The market for digital photo frames has taken-off, particularly since prices dropped to affordable levels in the first half of 2009, reports In-Stat. However, due to difficult economic conditions and the trend to purchase digital photo frames as gifts pre-loaded with pictures, most units shipped still lack advanced features such as wireless connectivity to the Internet. Nevertheless, wireless-enabled photo frames are a key growth driver as they will grow at twice the rate of overall digital photo frames in 2010.

“Prices for connected frames will continue to decline, and as manufacturers educate consumers about these devices; the mass market will become more comfortable using the Internet services connected frames support,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. “Applications such as sharing and downloading pictures over the Internet, as well as streaming Internet radio and video from online sites like YouTube, are expected to be primary drivers.”

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

• Worldwide unit shipments of all digital photo frames are expected to reach 50 million by 2013.
• Nearly 60% of US respondents to In-Stat’s consumer survey identified integrated wireless connectivity as a desired feature on their next digital photo frame purchase. 
• The total silicon opportunity for digital photo frame suppliers will exceed $550 million by 2013. Microcontrollers comprise the largest opportunity in non-wireless enabled devices. 
• The bill of materials for a wireless 8-inch digital photo frame will fall below US$36 by 2013; the LCD, the wireless module and the enclosure are the dominant cost items.
  

The research, “Wi-Fi Represents Strongest Opportunity in Global Connected Digital Photo Frame Market”, covers the worldwide market for wireless digital photo frames. It includes:

• Forecasts of digital photo frame unit sales and revenue (connected and non-connected) by functionality segment through 2013.
• Forecasts of average selling prices and bill of materials for digital photo frames through 2013.\ 
• Total available market forecast for components and silicon through 2013. 
• Analysis of a US consumer survey regarding digital frames. 
• Profiles of digital photo frame vendors and silicon vendors including: HP, Kodak, Pandigital, Philips, Samsung, Sony, RMI Corporation, Marvell Technology Group, and Samsung Electronics.
  

 

I am wondering whether they have taken CAT-iq into account as a possible wireless technology? 

 

This strategic research report from Berg Insight provides you with over 160 pages of unique business intelligence, including 5-year industry forecasts, expert commentary and real-life case studies on which to base your business decisions.

Highlights from the sixth edition of the report:

• Case studies of smart metering projects by the leading energy groups in Europe.
• In-depth market profiles of fourteen countries in Western Europe.
• Status updates on the development of smart grid and communication technology.
• Updated profiles of the key players in the metering industry.
• Revised market forecasts lasting until 2014.
• Summary of the latest developments in the European energy industry.
  

 

This report answers the following questions:

• How are EU energy policies driving the adoption of smart metering?
• Which are the latest countries to announce mandatory requirements for smart meters? 
• What is the UK government's plan for a nationwide rollout? 
• What are the true implications of Germany's new metering regulation? 
• What are the latest market developments in the Nordic countries? 
• Who are the leading suppliers of smart metering solutions for the European market? 
• Which are the main providers of PLC and wireless communication technology for smart meters?
  

For more information download the brochure here.

Read in cellular-news;

Americans value broadband more than ever with home broadband adoption rates up 15 percent in 2009 and consumers favoring Internet over cell phone and cable TV, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"We found that broadband is now in the 'must keep' category for Americans, even when economic times are tough," said Horrigan, principal author of the report. "Many consumers view their home broadband connection as a conduit for connecting to community and economic opportunities."

The new research shows 63 percent of adult Americans surveyed now have broadband Internet connections at home. The growth in broadband adoption indicates that the economic recession has had little effect on decisions about whether to buy or keep a home high-speed Internet connection. The survey found that people are twice as likely to say they have cut back or cancelled a cell phone plan or cable TV service than internet service.

See the complete article

HomePlug® Powerline Alliance and ZigBee® Alliance  today announced public availability of the next generation market requirements for Smart Energy and supporting use cases.  Smart Energy enables both wired and wireless communication between utility companies and everyday household devices such as smart thermostats and appliances. Captured in the market requirements document are details for the next generation of functionality envisioned for the Smart Grid with accompanying consumer control.  It includes insight to a variety of use cases including plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging, installation, configuration, firmware download for home area network (HAN) devices, prepay services, user information and messaging, load control, demand response, and common information and application profile interfaces for wired and wireless HANs.

