Telemática dentro de las "cajitas"

Gadgets

Dec 4th 2008. Thinking inside the box. From The Economist print edition. There is more to portable electronic gadgets than just fancy hardware

Illustration by Claudio Muñoz

ELECTRONIC gadgets have changed a great deal in the past few years. Most obviously, they have become smaller, sleeker, smarter and more versatile. Billions of people now carry around tiny devices that are more powerful than the desktop computers of a few years ago. But these gadgets have also changed in a less obvious way. Once they were lumps of hardware, brought to life by a layer of software; today, they might be more accurately described as services in a box. It was ever thus with mobile phones, of course: the handset is useless without a network operator, and mobile phones are, in effect, the containers in which operators sell their services. But the handset and the network service have hitherto come from different companies. Operators do not manufacture their own phones, and handset-makers are not operators. But now device-makers are increasingly providing the services that power their devices—or, to look at things the other way around, building devices that encapsulate services they wish to offer. One of the first to do so was Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device. As well as making BlackBerrys, RIM also handles the delivery, using its own behind-the-scenes infrastructure, of e-mails to millions of its devices around the world. Similarly, Apple's iPod started off as a piece of hardware in 2001, but it really took off in 2003 when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, a service that makes it easy for iPod owners to download music, video and games to their devices, and which is now the leading online music retailer. Makers of satellite-navigation devices such as TomTom and Garmin are also moving from a focus solely on hardware to a greater emphasis on supplementary services—real-time traffic updates, information about the positions of speed cameras, revised versions of maps and so on. Now the biggest gadget-maker of all, in volume terms at least, is extending its push into services, and is trying to do all these things at once. Nokia, the world's biggest handset-maker, sells nearly half a billion mobile phones a year, roughly two in every five. This week it added revamped mobile e-mail and navigation services to the music downloads it already offers on some of its handsets (see article). So convinced is Nokia of the importance of services that it reorganised itself last year into two divisions: one to build handsets, and the other to provide its growing suite of services, called Ovi. At your service There are several motivations for the gadget-makers' shift into services. First, margins on hardware are generally lower than margins on services. Second, saturated markets in many parts of the world mean that hardware sales are slowing in some categories. Soon, everyone in western Europe who wants a satnav will have bought one; what will the manufacturers do then? Make money from subscriptions and updates, of course. At least, that's the plan. Finally, services provide a way to hold on to customers. If you have signed up for a service tied to a particular gadget-maker, the thinking goes, you are less likely to switch to a different manufacturer's device in future. The world's most successful gadget-makers are those that have been quickest to recognise the importance of offering accompanying services. Makers of stand-alone music-players, such as Rio, have been unable to compete with Apple; and Motorola, once the top dog in mobile phones, let RIM, once an obscure Canadian start-up, grab the mobile e-mail market. With elaborate branding and advertising campaigns, gadget-makers have long promoted the idea that they were selling something more than just a bundle of electronics in a snazzy case. Now, funnily enough, some of them really are.

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Teléfonos inteligentes; alternativas inteligentes.

Technology.

Smart Phones, Smart Choices By ROY FURCHGOTT Published: December 1, 2008

The BlackBerry Storm has traded a full keyboard for a detailed larger screen and a touch-pad keyboard.

IF you are confident that a phone is the right gift for a friend or loved one, the smart choice this year is a smart phone. The demand for mobile Web access is increasing, and the ability of phones to deliver it is improving. That said, how to match the smart phone to the recipient? Some generalities provide a road map. FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T READ INSTRUCTIONS The choice here is simple. The easiest-to-use phone, right out of the box, is the iPhone. It's that ease that has propelled it to the No. 1 selling position, surpassing the Motorola Razr. The iPhone's touch screen is intuitive and easy to operate. It's also easy to customize. The phone can run applications that can help you lose weight, identify a song on the radio, find a restaurant and do many other things. Apple has nicely corralled more than 5,000 of these, including games and productivity software, in its App Store. On the technical side, it's a GSM/EDGE phone, which means it can be used overseas, and it can work on a Wi-Fi wireless connection, which gives you access to a faster network for Internet browsing. It also has a 2-megapixel camera, and the music player has the familiar iPod menus and up to 16 gigabytes of memory. There are a few quibbles: It doesn't have true GPS, although its locator does pretty well. The Bluetooth wireless link is monaural, so you can't get the full effect of your music on a stereo Bluetooth headset. And there are those who hate the virtual keyboard that makes you type using, essentially, a picture of a keyboard on the touch screen. On the other hand, an application that makes the keyboard bigger, like EasyWriter, makes a nice stocking stuffer.

