology officer at Office Noa, an information technology venture with fewer than 20 staffers. By contrast, "Nancy can do all encoding by software," he said. "There are no competing video compression technologies that can do [the same]." Nancy enables a 130-Mips MPU to encode Common Intermediate Format (CIF) video data — 352 x 288 pixels — in 24-bit color at 30 frames/second. More practically for cell phone display, it can also compress QCIF video at 15 frames/s using a 17-Mips microprocessor.
In the vanguard
Kajiki, 41, majored in English literature at Otsuma Women's University, a junior college. Five years after graduation, in 1985, she set up Office Noa as a marketing consultancy and employment agency. Electronics was the furthest thing from her mind. "When beauty treatment clinics came into fashion, I made plans for it," she said. The same with chic restaurants and recreational spots. "I did whatever I felt was in the vanguard at the time."
Soon it became clear that electronics was the vanguard. "I thought we needed a strong technology" in which to specialize as consultants, she said. CTO Kato, a longtime friend and colleague, "said compression technology is it. At that time, eight years go, Kato was my tutor, so I said 'yes, sir,' " said Kajiki.
"Kajiki has a very unique talent in marketing. She is like a chess player who always reads 30 moves ahead," said Kato. He and Toshihiko Inoue, an Office Noa executive director, met Kajiki early in her career and were impressed enough to sign on when she launched her startup. Both were architects with computer backgrounds who had already done big projects, such as hotels and urban development.
Tables turned
"In the first few years, we taught Kajiki how to manage a company. We often abused her, saying this is stupid, don't you understand such an easy thing?" Kato joked. "But soon our positions reversed."
"I was mortified and made up my mind to overcome these guys," said Kajiki.
With no compression specialists on staff, Kajiki went to labs and universities, asking that engineers set aside the accepted beliefs to "develop video compression technology that does not depend on existing compression technology." In three years, she spoke to 275 engineers and "only three said that they would dare to contrive a new algorithm. They were not specialized researchers in this compression field, but were just [people] loving computers."
The key hire was Satoshi Tanabe, who developed the core of the Structured Meta Scale Polygon algorithm. In 1996, Tanabe's engineering team finished the algorithm and in 1998, with financial support from the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Office Noa completed Nancy.
"Researchers and engineers with higher degrees or higher positions . . . simply said it was impossible," Kajiki said. Those she hired felt "that if a compact compression technology is not available, let's create it."
If the idea was a hard sell at home, so it was abroad. "When we completed Nancy in 1998, I visited every major company in Silicon Valley, dragging a computer in a box," she said. Some told her that "the technology you demonstrated is really impressive. If you were a male [PhD] who had graduated from Stanford, we would make a contract with you immediately. But you have no technical background and you are a woman.' "
Moreover, she went on, "it was a PC-based world, and all surrounding core technologies are their technologies. Once we enter that world, we would lose our business independence." Rather than sell off the technology — or the company — Kajiki nixed the offers and opted to promote Nancy for cell phones.
Real-time rock
"Kajiki clearly recognized at that time that the first main applications of Nancy would be cellular phones and mobile gear," said Kato. In short order, Nancy won support in Texas Instruments Inc.'s and Hitachi Ltd.'s cellular phone platforms. And in December 2000, Office Noa wowed Japan by distributing a real-time rock concert live to cell phones in all of Japan's 2.5G networks.
Several companies in Japan are now preparing Nancy-equipped cell phones and PDAs, and China has shown an interest in the technology's scalability — it can work with everything from mobile handsets to digital TV broadcasting. Office Noa is now in discussions with China's State Administration of Radio, Film and TV about its possible use for Chinese HDTV.
"Technology does not create a market," said CTO Kato. "With adequate marketing, [the technology] flourishes."
TI Delivers Industry's First Stereo Audio CODEC With Built-In USB Controller And S/PDIF I/O
Terminal
Audio CODEC From TI's Burr-Brown Product Line Saves Space and Cost
TOKYO, March 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Providing a high-performance audio solution for the home entertainment market,
Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN - news; TI) unveiled the industry's first stereo audio CODEC family with a built-in
USB controller and an internal S/PDIF-compatible I/O terminal. Addressing the consumer's need to download and edit
digital audio material on PCs as well as transmit the data to audio equipment, the family is ideal for mini-stereo decks,
portable CD/cassette radios, headphone/microphone combo units and domestic-use robots. (See
http://www.ti.com/sc/sc02012 .)
``TI's PCM290x series adds more value to audio equipment by integrating USB functions while reducing size and cost
by 50 percent compared with existing USB controllers with S/PDIF functionality,'' said Yuzo Sugiki, marketing
manager, TI Digital Audio. ``The series can be applied to a wide range of digital consumer appliances, which will help
us serve our customers more effectively.''
The PCM290x family includes four products with two different power supply formats, the USB bus-powered
PCM2900 and PCM2902 with an operating voltage of 2.7-3.6V, and the self-powered PCM2901 and PCM2903 with
an operating voltage of 5V. With a 16-bit resolution and maximum sample rate of 48KHz, the PCM290x family has a
dynamic range of 89dB (typ) for analog-to-digital converters and 93dB (typ) for digital-to-analog converters with 0.005
percent THD+N (typ) in self-powered products.
In addition, the PCM290x series contains built-in protection against unauthorized copying (SCMS), is full duplex
compatible with a 12 MHz on-chip clock generator and features HID (human interface device), volume and mute
control. The series also contains a suspend flag feature that saves power in target applications, notifying external circuits
to the condition of the PC suspending.
The PCM290x series has consolidated the USB device disk repeater function, normally controlled by a microcomputer,
onto a single chip, making it possible to reduce the board surface area by 50 percent. Furthermore, the product is
controlled by the USB drivers included in the OS software, eliminating the need for specialized drivers and making
product development more efficient.
The product series also uses TI's Sampling Period Adaptive Controlled Tracking System (SpAct)(TM), which enables
the splitting of a single clock source using a PLL circuit. In addition, the series is compatible with multiple sampling
rates and suppresses jitter to extremely low levels.
Audio Expertise
TI provides high-performance, programmable DSP and analog-based solutions for many audio segments. By leveraging
the programmability, performance headroom and design flexibility of TI's leading DSP and analog technologies,
customers can build feature-rich audio products with more functionality that offer a true, lifelike sound experience at a
lower overall system cost.
Packaging, Pricing and Availability
The PCM290x family is available now from TI and its authorized distributors. The devices are each packaged in a
28-pin SSOP. Details are included in the following table.
Product Power supply S/PDIF compatible Price (1,000 units)
I/O terminal
PCM2900 Self-powered No $3.95
PCM2901 USB bus-powered No $3.95
PCM2902 Self-powered Yes $4.25
PCM2903 USB bus-powered Yes $4.25
Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the
semiconductor engines of the Internet age. In addition to Semiconductor, the company's businesses include Sensors &
Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing,
design or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on
the World Wide Web at www.ti.com .
SOURCE: Texas Instruments Incorporated
OT Where Companies Hide Their Money
By Pat Dorsey
Wednesday March 6, 6:00 am Eastern Time
Morningstar.com
It's a wonderful time of year to be a stocks junkie.
No, not because the darn things are actually going up for the first time in a while. It's because companies are sending two types of annual filings to the SEC that can be very, very revealing. The 10-K report gives all kinds of juicy information about pensions and options, and the proxy statement gives you the full scoop on just how much compensation senior corporate managers are raking in.
First, the 10-K, and what it can tell you. (I'll cover the proxy statement on Friday.) Companies have to file this lengthy annual report with the SEC within 90 days of the end of their fiscal year. Since the majority of companies end their fiscal years in December, this means that thousands of 10-K reports will get filed with the SEC over the next few weeks.
Why should you care? Because the 10-K tells you two things (among many others) that you can't find anywhere else: How much the company would have made if it had counted stock options as an expense, and what kinds of assumptions are going into its pension-plan calculations. (For more on stock options and why they matter, check out this classic article by Haywood Kelly.)
Option-related expenses and pension assumptions are not esoteric datapoints by any stretch of the imagination. The options footnote tells you not only what earnings per share would have been if options had been expensed, but gives you full details about how many options are outstanding, when they'll expire, what their exercise prices are, and all kinds of goodies. (The easiest way to find this information is to do a search--using the CTRL + F command in your browser--for the word ``Scholes.'' That should take you straight to the options footnote.)
For example, I just popped over to the FreeEDGAR Web site to look at some recently filed 10-Ks, and looked at the filings for Unisys UIS, Genentech DNA, and Compaq CPQ. Had Unisys accounted for the cost of the stock options it issued, it would have lost $0.37 per share in 2001, rather than the $0.21 per-share loss it reported. Genentech wouldn't have earned much of anything, as opposed to the $0.28 per-share profit it reported. Finally, Compaq would have lost $0.87 per share, not the reported $0.34 per share. (The footnotes also show that the vast majority of Compaq's options are way, way underwater, so I'd watch for a repricing or another big round of options grants.) As you can see, we're hardly talking about chump change when it comes to expensing options.
Same goes for pension benefits. As I've yammered about in the past, companies' bottom lines can be boosted in a number of different pension-related ways, none of which have a thing to do with how well their business is running. If a company has more pension assets than forecasted future liabilities--usually because its pension plan has been doing well--then the difference can be counted as profit. In fact, GE GE and IBM IBM have benefited from this little accounting quirk for years. (For more on how this works, and where to find it in a 10-K report, check out this article.)
But even more pernicious, in my opinion, is the fact that companies can juice their earnings simply by assuming that their pension plans will perform well in the future. You see, if a company assumes that its pension assets will appreciate at, say, 12% per year, its current liability is lower than if it assumed those assets would only return 8%. (For more on how this works, check out this article.) And if the liability is lower, then so is the amount that the firm needs to pay into the pension plan--which means that earnings are higher.
As Warren Buffett pointed out in a wonderful late-2001 article in Fortune, a lot of the assumptions that companies are making right now about future pension-plan returns are patently unrealistic. Now that 10-Ks are out, you can check just how ridiculous they might be for the companies you own. An unscientific sample of a few dozen large companies showed that most are expecting returns of about 9%--and this is for portfolios that are almost certainly a mix of stocks and bonds. Now, unless you think bonds are going to return 9% over the next decade, that means stocks have to do double digits to make the math work out. Maybe this will happen, but it's not something I'd want to bet on--and it's sure not a source of earnings that I want to count on. (To find this figure yourself, search on ``Expected rate of return on plan assets'' in any 10-K.)
On Friday, I'll show you all of the fun stuff that's buried in proxy statements. Want to know how much the CEO makes? Whether the company is paying for his house? It's all there.
Get Morningstar's unbiased analyses of 1000 stocks and 2000 funds, free for 30 days.
Murgirl, could it be a MusicMatch,EDIG, and Morpheus tie-up in a legitimate music subscription service? If so....HUGE. This could be a logical explanation.
cheers
IBM will steer PowerPC into mobile mart
By David Lammers
EE Times
February 28, 2002 (4:25 p.m. EST)
AUSTIN, Texas — IBM intends to take its PowerPC processor architecture to the mobile
sector and into "head-to-head competition with Intel" and that company's Xscale
processor, John Kelly III, senior vice president of IBM's Technology Group, said this
week.
To get there, IBM is establishing a separate design group in Raleigh, N.C., that initially
will create follow-on products based on the PowerPC 405LP (low power) system-on-chip,
which is slated to sample next quarter.
The company also is stepping up its efforts in embedded Linux, adding it to the
PowerPC brew to entice customers looking to differentiate their products on
performance.
Kelly said IBM believes the fastest-growing part of the semiconductor industry will be
mobile devices that combine computing and communications functions. The company
calls the concept pervasive computing.
"The volumes and revenue going forward are going to be in PDAs, handsets, in-cab
[telematics] in automobiles, game machines and other systems that are
power-sensitive," he said. "We have hundreds of people working now on low-power
solutions and are making some very big investments in this area. We gained early
ground by taking the PowerPC into the game machine space with Nintendo and Sony,
and now we want to extend that to battery-operated systems."
Kelly, who is in charge of IBM's semiconductor and storage divisions, acknowledged that
"ARM and MIPS are the clear incumbents in the low-power space" but questioned
"whether they have the wherewithal to continue to extend those architectures."
Low-power design "is not a static thing, and you need to make big investments," he
said. "These architectures are not easy to sustain. I think eventually it will come down
to two or maybe three big companies, including Intel and IBM."
If the embedded-Linux strategy plays out, IBM may also take on Microsoft Corp., which
has seen growing success with its PocketPC operating system in the PDA market. IBM
has surprised many by successfully advancing Linux in servers, creating an intense
competition with Microsoft. Kelly said IBM's internal efforts to further the embedded
Linux operating system are bearing fruit.
"The whole OS portion of this market is in flux, and we think eventually that embedded
Linux on a PowerPC will be a big play in this space," he said.
Fork in the road
IBM isn't daunted by the fact that many cell-phone vendors have developed an
installed base of code based on ARM processors, Kelly said. As the cell phone and the
PDA "merge into a single device, systems companies will be forced to rewrite their
source code. That creates a fork in the road," making it easier for IBM to gain entry to
a cell-phone market that has been dominated by Texas Instruments, Motorola and
others with strong DSP technology.