The Smart Energy market requirements document is available for review at the site. It was jointly developed by ZigBee Alliance members, HomePlug Powerline Alliance members, utilities, regulators, suppliers and technology providers as a foundation for an enhanced ZigBee Smart Energy profile and as the basis for global standards development by other organizations.  On May 18, the ZigBee/HomePlug Smart Energy profile was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an initial interoperable standard for HAN devices and communications and information model.  

The development of the Smart Energy profile drew upon the collective experience of members involved in the current development and deployment of the existing wireless ZigBee Smart Energy standard. Certified products and services based on this standard are available for use today from a variety of ZigBee members.  The standard is supported by a comprehensive certification process that delivers secure, robust, reliable, plug and play interoperability with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and Smart Grid applications.  

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance is the leading industry group in the development of multivendor, global standards and certification for powerline communications.  With more than 70 percent of the cumulative worldwide market share (per recent reporting from In-Stat), HomePlug technology is rapidly becoming a key element of the Smart Energy HAN and is already being integrated into AMI applications by utilities and meter manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe.

 

 

AT&T is on track for a national femtocell launch by the end of this year, according to Gordon Mansfield, executive director with the company, speaking at the Femtocell World Summit in London yesterday. As a first step, AT&T is expanding its trials, which involve some 200 users, to coverage of key cities, after which, "We're on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009," he was quoted saying by Unstrung. This will be the first UMTS femto launch in the US.

Mansfield told Unstrung that AT&T will launch with a standalone 3G femtocell, (as opposed to a femtocell that's integrated into a residential gateway), but in the longer term, AT&T has its eye on integrated femtocells. Mansfield said, "Certainly we're looking at integrated femtocells. Some people think that integration is putting a femto into a residential gateway, and that's one aspect. We're looking at other things in the home [and asking]: 'How can I leverage all the elements in the home?' There's a lot of research and investigation in these areas and nothing definitive on what we're going to do."

 

As with Vodafone in the UK, Femto will be used as a standalone 3G cell, and not integrated in the home network.

The Vodafone Access Gateway is purely targeted at improving coverage and no attempt has been made to dress it up - there are no femtocell-specific tariffs, no bonus minutes, texts or data allowances.

This is further evidence that in early launches the femtocell business case will focus on coverage and not the ‘mobile home hubs’ that some in the industry believe. However, selling coverage that customers believe that they are already paying for comes with its own risks of a backlash if it is pushed too hard.
Vodafone puts together a better business model
Vodafone offers several options to customers wanting a Vodafone Access Gateway. This variety is the best strategy for selling femtocells to date, although we still see some major barriers limiting uptake.

For customers on tariffs of £60 per month or more the device is free, something we believe that a majority of femtocells will need to be (once costs come down) for consumers to embrace them. Currently, Vodafone UK offers just two tariffs over £60 per month, so we think that this offer will have a limited addressable market. We also assume that the seemingly arbitrary £60 figure relates to a cost-modelling exercise that indicates high hardware costs rather than strategic intent.

Vodafone has also achieved something that both Sprint and Verizon Wireless failed to do: to give customers options. For the majority of users below the threshold, there is the option to pay a monthly fee of £5, £7 or £10 on top of their post-paid plan over 24, 18 or 12 months respectively. This creates a far lower price barrier, while ensuring that subsidies don’t kill off the business model too soon. We expect the majority of uptake to come from this approach.
Finally, Vodafone has followed Verizon Wireless’ route of offering the device for a one-off £160 fee. Alongside the other options, this completes a far more rounded proposition than Verizon managed, although the high price point will be a barrier for Vodafone as much as it is for Verizon.
Impact likely to be muted in the short term

On one level this is a churn-reduction tool. Those customers with poor coverage have a means of staying with Vodafone, although the high cost plans needed for a free femtocell will be a severe test of Vodafone’s resolve not to give the devices away for free. Customers with poor coverage will demand a femtocell for free regardless of their plan and, like Sprint before it, Vodafone will be under immense pressure to give in.

The Vodafone Access Gateway is also a tool to encourage customers to churn from rivals. However, in multi-operator households, there will invariably be a lag as rival contracts are run down. Furthermore, the key determining factor is whether improved coverage is sufficiently attractive to stimulate churn from rivals, particularly when the rivals could offer more texts, minutes or data to stay. Indeed, if coverage were that great an issue the entire household would most likely already be on the operator with the best coverage. Therefore, with no femtocell-specific tariffs, there would be little incentive to switch to Vodafone.

