Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

Dell’s Tablet Aims to Stick It to Apple’s iPad

Say the words “tablet computer” and ten bucks says it’s Apple’s iPad that springs to mind. But that doesn’t mean other companies aren’t busy building their own version of a touch-enabled, multimedia-sporting, slab of portable computing goodness.

Dell’s first effort at a tablet will be the Mini 5 (a name that is still in beta) — a slice of plastic and glass with a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen that according to Michael Dell will debut “in a couple of months.”

The Mini 5 will sport a 5-megapixel camera on the back, a separate front-facing camera that can be used for video conferencing, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1-GHz processor. The 5-inch screen also means it will be be closer to the Sony PSP in its form factor than the longer legal notepad design of the iPad.

The Mini 5 will run the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, version 2.0 or higher. And instead of the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad, Dell’s tablets will support the 16:9 ratio. Widescreen films anyone?

“It’s a device optimized for media consumption,” Neeraj Choubey, general manager of the tablets division at Dell told Wired.com. “It will offer the full web-browsing experience so you have something that you are holding in your hand that replaces everything the smartphone does and takes on quite a bit of the features of a laptop.”

The Dell 5 Mini will also just be the first in a series. “We are going to have a family of tablets,” says Choubey. “The first one is a 5-inch screen but we want to scale that up to a variety of screen sizes.”

That means future versions of the Mini 5 could have larger screens that will be closer in size to the iPad.

Dell wouldn’t comment on pricing, beyond saying it will be “competitive,” or when it will launch this year. Apple’s iPad ranges from $500 to $830.

With the launch of iPad in January, the tablet PCs are going through a renaissance. Though PC makers have offered slates and convertible notebooks for nearly a decade, consumers haven’t bought them in droves. With its 9.7-inch display, sleek design and Apple’s relentless hype, the iPad could alter the way we experience mobile computing. And Dell knows this.

Three years ago, Dell started expanding its product line to include mobile products. Dell smartphones are now sold in Brazil and China and it hopes to bring a version to North America. Meanwhile, the company set up a tablet division, and three weeks ago Choubey joined Dell from venture capital firm Venrock.

As he sees it, the Mini 5 will offer the apps that are available on smartphones, a set of specialized tools and programs for business users, a strong movies and music experience and web surfing — flash and all included. Take that, iPad.

Along with the apps on the Mini 5 users will have quick access to e-mail, YouTube, Amazon’s MP3 store for music, as well as spreadsheet, presentation maker and documents. It will also support voice recognition.  And these are characteristics that will be common to all tablets from Dell.

Still it will be a hard sell to consumers, says Van Baker, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

“If all you are bringing to the market is another media-playing or handheld-gaming device, then it’s not going to work,” he says. “It’s all about the services you have behind the device.”

And that’s where the iPad scores, with its strong developer ecosystem and 100,000 apps, along with iTunes and iBooks, says Baker.

Dell is betting it can offer that and add a compelling value proposition for business users: a promise that its tablet won’t just be a coffee-table device but instead a powerful productivity tool.

“There’s no reason why you can’t use the tablet to take notes in class,” he says.

Dell will also offer services such as syncing that will allow users to move music, documents and other data between their PC and tablet easily.

“At a very basic level, you would have a service that will share content across the devices seamlessly and have it in the cloud,” says Choubey.

Dell also hopes to draw on the Android ecosystem by offering developers the opportunity to port their Android apps to the Mini 5 and its successors.

For the Mini 5, though, its PlayStation Portable-like form factor could be a big drawback, says Baker. The Dell Mini 5 is closer in its looks to gadgets better known as mobile internet devices or MIDs, a category that has been languishing despite products from companies such as Lenovo and Archos.

“If the Dell Mini 5 is this small and it is pocketable, then why isn’t it a phone?” asks Baker. “If I am going to carry a second device, it better have something that’s a significant advantage over what I can do with my phone. With the iPad, the value proposition is a much larger display.”

But Choubey says the innovation is not just in the form factor but also in the business model. Dell will work with carriers to bundle inexpensive data plans for the Mini 5 and other tablets.

“That type of model — the way iPad was able to do with AT& T — will become more prevalent with these tablet devices,” he says. “It allows the carrier to increase number of devices per user.” Apple introduced a $15 for 250 MB, or an unlimited $30 a month, no-contract data plan for use with the iPad.

See Also:

• Dell Plans Its Own Smartphone, Analysts Say
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• Can Apple’s iPad Save the Media After All?
• Hands-On With the Apple iPad
• Designers Unearth Apple Tablet Prototypes — From 1983

Photo: Dell Mini 5 (ndevil/Flickr)

Mobile TV Tries to Break Into Prime Time

On Super Bowl Sunday, about 116 million viewers watched commercials touting Budweiser, Doritos and Coke — as well as spots promoting Flo TV, a service that promises to let you watch TV wherever you are.

It was a high-profile promotion for mobile TV, which despite years of innovation has failed to catch on outside of a few niches.

A mobile TV service from Qualcomm, Flo offers channels such as ESPN, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central for a monthly fee. You can watch Flo on your cellphone, in your car or on a dedicated device known as a personal television.

“Flo is a prepackaged entertainment experience,” says Alice Kim, senior vice president of strategy & corporate development for Flo TV. “It’s about portability,  it [is] about live video and it is complementary to your home experience.”