The T-Mobile G1 offers a Google Chrome browser and synchronizes easily with programs like Gmail and Google Maps. Because it features few restrictions on application designs, it shows great potential. More Photos >

FOR THE FUTURIST The T-Mobile G1 gained attention as the first phone offering a Google Chrome browser, which means that you are getting the real Web on your phone, not a version dumbed down for a slow processor and small screen. It also has the Android operating system, which will allow any developer to build applications for it, virtually without restrictions. The phone has a nice hefty case that contains a triple-threat of Web navigation. For one, there's an actual Qwerty backlit keyboard, not a virtual one. But there's also a touch screen and a built-in track ball, very handy for navigating Web pages shrunk to fit the three-and-a-quarter-inch screen. As a Google product should, the G1 easily synchronizes with applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and, of course, Google Maps. Because it is backed up on the Web, if you lose your phone all of your contacts and data will be restored automatically when you get a new one. The phone has a 3.2-megapixel camera and a slot for a microSD card that lets you expand the memory up to 16 gigabytes, the current card limit. It has a music player and links to Amazon. As a GSM phone, it can also be used overseas. But it's the phone's potential that qualifies it for the futurist. The first applications are interesting, but they don't always work smoothly. The system should improve as it goes, and it holds great promise. By putting few restrictions on the design of applications for the phone, the G1 could be the first to incorporate some of the coolest software.

Mark Blinch/Reuters The iPhone's simplicity and ease of use have propelled it to No. 1.

FOR THE ROAD WARRIOR The new BlackBerry Storm is something like the electronic equivalent of a mullet — all business up front, party in the back. It still incorporates the serious mail and organizational features that have endeared these phones to businesspeople. One of the attractions on past models was the full keyboard, but the Storm has traded that for a larger screen and a touch-pad keyboard. For some it's a reasonable trade-off. The 3.25-inch screen is bright and detailed. It's a decent size for watching videos while flying. With a 16-gigabyte microSD card, you could store hours of MPEG4 video, and the advertised five hours of battery life means you could watch them. The camera is 3.2 megapixels, and it shoots video as well as still photos. It does have stereo Bluetooth, but no connection to a music store — you'll have to load music by SD card or by connecting to your desktop computer. How much BlackBerry devotees will like this phone depends on how they feel about the SureType keyboard. It is displayed on the touch screen, but to activate a key you have to put a finger on it and depress the screen, which is a giant click button. It can take some getting used to. As always, the BlackBerry has international connectivity.

The Jitterbug is for those who don't like the complexity of added features.

FOR THE LUDDITE For those who are terrorized by buttons and features, there is the Samsung Jitterbug Dial. Yes, the commercials are cheesy and the phones aren't cheap, but they have just a few large buttons, and they make calls. That's it, just phone calls. That makes it even easier to use than an iPhone.

Multimedia Slide Show Related To Have and to Hold (December 2, 2008) For Cellphones, an Enticing Array of Add-Ons (December 2, 2008) Comes With a Ribbon, but No Strings (December 2, 2008)

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Copyright by the New York Times 2008

La batalla por el alma de los celulares inteligentes. (Smartphones).

Mobile phones.

Nov 20th 2008. The battle for the smart-phone's soul From Economist print edition. Competition heats up to provide the software that powers mobile phones

From handsets to services in billions of Sterling Pounds.