While IBM has a license to the ARM7 core from ARM Ltd. (Cambridge, U.K.), Kelly said
his company has yet to decide whether it will license the ARM9 core. In the DSP area,
IBM licensed the ZSP core, owned by LSI Logic Corp., largely because some customers
had requested it.
"I have not invested heavily in signal processing, because in the long run we believe
the general-purpose processor will take on most of the workload," Kelly said. "As the
cell phone and the PDA merge, the CPU will take on the computer-like functions.
Historically, DSPs have been very good at specific algorithms where there is a lot of
parallelism — for algorithms that are optimized for very specific signal-processing
functions. That will change."
IBM has learned quite a bit about power conservation from its experience engineering
the Thinkpad notebooks. Much of the power savings for that platform in recent years
has come at the system level, via progress in such areas as learning when to instruct
circuits to turn off and other power-saving tricks. Through its work on game systems
with Nintendo Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan) and Sony Corp. (Tokyo), IBM has learned tricks to cut
power at both the chip and system levels, Kelly said.
Numbers game
Still, IBM has its work cut out for it, said microcontroller and DSP analyst Tom Starnes at
Gartner Dataquest. "Intel has a big advantage in the PDA market. The PocketPC
operating system is at a pretty good level now; it's the OS of choice for the upscale PDA
market. As far as I know, Microsoft only supports the ARM architecture," which Intel
supports with its StrongARM and Xscale products, Starnes said.
IBM's strategy for embedded Linux also would have to take into account the desire of
many users to exchange files between a PDA and a desktop. "That makes it more of a
challenge for IBM. In the end, it comes down to a numbers game," Starnes said. "The
application developers will support the platform — whether it's Palm, PocketPC or Linux
— that has the most target platforms."
IBM "right now doesn't have a lot of traction in either the PDA or the cell-phone
markets," said Will Strauss, president of research firm Forward Concepts (Tempe,
Ariz.). "The PowerPC has no play there at all right now. But IBM has the kind of
worldwide reputation that gets them in the door for a hearing just about anywhere."
Nonetheless, Strauss said, IBM's heritage has been in the high-performance and
high-cost end of the semiconductor market. "Can IBM slug it out in what may be a
commodity market? They are not known to have the lowest-priced fabs in the industry,
because they were creating ICs that went into systems that sold for millions of dollars a
copy. Maybe we are looking at a new IBM."
Power mantra
For many IBM chip designs thus far, Kelly acknowledged, the goal has been to keep
power consumption just below the acceptable threshold, delivering the best-possible
performance at the given power budget. And the PowerPC has been known for its use in
performance-driven applications, such as IBM servers, Apple Computer systems and
the high-end ASICs used largely in the networking industry.
Now, the push is on throughout IBM's engineering staff to reduce power consumption
across the board, from development of such process technologies as
silicon-on-insulator to computer architecture design and system-level engineering.
For example, the PowerPC 405LP will leverage IBM's efforts in voice recognition by
including an on-board hardware accelerator for speech recognition, as well as
accelerators for triple DES cryptography and instruction stream decompression. The
hardwired accelerators consume less power than if the same functions were handled by
the 32-bit PowerPC core, said Gary Carpenter, chief architect of the 405LP.
Carpenter said the design goal for the 405LP was to hit a power budget that would start
at half a watt and move down to 50 to 60 mW of active power dissipation.
"We set out to enable voltage scaling on the fly, without having to relock the PLLs
[phase-locked loops]," he said. "The idea is that the application can determine what
the optimum performance and power trade-offs can be.
"That [trade-off determination] could come from the demands of the application or
from how much energy is left in your battery. We think we can move the whole debate
about power consumption to a pretty high level," Carpenter said.
The 405LP operates at 1 volt to 1.8 V. Carpenter said system designers can choose to
vary the frequency of the processor as needed, from a scant 11 MHz to the maximum
of 380 MHz.
"Customers can be as aggressive as they want to be," he said. "We see the future
being one of significantly varying performance, particularly with the improved user
interfaces, such as natural-language speech recognition, handwriting recognition and
retinal scans. If a person is running an MPEG-4 video, the system will move up in
voltage.
"There will be high-performance demands, but they will be sporadic — because, after
all, these battery-operated systems interface with humans, and we engage in a lot of
sporadic activities."
Have iPod, Will Secretly Bootleg
by Leander Kahney
Thursday, February 28, 2002 5:00 a.m. EST
When Apple introduced the iPod, the company was aware that people might use it to rip off music from the Net or friends' machines. Each new iPod, in fact, is emblazoned with a sticker that warns, "Don't Steal Music."
But it is unlikely that Apple imagined people would walk into computer stores, plug their iPod into display computers and use it to copy software off the hard drives.
This is exactly the scenario recently witnessed by Kevin Webb at a Dallas CompUSA store.
Webb, a computer consultant from Dallas, was browsing his local CompUSA when he saw a young man walk toward him listening to an iPod . Webb recognized the iPod's distinctive ear buds.
The teenager stopped at a nearby display Macintosh, pulled the iPod from his pocket and plugged it into the machine with a FireWire cable. Intrigued, Webb peeped over the kid's shoulder to see him copying Microsoft's new Office for OS X suite, which retails for $500.
When the iPod is plugged into a Macintosh, its icon automatically pops up on the desktop. To copy software, all the kid had to do was drag and drop files onto the iPod's icon. Office for MacOS X is about 200 MB; it copies to the iPod's hard drive in less than a minute.
"Watching him, it dawned on me that this was something that was very easy to do," Webb said. "In the Mac world it's pretty easy to plug in and copy things. It's a lot easier than stealing the box."
Webb watched the teenager copy a couple of other applications. He left the kid to find a CompUSA employee. "I went over and told a CompUSA guy, but he looked at me like I was clueless," Webb said.
Unsure whether the kid was a thief or an out-of-uniform employee, Webb watched as he left the store. "I thought there's no point in getting any more involved in this imbroglio," Webb said. "Besides, this is Texas. You never know what he might have been carrying."
CompUSA representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. Neither did Apple officials.
The iPod is perfect for virtual shoplifting. It is designed as a digital music player, but its roomy 5-GB hard drive can be used as portable storage for all kinds of files, even the Macintosh operating system. In fact, it can operate as an external drive, booting up a machine and running applications.
The iPod's FireWire interface -- one of its most important but undersold features -- allows huge files to be copied in seconds. The iPod doesn't even have to leave the user's pocket.
And while the iPod has a built-in anti-piracy mechanism that prevents music files from being copied from one computer to another, it has no such protections for software.
Ironically, Microsoft has pioneered an easy-to-use installation scheme on the Mac that makes its Mac software relatively easy to pilfer. The company is known for its sometimes heavy-handed, anti-piracy mechanisms in such products as Windows XP.
When installing Office, users simply drag and drop the Office folder to their hard drive. Everything is included, including a self-repair mechanism that replaces critical files in the system folder.
By contrast, a lot of software on the Windows platform relies on a bunch of system files that are only installed during an installation process. Simply copying an application from one machine to another will not work.
Plus, getting a copy of the software application is only half the battle: most software won't work without a registration number. Usable serial numbers, however, are readily available on Usenet, IRC, Hotline and applications like Hacks and Cracks.
"This is the first we have heard of this form of piracy," said Erik Ryan, a Microsoft product manager. "And while this is a possibility, people should be reminded that this is considered theft."
While the iPod may be ideal for a software-stealing spree, there are a number of other devices on the market that could also be used by virtual shoplifters. As well as any external FireWire drive, there are now a number of tiny key-chain drives that plug into computers' USB ports, like M-Systems' DiskOnKey and Trek2000's ThumbDrive .
Most key-chain drives work with both Macs and PCs. Some are available with up to one gigabyte of storage space. However, most USB ports are a lot slower than FireWire, requiring the virtual shoplifter to hang around while the ill-gotten gains are transferring.
CompUSA and other computer stores could take a few simple steps to prevent software from being copied, said Mac expert Dave Horrigan, who writes a syndicated Macintosh column.
Any Mac can easily be configured to allow changes only by administrators, he said. Also, a system profile tool logs all peripheral equipment, but it must be running to log an iPod. For Macs running OS X, a locked dummy file in an application's package will protect the entire file from being copied without a password.
But Horrigan didn't think the iPod presents a serious piracy threat to Microsoft, and doubted the company would take special measures to prevent in-store copying.
"If Microsoft puts in protection it almost always screws up and causes problems for them or their legit users," he said.
Dennis Lloyd, publisher of iPod fan site iPodlounge , also said this is the first time he'd heard of an iPod put to such use.
"I can see how easy it would be to do," he said. "It's a shame someone has stooped this low to bring bad press to the insanely great iPod."
Online book-sharing service for the blind borrows a
page from Napster
Posted on Fri, Mar. 01, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Bookshare.org is borrowing a page from
Napster, but hoping for a happier ending.
Much like the ill-fated music-sharing service, Bookshare lets computer
users share copyrighted material -- in this case, books -- over the
Internet.
Empowered with a special exemption from copyright law, Bookshare
hopes to avoid the bitter legal fight that bogged down Napster and
prove Napster's subversive technology can be applied for social
good.
Bookshare, based in Palo Alto, is building an online library of books
scanned into audio and Braille formats for the exclusive use of the
blind and people with reading problems such as dyslexia.
The target audience, about 5 million people nationwide, qualifies
Bookshare for a copyright exemption created in 1996 to encourage
greater distribution of literature to the blind and reading-impaired.
With a $1.3 million investment from a nonprofit technology
organization, Benetech, Bookshare hopes to break even by next
year. To do so, it will need at least 10,000 subscribers willing to pay
a $25 setup fee and a $50 annual subscription to download as many
books as they want.
``Great technology that helps people but doesn't make a lot of
money usually never gets done,'' said James R. Fruchterman,
Benetech's chief executive. ``We are on a mission to make sure
socially cool applications happen.''
If not for Napster, Bookshare probably never would have been
created. Fruchterman got the idea in 2000, shortly after his son
joined millions of teen-agers hooked on the music-sharing service.
Bookshare, launched Feb. 21, is starting out with 8,000 titles from an
eclectic mix of authors ranging from Shakespeare to William Shatner.
Fruchterman believes the library easily can expand to 40,000 digital
books within the next two years by tapping into the collections
stored on the computers of its users.
With just 5 percent of all books available on audio, many people feed
paperbacks page by page into a special scanner to create audio files.
It's tedious work requiring about three hours per book.
``Scanning books is kind of like watching paint dry,'' said Rich Ring, a
Portland, Ore., computer instructor who is blind. ``If you are going
to do it, why not share the work with everyone? That's what makes
Bookshare a wonderful way to give back to the community.''
One blind man who scanned a book almost every day for the past 10
years already has given more than 3,000 titles to Bookshare,
Fruchterman said.
Despite its special exemption, Bookshare faced some resistance from
book publishers worried about an invasion from readers who aren't
blind or disabled.
``About 20 percent of the publishers were scared to death of us,''
Fruchterman said. Bookshare didn't reassure publishers with its
original name -- ``Bookster.''
Bookshare eased industry concerns by keeping all its files on a
central, secure server. In contrast, Napster and other music-sharing
systems provided a springboard for users to leap from one hard
drive to another in search of copyright songs to download for free.
About 3,000 of the titles on Bookshare's site can be downloaded by
anyone because the copyrights on the works have expired. For the
remainder, subscribers must prove they are blind or have a reading
disability.
Despite the controls, publishers will be watching closely.
``Technology advances at a pace far faster than any of us can
imagine, so one of the things we are concerned about is what might
happen in the future,'' said Allan Adler, a vice president at the
Association of American Publishers, the industry's main trade group.
Bookshare's format seems unlikely to appeal to people accustomed
to listening to taped books read by professional narrators. Using
special computer equipment, books will come through in an
automated electronic voice.
``If you are not accustomed to sitting in front of a computer listening
to a synthetic voice read to you, this isn't going to be a very
attractive option,'' Ring said.
Those who prefer tactile reading can use specialized printers or
electronic displays to ``read'' braille. But such equipment is
expensive. So only about 10 percent of Bookshare's users are
expected to use braille, said Fruchterman. The rest will listen to
audio.
Other companies, such as Audible Inc. and Books on Tape Inc., sell
more polished audio versions of books online.
With 20,000 titles from books, magazines and newspapers, Audible
offers monthly subscriptions starting at $12.95 per month, while
Books on Tape sells audio tapes at discount prices.
Bookshare signed up 60 subscribers in its first week.
Blind people who participated in a three-month test are confident the
service will succeed.
``It's an idea that I had been wishing someone would develop,''
said John Panarese, a test user in New York. ``But I thought it was
going to be impossible after all the flak Napster got.''
On the Net:
http://www.bookshare.org
OT IBM Global Services Executive Challenges Industry To Focus On Technology Integration,
Not Technology Advances
ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA--(INTERNET WIRE)--Feb 28, 2002 -- WORLD CONGRESS ON INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY -- Senior Vice President and Group Executive of IBM Global Services Doug Elix today challenged the
IT industry to stop focusing on unleashing the power of IT and look at ways to unleash the enterprise instead.
