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January 7, 2012

On any given day, 3G networks are struggling hard to support the rapidly increasing demands of smartphone users as their new devices require more and more data from the internet, says a report by market research firm Arieso.

4G and LTE networks make better use of wireless spectrum and are a lot more efficient, but that's not the case with older, third generation systems.

What's more, iPhone 4S users use twice as much data as iPhone 4 users, and three times as much as iPhone 3G users. Arieso, measured the overall data consumption of 1.1 million mobile internet customers in Europe, the U.S. and Africa over a 24-hour period in November and found disparities in internet consumption according to the devices used.

And the Apple iPhone 3G was taken as the benchmark. Users of the HTC Nexus One, the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy phones downloaded more data than users of Nokia phones or BlackBerry mobile handsets.

HTC owners seemed to be the biggest data uploads: HTC Desire S users typically shifted out 3.23 times as much data as iPhone 3G users.

Increased ease of use, more data intensive background apps and efforts to stick more content in the cloud have pushed data consumption right up. And faster phones with more functions chomp through more megabytes.

Michael Flanagan, CTO of Arieso, said that the biggest single factor pushing the rise was likely to be the move towards device synchronisation and sharing content between devices.

Looking at the iPhone 4S, there are a finite number of differences between it and the iPhone 4, so we can look at it and assess the impact of the new features.

Additionally, it seems that the cloud-based features of the iPhone 4S can make a small difference. For example, when the iPhone syncs content with Mac computers, it appears to use a bit less bandwidth as a bonus to the user.

The Ariesco report also noted that on the day it created the survey, it measured an average of about one percent of extreme users that were responsible for about 50 percent of all mobile data downloads.

Considering that the results included dongle users, it's likely that these will be torrent downloaders on laptops with no-limit internet SIM cards watching 2-hour movies.

In other mobile news

Wireless Industry News could not confirm this as of this morning, but there are some reports today that Apple could be opening new store-within-a-store locations in a few Target locations later in 2012, enabling it to expand its retail reach into smaller metro areas in the U.S. where the cost to open a flagship Apple store would be too high and impractical.

According to a source familiar with Apple's plans, the company could begin operating Apple-branded areas within 20 to 25 larger Target stores in smaller cities which can't support a standalone Apple Store.

The initial opening would be a small start, given that Target, the second-largest discount retail chain in the U.S., already operates 1752 stores in the country.

So far, Apple has opened no less than 359 of its own corporate retail stores across the globe, 245 of which are in the United States.

Apple currently also operates a "store within a store" at over 600 Best Buy locations, some of which feature staffing by Apple Solution Consultants. Best Buy has over 1,000 total stores in the U.S.

Apple once had similar arrangements with Sears, Circuit City, Computer City and Office Max but were terminated ten years ago when the company focused its efforts on CompUSA and its own new retail stores. CompUSA has since gone out of business, and Best Buy was brought back as a "store within a store" retail partner in 2005.

In October 2002, Apple began selling its iPod at all Target stores. Tim Cook, then Apple's executive vice president of Worldwide Sales and Operations, said in a statement at the time "We’re thrilled that Target will significantly expand the availability of Apple’s award-winning iPod to even more customers."

He then added "Apple has placed an operable iPod on display in each of Target’s 1,148 stores, so every Target customer can use and listen to an iPod before they buy."

Target then became the first retailer outside of Apple and Best Buy to begin selling the iPad in October of 2010.

A month later, it announced that it would begin selling Apple's iPhone 3 GS and the iPhone 4 in just over half of its stores, about 850 locations equipped with Target Mobile sales centers.

Target has since adorned its electronics sections with official Apple signage. With the move to opening full Apple mini-stores in new Target locations, the retailer could move beyond iOS devices to sell Apple's full product range, including Macs and AirPort wireless routers.

If this is true, it can only be good news for Apple. The maker of Mac computers, the iPod, iPhone and iPad will report its numbers on January 24, and most wireless industry analyst expect that Apple will surpass its sales numbers and profit projections set forth late in 2011.

In other wireless news

Today's mobile phones are dubbed smartphones simply because they feature more functions and are usually more complex than a typical device made in 2006 or before. And now handset makers are promising us phones that will be even smarter if all goes according to plan.

In the past couple of years, the focus has been mostly on making it easier for mobile users to make specific requests by swiping fingers, but the next batch of smartphones should be a little more proactive we are told.