BRACE yourself for disappointment: there may not be a flashy new mobile phone waiting for you under the Christmas tree. On November 14th Nokia, the world's largest maker of such devices, announced that it expects the industry to sell no more than 330m of them in the fourth quarter—about 6m fewer than in the same period last year and 20m fewer than it predicted just a few months ago. Worse, Nokia expects sales in 2009 to drop below this year's level. This would make it only the second year ever in which the global handset market has contracted. Yet not all is doom and gloom in the mobile-phone industry. On the contrary, it is going through two important shifts that promise to generate much growth and profit in the years to come. First, even though overall sales may fall in 2009, sales of "smart" phones—those that allow you to surf the internet, download music and use other data services, as well as make calls and send text messages—are booming. According to Informa, a market-research firm, the market for smart-phones will grow from $39 billion in 2007 to $95 billion in 2013, by which time they will make up nearly half of the handset market by value (though only 34% by volume). Second, and more important, as handsets get smarter the nature of the industry will change. It will be less about hardware and more about software, services and content. In fact, for the first time, more will be spent this year on such intangibles than on the handsets themselves (see chart). And this is why, also for the first time, a fierce battle between operating systems for handsets has broken out. Mobile phones had operating systems before, of course. Just like personal computers (PCs), they always needed such software to enable the hardware to function and to allow add-on programs to run. But most mobile operating-systems were proprietary, meaning that handset-makers had developed them specifically for their own devices. Only at the top of the handset market was there any rivalry between operating systems, with a struggle mainly between Research in Motion (RIM) with its BlackBerry; Symbian, controlled by Nokia; and Windows Mobile, a cut-down version of Microsoft's operating system for PCs. This set-up was fine as long as mobile phones were relatively dumb, wireless-data connections were slow and users were happy just to make calls and send text messages. But in recent years it became the main impediment to the take-off of the mobile internet. On their own, handset-makers did not all have the necessary resources, expertise and culture to develop top-notch operating systems with intuitive user interfaces. Add-ons such as games had to be laboriously tweaked to run on multiple platforms, which often existed in multiple versions. All this amounted to a tax on mobile phones: on average, 20% of the cost of a handset goes on software. It did not help that mobile operators, keen to keep control of their customers, decided which applications would run on a handset and which services it could access. They also confused customers with complicated pricing schemes for wireless data. It has taken two outsiders to shake things up. One is Apple, with its iPhone. As well as being a paragon of hardware and user-interface design, it comes with a flat-rate "all you can eat" data plan. Apple also provided powerful tools to develop software for the iPhone, and a novel way to distribute them: the App Store. As with a PC, users are free to download applications and install them on their iPhones. Launched in July, the App Store has taken off even more quickly than iTunes, Apple's industry-leading online-music store. In the first two months, iPhone users downloaded more than 100m programs. The other disrupter is Google, with its Android platform. It also lets users download applications from an online store, called Android Market. But it differs from the iPhone in that Android is just software, which Google makes available to handset-makers and operators. The first operator to adopt it was T-Mobile, for its G1 phone, launched in September. What is more, Android is "open source", meaning that its underlying recipe is freely available and can be easily changed and understood. This, Google hopes, will speed up adoption and allow more innovation than the iPhone platform, which Apple controls tightly. The appearance of these two newcomers has led the industry's incumbents to redouble their own platform efforts. One scheme, called LiMo, is run by an eponymous foundation with a membership comprising more than 50 handset-makers, mobile operators and other industry bodies, all of which share intellectual property. Just like Android, the software is based on Linux, an open-source operating system ("LiMo" stands for Linux Mobile). But in contrast to Google, the LiMo foundation intends to offer only the basic elements of a platform, leaving its members room to differentiate themselves, for instance by developing their own user interfaces. And then there is Symbian, which has been around for a decade. In June Nokia announced a deal which seems counterintuitive, to say the least. It paid €264m ($411m) to buy out the other shareholders in Symbian and transfer its software to a non-profit foundation that will continue to develop and distribute it, on an open-source basis. But by doing so Nokia kills two birds with one stone. The acquisition means it no longer has to pay licence fees to use Symbian, and open-sourcing it makes the platform more attractive to programmers and other handset-makers. Let battle commence How will this conflict play out? There are actually several front-lines. One is between the open-source platforms and their proprietary rivals, in particular the iPhone and BlackBerry platforms. Although the majority of smart-phones will ultimately be powered by open-source software, the proprietary platforms are here to stay, predicts Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight, a market-research firm. Many users, he says, value their tight integration of hardware and software, which makes for a more seamless package. Only Microsoft has a real problem: it does not make handsets itself, so it cannot exploit such integration, and handset-makers that do not wish to develop their own software now have a choice of free alternatives to Windows Mobile. Then there is the fight between the three open-source platforms. All have their strengths and weaknesses. Symbian is proven technology that powers some 159 phone models, but has limited momentum among independent software firms. With Android, it is the other way around: the software powers only one handset model so far, but its online marketplace already boasts a few hundred programs. LiMo is behind in both, but has the merit of not being controlled by one big firm. In 2009 each platform will be trying to win the hearts and minds of software developers, says Roberta Cozza of Gartner, another market-research firm. But even if one comes out ahead, it is unlikely that the market will consolidate soon. Strong economic interests are keeping each platform alive. Google wants to get its services and advertising on mobile phones. Nokia is also betting on services as a source of growth. And handset-makers and operators will probably continue to support LiMo, if only because they do not want to depend on Google or Nokia. The best outcome, indeed, is a continuing battle. If the market for mobile-phone platforms were to consolidate quickly or go down the same route as PC operating systems, which wound up being dominated by Microsoft Windows, the result would probably be less innovation. And it is by innovating rapidly that the mobile-phone industry, and any other for that matter, has the best chance of weathering the oncoming recession.

Blackberry Bold.

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