BPN 1008 The flood of press releases on mobile stops today

Today the boys and girls of the mobile industry pack up and will leave Barcelona. They have a lot to think of. They got quite some messages for the next year to think about. I am not in the mobile business nor am I in Barcelona. I am just a mobile user with an interest in the development of mobile content. So I have been reading the stream of press releases. Most of them could be relegated to the dustbin immediately and were not even worth reading. And as I wrote before about the Readius, the mobile with flexible digital paper, of course the old tricks were played to lure the press; but the press can have a better memory these days due to search engines. (I recently spoke to someone who had seen and felt the Readius and was shocked to find out that you have to open the mobile when called. There is no interface and/or screen on the outside of the mobile to accept the call. This mobile will not win a usability award, was his final judgement).

The flood of press releases shows that the mobile industry will have to deal with saturation. This year there will be more mobiles in China than in the USA. Of course there are still markets which still have to pick up mobile telecom, but they are not the most interesting markets. And the profit margins on devices are under pressure; Nokia has to move its production from Germany to Romania.

After saturation, consolidation sets in. No longer the various models of mobile telephone (or handy as the Germans call the device) are important but the software will influence the acquisition. And the software is based on the operating system. Presently there are some 50 operating systems and new ones still pop up like Google's Android. But the most important ones for now dominate the market: Symbian, Microsoft Mobile, Opera. And the manufacturers are no longer strict in using operating systems. Even Symbian shareholder Sony-Ericsson has now used Microsoft Mobile in one of its new models. And they are desperately looking for infrastructure like search engines. Of course Microsoft hoped to catch two flies in one go with Yahoo. Once the search engine would be part of the conglomerate, it could also function as mobile search engine.

But the main manufacturers and operators are still dancing around the issue of content. The latest item in content is of course television. This will bring in the ship with gold; so they think. I am not a believer of that. Mobile television will fit in the snack culture: short, funny movies. I do not believe that you will watch television series. In my view this will be something for the Ultra Mobile PCs, which will flood the market by mid 2008.

But also in other content areas, manufactures are looking again. Nokia started to distribute content of games, music, navigation information and other information through its Ovi service. Local operators will be glad to pick up the connect minutes, but will not get any extra’s out of it. The operators have also looked for the content revenue extension. But the time of the walled garden services is over. Besides people pick what they want to have and not what the operators think that they should have.

One of the reasons mobile content has not been a success is the tariff of connect time. Just downloading a1Mb from the mobile net cost a fortune. Of course T-Telecom has brought down the price, but if you have to pay yourself, you will not connect to YouTube for the daily selection. And money is not the only handicap, but also the operating systems. The scaling/reformatting of internet screens does not really work, even not on smart phone screens.

There is an old wisdom in the PC world that you have to sell a PC for free and ask money for software. IBM forgot to do this, when it launched the PC in 1981 and Microsoft came in. In 2004 IBM had to sell its PC business to Lenovo. Nokia is trying to hold the fortress by launching the Ovi service. But will this service mature in time to deliver profits, when the profits on device manufacturing will start to tumble and local operators are back to their old game of ticks and bundles.

Blog Posting Number 1008

Tags: mobile, walled garden, smart phone, digital paper

BPN 991: Here the Readius comes again

Last week Polymer Vision, the inventor of rollable displays and a spin out from Philips, announced the commercial launch of the Readius device by mid 2008. The exclusive device exploits the versatility of rollable displays to merge the ‘reading friendly’ strengths of e-readers with the ‘high mobility’ features of mobile phones. Together with the Readius internet portal, designed for personalisation and content selection, the company offers a whole new mobile phone category.

The Readius is designed around ease of use and mobility. The device can last for 30 hours of continuous reading without battery charge. The 3G HSDPA tri-band phone allows worldwide calls and high speed instant updates from personally selected news sources, email and other services. Standard POP3 and IMAP is supported for ISP e-mail and others such as Yahoo!Mail, Google Gmail and Microsoft Exchange. The Micro SD High Capacity storage ensures quick and easy access to e-books and valuable information. Readius also features audio capabilities, including MP3, for podcasts, audio books and music.

The Readius internet portal allows users to quickly and simply configure their Readius User Interface as well as select content and services to individual style and needs. With zero clicks, personal data and information is then ‘pushed’ whenever and wherever it is needed.

The portal presents content providers with a commercially attractive channel to offer their content and services to the high growth mobile consumer market. Polymer Vision is in discussion with numerous such providers to populate the portal and make a broad choice of content and services available to Readius owners.