Mobile TV, which bring television news and shows to handheld devices, could be the next big thing for consumers who want to watch a game while on the subway, or catch up on their favorite TV show while waiting at the DMV. For instance, with Flo TV, you can get Jon Stewart on The Daily Show or live NBA games with a few clicks. The 3-inch screen is small, but it’s more convenient than a netbook.

But it’s a difficult sell. U.S. consumers so far have failed to jump on the mobile TV idea, even though it’s been around for years. Just about 1 percent of mobile users in the U.S. watch mobile TV. And even there, Flo faces some stiff competition. Rivals MobiTV and Sling Media also offer TV content to go. Last month, AT&T allowed iPhone users to access live and streaming TV on the Sling player over 3G. Meanwhile, a coalition of local broadcasters has formed a group called theOpen Mobile Video Coalition that attempts to bring free TV content to mobile devices.

“The idea is to be an alternative to the DVR,” says Ross Rubin, an analyst with research firm The NPD Group. “Prime time can be when you say it is or you can always tune in to live programming.”

Flo TV is alluring to some — especially when you have restless kids on your hands. Just ask Tyren Patterson, a Michigan-based Flo TV user who has been paying $25 a month for the service since 2006 on his LG Voyager. “When we go out and run errands or shopping and the kids get to start to antsy it’s good to be able to turn on Nickelodeon,” he says.

Patterson, a Verizon Wireless customer, has been a subscriber to Verizon’s V Cast service, which is powered by Flo TV.

“I use it everyday,” he says. “When you turn it on and start flipping the channels and see basketball games there’s the wow factor. The cost doesn’t matter then.”

Customers like Patterson may be few today (Qualcomm won’t disclose how many Flo TV users there are currently) but there are 200 million cellphone users who could become potential users, says the company. Flo rival MobiTV claims to have more than 7 million subscribers.

Where Flo TV says it hopes to distinguish itself is by offering the kind of shows and channels that most consumers would really want to watch, by offering high-quality video, and by time-shifting so you can watch shows when it’s convenient to you.

Flo — which stands for Forward Link Only — takes standard video signals and re-formats them for the mobile platform. Flo’s network operations center transcodes and compresses broadcast content into a single package that is sent to transmitters using satellite, microwave or optical fiber. The transmitters then send it to receiving devices over the 700-MHz spectrum.

“Flo TV’s network is explicitly designed for this and does a very good job of it,” says Rubin.

And because it’s a push technology with one-way data transmission, from the tower to the device, it doesn’t overload the network. Video through Flo TV is smooth and doesn’t stutter, says Kim. But to run Flo TV, devices need to have a special chip made by Qualcomm.

To popularize Flo TV, Qualcomm hopes to bring down the price of the service and offer it on a variety of devices. A personal TV that runs Flo costs $200 today, down from $250 just months before, Kim says. Meanwhile, AT&T has reduced subscription fees for the device to $10 a month from $15 earlier.

And on the road map are new devices such as a personal DVD player from Audiovox that will come with Flo TV, and a shot at the iPhone and iPod Touch market through a collaboration with battery and accessories maker Mophie.

“We are not trying to make a choice for the consumer, we are trying to give them choices,” says Kim.

See Also:

• Review: AT&T Mobile TV — Media Flows Like Greased Lightning
  
• Mobile TV, Video Market Will Be $15 Billion Worth of Huge
  
• Web/Mobile Video Will Overtake TV By 2013: Research Group
  
• Americans Don’t Care About Mobile TV

iPhone to be sold by Tesco in the UK, hemorrhages cachet

So we know the iPhone has been slumming it and selling itself on Walmart shelves in the US for a while now, but it’s retained a somewhat more dignified cachet over here in Europe. Until today, that is. Just “in time for Christmas,” British retailer Tesco will make it possible for you to buy your socks, no-frills groceries, and shiny smartphone all in the same place. You’ll still be riding O2’s network, thanks to the Tesco Mobile service, but the department store chain is likely to price its contracts more aggressively, as it already has a £30 per month plan that includes unlimited calls, texts, and web surfing. There might be something to this whole “competition” thing after all then, eh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iPhone to be sold by Tesco in the UK, hemorrhages cachet originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung announces Bada mobile OS, SDK sets sail in December

Because what the world needs now is yet another mobile operating system, Samsung has announced its foray into the field with Bada. Not much to reveal at this point other than some key PR speak: the name means “ocean” in Korean, the company’s committed to “a variety of open platforms” in mobile industry and it plans this to be easy to integrate / customize based on carrier’s experience. All real news should be coming sometime in December, when Sammy is saying it’ll have a London launch event and reveal the SDK. Full presser after the break.

Continue reading Samsung announces Bada mobile OS, SDK sets sail in December

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung announces Bada mobile OS, SDK sets sail in December originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung and TeliaSonera bringing LTE to vikings in 2010

Scandinavian folks tend to be a pretty cheerful bunch during the summer, and now Swedes and Norwegians will have reason to smile through the cold dark winters as well, with Samsung announcing an agreement to provide TeliaSonera with “mobile broadband devices for commercial service next year.” This agreement relates to Sammy’s Kalmia 4G USB modem and adds to the Swedish operator’s LTE push, which already counts Ericsson and Huawei among the contracted hardware providers. So that’s 100Mbps mobile broadband, coming to a snow-covered nation near you within the next dozen months or so. All we would ask of our viking friends now is that they remember their world-conquering ways of the past and start spreading that goodness globally. Come on, it’s our right! Full press release after the break.

Continue reading Samsung and TeliaSonera bringing LTE to vikings in 2010

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Samsung and TeliaSonera bringing LTE to vikings in 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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