Finally, there is the opportunity for Vodafone to increase mobile usage while at the same time offloading traffic. We have said in the past that this looks the most likely model to succeed in the long term as, with sufficient penetration, the opex savings are considerable. However, femtocells are clearly not there yet. In early deployments the priority is to prove that they work from technical and customer perspectives. Therefore, to gain sufficient penetration, and make the business case work, Vodafone will have to up the ante in the future and differentiate by more than just coverage. Until then, yesterday’s announcement is a femtocell offer that is an improvement on what has gone before, but still a relatively niche offering.

With the introduction of the new I755 DECT handset, NEC Philips expands its Business Mobility portfolio with a robust high-end handset for wireless voice and messaging, ideal for care free use in demanding environments such as in healthcare, manufacturing, warehousing and retail.

In developing this new device, NEC has managed to combine extreme robustness and resistance to shocks, dust and water (IP54 classification) with an extremely appealing design, including a colour display, an intuitive user interface and its keypad with easy to use distinctive keys.

A dedicated SOS-alarm key and the man-down function (detecting a non-vertical position) provides additional personal security to the user, while the optional Bluetooth headset provides additional freedom and flexibility.

 

 

 

 

Besides flexibility and comfort, the I755 offers rich functionality, giving users full control over their accessibility and providing many different call control features seamlessly integrated with the PBX.

Text messaging and alarm information, from applications such as alarming and nurse call systems, provides valuable information to the user, including central directory access, personal phone book and calendar entries

The I755 handset complies with the DECT standards for high speech quality and security and contributes to reduced communication and maintenance costs. The dual antennas included in the I755 allow for antenna diversity, adding to stable and secure communications even in demanding RF environments. 

Ovum’s latest fixed voice forecast predicts that fixed voice lines will decline at a CAGR of -3% between 2008 to 2014, falling from 1.1 billion to 0.9 billion globally. We anticipate that global fixed voice revenues will decline at a faster rate, with a CAGR of -4.9% over the same period, from US$418billion during 2008 to US$309billion by 2014. Asia-Pacific will perform similarly with a CAGR of -2.8% in terms of lines and -5.8% in terms of revenues over the same time frame.

“Despite pressure to de-prioritize legacy services, fixed voice should not be ignored”, said Nathan Burley, analyst based in Melbourne. In 2008, revenues from fixed voice equated to 63% of that derived from mobile voice. By 2014, fixed voice revenues will still amount to 40% of mobile voice revenues, which will also be declining by that time.

Burley said, “Fixed voice lines and revenue declines will vary by market, driven by various factors including differing levels of Fixed Mobile Substitution (FMS), VoIP substitution, operators’ strategies, cultural behaviour, economic conditions and existing telecoms infrastructure”.

“Generally, in the short-term we expect broadband-led and mobile access substitution to cause further declines in fixed voice channels”, advised Nathan Burley. Substitution from VoIP and naked DSL will also continue, although this effect will vary substantially from country to country, depending firstly on the degree to which large market players actively market and support VoIP services, and secondly on whether or not Naked DSL has been mandated by national regulatory authorities..

Operators have been left to manage the decline in fixed voice, and as a result, initiatives such as subscription-based pricing and bundling have been widely implemented. However, despite continued development of more sophisticated packages, these initiatives look to have reached peak effectiveness.

The stickiness of broadband and cheapness of bundles relative to stand-alone products is helping operators to slow the decline in fixed voice subscriptions to a degree, particularly in those countries where Naked DSL has not been implemented. However, ADSL’s reduced competitiveness as a broadband technology in advanced markets means that it will be increasingly difficult to bundle broadband with PSTN access. “Additionally, some broadband FMS, especially at the low-end has begun, as wireless broadband alternatives gain more traction. Future upgrades to mobile networks could allow mobile operators to attract more fixed broadband users to their mobile broadband offerings, which is why it is imperative that fixed operators embrace next generation broadband in order to maintain their advantage in this market”, said Burley.

In terms of call volumes, FMS will continue at a steady rate, with the ever increasing buckets of minutes available with mobile packages contributing to this trend. Furthermore, the convenience of mobile relative to fixed, and the converging trend in the price of the mobile and fixed voice minutes will result in users continuing to use mobile telephony even when they are within reach of a fixed line. “As a result, we expect call substitution to continue to grow at a greater rate than access substitution”, concluded Burley.