If business and IT are going to work together in a more integrated fashion, Elix said, the IT industry must establish
stronger connections between the two. Right now, some of the "pieces just don't fit," he noted. Advances in technology
are creating unmanageable levels of complexity -- complexity that is growing so fast, it could take 200 million IT
professionals to support the billion people and millions of businesses that will be connected to the Internet by 2010.
Elix outlined his "agenda for action" during a keynote speech at the World Congress on Information Technology today
in Adelaide, Australia. The Congress is the flagship event of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance,
which includes members from the national IT associations of 41 countries.
Elix called on IT professionals and companies to join forces to write a charter for the next era of IT. This collaboration
will require "a new openness in both business and technology, as well as unprecedented levels of cooperation," Elix
said. Without open standards, it will be impossible for companies now locked into proprietary platforms to share data,
applications or computing power. He cited the recent joint proposal between IBM, the Globus Project and Microsoft for
industry-wide adoption of the Open Grid Services Architecture as an example of this new spirit of openness.
To achieve the vision of integrating IT with business, Elix stated that we need systems that require less human
intervention, not more. There are two emerging developments the industry needs to embrace to make the job of
managing and integrating technology less resource-intensive. These are: grid computing, a model for linking the world's
computing resources via a network to address underutilized capacity and make data more accessible; and the goal of
autonomic computing, the creation of self-managing, self-diagnosing and self-healing systems.
To exploit these emerging developments, enterprises can turn to a relatively new computing model: e-business on
demand. Through the delivery of information technology as a utility-like service, Elix said, "CIOs no longer run the data
center, they buy it as a service. This frees them to focus on driving value for the enterprise."
Elix also encouraged organizations to transform their corporate culture into one that focuses on driving business value,
with CIOs acting as operational executives involved in setting business strategy. In addition, Elix urged the IT industry
to collaborate on building more secure and resilient IT infrastructures that are immune to physical or electronic attacks.
Elix concluded his remarks by calling on the IT industry to work together to improve overall quality of life. "We should
not be satisfied with just unleashing IT to transform the enterprise," Elix said. "We also need to use its potential to make
our world a better place to work and live."
For more information about the 2002 World Congress on Information Technology, visit: www.worldcongress2002.org
About IBM Global Services
IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider, with approximately 150,000
professionals serving customers in 160 countries and annual revenue of approximately $35 billion (2001). IBM Global
Services integrates IBM's broad range of capabilities -- services, hardware, software and research -- to help companies
of all sizes realize the full value of information technology. For more information, visit: www.ibm.com/services
*Trademark or registered trademark of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All other
trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Contact:
Contact: James Sciales
Company: IBM
Voice: 914-766-4664
Email: sciales@us.ibm.com
CenterSpan To Pay Sony $2 Million And Stock In Digital Music Pact
Thursday February 28, 9:56 am Eastern Time
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- CenterSpan Communications Corp. (CSSS) agreed to
pay $2 million, plus stock, for the rights to distribute Sony Music Entertainment's
(SNE) recordings in a digital format over the Internet.
CenterSpan also issued Sony 283,556 common shares and a warrant for another 189,037 shares at an exercise price of
$8.11 a share, according to a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
-Robert L. Grant, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-393-7851; robert.grant@dowjones.com
(This story was originally published by Dow Jones Newswires)
Copyright (c) 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Flash: a fractured fairy tale
The clock struck midnight in 2001, but Flash memory is poised to complete its Cinderella story—albeit, with a slight twist
By Beth Stackpole, illustration by Michael Witte -- Electronic Business, 3/1/2002
Sections:
Ebbs and flows
Build it and they will come
As the millennium turned, flash memory made a royal splash as a key component in hot-ticket items such as cell phones and digital cameras. Then, last year, severe market and pricing fluctuations combined with the suddenly sluggish economy cut short the dance—and took the shine off the nonvolatile storage technology.
Most experts now agree it was a temporary setback. But while they expect a full recovery, they say the fantasy ride is over. If they're right, purveyors of flash might do well to get fitted for a good pair of hiking boots instead of a glass slipper.
"There's not a good fairy tale for this recovery," says Jim Cantore, principal analyst for memory at iSuppli Corp., a market research firm in El Segundo, CA. "Now, instead of a Cinderella thing, we're talking a long, slow grind up the mountain."
Like most technology areas today, flash is facing a less-than-charmed landscape. A worldwide economic downturn is eating into demand for products that employ flash—everything from PCs and automobiles to emerging products such as digital cameras and camcorders, MP3 players and set-top boxes. Because things looked far different—read "off-the-charts promising"—in early 2000, manufacturers stocked up on flash inventory and flash makers cranked up their fabs to accommodate the anticipated growing demand. All of this served to create a serious glut of flash at the very moment the market bottomed out. As a result, there have been huge price drops in flash components—some forms of the memory fell by more than 50% last year—putting further pressure on already struggling flash providers.
There are signs that this tale of woe is starting to turn. Despite the poor market conditions, flash vendors claim unit sales and densities are up, even if total revenues are lagging. There also is plenty of ongoing development in the two competing flash camps: NOR, the traditional flash memory suited for code-executable applications such as powering on cell phones or PCs, and NAND, the more data-intensive technology that lends itself as a storage medium for digital cameras or MP3 players. Flash also is faring far better than other memory technologies, including DRAM and SRAM, which are more dependent on stagnating PC sales and have suffered tremendously. Flash is used in a broader array of products, and thus isn't wedded to the fate of a single market. Finally, because flash is tied so closely to emerging products, experts say we're merely on the cusp of the growth curve—leaving ample opportunity once the economic downturn finally reverses.
"Flash is in every computer as the boot-up mechanism, in every cell phone to keep communications protocols going, in digital cameras as a film replacement, in MP3 players to store music and in PDAs instead of hard drives," says Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research Inc., a market research firm in Monterey, CA, specializing in memory. That's only the tip of the iceberg, Niebel says. Flash currently serves more than 50 applications areas—among them, network routers and hubs, scanners, terminals, printers and navigational systems like those of an automotive GPS (Global Positioning System). Says Niebel: "That's a lot of potential and a lot of application markets. Every year, we're seeing the silicon content increasing in greater percentages of every device out there. And flash is, and will be, the device of choice."
Ebbs and flows
Flash is the preferred medium for a number of reasons. Unlike its DRAM and SRAM cousins, flash is nonvolatile, meaning it doesn't lose its content once a system powers down. Although it got off to a slow start in the mid- '90s because its price point still was far higher than those of competing memory technologies, flash took off in 1998 as costs began to come down and core manufacturers such as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Silicon Storage Technology (SST) and others began making advances that improved the capacity of flash components (density size) while decreasing chip size.
"Instead of a Cinderella thing, we're talking a long, slow grind up the mountain."—Jim Cantore, principal analyst for memory, iSuppli Corp.
The market grew by 148% from 1999 to 2000—from $4.6 billion to $11.3 billion—according to Web-Feet Research (see chart, above). But 2001 was far less kind. The flash memory market declined by about 30%, to somewhere near the $8 billion mark, according to the research firm, and 2002 is expected to be flat or have single-digit growth. Analysts don't expect flash to really get back on track until 2003. "There's too much uncertainty heading into 2002," Niebel says. "Once we see a turnover [to economic] recovery, it will stimulate demand, but it'll still take a good six months for flash to gain any real momentum."
Chances are pretty good, however, that flash will rebound before other memory components. Flash is less of a commodity item than DRAM and SRAM, and thus isn't subject to the same cutthroat price wars. While the flash market was down 30% in 2001, for example, pricing pressures cut DRAM revenue by nearly twice that, analysts say. Also, many of the larger OEMs buy flash memory under long-term agreements, which lock in rates and protect both sides from hair-raising price swings.
Diversity also is a factor. "Flash is split up enough among the different applications that the effects of the market are not as cumulative as they are with DRAM, and the pricing pressures are not as acute," notes Rich Wawrzyniak, director of nonvolatile memory at Semico Research Corp., a market research firm in Phoenix. Wawrzyniak believes the market hit bottom in the third quarter of last year and expects flash to continue as the memory solution of choice for new portable and wireless devices for at least the next five years—or until emerging technologies such as magnetic RAM and others mature enough to be viable in mass production.
Stability notwithstanding, prices of flash components also are dropping enough to allow OEMs to build larger densities into their designs. For example, 16-Mbit NOR flash, a popular density used for cell phones, dropped from $5.90 a component in the first quarter of 2001 to about $3.90 in the fourth quarter, and is expected to flatten out early this year at $3.75 a component, according to iSuppli (see chart, below).
This kind of price drop and stabilization is good for OEMs, and ultimately for consumers. "There's opportunity now that prices are falling," says Bill Dalheim, project manager in procurement for MP3 products at Compaq Computer Corp., Houston. Compaq is easing into the MP3 market with its first product, the PA1, which currently is outfitted with a 64-Mbit MMC multimedia flash card.
A packaged memory option that employs flash components, such flash cards commonly are used in digital cameras, MP3 players and other electronic devices. They make up about 15% of the overall flash market. When customers want more memory space, they can purchase additional flash cards just like they buy extra floppy disks or CD-ROMs.
Now that prices on flash components are dropping, Compaq intends to boost the performance of its MP3 players by replacing the cards with embedded NAND components produced by Toshiba Corp., Tokyo, in partnership with SanDisk Corp., Sunnyvale, CA. "These [chips] will be cheaper and faster [than the cards], and when you're trying to push music, downloading anything faster is better," Dalheim says.
At Targa Electronics Systems Inc., a reseller of ruggedized data storage units used in airplanes and helicopters, lower pricing on flash components is helping make the technology less of a specialty purchase and more of a mainstream application sell. Targa products employ flash memory cards to capture navigational data or other operational information used in post-flight analysis. "Lower pricing has helped eliminate some of that flash price sticker shock experienced by some of our customers," reports David Saunders, Targa's vice president of operations, in Ottawa, Canada. "Two years ago, in many instances, the astronomical cost of flash drove customers to look for alternative technologies."
Build it and they will come
OEMs—and ultimately consumers—can continue to expect to get a lot more performance for their flash dollars. Digital camera makers now can outfit their equipment with 128 Mbytes of NAND flash memory for about what they paid for 32 Mbytes last year, meaning consumers will be able to store more photos without having to purchase additional memory cards. Cell phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, also are in the market for higher density memory sources to fuel new products that have built-in Internet capabilities as well as features for downloading video or running PC productivity applications, officials there say.
"Flash is in every computer as the boot-up mechanism, in every cell phone to keep communications protocols going, in digital cameras as a film replacement, in MP3 players to store music and in PDAs instead of hard drives."—Alan Niebel, CEO, Web-Feet Research Inc.
To accommodate all of this demand, flash vendors in both NOR and NAND camps are promoting advances that pack more high-performance memory into smaller, more efficient spaces. Even though many companies have had to implement layoffs or salary freezes to deal with the current downturn, most aren't willing to sacrifice development in such a competitive climate. "We don't want to just survive and be around for the up cycle—we need to position ourselves better than anyone else for the up cycle," explains Nelson Chan, senior vice president and general manager for SanDisk's retail business unit.
That's why NAND vendors such as SanDisk and partner Toshiba are leading the charge to the highest flash densities. Less costly to manufacture, NAND is sequential flash technology that lends itself to data storage applications, thus a prime candidate for the higher-density capacities. While NOR vendors are just out with densities in the 128-Mbit and 256-Mbit range, the Toshiba/SanDisk partnership, for instance, in November announced a 1-gigabit NAND flash memory chip. The chip will be manufactured on the same 0.16-micron process technology that currently is used in the production of 512-Mbit NAND, and is based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology, which allows two bits of data to be stored in one memory cell, doubling memory capacity. Both Toshiba and SanDisk also will release memory cards that utilize the new chip in the first half of 2002.
NOR vendors also are doing their best to stay out in front. NOR, a random access flash technology, generally is considered to be higher performance than NAND, making it a natural for code storage or execute-in-place applications. Since density is not as acute a requirement, companies such as Sunnyvale, CA-based SST are touting performance, low power and flexibility advantages as well as improvements in capacity. SST, for instance, claims its SuperFlash split gate architecture provides a level of flexibility particularly appealing to OEMs with small- and medium-sized memory requirements (like those of cell phones, PDAs and other wireless devices).
Intel Corp., the overall leader in flash, recently has made advancements to its StrataFlash NOR technology. In October, the company announced the first flash chip based on 0.13-micron process technology, which it aims to ship early this year. The new Advanced+ Boot Block flash chip—nearly 50% smaller and consuming less power than its 0.18-micron predecessor—is what Intel claims is the world's smallest 32-Mbit die, aimed at cell phones and other electronics equipment in which small form factors and low power are critical requirements. In addition, the new process technology will allow Intel to build flash memories with densities up to 512-Mbit and beyond, according to Curt Nichols, vice president and general manager of Intel's flash products group, Folsom, CA.
