BlackBerry and Chinese 3G to live another day

RIM eventually found a deal with NTP, but millions of users have had time to sweat and to look for alternatives. Even among the most addicted CrackBerries, some could change dealers next time...
In the meanwhile, the world's first 3G TD-SCDMA videophone is out. It's a Samsung device with a combined Philips / T3G Technology Co. techno, T3G* being the JV founded three years ago between China's Datang Mobile Communications Co. and South Korea's Philips - Samsung JV (Royal Philips Electronics and Samsung Electronics Co.).

Philips are betting more than a few bucks on TD-SCDMA : according to their CEO, the techno will not only be an entry point for the Chinese market (which is anyway also open to W-CDMA, CDMA2000 & beyonds), but for other emerging markets where data isn't so important. Philips even expect some developped countries to add this feature in due time (which is supposed to be not so difficult but hey, that's a vendor talking...).

Samsung should try and sell volumes before Chinese manufacturers take over. After that, collecting royalties through T3G could prove a more profitable business : as it is, TD-SCDMA won't be for high end customers with demanding data needs.


* see T3G Technology Co. website (t3gt.com), Philips news release.

RockR's mTunes and the March of the Emperor

Steve Jobs had to pull out of his pocket a new and slender iPod Nano to compensate for Moto's RockR, the ugliest tribute to Meat Loaf one designer could dream of. To survive, iTunes needs much more Cingular moves.
More disruptive news for the industry came from Cellon : the manufacturer will use Trolltech's Qtopia Linux software on its triband GSM/GPRS C8000 series. Cellon may not be a giant and its partner may be a troll*, but that could prove to be the tip of the iceberg for our dearest penguin. The Chinese don't care about greenhouse effect gases but Cellon happens to be respected there, working for Siemens, Alcatel or Philips. And China happens to seek alternative solutions to Europe's Symbian or USA's Windows Mobile.
Yet, the March of the Emperor will require the involvement of a new kind of player between manufacturers and operators, more efficient than a simple OMA spinoff. Some kind of a mobile Red Hat with a safe but cool suite. Neither expensive nor sophisticated : you don't want to need air-con on your handset just to help your penguin survive.

* a troll with a powerful ring : index ventures supported MySQL and Skype

Report bad link - Meshed Potatoes.org

The good thing about updating your favorites is you check every now and then how a techno is doing. Take Near Field Communication for example : the NFC Forum website's last press release is dated march 2004 and working groups remain to be seen (anyway, who would buy a technology labeled with such approximation ?). Elsewhere, the rebranding around the UWB (Ultra Wide Band) family obviously brought some confusion : launching the WiMedia Alliance sounded like surfing on the WiFi-WiMAX wave but in the meanwhile the tsunami took the UWB WG's url away. uwb.org now leads to a commercial site for radar products which would be very much needed in the war of standards between MB-OFDM (supported by the Multiband OFDM Alliance, about the same players as for WiMedia) and DS-UWB (Direct Sequence UWB), supported by the UWB Forum. Judging by how that forum allows a chinese spin-off, I wouldn't be surprised if China decided to build their own standard. Motorola seems to bet on it. For all I now, the rest of the UWB Forum can turn into meshed potatoes, squeezed between this MBOA and the WUSB initiative, a.k.a. wireless USB, a likely Bluetooth-killer if the Viking keeps wasting time and opportunities. You can watch the one year old WUSB toddling somewhere on USB.org, under the nose of mighty naughty fairy godmothers : some board members of the USB Implementation Forum (intel, Microsoft, HP, NEC, Philips) plus Samsung... who decided to bet on all horses (also a UWB Forum member).
As a matter of fact, WUSB is already working. And focusing on a major and demanding application : broadcasting live music. That's on WUSB.org. That's also on 90.1 fm, live from the University of Sonny Brook, NY. And guess what, WUSB's sister station is none other than the WPKN I used to tune to back in '86.