China - 3G approved '09

China goes into 2009 with approval of 3G licences [link ]. China's homegrown 3G platform called TD-SCDMA will be used and advanced in a quest to give primacy and advantage to home industries. Vendors craving for the huge market of the middle kingdom would put in place plans to ramp up on this technology. This is called changing the rules of the game. With growing clout in terms of technological ability and economical prowess, China is positioning itself to reap maximum benefits out of  all major opportunities. Telecom is one area where China has focussed its energies to ramp up and it is not surprising that Chinese companies have become credible competitors to the telecom biggies like Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent et al.

Wishing all a very happy new year 2009 !!

Hot Mobiles, Hotter apps

This post come after a self-imposed gap for the busy things that happen. One of the momentous thing that happened during this time was the approval given to white space spectrum by FCC. There is bound to be lot more arguments before any thing comes out of white space spectrum debate, like lot of cheap bandwidth. FCC has taken a go-forward decision to let technology find solution to the debate.

Meanwhile an application like Skyfire points to a future where the mobile needs more power for a seamless experience of PC-like browsing. Mobile browsers have vied with each other to show how better they can reformat the page to suit the mobile's screen. Skyfire takes the approach of replicating the experience found in PCs on the mobile. Rich applications like the flash player only available of PCs are now extended to mobiles thanks to Skyfire's technology.

On browsing using Skyfire on my N95 (with the latest firmware having demand paging support), it takes quite an amount of the CPU for getting to display the Skyfire's capabilities, however I can actually watch embedded video relatively easily. With a bit more power, the page refreshes can be faster. The newer phones might do well using Skyfire than my (g)old N95 and that is where the direction is for future mobiles. Hotter, faster processors for mobiles...new cooling technologies....advances in battery life most notably energy density, also advances in battery temperature control...

As far as the applications on the mobile itself go, the trend is towards more immersive browsing experience, more video options, innovative interfaces ( touch of iPhone, trackball of Blackberry ...come to mind) . A workable speech interface might also come, haptics for sensory feedback, projection of screen, improved TV interface may follow and may be some nice apps for mobile webserver...and one more - live streaming (Qik, Qik, Qik...  ) I hear somebody also say about editing documents, push email, the office works... Everybody needs more computing power in their hands in a literal sense.

My best wishes for mobile computing...Cheers!