In the interim, Intel also is pushing the densities of its existing StrataFlash line. The company is shipping a 128-Mbit version of its 3-volt synchronous Intel StrataFlash Memory, and has announced plans to build 256-Mbit versions. While its ability to produce higher density flash products is evolving, Nichols says, Intel is committed exclusively to NOR technology, thus the company doesn't see a need to go much beyond those densities—at least, for the next decade. "One-gigabit technology [like NAND offerings] is great for digital cameras or MP3 players, but cell phones are just moving to the requirement for 64-Mbits," Nichols says. "Our product line is focused on the ability to execute code and store data on a single chip…so any comparison [to NAND] is apples to oranges."
"We want to address the entire market, technologywise."
—Kevin Plouse, vice president of technical marketing and business development, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
AMD Inc., another major player in flash, also believes there are distinct markets for NOR and NAND technology—yet unlike Intel, it wants in on both. "NOR and NAND are similar, but the end applications are very different, requiring us to do both," says Kevin Plouse, AMD's vice president of technical marketing and business development in Sunnyvale.
For NAND-type applications, AMD offers the 3.0-volt-only Am30LV0064D, a 64-Mbit device that is the first in a family that eventually will extend to 1-Gbit and beyond. AMD has its own blueprint for packing twice as much data in the same space for its NOR line. Its MirrorBit architecture, a variant of multicell technology used by competitors, will be introduced in a 64-Mbit device during the first quarter of 2002, with the 256-Mbit version to follow in the third quarter. The company also is pushing the limits of its existing NOR products. Last November, AMD announced a 128-Mbit, high-performance NOR device aimed at automotive, cell phone and set-top box applications. That same month, AMD rolled out a fast, burst-mode NOR flash device specifically designed to support the high-speed and low-power requirements of emerging cell phone applications. "We want to address the entire market, technologywise," Plouse says.
STMicroelectronics NV, a relative newcomer to flash, also is considering expanding its NOR product portfolio to include NAND components, says Mario Licciardello, memory products group vice president and general manager for STMicro's flash memory division in Agrate, Italy. "For whatever applications we support and whatever customers we support, we want to be a provider of a solution," Licciardello says. "Major customers in the cell phone business likely need both high-performance flash and low-cost flash for data storage. We don't want to take them from here to there and have to direct them to a competitor to get the rest."
The downside to doing both, Licciardello admits, is that STMicro clearly lacks the experience in NAND technology and would have to create a fab with a different process type. "We're also looking at how to take our own multicell technology to achieve similar densities and cost efficiencies without having to pursue an alternative technology," he says.
Clearly there are enough emerging applications for both forms of flash. NAND technology currently accounts for only 10% of the market, with NOR flash devices capturing 84% and the remaining portion going to chips that combine the two forms, according to Web-Feet's Niebel. And while most expect NAND's toehold to increase dramatically over the next few years as demand for digital cameras, MP3 players and other prime devices takes off, no one is anticipating that it will overtake NOR or set off any kind of major power shift among the players in the market.
"We don't want to just survive and be around for the up cycle—we need to position ourselves better than anyone else for the up cycle."—Nelson Chan, senior vice president and general manager, SanDisk's retail business unit
The bottom line: There's still plenty of opportunity to go around for the entire cast of flash players, which in itself is a pretty cheerful note in what some are calling the worst chapter in semiconductor history.
Still, when the economy rebounds, experts don't anticipate a return to the exuberant days of 100%-plus growth for any technology sector—even the once high-flying flash. Moreover, falling prices and, eventually, competing new technologies also will keep flash's prospects a little more grounded. "With some of these emerging applications, it's entirely possible that lightning will strike again [for flash], although not probable," says Semico's Wawrzyniak.
So, while flash might not recapture the glory role of Cinderella at the Royal Ball, it's not about to become the ugly stepsister, either.
Beth Stackpole is a freelance writer living in Newbury, Mass. She can be reached at bstack@stackpolepartners.com.
Sunncomm and Music City Records Agree to Resolve Consumer Music “CD- Cloqueing”
Posted 26. February 2002 07:52
Sunncomm and Music City Records agreed today to settle a suit brought against them by a
California women arising out of Sunncomm’s “cloquing technology” used on Music CDs that
allegedly acted against the reasonable expectations of consumers by electronically tracking
consumers’ listening habits and preventing consumers from spaceshifting songs to portable
MP3 players.
The lawsuit, (entitled DeLise v. Fahrenheit Entertainment, Music City Records, and Sunncomm)was filed in Marin County Superior Court in September, 2001 and alleged that Music City Records failed to disclose that unlike millions of Music Compact Discs sold before it that Music City's CD entitled "Charley Pride - A Tribute to Jim Reeves" would not work on standard audio CD players found on millions of personal computers, that electronic music files made available for download pursuant to purchase of its CD were proprietary in nature, that such electronic music files would not work on portable MP3 players, and that the CD included a proprietary electronic music scheme that tracked, stored, and disseminated specific consumer personal identifying information, listening data, and downloading habits to entities beyond the control of the consumer. The suit also alleged that there was no practical way to opt-out of the data collection or destroy the data once it is collected. The suit requested relief from the Court to stop the alleged privacy intrusion and to provide better consumer notices. According to the settlement agreement summarized below, the “Defendants”, Music City Records, Fahrenheit Entertainment, and Sunncomm, agreed to the following consumer remedies in the United States so long as they maintain the Sunncomm or similar “Cloqueing”
(Digital Rights Management) technology on the music CD entitled “Charley Pride — a Tribute to Jim Reeves” (“Charlie Pride CD”):
Privacy
1. Defendants shall immediately ensure that any and all Internet music file downloads and listening of the music contained or arising out of said Charlie Pride CD are always anonymous and personal identifying information including, but not limited to, e-mail address and IP addresses shall not be required nor obtained as a condition of downloading (including file downloads from sunncomm.com) or playing or listening to the CD or music files, thereby protecting consumer privacy.
2. Defendants shall immediately purge all personal identifying information (including e-mail addresses and IP addresses) obtained via the music file downloading process to date.
3. Defendants shall amend their privacy policy(s) to advise consumersthat all Internet file downloads of the music contained on the Charlie Pride CD are anonymous. Right of First Sale
4. Defendants shall not impair or limit in any manner the ability and right of consumers to lawfully sell or transfer ownership of the Charlie Pride CD to others who shall have the equal ability to download related digital music files; Return Policy
5. Defendants shall immediately begin accepting from consumers not satisfied with the Charlie Pride CD due to problems with playability on their CD player, computer CD player, or electronic or portable playing device; Platform Notices
6. Defendants shall include a warning that the Charlie Pride CD is not designed to work in DVD players or Computer CD-ROM players;
7. Defendants shall include a warning of the minimum system requirements for playing the downloadable encrypted digital music files on a computer, including Microsoft Windows 98 and above and Microsoft Windows Media Player 7.0 and above and access to the Internet; Spaceshifting Notices
8. Defendants shall include a warning that the Charlie Pride CD and encrypted digital music file downloads are not compatible with MP3 rippers and players and are not compatible with MP3 electronic playing devices; .
9. Defendants shall include a notice to visit a web page with a simple URL for an updated list of known compatibility problems related to computers. CD players, and digital music playing devices;
10. Defendants shall include a warning that the downloadable encrypted digital music files of the songs contained on the Charlie Pride CD may only be downloaded six times. “I am very satisfied with the settlement we obtained for the benefit of the General Public…I applaud Music City and Sunncomm in deciding to resolve this case and to give consumers better notice so consumers can make an informed decision as to whether they want to purchase such functionally impaired CDs" said Karen DeLise plaintiff in the case. “Sunncomm and Music City, in our view, have an obligation if they want to implement Digital Rights Management technology on their music CDs to do so responsibly, with notice, so consumers can make an informed decision about whether to buy such burdened CDs. We are hopeful that this settlement will create a model for other record companies to follow if they want to sell functionally inferior music CDs by making them different from the millions of CDs sold in the
past " said Ira Rothken, an attorney representing the Plainitffs.
If you wish to discuss this case or have any questions please contact Plaintiffs lead counsel, Ira Rothken of THE ROTHKEN LAW FIRM at 415-924-4250 or via e-mail at ira@techfirm.com. The law firm web site is located at http://www.techfirm.com.
Uh, tech it's nearly March if u didn't notice.eom
Must read..The Digital Rights Future...
http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/25/0225digitalrights.html
Published in Chicago Tribune today..tomorrow????..
http://chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0202250014feb25.story?coll=chi%2Dtechnology%2Dhed
Music firms look to new disks for a jolt
DataPlay media to resist piracy
By Jon Healey. Special to the Tribune. Jon Healey is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper
Published February 25, 2002
courtesy billygoat-RB
BOULDER, Colo. -- Digital technology is built on an elegantly simple foundation, a universal language of ones and zeros. Yet when it comes to storing those ones and zeros, the electronics world is a mess of incompatible memory cards, sticks and disks.
DataPlay Inc., a start-up bred in a Rocky Mountain hotbed for data-storage engineers, hopes to lead consumers out of the chaos with a new, universal format.
A wafer-thin disk encased in a 1 1/4-inch square of plastic, each piece of DataPlay media can hold at least five hours of CD-quality music, one hour of video, one console-style video game, 1,000 high-resolution digital photos or 100 e-books.
It's a masterpiece of engineering that gives at least one multibillion-dollar business--the music industry--exactly what it wants: a new medium that resists piracy.
More than 20 years have passed since the introduction of the CD, which boosted sales by prompting music lovers to buy new versions of the records they owned. Now CD sales are flat, and the industry needs a jolt.
The disks' multimedia capabilities and encryption technology could spark new approaches to selling music, movies and other digital material. For example, record companies could load a 500 megabyte DataPlay disk with music videos, backstage photos, tour schedules and older albums waiting to be unlocked for an extra fee.
For every new format that reached mass acceptance, however, there are a dozen more that didn't. One reason is the fierce competition among electronics companies, many of which bring their own formats to market.
A more fundamental question is whether the public will embrace any new format for portable storage, particularly one that works only on new devices built for that format.
In the not-too-distant future, consumers will be connected continuously to the Internet at high speed, and their devices will talk to each other wirelessly. They'll download digital music and movie files from the Web and store their collections on computer hard drives instead of bookshelves.
With technology like that, why would anyone need disks? That world is still at least a few years away, yet some analysts say it's close enough to spell trouble for DataPlay.
"DataPlay is caught between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the CD and the hard place being the advent of digital music [online]," said analyst Mark Mooradian of Jupiter Media Metrix, a technology research and consulting firm. "It becomes very difficult to imagine a place for a format like DataPlay. It looks very transitional."
To make matters worse, engineering delays pushed DataPlay at least six months behind schedule. Instead of making their debut last fall in time for the holiday-shopping season, the disks and players are now expected in April.
Those delays have left a number of consumer electronics and media companies in a we'll-believe-it-when-we-see-it mode.
"If DataPlay matures to the point where it's accepted by the mass market, then we would be more inclined to produce devices," said Phil O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for consumer-electronics manufacturer Creative Labs.
Steve Volk, DataPlay's founder and chief executive, shrugs off the delays. Factories belonging to partners in North Dakota and Taiwan are cranking out blank DataPlay media as fast as they can make it. Another partner in China is assembling tens of thousands of the tiny "storage engines" that will read and record the disks, supplied by optical components from DataPlay's own plant in Singapore.
"We are in volume production now," Volk said.
DataPlay is based in Boulder, a college town that became a mecca for data storage after IBM Corp. put a pioneering magnetic-storage plant here a quarter-century ago. Volk made a name for himself as an entrepreneur in that area, credited with helping a series of companies develop the pint-size hard drives used by laptops, personal digital assistants and Apple's iPod MP3 player.
Firm boasts team of experts
After devising the concept for DataPlay in his basement four years ago, Volk pulled together a team of experts from the magnetic and optical-storage fields. The basic idea was simple: to create a small, inexpensive disk that stored information as densely as a DVD.
Turning Volk's cardboard mock-ups into working models, however, required a series of technological leaps.
Chief Technical Officer Dave Davies, a former 3M engineer who helped introduce the CD-ROM, said DataPlay had to come up with much more effective error-correction technology while dramatically cutting the size and power consumption of the components that read and burn the disks.
Like a DVD recorder, the DataPlay engine uses a laser to change the physical properties of a blank disk, creating a digital code of bumps and pits in the disk's grooves. The optical components that do this work are "the world's smallest by a very large margin," Davies said.
The disks can be recorded only once, a significant sacrifice that DataPlay made for the sake of disk longevity and battery life. But unlike virtually every other kind of media, the double-sided disks can offer prerecorded material with blank space for consumers' data.
That means consumers buying a new U2 album on DataPlay, for example, could customize the disk with older U2 songs and pictures from a U2 concert. Or they could buy an electronic key online to unlock additional albums, videos or other material hidden on the disk.
"We don't intend to be a small CD," Volk said. "We intend to give you the tour, the album, the video and a lot more. It's a different consumer experience."