The Dutch consumer fixed telephony market grew by slightly more than 18,000 connections during the first quarter of 2009 to 5.89 million, despite a 3.9 percent drop in PSTN/ISDN connections to 2.266 million, according to Telecompaper’s Dutch Fixed Telephony Q1 update. The number of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) users grew by around 3.3 percent during the first quarter to 405,000 on 31 March 2009, and the number of consumer VoIP subscriptions grew 3.1 percent, to 3.23 million at the end of March 2009.

The growth was driven by DSL providers, with a 3.6 percent increase during the quarter to reach 1.666 million subscribers. Cable VoIP reported quarterly growth of only 2.5 percent, the lowest growth rate since the third quarter of 2004, to reach 1.491 million users on 31 March 2009.

“Due to the low growth during the first quarter of 3.1 percent, which is below our expected range of 4-4.5 percent growth, our estimate for the remaining quarters of 2009 has been cut to between 3.5 and 4 percent,” said Telecompaper senior analyst Kamiel Albrecht.

KPN saw its share of the Dutch digital telephony market grow to 35 percent on 31 March 2009. During the first quarter, KPN won 43,000 new VoIP customers, growing 4 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2008 and ending March 2009 with 1.129 million VoIP users.

Ziggo won an estimated 17,500 new telephony customers during the quarter to end the period with 826,500 VoIP users, keeping its place as the second-largest VoIP provider in the Netherlands. UPC reported 16,500 net additions during the first quarter, ending March with 588,900 VoIP customers. Its share of the VoIP market dropped 0.1 percentage point to 18.2 percent. Tele2 saw its VoIP customer base grow to reach 251,000 on 31 March 2009.

By combining considerable chip knowledge with excellent system domain knowledge, RTX and SiTel have created a new innovative Ultra Low Power (ULP) technology based on CAT-iq – this is the first step into completely new application areas for DECT/CAT-iq.

RTX and SiTel have joined forces in the quest for new and innovative battery management algorithms. The primary objective in the program has been to obtain a considerable reduction in power consumption in order to extend battery life, for example for cordless phones. The outcome is a new and ground breaking technology - Ultra Low Power (ULP) - with impressive features, and furthermore interoperable with DECT/CAT-iq. Consequently, ULP devices are able to use an already existing DECT/CAT-iq infrastructure; hence reducing risk and complexity in introducing ULP based devices.

 
About Ultra Low Power (ULP) technology
The new and innovative ULP technology targets not only cordless phones but battery powered devices in general - especially applications in which battery life is an essential issue. Consequently, primary application areas for ULP include:

• Home Entertainment and Control devices – smart lighting, wireless door bell, safety and security, advanced temperature control (e.g. HVAC systems)
• Home Awareness – metering, fire and smoke detectors, water and power sensors, smart appliances, remote monitoring, sensor networks etc.
• Advanced Remote Controls – e.g. two-way remote controls for consumer electronics
  

A very central feature in ULP is interoperability with an existing DECT/CAT-iq infrastructure, since this will open up a completely new world of opportunities in which ULP devices can be connected to the Internet or LAN through for example a CAT-iq enabled Gateway or IAD. This is especially interesting in connection with for example remote monitoring applications. Key features of ULP are:

Based on mature and proven technology

• Supports multiple nodes
• Easy and low risk integration path into existing products
• Typical power consumption reduced by a factor 40 over traditional DECT power management algorithms
  

Currently, application profiles are being developed and are to be incorporated into the upcoming CAT-iq V4.0 standard.

“The market is asking for greener products. Certain retail chains start now also to push the issue of sustainability and they measure their suppliers against a scorecard of “green” metrics”, says Arend van der Weijden, CMO at SiTel Semiconductor BV. The solutions of RTX and SiTel semiconductor are leading in this field.

 
Availability and solutions
“RTX is in the process of creating a platform, modules and an SDK (software Develoment Kit) for easy and fast ULP integration and product development”, says Lasse Anker Knudsen, Technical Marketing Manager at RTX Telecom A/S. RTX also offers system design services to product developers who want to integrate the ULP technology into their products or product platforms. Get a head start and benefit from the opportunities in ULP with RTX.