So what is new after last years’ press announcement for the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona? Last year the announcement indicated that Telecom Italia would exclusively market the Readius. In one of the press releases even the deadline of one week after the Barcelona Congress was mentioned. Did Telecom Italia pilot the Readius or even market the device officially. The site of Telecom Italia only mentions one press release: Telecom Italia through TIM will co-develop and market in Italy the world’s first rollable display enabled personal device for digital content distribution while Polymer Vision will market the device in the rest of the world. Nowhere on the Telecom Italia site is an indication of a pilot or the availability of the Readius. Now one year later the manufacturer tells the mobile world that the Readius will be available for commercial launch mid 2008. IN the press release there is no mention of the Telecom Italia exclusive launch.

Rushing press releases to the market before finished devices is a bad policy. The following question will pop up: What went wrong between Telecom Italia and Polymer Vision; Was the device not ready yet; Will the device be ready for commercial launch mid 2008 (roughly July till October 2008)? Or is there a technical or production problem. From a person who has seen the Readius, I heard that there is a fault in the design. When you are called, you will have to open the mobile to take the call; there is no screen, receiver and speaker on the outside. This will be experineced by a user as very awkward and looks like a cardinal sin in mobile usability design.

Blog Posting Number: 991

Tags: digital paper

Dutch public libraries in e-books

The Dutch service organisation for libraries NBD/Biblion will offer public libraries a collection of digital and audio books within two months. The members of the public library will be able to download e-books and audio books at home. The new online service is an addition to music download service for members of the public library, which was started late 2005.

The service organisation will produce a portal, which will be launched for trial in the second quarter of the year. There is a curious detail: normally e-books can be rented out to members instantaneously. However, in this case a limited number can rent the e-book copies due to license limitations. In first instance a few hundreds Dutch language e-books will be available, included copyright ones, as well as a few thousand English language books in the public domain.

In The Netherlands activities concerning e-books are fragmented. iRex Technologies is selling the iLiad. There is an online e-book site. The Dutch book chain Selexyz has started to sell the e-book reader Iliad and e-books (the company sold already more than 150 e-book readers). The software development company Edupaper has held a trial in a school environment and is now selling e-book readers like the Iliad, Booken Cybook, Polymer Vision Readius. And a few public libraries, among which the public library of my hometown Almere, bought e-book readers to rent them out. However, there is no united consumer promoting campaign for e-book readers and e-books by manufacturers, publishers, developers, book shops and libraries.

Blog Posting Number: 976

Tags: e-book,
e-book reader, public library, library

Colour digital paper around the corner

Last week digital paper was in the news again, when the French financial newspaper Les Echos announced two propositions for e-readers for its subscribers. One of the propositions is the iLiad, a black and white e-reader, manufactured by iRex Technologies, a spin-out of Philips. When talking to people a black and white e-reader is seen as a drawback; why is there not yet full colour digital paper. Of course such people forget that it is not just a black and white e-reader, but one with sixteen grey tones. So its not just a four grey tones like for example STAReBOOK. But yes, it would be great to have full colour digital paper.

The development of coloured digital paper has been started long time ago in laboratories. Last year Hitachi and Bridgestone showed an example of digital paper which could render colour for 40 percent of the entire survive. The colour prototype has a diameter of 13 inch, a resolution of 352 times 512 pixels. But it is not just a colour problem to solve, but also a power management problem. During the process of turning a page, the machine consumes energy. When a page has been turned and is definite, .no energy is consumed. This power management leads to a different way of programming.

Last month LG Philips showed full colour digital paper. It was an A4, 0,3 mm thin, thin and showing 4096 colours. Just like the iLiad has 16 grey tones, so this coloured paper has 16 colours per red green and blue channel, making up 4096 colours. This is contrary to a conventional screen , which renders 16,7 million colours with 256 channels in red, green and blue.

It looks like it will take some more years before colour digital paper will be to an acceptable level. And for colour books it will be acceptable. But the digital paper will not be able to render video yet. Uploading of images takes a lot of energy.

Of course colour digital paper is not only interesting for newspapers and books. But digital paper will also be usable for screens of smart mobile telephones as Readius of Polymer Vision, another Philips spin-out, is demonstrating. Other applications have not left the laboratories yet.