Each side of a DataPlay disk has only about one-third the capacity of a CD, but the methods it uses to compress and store audio data are 10 times as efficient. That means a single disk can hold about 80 CD-quality songs, or three albums' worth of music.
DataPlay ran into delays as it worked to drive down costs and set up production lines overseas, but company officials say they've hit all the technical marks. Now, as the first generation of DataPlay devices goes into production, the company is working on ways to boost the disk's capacity to 1 gigabyte and beyond while slimming the engine's profile.
Volk said the company has spent $125 million so far, the bulk of it coming from venture capital firms and corporate investors. These include photography powerhouses Eastman Kodak Co. and Olympus Optical Co., chipmaker Intel Corp., giant music retailer Trans World Entertainment Corp., and Asian electronics conglomerates Toshiba and Samsung.
Also backing DataPlay is Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company. DataPlay officials said that three of the five major record companies--Universal, EMI and BMG--each pledged to have 50 hit albums in DataPlay format.
The CD will be hard to replace, given the millions of players installed in homes, cars and offices. But the music industry is eager to supplant it with copy-protected media, which not only combat piracy but also enable new business models.
Larry Kenswil, president of Universal ELabs, said the CD makes it difficult for the labels to sell packages of music with fewer rights--for example, an album that could be played only on one device, or for a set amount of time.
"That forces the price of the CD to be very high in the first place, and secondly eliminates the possibility of pricing things lower for fewer rights," he said.
Encryption draws attention
Any kind of data can be stored on a DataPlay disk, but a DataPlay-equipped music player will play only music files that have been encrypted, Volk said. In other words, a DataPlay device can't play MP3s unless they're wrapped in software that prevents them from being copied or moved to other computers.
The encryption features have cooled the enthusiasm of one early backer, SonicBlue Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based consumer electronics company.
"They've sold their soul to Universal," said Andrew Wolfe, SonicBlue's chief technical officer. "There are so many rules and restrictions about what you can put on the disk and what you can't put on the disk, it just doesn't fit into our infrastructure."
Samsung, Toshiba and San Diego-based E.Digital Corp., on the other hand, all have announced plans for music players, cameras and adapters that enable computers to read DataPlay disks. The first DataPlay device, due April 15, is a $350 player from Evolution Technologies Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., that's based on an E.Digital design.
Prices will be high initially, because the DataPlay engine costs about $100, said Brad Deifer, chief executive of Evolution. By contrast, supporting a CompactFlash memory card requires a connector that costs less than 50 cents, said Nelson Chan of SanDisk Corp., a leading manufacturer of flash memory products.
Volk said the company's investors are committed to the format, giving the firm plenty of time to establish the new medium.
Still, even successful formats take years to win over the masses. Although the proliferation of portable digital gear and the rising piracy concerns make DataPlay's timing auspicious, its opportunity is passing quickly.
Prices of flash memory chips and hard drives are plummeting while their capacities double every year. Within a few years, a fully rewritable 512 mb CompactFlash card will sell for about the same amount as a DataPlay disk and engine cost today.
The labels' support and the company's engineering breakthroughs give DataPlay a significant head start in what some analysts see as a race for the next great format.
Said Jim Porter, an analyst for market research firm Disk/Trend Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., "If this gets done on schedule, with perceived reliability and at the right cost, then Steve Volk has a huge winner."
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
Hmmm..STMicroelectronics Flash memory eliminates external RAM
Posted : 25 Feb 2002
Designed for digital consumer products such as STBs, PDAs, camcorders, and printers, the M58LW032A 32Mb Flash memory chip stores data, but allows direct execution of stored codes and eliminates the need for a separate RAM. The device can also be used in network routers and car navigation systems.
The device features 56MHz synchronous data bursts, a 16-bit data bus, and an operating voltage range of 2.7V to 3.6V, as well as a voltage I/O buffer. The M58LW032A also performs asynchronous 90ns/25ns page mode read, 90ns random access, and address-latch-controlled read operations.
The chip also offers a 16word write-buffer that lets a microprocessor program from one to 16words in parallel, speeding programming while freeing the processor for other tasks. A controller that conforms to the Common Flash Interface specification and executes standard JEDEC control commands, is also included.
To simplify system design, the M58LW032A consists of 64 uniform memory blocks of 32Kwords each. Blocks are independently erasable and programmable, making it possible to erase old data while preserving data that is valid. For data security, individual blocks can be protected from being accidentally erased or programmed. In addition, a separate enable line, when held low, inhibits all erase and program operations.
The chip can also suspend a programming operation to allow data to be read from other blocks. Erase operations can also be suspended for the sake of either reading or programming another block before resuming.
The M58LW032A also includes a 128-bit protection register comprising two 64-bit segments. The first segment contains a manufacturer's code, while the second is a user programmable and lockable bit field.
Available in TSOP56 and TBGA64 packages, the M58LW032A operates over the temperature range of -45°C to 85°C, and is capable of >100,000 erase and program cycles per block.
Thanks MIR.eom
Sharp set to release portable A/V player
Posted: February 20, 2002
Japan—Sharp Corp. plans to launch a portable A/V player that records and reproduces audio and video data.
The MT-VA1 compresses video data in MPEG-4 format. It supports a combination of digital signal processing (DSP) and software performs encoding and decoding. Pictures are recorded at a resolution of 336 by 220 pixels.
The player also reproduces in G.726 format. Both video and voice recording are performed through composite signals using the attached A/V stand. Videos can be reproduced on PCs.
Video data are stored either in the built-in 64M synchronous DRAM (available capacity is 56M) or in the SD Memory Card. Using an SD Memory Card of 128M, recording time ranges from 33 minutes to 120 minutes. The player has three video-encoding speeds: 470Kbps at 15fps, 215Kbps at 10fps, and 100Kbps at 7.5fps.
When the unit functions as a voice player, the compression speed is 96Kbps or 40Kbps. Voice data are compressed in MP3 format. When the player functions as a music player, it has two compression speeds: 128Kbps on normal mode and 96Kbps on economy mode.
The player comes with a built-in three-inch color TFT LCD with backlighting. The panel displays content list, content data capacity, available memory time, time and volume. The unit is also equipped with built-in Li-ion secondary batteries that support approximately one hour of video reproduction and 3.5 hours of music reproduction. Power consumption is 1.8W.
The 88 by 82.5 by 18mm player weighs 126g. It is expected to cost around 40,000 yen (132.29 yen = US$1). Monthly production is estimated at about 20,000 units.
Anyone know what happened to the Treoplayer "eGroup" on Yahoo?TIA
LGJ, liked this part the best...The fans could in turn pass tunes along to friends — a kind of musical trading card.
Unlike Internet downloads, tunes sent to cell phones would be easy for record
companies to track, said Ralph Simon, a former record industry executive who is now
chairman of Yourmobile, based in Santa Monica, Calif.
"If you pass a song along to other phones through a network, each phone can be
charged," said Simon, who was in the French Riviera resort of Cannes for a
conference on wireless technology. "It's like going through a toll gate. There's more
potential for copyright control than there was on the Internet."
Digital Music After Napster
Penelope Patsuris, 02.20.02, 12:00 PM ET
NEW YORK - Seven months after they shut down Napster, what are the
five major record companies doing to give consumers the digital music
they demand? Answer: not very much.
Sure, each has cut licensing deals with the two competing ventures that
the five majors have started, MusicNet and Pressplay, but each of these
subscription services is seriously flawed. And apart from these deals,
each record company has loads of other digital music pacts, which tells
us that the majors simply haven't a clue as to who really knows how to
sell songs online.
Indeed, there are currently so many convoluted deals in play at this point
that it's impossible to say which record company has the lead online. For
the latest on each company's digital deals, click on the names below.
Bertelsmann
BMG Entertainment
Major Labels: Arista Records, BMG, RCA Records
Who's The Boss: Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, chairman and CEO
2001 Revenue: $3.2 billion
Platinum Performers: Puff Daddy, Aretha Franklin, Christina Aguilera,
Clint Black, Dave Matthews Band
Digital Deals: BMG doesn't sell any digital music itself, but it is a partner
in MusicNet. It also has a handful of sites that promote its artists,
including Click2Music.com for rock and pop and BlueBird.com, which
features BMG's bevy of jazz giants, like Duke Ellington.
For digital sales, BMG licenses MusicNet and RioPort's PulseOne Media
Service, which is a wholesale download service that sells its content and
technology to digital music retailers like MTVi.com, Radio Free Virgin and
BestBuy.com. In early January, BMG also became the first major record
company to license its library to Listen.com's Rhapsody, which is a
stream-only subscription service that also aims to wholesale its content
and technology to distribution partners in an increasingly crowded market
along with PulseOne and MusicNet. Thus far, Rhapsody has also landed
licenses with Sony and EMI, but it is partnered for distribution only with a
Seattle-based broadband service called Speakeasy and Naxos.com, a
classical music Web site.
EMI Group
2001 Revenue: $3.8 billion
Labels: Capitol Records, EMI Chrysalis, Virgin Records, Abbey Road
Studios
Who's The Boss? Alain Levy, chairman and CEO of recorded music
Platinum Performers: Janet Jackson, Radiohead, Coldplay, Garth
Brooks, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Beastie Boys
Digital Deals: EMI is the only major record company smart enough to
get on board with both MusicNet and Pressplay from the start. Why
would any music company want to limit its distribution? EMI also
licenses Listen.com's Rhapsody and Ecast, which, among other
broadband enterprises, puts pay-per-play digital jukeboxes in public
places like restaurants and bars and splits the revenue they generate with
the record company. EMI has a Christian-music subscription service
dubbed HigherWaves.com and is on board with FullAudio, which provides
digital music services for the Web sites of radio stations owned by Clear
Channel.
Sony
Sony Music
2001 Revenue: $4.9 billion (fiscal year ended March 31, 2001)
Major Labels: Columbia Records, Epic Records, Harmony Records,
Legacy Recordings, Sony Music Soundtrax
Who's The Boss? Thomas Mottola, chairman and CEO
Platinum Performers: Destiny's Child, Celine Dion, Dixie Chicks, Bob
Dylan, Lauryn Hill, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Korn, Jennifer Lopez,
Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand
Digital Deals: In addition to partnering in Pressplay, Sony has deals to
sell its music digitally through Ecast and Rioport and through
Listen.com's Rhapsody. Sony's digital efforts look particularly paltry
because the entertainment giant had the misfortune of teaming with the
wrong startup, Reciprocal Music, to distribute its music digitally.
Reciprocal went under last fall and took with it the business Sony had
selling digital downloads via the Web sites for brick-and-mortar outfits
Tower Records, Hastings Entertainment and Alliance Entertainment.
None of these deals were huge, but now Sony is back at square one.
Universal Music Group
2001 Revenue: $6.6 billion
Major Labels: Interscope Geffen A&M, MCA Records, Motown, Universal
Records
Who's The Boss? Doug Morris, chairman and CEO
Platinum Performers: Eminem, Elton John, Sting, Luciano Pavarotti,
Shaggy, Shania Twain, U2, Sheryl Crow
Digital Deals: Universal Music is part of the joint venture Pressplay, but
it also runs a handful of smaller, somewhat disparate digital music sites
that it's acquired as struggling dot-coms went looking for corporate cover.
One is MP3.com. In the late '90s this pioneering music site may have
scored the perfect domain name for offering digital downloads, but since it
elected to stick with peddling legal downloads, most of the bands it
features are small, independent acts. Now MP3.com bills itself as the
largest, legal free music site, and with 1.4 million tunes on file and 20
million registered users, it is. Vivendi admits that mostly unknown artists
post their work on the site, hoping to gain a following. Still, some
big-name acts like Offspring, Alicia Keys and Jewel offer streams and
CD-burnable downloads. A small and underwhelming subscription feature
lets users load music onto CDs that they already own so those albums
can be accessed and played from any PC.
Emusic.com, another once-independent site pulled into this corporate
fold, is a paid site with two subscription levels. A one-year commitment
costs $9.99 a month, and a three-month commitment is $14.99 a month.
Its small but loyal following has unlimited access to Emusic's collection
of jazz, punk and industrial tracks, which can be streamed, burned and
downloaded to both PCs and portable digital music devices.
GetMusic.com intends to be the MTV of online music, with streaming
music videos and live performances, but it's never really taken off, so
Vivendi intends to morph it into a site for teens. Whether teens or anyone
else would rather watch videos on their PC when they can see them on a
TV remains to be seen.
Finally, Universal is also partnered with RollingStone.com, but the aging
alternative- magazine's site mostly features photos and reviews, and just
a smattering of MP3 files.
Universal's sprawling digital music strategy may be more effort than it's
worth. MP3.com and Emusic serve niche music with loyal followings, but
it's not clear that their business models will hold up. As with every other
market on the Net, this one will consolidate in the end, and the likely
winners will be Pressplay and MusicNet, which have the major record
companies' support.