To be sure, our close relationship with our mobile phones is still based on various commands and responses. Google's search engine is smart-- ask it to find "streets of New York" and it points you there, with some famous NYC landmarks.

But beyond appointment reminders and a few other simple things of similar nature, smartphones are, for the most part, not smart at all.

Case in point-- Nokia did try in the past to integrate its mobile handsets with some kind of intelligence, initially giving a Special Award to MoBots and then developing the similarly functional Nokia Bots. MoBots was very basic, responding with preprogrammed actions to a specific stimulus such as being in a particular location at a particular time. But other than that, the rest of the device was dumb, to say the least.

Nevertheless, Nokia Bots went a little further by suggesting (based on previous behavior) what time you might like to wake up in the morning, recommending that you charge your phone before you sleep, or changing the handset profile while you're in a meeting, etc.

And to a certain 'limited' degree, bots are clever somehow, and they can mimic some intelligence well if properly configured, but sadly Nokia Bots has been languishing in Beta for almost two years now, and shows no signs of appearing in the wild any time soon. Which leaves Motorola as the unlikely leader in the quest for a smarter smartphone.

To be sure, MotoACTV is that little wrist-mounted nugget that some Motorola devices feature which tracks heart rate and movement. (See photo near the top left of the article)

Monitoring the user's behavior and then reacting to better integrate with their lifestyle, even if that is the lifestyle of a fitness-obsessed early-adopter who likes Android, since most Motorola devices now run on Android.

Motorola's new RAZR mobile handset comes with something called Smart Actions, which do a reasonable impression of Nokia Bots, but the Motorola handset also goes a step further in making suggestions of how it might better coexist with the user.

And noticing that the device isn't charged and remains stationary at night, for example, the RAZR will offer to automatically shut down network synchronisation as well, helping save battery life at the same time.

The nice thing about this kind of intelligence is that it's taking place on the handset, so there are no privacy issues to worry about. That also means that the data isn't backed up, so a new handset will have no idea if it's going to be plugged in every night or not.

Still, this year might not be the year of the "smart" smartphone. People relentlessly seem more interested in better ways of telling their existing smartphones what they want done. However, there is still an inevitable drift towards intelligence, hopefully allowing our mobile devices to take over, whether we like it or not. At least that seems to be the trend, for now.

In other mobile devices

The slowly-moving market for broadcast mobile TV got a boost today when MetroPCS announced that it will be the U.S.' first wireless provider to offer its subscribers the new service.

Metro PCS will start selling an Android-based Samsung phone later this year equipped with an ATSC chip, the hardware needed to receive mobile television signals in the United States.

The phone will be preloaded with the Dyle mobile TV app from Mobile Content Venture, a group of twelve major broadcast companies formed in 2011 to launch the country's first large-scale mobile television service.

"This new initiative allows Dyle to take the first step in realizing the broadcaster vision of live, local TV on every smartphone," Salil Dalvi and Erik Moreno, general managers for Mobile Content Venture, said in a joint statement.

MetroPCS didn't provide a specific launch date for the service or offer any pricing information for the new handset. Mobile Content Venture said that by the time the phone launches, its mobile television service will be available in 72 stations in 32 markets covering more than 52 percent of the U.S.' population.

The company didn't name specific markets, but its members had previously committed to launching service in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Tampa, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Orlando, Portland, Cincinnati, Greenville, West Palm Beach, Birmingham and Knoxville.

Mobile TV service in the U.S. has long been stymied by a great lack of stations transmitting the necessary ATSC signals and an inadequate supply of consumer electronics outfitted with the right chips for the technology.

A while back, Qualcomm tried to forge its own way with its now-defunct Flo TV mobile television offering but took the service off the air after it failed to gain traction with consumers. The spectrum used for Flo TV was sold to AT&T for $1.9 billion.

Mobile Content Venture's deal with MetroPCS could be a critical step in getting broadcast mobile TV off the ground. Wireless carriers are crucial distributors for mobile devices and relationships with the wireless industry are seen as an important stepping stone for the advancement of mobile television technology.

MetroPCS, Mobile Content Venture and Samsung all plan to demonstrate the new mobile television service at the 2012 International CES in Las Vegas next week.

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Source: Arieso Market Research.

    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.