Mobile gaming enthusiasts envision the day when they can play massive multiplayer titles that combine real-time interaction and pinpoint location capabilities with eye-catching, 3-D graphics. For now, though, the most popular games in wireless are old and simple. And they weren't originally built for...
New competitors will threaten the established portable navigation device vendors, said ABI Research. The enormous market expansion and related price war in the consumer navigation market is no longer new. What has changed is that the resulting attempts at product segmentation and the additional...
Commercial telematics, in particular mobile research management, is driving location-based services today, according to ABI Research. But the next big battleground will be to add Web portals to vehicle navigation devices. Following is a roundup of trends to watch in location-based services. The technology...
Digital map developer Navteq announced a product licensing agreement with LandSonar, a predictive traffic supplier. The deal gives Navteq the right to use LandSonar's Predictive Speed product, which estimates trip time and advises routes based on driving speed combined with the continental road network...
Location-based services seem to encompass consumer applications that generate plenty of excitement among consumers, yet somehow, uptake of LBS applications is not exactly booming-except in cars. Cell-phone users in the United States have been slow to adopt mapping and tracking services, but drivers are...
Device-based security, which despite competing notions of stored data vs. data-in-motion, has its role. In that case, according to the Tower Group's Bob Egan, keep in mind that the drivers-both legal and "reputational," if you will-are powerful and the market is small. Smart phones...
16The spate of recent headlines can only feed the well-founded paranoia of corporate IT managers struggling to serve their colleagues' quest for mobility. The enterprise's demand for data on-the-go naturally includes e-mail and requests for proprietary corporate information, including access to the corporate network-sending...
Mobile-phone penetration rates are surpassing 90 percent in markets around the world, reaching the saturation point in Hong Kong, South Korea and Western Europe. Meanwhile, handset manufacturers continue to gain ground. Worldwide mobile-phone shipments in the second quarter fell just short of an all-time...
Given all the recent WiMAX announcements, it seems that the communications infrastructure community has convinced the rest of the world to invest in WiMAX technology, whether for fixed or mobile networks. In Seoul, South Korea's top two carriers, SK Telecom Co. Ltd. and KT...
The big issue for some players in the wireless community regarding Java ME revolves around its owner, Sun Microsystems Inc., which announced at its May JavaOne conference that it was mulling how to go open source with the industry's dominant programming language. This move...
Imagine Java as a set of three types of Lego blocks, says Eric Chu, director of the Java ME platform in Sun's Client Systems Group. The bottom unit contains two "configurations," including CDC (connected device configuration) and CLDC (connected limited device configuration). Sitting on...
Sun licenses the testing of Java applications to various companies, and it licenses the Java brand to companies whose products are Java-compatible, according to the company. Sun also licenses implementations, so companies that want to ship a Java-enabled handset need to get software from...
As consumers and businesses start to take wireless carriers up on their offers of data services, and the carriers themselves put up ever-faster networks to support the demand they're trying to create, backhaul capacity requirements are poised to increase dramatically-and backhaul providers are anticipating...
Television has been called the "75-year-old killer application" and, indeed, one of the hurdles to-and possibly a shaper of-the mobile television experience is the recent trend toward giant, flat-screen TVs with surround sound in the home. Accustomed to zoning out in front of a...
If it seems like the tower industry has been taken over by giants, consider that first and foremost, towers are real estate. Thus, the game is not necessarily played according to volume. Rather, the value of any given tower depends in large part on...
"News of my death has been greatly exaggerated," Mark Twain is said to have written in 1897, when he remained hale and hearty. Qualcomm Inc. has taken a page from Twain and added a biblical twist, as it hails its new incarnation of BREW...
A quarter century ago, RCR's inaugural issue rolled off the presses. Radio Communications Report was launched by Titsch Communications Inc. as a monthly spinoff of another publication, Two-Way Radio Dealer, to cover the emerging cellular telecommunications industry. In its second year of publishing, with...
WASHINGTON-In the dog-eat-dog world that is life inside the Beltway, it is rare to find someone who is liked, respected and considered effective from people on both sides of the aisle. Meet Brian Fontes, this year's inductee to RCR Wireless News' Wireless Hall of...
No matter what type of network technology or application the wireless industry develops, you can bet that the test and measurement providers are prepared to measure how it performs. The major players tout equipment that can test basic voice and related services as well...
Within the past two years, the number of national carriers in the U.S. has gone from six to four. Between Cingular Wireless L.L.C.'s acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Sprint Corp.'s acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc., the companies that need to have their...
It's safe to say U.S. wireless subscribers have caught up with much of the rest of the world in terms of data consumption. But it appears American carriers still have their work cut out for them when it comes to cashing in. The United...
Hysteria about Voice over Internet Protocol is apparently not without cause, as VoIP is claiming a big (and-getting-bigger) piece of the communications market. Earthlink Inc. and Linksys, a Cisco Systems Inc. subsidiary, late last week teamed up to offer retail shoppers at 30 Fry's...
What does $67 billion buy these days? Convergence nirvana, for one thing. If AT&T Inc.'s offer for BellSouth Corp. gets approved, as it's expected, big-time convergence could finally start happening in real-world terms. Bundled communications services from a range of wired and wireless network...
The market outlook for CDMA handsets may be described as a tale of two contrasting regions. And therein lies a few wireless lessons about the difference in how profits are made in emerging and mature markets. The emerging market is the Asia-Pacific region, led...