AOL Time Warner
Warner Music Group
2001 Revenue: $3.9 billion
Who's The Boss? Roger Ames, chairman and CEO
Major Labels: Rhino Records, Warner Bros. Records, Reprise Records,
Elektra, Atlantic Records
Platinum Performers: Brandy, Linkin Park, Metallica, Faith Hill, Red
Hot Chili Peppers, Goo Goo Dolls, Cher, Staind, Alanis Morissette
Digital Deals: Warner Music has a ton of them--it has the most digital
distribution by far of all the major record companies. For music it's on
board with AOL Music (of course), MusicNet, MP3.com, MTVi,
Listen.com, Liquid Audio, RioPort, TouchTunes, Echo, Muze, Ecast, and
LoudEye/Discover Music. Warner has a whole other stable of sites
licensed to stream its artists' videos, including GetMusic, Intertainer,
Launch Media/Yahoo!, ArtistDirect, Ritmoteca and the Digital Music
Network.
Can The Album Survive Digital Music?
Ian Zack, 02.22.02, 12:00 PM ET
NEW YORK - Middle-aged music fans remember picking up the Beatles'
Sgt. Pepper's album in 1967, pouring over its cryptic cover, pulling out
the giveaway cutouts inside and being blown away by one of the most
famous artistic creations in popular music history.
But don't tell that to Matt Goyer.
"As a music fan, I'd much prefer to download a new song every month or
two months, rather than waiting two years for an album," says Goyer, a
22-year-old who has downloaded 3,000 songs from the Internet to his
computer. "I pretty much don't buy CDs anymore."
The digital music revolution is barely beyond the Fort Sumter stage, but
it's worth asking: Will there be albums, as they're known today, in the
future?
Some say yes.
"There's a lot of evidence that shoppers and consumers like to go to a
record store, to see and touch and feel the product," says Alan Malasky,
a lawyer for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, which
represents music retailers. "I don't think that anyone is realistically saying
that CDs or albums are going to disappear in the foreseeable future."
Don't be so sure, though. Listen to Dave Goldberg, vice president and
general manager of music for Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people): "I
think we all pretty much agree that we are going to move away from the
physical delivery of music," he says. "It won't be delivered on a piece of
plastic."
To those too young to know the difference between Mick Jagger and Mick
Fleetwood, it may seem like albums have been around forever. But for
more than half of the last century, single songs and not full-length albums
ruled the music world. Fans bought their blues, country and popular
music on 78 RPM records, later on 45 RPM records, one or two songs at
a time. Columbia ushered in the LP long-playing record format in the late
1940s, but it did not immediately become dominant. Elvis Presley built
his reputation in the 1950s on hit singles, not albums.
Credit Frank Sinatra for elevating the album to the status of an artistic
statement in the mid-1950s. Later, in the '60s, bands like the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones and singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan did the same in
rock music. Single 45s eventually became mere marketing tools for
albums and nothing more. Compact discs, introduced in 1982, dealt the
first blow to the aesthetics of the album, relegating the cover art, lyrics
and liner notes to the size of a jewel case.
Then came Napster, the free music download service, which took off in
the late 1990s and had 30 million users trading digital music downloaded
from the Internet before record companies forced its shutdown last year.
Many users have since migrated to Morpheus and other free sites, while
several pay-subscription download services have sprung up, including
MusicNet, Pressplay and EMusic.
Some musicians have begun challenging the pay services as they did
Napster, arguing that they never gave permission for their songs to be
sold digitally, one at a time. Some look into the digital future and don't
like what they see, economically or artistically.
Howard King, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer whose clients include
Metallica and Dr. Dre, says a lot of musicians are concerned that albums
could be a thing of the past if record companies decide they can make
more money offering songs piecemeal.
"It somehow cheapens it that one item gets put out and 14 tracks get
missed," King says. "It's like someone taking a corner of a Chagall
painting and saying that's the whole painting."
Andy Schuon, chief of Pressplay, the new music download service
backed by Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people), EMI Group and Vivendi's
(nyse: V - news - people) Universal Music Group, says there's always
been two kinds of artists, those who make albums as artistic statements,
the Bruce Springsteens and U2s of the world, and those who produce a
collection of songs because it has been the conventional way of
marketing music.
Schuon insists that albums will remain viable, although his choice of
words is interesting: "The album is for the moment here to stay."
There was some good news for albums in 2001. U2 released one of its
most successful albums ever, All That You Can't Leave Behind, which
already has gone triple-platinum (3 million in sales). LP fans swarmed
Restoration Hardware (nasdaq: RSTO - news - people) stores last
Christmas to get a boxy retro turntable, proving there is still a market for
albums, even on vinyl.
But overall the news was dismal for the record industry. Compact disc
sales fell 3% last year, and are down 8% so far this year, according to
SoundScan. The drop is attributed in part to digital downloading and CD
burning. There were an estimated 150,000 subscribers to paid
music-download services at the end of 2001, according to IDC, with the
number expected to rise to 10 million by 2005. Untold others are still
downloading for free, waiting to see how the legal issues over online
music sharing play out.
"Until the record companies find a new business model, where they are
again making money on singles, they are still going to push albums,"
says Owen Sloane, an entertainment lawyer with 30 years in the
business. "This digital music and the emphasis on singles in a way
brings us back full circle."
Under the current system, record companies must kiss a lot of frogs to
find a few princes among up-and-coming artists. Companies can spend
$1 million to $2 million promoting a new album by a mainstream artist,
but only a few of them ever pay off. In 2001, some 30,000 records were
released in the U.S. Only 146 of those went gold, meaning they sold
500,000 copies, according to the Recording Industry Association of
America.
Yahoo!'s Goldberg thinks albums as they're conceived today probably
won't exist once digital music becomes mainstream, although he
hesitates to say how long that will take.
In his view, some artists in the future, especially those who don't make
their living playing sold-out stadiums, will want to release one or two
songs at a time anyway. The ones who do a lot of shows, like a Dave
Matthews Band, will probably continue to release a group of songs so
they have something to promote around the world. Will these batches of
songs look like albums?
"There will be some kind of visual imagery that goes with it," Goldberg
predicts. "Will it still be artwork or animation or streaming video? I don't
know. It may be sort of like the way they do special editions now, and the
artwork and the lyrics could be purchased by the die-hard fans."
But first there has to be a model of disseminating the music acceptable
to record companies, fans and the artists themselves. With the rise of
Napster, artists saw the promise of democratizing the distribution of
music. Now that the big labels have started to assert themselves, no one
knows how artists of the future will be heard.
Jules, a 26-year-old singer from Florida, has gotten some radio and club
play from her remake of the Pat Benatar hit "We Belong." She longs to
make albums, but if the tide turns again to singles--this time of the digital
variety--she would not complain.
"If that's the approach," she says, "I would just love to get out there and
be heard."
page 2 The success of file-trading companies
brought the go-go days of the late
'90s to a halt. Free music was blamed
for the several high-profile digital
music failures, Musicmaker's in-store
kiosks and the Musicbank locker
service. Remaining executives
became gun-shy about promoting
new products meant to overturn the
$40 billion recording industry.
That has made tracking the success
of pay models difficult, since
companies are reluctant to discuss
facts and figures. Invariably, any new
service will be compared to the 80
million people Napster attracted, and
right now, the well of customers is still
shallow.
That has especially been true for
high-profile companies. The two
major label-backed services, MusicNet
and PressPlay, declined to discuss
how many people used the service,
citing the short time each has been
available. Listen.com, another
independently owned business,
declined to say how many paying
customers its streaming Rhapsody
service has.
That silence gives the impression
that online music isn't moving
forward. But that perception appears
misguided, even as rogue,
peer-to-peer, file-trading networks
facilitating billions of song-swaps
siphon off customers. Numbers might
not be skyrocketing, but business is
growing.
RealNetworks, which distributes
MusicNet, has 500,000 paying
customers, far and away the most for
any online service. However, RealOne
includes news and sports radio along
with music. The company doesn't
break its customers down into
separate subscriptions, so it's unclear
if MusicNet boosted sales.
The other end of the spectrum is
Emusic, a digital download business
that has attracted 40,000 subscribers
despite its lack of popular music. The
company, owned by French media
conglomerate Vivendi Universal, uses
unique affiliate programs with ISPs
and individual websites as well as a
lucrative deal with Hewlett-Packard to
attract users.
Online Tunes: People Are Paying
By Brad King
2:00 a.m. Feb. 22, 2002 PST
Amid copyright infringement lawsuits, bankruptcies,
legislative battles and an overriding belief in some quarters
that they'll never turn a profit, digital music subscription
services are showing signs of good health.
Independently owned MusicMatch, which this week
surpassed 100,000 customers for its streaming radio
service, has become a beacon for Internet music
businesses.
"The fundamental
question in a
post-Napster era is,
'Can you create a
business model?' The
answer is yes," said
Aram Sinnreich, senior
analyst with Jupiter
Media Metrix.
"Consumers do
recognize value in
premium services."
MusicMatch
negotiated the tricky
licensing issues that
plagued other
companies and
settled a legal dispute with the recording
industry. That paved the way for
MusicMatch's Radio MX, which has become
the largest music-only subscription service.
Radio MX listeners can't choose specific
songs or the order they are played but they
can select genres and musicians that are
randomly played. It's not Napster but it
appeals to people who are tired of the din
of traditional radio, yet don't want to take
the time to download hundreds of songs.
Remarkably, the company also sold 1
million jukeboxes, the software application
that allows people to store, sort and play
digital music files. That's no small feat
considering RealNetworks, Microsoft,
America Online and even MusicMatch itself
offer scaled-down media players for free.
Those players have certain limitations, such
as the inability to burn CDs, which
consumers must pay to upgrade.
The fact that people are paying for digital
music could be the beginning of what many
hope will be the revival of a sonic boom that
hit full volume in 1999. The reason: Most
services, even Radio MX, offer only a
fraction of what consumers will eventually be
able to purchase.
"There are the people who like to pick every
track and those are our jukebox
customers," said Dennis Mudd, MusicMatch
CEO. "Radio MX is this ultimate lean back
experience. You click on a button and you
lean back and you get pretty much what you
want. The big opportunity is still reasonably
compelling on-demand licenses. We're at
the very tip of the iceberg until people can
get digital music downloads."
Well, that's actually one major problem.
People can already get digital downloads.
Napster's meteoric rise brought the concept
of file-sharing services to a mass audience.
The music industry immediately sued,
starting a legal war that forced the network
to shut down.
Unfortunately for the major record labels
and digital music companies, dozens of new
file-trading services filled the Napster void.
While the company continues to struggle in
its attempts to forge a settlement with the
Recording Industry Association of America,
millions of users continue to download other
file-sharing software.
MVQ streaming may blow away MPEG-4
Thu Feb 21, 9:43 AM ET
By Philippe Leroy, ZDNet News
Finnish developer Oplayo has been demonstrating a compression technology at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes which, says the company, is up to ten times faster for delivering audio and video to mobile devices than MPEG-4.
Baptised MVQ (which stands for Motion Vector Quantization), the technology enables extremely light video decoding that requires a low processing power at the receiving end, making it suitable for wireless devices. Instead of using a plug-in, or a player as is the case with both Microsoft and RealNetworks technologies, Oplayo's MVQ uses a 20KB Java applet that can be transmitted to a PC, PDA or phone along with the video package.
"Once compressed, the audio or video media can be used to enrich sales presentations, support after-sales packages or offer long-distance training," explained Anttoni Vesterinen, Oplayo chief executive, speaking to ZDNet France at the 3GSM conference. Mobile streaming is likely to be adopted first in areas such as music distribution or tourist information as well as sport or cultural programmes--a promising activity for content providers--he added.
Created in 1996, the Finnish company was restructured in 1999, following financial aid from Nokia (news - web sites) Venture Partners. A shareholder and user of Oplayo technologies, Nokia uses video support to show its own customers how to change the cover of their mobile phone.
Pfizer and General Motors are two other well-known clients of the Helsinki developer. Oplayo's visualisation and creative software are now available in France: version 3.1 of the toolkit costs 30,000 euros for a user group of five licences. For the same number of users, Composer Pro is available for 45,000 euros, providing users with the ability to mix video into PowerPoint slide shows in order to make presentations more striking.
Users who access their email via the Internet or a Java browser will also be able to view files that have been compressed with Oplayo. Both Microsoft's ActiveX and .Net platforms as well as Qualcomm's Brew are also supported. The MVQ algorithm compresses mixed audiovisual formats (AVI, Wav, MJPEG, MPEG2, QuickTime and MP3 files).
In order to target pocket PC and GPRS mobile phone owners, the video stream appears in a small display area. According to Vesterinen, the Oplayo solution only requires a small amount of bandwidth (around 14kbps) for the video stream which is almost half the bandwidth typically available on GPRS networks.
The main benefits for the general public are that the Oplayo player doesn't require any pre-installation and the video buffer lasts only a few seconds, said Vesterinen. On the content provider's side, neither streaming server nor dedicated cache is required. They will, however, be able to benefit from an infrastructure built for delivering multimedia streaming in order to provide more users with optimized response times.
Thanks Sentinel; nice work.eom
OT-U.S. Companies File in Bermuda to Slash Tax Bills
Mon Feb 18, 3:03 PM ET
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON The New York Times
A growing number of American companies, encouraged by their financial advisers, are incorporating in Bermuda to lower their taxes sharply without giving up the benefits of doing business in the United States.