20070607: Check an article by Reuters

Blog Posting Number: 773

Tags: digital paper, e-book, e-reader

iLiad: forthcoming research on Dutch newspapers

It has been in the air ever since the iLiad was under construction by the Philips spin-off iRex Technologies: Dutch language newspapers on e-Readers. This week the Dutch Press Fund awarded a consortium of Dutch newspapers a grant of maximally of 362.950 euro for practical research into e-Readers. Three newspapers will partake in the research: the free newspaper Spits, the financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad and the national daily de Volkskrant. The research will take two years and the results will be offered to the newspaper sector.

The practical research will not be directed towards the technology, but will focus on how e-Readers can assist the change-over from the classic, static newspaper to the digital, dynamic newspaper content.

This research objective is broad. Yet one can ask whether another research has to be started up. Internationally there is an IFRA eNews research project going on. Closer to home, Wegener and Philips have done research into the usage of e-Readers by regional newspaper readers. The use of the e-Reader was tested over against other information devices. Especially the difference in usage between internet services and e-readers was tested. Very extensive research was performed with the Belgian newspaper De Tijd. This newspaper is a Flemish financial newspaper. I reported on the results of the research project extensively in my postings. But so far there is no decision has been made public that De Tijd will continue will the service.

The research in The Netherlands will be interesting as Het Financieele Dagblad will be the Dutch language partner in it. So it will be possible to compare the results between De Tijd and Het Financieele Dagblad as language and subject are the same.

New for the Dutch/Flemish language will be the research into the free daily and the paid national newspaper. De Spits is the counterpart by de Telegraaf of the Metro. It aims at the young commuters in urban areas. For de Telegraaf the newspaper the newspaper is an ad vehicle. The national newspaper de Volkskrant direct itself towards young audience with a good education and good job; a substantial part of the audience consists of singles.

The interesting part of the research will be the comparison between professional usage, usage for paid news and usage for free news. From my experience with the introduction of new devices such as CD-ROM players and electronic books, I expect that professional usage will be the leader of the three.

Interesting will also be the content question. Will the newspaper editorial staffs just transmit the newspaper as the pdf files on internet once a day or will they provide an iLiad edition once a day, in a day parting mood (morning, midday, late afternoon editions) or continuously changing news. From the internet experience it is clear that pdf is not a favourite type of edition and that continuously changing news is much appreciated. Given the wireless facility of the iLiad e-Reader a continuously changing news feed can be transmitted.

Personally I would also include the Readius in the project. The two e-Readers could be tested over against each other. The iLiad would be a single functional information device with an A5 screen, while the Readius would be a multi-functional communication and information device with a mobile telephone and a small screen, dedicated to information.

I look forwards to participating in tests of this research project. Of course I should get my iLiad to the repair service first.

Blog Posting Number: 732

Tags: iLiad, e-Reader, electronic book, digital paper, electronic newspaper

Cellular eReader

Telecom Italia and Polymer Vision today announced an agreement which will see the leading operator of the Italian mobile industry and the pioneers of the rollable display industry join to develop and launch the world’s first rollable display enabled mobile device to market in 2007.












Today the innovative terminal will be presented to the mobile industry as a world first at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona from February 12th (booth in Hall 2, D 06). The device uses the unique Polymer Vision rollable display technology which enables mobile devices to incorporate a display larger than the handset itself and offers a readability similar to printed paper. The product follows up on the rollable display technology based concept device Readius® presented by Polymer Vision less than 18 months ago at the IFA Consumer Electronics Trade Fair in Berlin.

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.

The rollable display enables reading entire newspapers as well as books that can be delivered and bought through TIM’s mobile network via a regular SIM Card within the device - and then stored in the terminal’s memory which will be extremely large (starting from 4 Gigabytes available in the first models). Combined with TIM’s mobile services, the device will permit instant access to personalised data, e-mail, news, information feeds and location sensitive maps wherever and whenever. The always-on user experience is made possible through an optimised combination of cellular (EDGE/UMTS) and broadcast (DVB-H IP data-casting) mobile functionalities as well as a mini-USB slot for PC and wired/wireless broadband data connection.

Together with superior text and graphic content, the new device will also download and play music, audiobooks and audio podcasts. Featuring single-handed navigation and control via an innovative touch sensitive LED user interface, as well as intuitively simple software, users will enjoy a new unique experience in managing, accessing relevant and personalized high value content. With the extremely low power consumption of the display, the new device will deliver an exceptional 10 days of average usage time between battery charges.

The rollable display is based on the e-Ink technology. Part of the screen-substrate technology and the wireless technology has been developed by Philips and has been spun out to iRex Technologies, which produces the eReader iLiad, and to Polymer Vision.

Blog Posting Number: 662

Tags: 3G, UMTS, eReader, iliad, iliad, digital paper