Nikkei Electronics Asia -- May 2009
Analysis
Mobile World Congress Roundup: Smartphones Call the Future

Mobile World Congress 2009, the largest exhibition in the world in the mobile phone field, was held recently. Many major mobile phone operators around the world are planning to adopt Long-Term Evolution (LTE), and the congress revealed that the focus right now is on just how mobile phone services will evolve during the transition years until then.

"Total shipment volume of mobile phones is trending down worldwide, but we expect the smartphone market to achieve an annual growth rate of 15% for the next five years," says senior corporate vice president and president of Smart Handheld Business Group Aymar de Lencquesaing, of Acer Inc of Taiwan.

Mobile World Congress 2009 (MWC) was held in Barcelona, Spain from Feb 16 to 19, 2009, and many of the world's leading manufacturers expressed high expectations for the multi-function handset market. 

The key models announced by major handset manufacturers at MWC resembled each other closely in terms of sales points: touch-panel operation, cameras with more than 5 Mpixels, and record/play of 720p video streams. It is evident that they are all heading in the same direction, making it difficult to tell them apart anymore. As a result, manufacturers are trying to find routes to higher growth, including developing handsets emphasizing a function subset, or offering in-house services exclusively to users with their handsets.

Touch Panels Here to Stay

Almost two years after the appearance of the iPhone from Apple Inc of the US, touch panels have become a standard input device in mobile phones. New models announced by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd of Korea, for example, use touch panels across the board. Touch panel designs were on display throughout the show, such as the Arena from LG Electronics Inc of Korea and the Idou (development codename) from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB of the UK (Fig 1). Samsung Electronics stressed its proprietary TouchWiz touch panel-based operating screen, while LG Electronics offered the S-Class User Interface (UI) with three-dimensional (3D) visuals.

New faces popped up in the line-up of major manufacturers competing in the multi-function handset market, too. Acer, a growing presence in the mini-notebook personal computer (PC) field, officially announced its entry. The industry had predicted the move, following Acer's acquisition of E-Ten Information Systems Co Ltd of Taiwan in 2008, but in 2009 it announced eight handsets at once. Acer's Lencquesaing (Fig 2) is eager to join the fray, predicting "We will be the leader in handsets designed for primarily datacom."

HD Mobile Phones

One of the handsets that stood out functionally was the OMNIA HD, from Samsung Electronics. Capable of shooting and playing 720p imagery, it has a 3.7-inch screen with 640 x 360 pixels resolution - only a quarter of the pixel count needed for 720p content. The company provided the handset with Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)* server functions, making it possible for a display device (television, etc) with DLNA client functions to play back 720p video streams from the OMNIA HD via a wireless local area network (LAN) connection.

* DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance): an organization drawing up design guidelines for multi-vendor interconnect in the home network, and certifying complying products.

Texas Instruments Inc (TI) of the US, which supplies Open Multimedia Application Platform (OMAP) application processors for mobile phone handsets, announced that it will begin volume production of the OMAP 4 series in the second half of 2010, providing support for 1080p imagery encoding and decoding. Qualcomm Inc of the US will also support 1080p encode/decode processing with the mobile phone chipset slated to sample-ship in 2010. If this represents an emerging trend, then "full-high definition" (full-HD) mobile phones should hit the shelves in 2010.

Projector Functionality

The Samsung Electronics' I7410, with projector functionality (Fig 3), drew considerable interest (Note 1). Using the Digital Light Processing (DLP) Pico chipset for miniature projectors from TI, it can project an image with 480 x 320 pixels resolution at an equivalent screen size of five to 50 inches. Handset dimensions are 111.7 x 56.7 x 17.2mm, slightly thicker than most models on the market, but when you pick it up you don't notice the extra size, weight, etc. 

Note 1: I7410 is the model number for sale in Europe. The firm announced the same model would be released as the W7900 in Korea in Feb 2009. Continuous display time was not disclosed, but the internal rechargeable batteries have a capacity of 1440mAh. The rechargeable batteries in the MBP200 miniature projector from Samsung Electronics, using the same DLP Pico chipset, have a capacity of 1480mAh, with a maximum continuous projection time of 80 mins.

The TG01 from Toshiba Corp of Japan is another handset that makes its characteristic hardware stand out. The display is a large, 4.1-inch touch panel design, but the handset is only 9.9mm thick (Fig 4). According to Akira Yushima, chief technology executive, Mobile Communications Company of Toshiba, the 4.1-inch display "...was selected as the largest screen size, for maximum viewability, that would still fit in the user's palm and pocket."

Handsets, Services Linked

It is becoming increasingly difficult to discriminate by hardware functionality, and manufacturers are instead boosting added value by linking the handsets to services. One good example is the nuevifone (Note 2) announced by Garmin-ASUS, the joint brand of ASUSTeK Computer Inc of Taiwan (a manufacturer in the PC sector), and Garmin Ltd of the US, a major player in portable navigation devices (PND). A source at ASUSTeK Computer explains, "We aren't aiming at the smartphone market where there are so many competitors. We want to provide new communication services built around position information."

Note 2: ASUSTeK Computer has attempted mobile phones in the past under its own brand, but announced plans to phase the line out after the launch of the joint brand with Garmin.

A quick nuevifone search of information on nearby shops and other items nearby, using Web-based services from Google Inc of the US and other providers, displayed a number of buttons for tasks such as phoning the designated point, showing route guidance there, or looking at a map of the area (Fig 5). 

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has begun to handle video through its existing PlayNow music download service. The video can be played via the firm's own handsets or a PC. 

New Application Stores

The appearance of Apple's App Store, Google's Android Market and the like has made handset manufacturers realize just how important it is to provide add-on applications to users. The reason is simple: when more software developers, content creators, etc, come together, more users adopt that handset, which in turn draws even more creative people in a positive feedback cycle. 

Nokia Corp of Finland, the largest mobile phone manufacturer, announced that it would open the Ovi Store, retailing applications including games and widgets, in May 2009 (Fig 6). "Ovi Store will be serving the 550 million handsets we've already shipped," says Niklas Savander, executive vice president of the company, stressing the market strength that sheer volume enjoys (Notes 3, 4). 

Note 3: For handsets using the Nokia S60 and Series 40 software platforms.

Note 4: Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation promoting the use of the Symbian OS already used in many Nokia handsets, explained "Ovi Store is run by Nokia. I expect other handset manufacturers using Symbian will launch their own retail sites." He added that the Symbian Foundation is trying to unify the software execution environment in Symbian handsets from all manufacturers.

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