• U.S. Companies File in Bermuda to Slash Tax Bills
• The Energy Industry Gauges the Enron Damage
• For more news, visit the Business Section
• Get DealBook, a daily email digest of corporate finance newsDealBook.
Search NYTimes.com:
Today's NewsPast WeekPast 30 DaysPast 90 DaysPast YearSince 1996
Insurance companies led the way, but now manufacturers and other kinds of companies are following.
Stanley Works, for 159 years a Connecticut maker of hammers and wrenches, is among the latest with plans to become a corporation in Bermuda, where there is no income tax. The company estimates that it will cut its tax bill by $30 million a year, to about $80 million.
Tyco International, a diversified manufacturer with headquarters in Exeter, N.H., says that being a Bermuda corporation saved it more than $400 million last year alone. Other companies that have incorporated in Bermuda or plan to do so include Global Crossing, a Beverly Hills, Calif., telecommunications company; Ingersoll-Rand and Foster Wheeler, both New Jersey industrial manufacturers; Nabors Industries, a Texas company that is the nation's largest oil well services company; and Cooper Industries, a Houston manufacturer of industrial equipment.
Becoming a Bermuda company is a paper transaction, as easy as securing a mail drop there and paying some fees, while keeping the working headquarters back in the United States.
Bermuda is charging Ingersoll- Rand just $27,653 a year for a move that allows the company to avoid at least $40 million annually in American corporate income taxes.
The company is not required to conduct any meetings in Bermuda and will not even have an office there, said its chief financial officer, David W. Devonshire.
"We just pay a service organization" to accept mail, he said.
Kate Barton, an Ernst & Young tax partner, said that incorporating in Bermuda "is a megatrend we are seeing in the marketplace right now." Many corporations that are planning the move have not yet announced it, she said.
In a Webcast to clients, Ms. Barton cited patriotism as the only potentially troubling issue that corporations consider before moving to Bermuda, and she said that profits trumped patriotism.
"Is it the right time to be migrating a corporation's headquarters to an offshore location?" she asked. "And yet, that said, we are working through a lot of companies who feel that it is, that just the improvement on earnings is powerful enough that maybe the patriotism issue needs to take a back seat to that."
The White House has said nothing about these moves and their effect on tax revenues. Mark A. Weinberger, chief of tax policy in the Treasury Department, said the moves to Bermuda and other tax havens showed that the American tax system might be driving companies to make such decisions. "We may need to rethink some of our international tax rules that were written 30 years ago when our economy was very different and that now may be impeding the ability of U.S. companies to compete internationally."
But others have expressed concern about the trend. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, expressed alarm. "There is no business reason for doing this, other than to escape U.S. taxation. I believe the Finance Committee needs to investigate this activity."
There is no official estimate of how much the Bermuda moves are costing the government in tax revenues, and the Bush administration is not trying to come up with one.
A Bermuda address is being recommended by many legal, accounting and investment advisers. Stanley Works, for example, relied on Ernst & Young for accounting advice, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom for legal advice, and Goldman, Sachs for investment advice.
Ingersoll-Rand's top tax officer, Gerald Swimmer, said all of the major investment houses and accounting firms had presented the idea to his company. Ingersoll-Rand expects its worldwide income taxes to fall to less than $115 million from about $155 million annually.
Many companies looking for tax havens abroad are choosing Bermuda because it is close, its political system is stable and it uses a legal system similar to that of the United States. But some, like Seagate Technology, the California maker of computer disk drives, have gone to the Cayman Islands and other places.
Insurers have also flocked to Bermuda to escape most insurance regulations, including how much money they must hold in reserve to pay claims.
Since companies that move to Bermuda usually keep their main offices in the United States, they continue to have all the security provided by the American government, the legal system and the courts.
But by moving to Bermuda, their income from outside the United States becomes exempt from American taxes. Also, when the American company borrows from its Bermuda parent, the interest it pays creates a deduction that reduces U.S. taxes, but there is no tax on the interest earned by the Bermuda parent.
These companies say they are moving because their worldwide tax rates are higher than those of foreign competitors. Stanley Works expects its worldwide tax rate to fall to 23 percent to 25 percent of profits, down from 32 percent now, said Gerard J. Gould, Stanley's vice president for investor relations.
Another company, Cooper Industries, expects to lower its worldwide income tax bill to $80 million from about $134 million.
Robert Willens, a tax expert at Lehman Brothers, said that "any company with a decent amount of foreign income will see its tax rate fall dramatically" by moving its nominal headquarters to Bermuda.
"But the political considerations sometimes prevail," he added, "and companies are understandably reluctant to do something like this because it will not necessarily be properly construed in the marketplace. It may be seen as not patriotic and in the wake of Sept. 11, that is not a good posture for a company."
Mr. Willens said that he had personally presented the Bermuda idea to some companies and that the idea had been turned down for just that reason. "The companies most willing to do this are not household names," he said, "but Stanley Works is verging on a household name."
Mr. Gould said Stanley Works, whose products can be found in many home toolboxes, had not received a single complaint that it was being unpatriotic. Only a few shareholders complained, he said, and all were longtime shareholders who will owe taxes on their capital gains if the deal is approved by two-thirds of the Stanley Works shareholders.
The Internal Revenue Service has ruled that shareholders must pay taxes on any increase in the value of their shares between the date they bought them and the date the company incorporated in Bermuda, even if they do not sell the shares. The government designed this rule to place a price on what it calls tax-motivated expatriation.
With the stock market depressed, Mr. Willens noted, interest in moving to Bermuda is up because fewer shareholders would owe capital gains. And even when a move to a tax haven occurs, the company is not required to report to the I.R.S. on the holdings of each stock owner. Only the integrity of individual taxpayers ensures that the taxes are paid, as is the case with any tax on capital gains.
"I am sure a few get missed," Mr. Willens said with a chuckle.
Peter L. Baumbusch, an international tax lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, said current tax law discriminated against existing multinational corporations with headquarters in the United States.
David A. Weisbach, a University of Chicago professor of tax law, said the corporate moves to Bermuda should prompt Congress to review the American corporate tax regime, which was established when American companies sold primarily to the domestic market and few foreign companies had a major presence in the United States.
"Should we be taxing worldwide income or not?" he asked. "That is the really hard question."
Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the patriotism question also needed to be debated.
"Some companies flying the Stars and Stripes renounce America when it comes to paying their taxes," he said. "They choose profits over patriotism. So far, the Bush Treasury Department has shown no interest in stopping these corporate moves, or even drawing attention to them. Supporting America is more than about waving the flag and saluting — it's about sharing the sacrifice. That's true of soldiers, citizens, and it should be true of big companies, too."
Alcatel, Compaq, Packet Video Team to Deliver Music Videos on Mobile Devices
DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 19, 2002--Alcatel (NYSE:ALA), Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ) and Packet Video, leaders in the delivery of mobile multimedia services, are demonstrating at the 3GSM World Congress the instant delivery of music video charts and clips over GPRS (General Packet Radio Services)-enabled pocket PCs.
This paves the way to an end-to-end mobile streaming solution delivered over UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)-enabled devices, with data transmission rates up to two megabits per second. This is a massive growth market, as music downloads are considered one of the fastest-growing, highest-demand services for personal devices.
In the demo, the user browses a GPRS-enabled Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC, a tiny handheld computer, to view a list of the current music charts. Once users select a music video, they can choose the most appropriate means of payment and stream the video clip. A 25-second clip is free, or the full-length video is available for a small fee. For service providers, on the other hand, real-time billing of streaming allows them to adapt their billing to the ratio of the service provided. Visitors can take a first glance at this joint demonstration at the 3GSM World Congress, held at Cannes from February 19 through 22.
"By combining our IT and telecom strengths, Compaq and Alcatel are able to provide profitable audio/video streaming solutions for the high potential 2.5/3G market," said Jenny Newton, EMEA vice president of Compaq's Telecom Division. "Compaq is already a leader with its rich product and services portfolio for the IT infrastructure industry, management of audio and video content, and personal access devices such as the iPAQ. This represents the next step in meeting the needs of this dynamic and rapidly growing market."
"This demonstration is further proof of Alcatel's extensive knowledge of telecom networks and telecom software integration," said Jean-Philippe Haag, vice president of Alcatel's Network Applications Division. "We have the skills to provide end-to-end mobile solutions. Through this alliance Alcatel and Compaq lead the industry in delivering viable, secure and desirable state-of-the-art streaming solutions."
About Alcatel
Alcatel designs, develops and builds innovative and competitive communications networks, enabling carriers, service providers and enterprises to deliver any type of content, such as voice, data and multimedia, to any type of consumer, anywhere in the world. Relying on its leading and comprehensive products and solutions portfolio, stretching from end-to-end optical infrastructures, fixed and mobile networks to broadband access, Alcatel's customers can focus on optimizing their service offerings and revenue streams. With sales of Euro 25 billion in 2001 and 99,000 employees, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, http://www.alcatel.com.
--30--bp/ny*
CONTACT: Alcatel
Press
Laurent de Segonzac, 33 (0)1 40 76 15 04
Laurent de-segonzac@alcatel.fr
Brian Murphy, 972/519-6677
brian.murphy@alcatel.com
or
Investors Relations
Claire Pedini, 33 (0)1 40 76 13 93
claire.pedini@alcatel.com
Peter Campbell, 972/519-4347
Peter.campbell@alcatel.co
or
Industry Analyst Relations
Julie Buckley, 707/792-7820
Julie.buckley@alcatel.com
KEYWORD: TEXAS
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: E-COMMERCE HARDWARE NETWORKING SOFTWARE
TELECOMMUNICATIONS MARKETING AGREEMENTS TRADESHOW
SOURCE: Alcatel
RealNetworks launches mobile media products
Posted on Tue, Feb. 19, 2002
SEATTLE (Reuters) - RealNetworks Inc. Tuesday unveiled new software for sending audio and video over wireless networks, the latest step by the Internet media pioneer to get a foothold in the nascent mobile market.
Seattle-based RealNetworks is launching RealSystem Mobile, a version of its RealSystem iQ software that Web site operators and corporate networks use to broadcast video and audio over the Internet.
The company also announced deals with Intel Corp. to optimize Real's software for use with the microprocessor giant's chips for mobile phones and handheld computers, and with consultancy Cap Gemini Ernst & Young to offer customers a package combining Real's technology and Cap Gemini's operational services.
Real, best known for its RealOne software for playing music or video on a personal computer, is also preparing to launch a version of RealOne for Pocket PC handheld computers based on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.
``Real has been thinking about the world beyond the PC for some time,'' Sharon Goldstein, a product manager for mobile services, said in an interview. ``So we consider this to be our coming out party.''
The Mobile version of RealSystem builds in extra features that focus on sending such content to a variety of portable devices like smart cell phones and handheld computers fitted with wireless connections, Goldstein said.
The new software debuts as Real is seeing sales of its regular systems software bottom out. The core systems business was badly knocked by the dot-com implosion and the slowing economy, which crimped corporate technology budgets.
While executives have said systems growth will restart this year, Real isn't expecting a quick payoff from mobile multimedia services, which Goldstein compared to the advent of audio on the Internet about 7 years ago, when the Web was limited to pokey speeds that allowed only tinny audio to seep through.
``What we see as being compelling are audio applications and short, location-specific video,'' Goldstein said. ``We see this as very similar to how the Internet developed.''
Real has laid other stepping stones on the path to mobile services, such as deals with Texas Instruments and Hitachi, two major makers of mobile phone chips, to support its media technology. Mobile phone giant Nokia is also using Real's software, most visibly on its groundbreaking 9210 device that combines a phone with a color screen and digital organizer.
RealSystem Mobile will be able to send content to networks based on different technologies, from so-called 2.5G low-speed services being deployed in the United States to faster 3G networks that Europe and Asia are focusing on.
The system can also serve up video content in the budding MPEG-4 format, which is widely seen as the future of Internet-based video but is still tied up with licensing and technical issues.
Real, which has managed to offer a successful subscription service through RealOne for the PC market, will also work with mobile companies to sell similar services for mobile devices, Goldstein said.
Microsoft, Intel, TI in mobile partnership
CANNES, France/SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 19 (Reuters) - U.S. technology companies Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), Intel Corp (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) and Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN - news) on Tuesday announced blueprints for new cellphones and handheld computer phones.
Breaking with the tradition of custom-designed technology for each cellphone manufacturer, the three companies will work to develop so-called reference designs which, if adopted by enough vendors, could establish these blueprints as standards for much of the industry.
The companies aim to repeat what they have done in the personal computer industry, where Microsoft and Intel have standardised key software and semiconductor hardware, with the Windows operating system software and Pentium processors. Each product has more than 80 percent share of their respective markets.
The U.S. companies made their announcements at the 3GSM World Congress here, Europe's largest trade show for the wireless industry, which is still dominated by European companies such as Ericsson and Nokia .
In separate deals with Microsoft, semiconductor makers Intel and Texas Instruments will work together to develop integrated chips and software that can turn a handheld computer into a mobile phone, ready to make calls and download corporate email.
