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July 16, 2010

Will 4G technology really deliver on 3G's previous promises? That's a question that's often on people's minds these days. There's no question that LTE and 4G is already boosting mobile traffic to the limit, and bottlenecks are now appearing at certain times of the day.

Neeraj Choubey, general manager of tablet PCs at Dell says “We've been hearing the same story over and over for more than 15 years now. I remember having the same discussion when we were on 2G networks.”

Presently, almost 77 percent of all traffic on NTT DoCoMo's wireless network is consumed by video, said Adrian Van Meerbeeck, the company's VP of strategy - R&D at the company's U.S. subsidiary.

“The reason we're going to 4G is because we know there's going to be like ten times the amount of video,” he said. With more content from big studios on the mobile horizon, networks will need to reach the promising speeds of 4G to stay in the game, he added.

“Overall traffic on the mobile Web continues to grow rapidly,” said Natalie Farsi, head of mobile at Warner Bros. “We have to look at the impact higher speeds are going to have on the mobile Internet.”

Warner Bros. has bi-weekly conference calls with Apple, according to Farsi, and only after the iPad was launched did the iPhone begin changing its strategy when it comes to mobile apps, she added.

“The attitude at Apple has changed a lot since,” Farsi said, adding that the company began embracing the Internet so long as Adobe isn't part of the equation. Just the same, however, Apple wants mobile app developers to create unique use-cases for their apps and not simply just mirror what's available online, Farsi continued.

“I can tell you that there is demand for people to just have the Internet,” Choubey said. “People say ‘I want the Internet experience on my mobile.'”

While many apps mirror content that's already available online, the studio is tracking more video and photo traffic on its apps while breaking news and live content are very much led by the Internet, Faris said.

“It's interesting. There's -toggling- going on between the app and the mobile Internet,” she added.

While Nokia has supported Flash technology on many of its devices for years now, the company's director of the preloads business, Jonathan Sharp, said Flash carries its own unique set of problems, and that doesn't surprise app developers.

“The thing about Flash is that we have all kinds of costs associated with Flash,” he said, adding that Nokia pays licensing fees for the technology, which is not an open standard.

“It's an issue we deal with everyday. It's costly for us to be on all these platforms,” Farsi said. “It is a big challenge for any company that produces content and on top of it you have all these versions.”

As an avid backer of Android, it only makes sense that Dell would push for the full spectrum of the Internet on mobile as a rallying cry and score points over Android's more recent support for Flash. Plus, Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen sits on Dell's board of directors. (!)

“Google and Android have always pushed the cloud-based strategy and an enhanced web browsing experience,” Choubey added. While she considers herself a “huge fan of the mobile Internet,” there's still a lot of innovation that needs to happen before websites are optimized for the full gamut of MIDs and operating systems available today.

The way Choubey sees it, wireless users simply want Flash-based content to work on their mobile phones. “it's all about what the customers want and if customers want to access the Web that's the way it is,” he said.

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Source: HGN.