An Intel spokesman said that his company and Microsoft would have a design available later this year. Texas Instruments already has a product available.
U.S.-based computer company Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP - news) on Tuesday introduced a PDA (personal digital assistant) phone based on the TI-Microsoft platform when it unveiled the mobile phone edition of its Jornada Pocket PC.
For its part, Microsoft is backing Intel's PCA technology, which is a blueprint that the chipmaker is pushing as a standard for next-generation wireless phones and handheld computers that work with its XScale processors. Intel, in turn, is backing Microsoft's PocketPC Phone operating system, which is gaining ground against the Palm Inc. (NasdaqNM:PALM - news) operating system.
Smartphones and PDA phones are different categories. PDA phones are handheld computers that are mainly used for wireless data communications, but they can double as a phone. Smartphones are light voice phones, and get their ``smarts'' from the ability to display diaries, receive email and play music files.
IBM Receives Delphi Business For Next-Gen Multi-Media Car Products
Combines IT, Auto Expertise For Full-Fledged Digital Dashboards
ARMONK, NY, and TROY, MI--(INTERNET WIRE)--Feb 13, 2002 -- IBM (NYSE:IBM - news) announced today that Delphi Automotive Systems has chosen IBM's J9(TM) virtual machine environment, as a foundation technology for the development of automobile multimedia products. These products can enable motor vehicles to communicate in real-time with drivers, dealers, manufacturers and others in the industry's value chain.
Delphi will use the IBM J9 virtual machine environment in the design of new mobile multimedia products that include embedded, real-time control systems using full-motion video, speech and voice processing, Internet and Java(TM) technologies to enhance communications and entertainment applications for original equipment vehicles. Products expected to result from the collaboration range from dashboard control features to information, entertainment, navigation and messaging.
In addition to enabling functions that consumers can experience firsthand, the collaboration between IBM and Delphi will enhance consumer-support Telematics solutions that ease vehicle maintenance by digitally connecting automakers, dealers and car owners. Such solutions include embedded functions ranging from the remote monitoring of a vehicle's condition to the wireless transfer of data to help manufacturers understand component performance, enhance repairs and drive future design improvements.
For Delphi's development of such advanced-capability products, IBM will provide J9 technology that is modular, scalable and optimized for memory and throughput efficiency. The J9 virtual machine, at the core of IBM's Telematics Solutions offerings, is a high-performance production environment offering adaptive dynamic compilation of Java application bytecodes and superior JIT (Just-In-Time) program execution performance.
IBM's embedded virtual machine technology has been developed, deployed and refined for more than a dozen years. In August 2001, IBM was the first to develop and distribute the J9 J2ME "Java Powered" environment simultaneously across multiple platforms. The J9 virtual machine environment has proved in independent testing to provide a high-performance, compact environment for running embedded Java applications across a broad range of processors. Complementing the J9 virtual machine, IBM's VisualAge Micro Edition allows developers to quickly and easily create and deploy e-business applications to automotive Telematics devices, hand-held computers, PDA's and cellular telephones. More information is available at www.ibm.com/embedded.
"IBM's work with major manufacturers and industry electronics partners like Delphi demonstrates that we are fast becoming a preferred supplier of development platforms for new automotive solutions," said Raj Desai, director, IBM Telematics Solutions. "Because we have optimized our technologies for use on multiple operating systems and bring to market a complete solution and services, we can help enable revolutionary new features. Time-to-market is a distinct advantage we have over our competitors."
Added Desai, "With these technologies in place, drivers will have the ability to simply talk to their cars instead of fumbling with knobs or glancing at attention-diverting displays. Computers can be enabled to constantly monitor a car's performance and, when a problem is detected, notify both driver and service shop."
About Delphi
Delphi Automotive Systems, headquartered in Troy, Mich., is a world leader in transportation and mobile electronics components and systems technology. Its mobile multimedia product line focuses on developing and marketing mobile products that provide advanced communication, information, and entertainment systems for light- and heavy-duty vehicle applications. Marketed under the Communiport(TM) brand, Delphi offers advanced audio, smart radios, Telematics, and rear-seat entertainment systems that provide a host of services, including navigation services, Internet access, e-mail, voice memo, integrated hands-free telephone, address books, voice recognition, DVD players, and other mobile office and entertainment features. For more information about Delphi Automotive Systems, visit Delphi's Virtual Press Room at www.delphiauto.com/vpr.
About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM is among the first companies to offer leading-edge technology and tools to its customers and enable them to deliver advanced Telematics Solutions. Through years of expertise and research in the Automotive industry, IBM and IBM Business Partners have built a flexible and reliable portfolio of software (such as speech recognition and wireless technologies), hardware, IT services, development platforms and innovative tools. Our end-to-end architecture fully integrates open standards. It links both portable and embedded hardware devices to the Internet via wireless networks and leverages Java applications to exchange data to and from the vehicles with Wireless Telematics Service Providers. Addressing issues such as safety, privacy, convenience and connectivity, our in-vehicle information systems and solutions enable our customers to deliver hands-free and eyes-free technology as part of developing invaluable and long-term relationships with their customers. As the Telematics revolution is now gaining momentum in other industries such as Insurance, Petroleum and Commercial market, our vision will prepare our customers for the next generation of e-business infrastructure for many years to come. Please visit our Telematics Solutions site at www.ibm.com/industries/automotive for further details and references.
IBM and VisualAge are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
Contact: Gina Jesberg
Company: IBM Corporation
Title: Public Relations
Voice: 914-642-3544
URL: http://www.ibm.com
Intel's New Rival: Texas Instruments
By Arik Hesseldahl
Wednesday February 13, 10:08 am Eastern Time
Forbes.com
With the launch of its latest microprocessor, the XScale chip, Intel is throwing down
the gauntlet for the start of a new battle, with a new rival.
Having handily won control of the majority of the market for chips in personal
computers, despite the best efforts of its rival Advanced Micro Devices , Intel is
now turning it considerable attention toward mobile phones and handheld computers.
And in both cases it's going up against Texas Instruments , which has a long-established position supplying chips
for both.
Intel's move comes at a crucial time. Both PDAs and
mobile phones are heading into a period of significant
change. Phones are adding to their traditional voice
functions, absorbing new features revolving around
wireless access to e-mail and the Internet. PDAs are
headed down the wireless path too, in some cases
merging with phones by adding voice capability.
Much of this new functionality is rooted in the use of
ever more complex microprocessors that can handle
both voice and video without killing the battery of a
handheld device.
Curiously, both Intel's XScale chip, announced Feb.
11 in Japan, and TI's OMAP chip spring from
similar origins. Both are built around a core
technology developed by ARM Holdings , the
British licenser of intellectual property and chip
design firm.
Intel has been producing chips based on ARM's
StrongARM design foundations since it took over the
chip operations of Digital Equipment in 1998. While StrongARM has recently become the chip of choice for
companies making PDAs using Microsoft 's PocketPC operating system--among them Compaq ,
Hewlett-Packard and a long list of others--XScale is aimed squarely at TI's heart: high-end wireless phones.
But in sizing up the competition, TI looks like anything but an easy mark, even for Intel. Late last year, Palm said the
next generation of its handheld devices would run mostly on TI's OMAP chips after years of exclusively using
Motorola 's Dragonball line of chips. Palm's arrangement with TI is nonexclusive, meaning it's free to use other chips
from either Intel or Motorola as it sees fit.
TI also has a long and established history supplying chips to wireless phone manufacturers, including market leader
Nokia and other big players, like Ericsson .
"It's going to be tough to displace TI from all the sockets its chips are already in," says Will Strauss, president of
Tempe, Ariz.-based market research firm Forward Concepts. Strauss estimates that TI controls about 58% of the market
for mobile phone chips, followed by Qualcomm , which accounts for between 10% and 15%.
But to build a beachhead in a new market, Intel is looking toward Japan, where third-generation mobile phone service
first launched to mixed reviews last year. Hitachi , Fujitsu , Acer , NEC , Toshiba and Casio were among those
announcing plans to use the chip Feb. 11. Intel has also been working on a 3G phone product with Mitsubishi since
2000.
But any mobile phone or PDA also needs another type of chip: flash memory. Intel makes more of them than anyone
else does, and Strauss calls it Intel's Trojan horse. It would be easy, he says, for Intel to offer its customers package
deals combining XScale and flash memory chips, and later to integrate the flash memory into the XScale chip itself.
There may be business enough for both Intel and TI. Consumers snapped up 8 million PDAs last year and will buy 15
million in 2004, according to research firm Cahners In-Stat. But the real volume is in mobile phones, some 400 million
of which shipped last year, according to In-Stat estimates. The firm expects mobile phone shipments to reach 900
million units by 2005 and says that about half of those will be data-enabled.
(Ridgefield Park, N.J.) Consumer electronics firm Samsung announced a deal
with satellite TV provider DirecTV to manufacture and market satellite TV
receivers with interactive capabilities. The $99 Samsung SIR-S60 satellite
TV receiver device will receive satellite TV signals in addition to
interactive programming and advertisements provided through technology
developed by Wink Communications. Viewers will access interactive features
by using their television's remote control.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020211/112520_1.html
http://www.samsungelectronics.com
OT Case bought 1 million AOL shares in Feburary
AOL Time Warner Inc. Chairman Stephen Case bought one million common shares in February in the world's largest Internet and media company, according to a U.S regulatory filing made public Friday.
( 02/08/2002 02:16 PM PST)
Verizon to Launch BREW Applications
By Amy Johnson Conner, Contributing Web Editor
Thursday, 07 February 2002
SAN DIEGO -- Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless service provider, will
develop and launch applications based on Qualcomm’s BREW platform, the
companies announced this morning.
Qualcomm’s BREW, or Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, allows
customers to wirelessly download a variety of entertainment and productivity
applications for their mobile phones. Verizon will begin rolling out BREW
applications in a portion of its nationwide area as early as this spring. It will be
the first carrier in North America to launch BREW-enabled applications.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Edward Snyder, a JP Morgan analysts who covers Qualcomm, says the deal is a
step in the right direction for these companies, but it will not change Qualcomm’s
financial situation materially.
Qualcomm and Verizon -- which has more than 29.4 million customers and
launched its high-speed wireless data service late last month -- are already
linked because Qualcomm owns the necessary intellectual property on which
Verizon has developed its network, Snyder adds.
The challenge for the two companies will not be in developing or deploying BREW
applications, but in getting cell phone users excited about them, he says.
"People who use cell phones don’t have time [for applications]. It’s only
modestly valuable. Coming up with a killer application that everyone wants" will
be the brass ring, Snyder says. "There will be a lot of incremental applications
[people will use] while they’re sitting around waiting."
Wall Street wasn't swayed by the news; investors sent Qualcomm stock (Nasdaq:
QCOM) down $1.49, or 3.7 percent, to $39.11 today.
IBM to unveil index card-size computer prototype
NEW YORK, Feb 6 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp.'s (NYSE:IBM - news) research division says it has developed a prototype of a portable computer module that is the size of a small pad of paper and has the computing power of a typical notebook or desktop computer.
ADVERTISEMENT
The portable computing device, which IBM Research will unveil on Feb. 11 at a technology conference in Phoenix, Arizona, includes 128 megabytes of dynamic random access memory, a 10-gigabit hard drive and a microprocessor -- which is the brain of the computer -- that runs at 800 megahertz, or 800 million cycles per second.
``We've taken the PC down to where you can take it home and finish your work,'' said Kenneth Ocheltree, manager for next generation mobile at IBM Research.
Code-named ``MetaPad'', the module is 5 inches (12.7 cm) long, 3 inches (7.6 cm) wide and about three-quarters of an inch (1.9 cm) thick. The module fits into a larger accessory piece that includes a small, flat screen on front and is about 6 inches (15.2 cm) long, 4 inches (10 cm) wide and 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick.
The index-card sized module can also be plugged into a docking station for a personal computer, enabling the user to move all of his or her information and applications from one location to another. It runs Microsoft Corp.'s (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Windows XP operating system.
Ocheltree said IBM doesn't have specific plans to sell the prototype, which could be ready for market in few years. IBM is talking to computer makers and customers about how it could be used, he said.
``We're trying to understand how people would use it and interact with it,'' Ocheltree said.
Ocheltree said some possible uses are in areas like medicine, international customs, and airline and hotel check-in. He said IBM is working on how wireless technology could be used with the device.
Companies like Palm Inc. (NasdaqNM:PALM - news), Handspring Inc. (NasdaqNM:HAND - news) and Research In Motion Ltd. (NasdaqNM:RIMM - news) all make pocket-sized computers with various degrees of computing power that handle anything from calendar functions to e-mail transmission. PC makers Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP - news) and Compaq Computer Corp.
(NYSE:CPQ - news) also make handheld computers.
Rapid growth in the handheld market has slowed amid the overall economic downturn as consumers have tightened up on spending, and the industry is increasingly introducing wireless devices for communications.
IBM, with a $5 billion research and development budget in 2001, does everything from exploratory research to application development, working in computer science, material science, mathematics and physics. For example, it has worked on making semiconductors smaller and faster.
Email this story - Most-emailed articles - Most-viewed articles