The Changing Mobile Landscape

Intel Corp. detailed its new Atom processors for mobile and embedded systems at the Developer Forum in China. Elsewhere, Research in Motion, Ltd. (RIM) continues to rank at the top of the handheld device sales and satisfaction charts. Lastly, vendors are beginning to showcase more WiMAX solutions.

Focal Points:

• Intel's Atom processors for mobile and embedded systems are based on the IA-32 architecture used to power its Core 2 desktop and notebook processors. As such, Atom will be able to run x86 instruction sets including Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s Java and Adobe Systems Inc. Flash to provide a rich Internet experience and ease the translation of desktop applications to lighter weight mobile platforms. The Atom processors offer power improvements as well, requiring only 0.65 to 2.4 watts while running at speeds ranging from 800 megahertz (MHz) to 1.86 gigahertz (GHz). The company also showcased new Centrino-based mobile platforms at the show, that include support for WiMAX and Intel's Turbo memory, which uses flash memory as cache to improve processor performance.
• RIM remains atop both the consumer and corporate handheld device sales ladder, holding a respective 42 percent and 73 percent market share of each, according to a recent survey. In addition, RIM scored a 54 percent satisfaction rating among those surveyed. While this compares favorably to the 22 percent satisfaction rating reported by Palm, Inc. users, Apple, Inc. iPhone users rated their satisfaction levels at 79 percent. From a sales perspective, RIM still tops the charts while Palm has experienced seven consecutive quarterly drops in sales. Apple achieved a nine percent share in the consumer arena.
• Nokia Corp. showcased the latest version of its Nseries, called the N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition. This Nokia Internet tablet, which is one of many Nokia has developed, includes a 4.13 inch touchscreen, Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities, slide-out keyboard, and Webcam. The embedded 2 gigabytes (GB) of memory is expandable to 10 GB. Increasingly, vendors are incorporating WiMAX capabilities into their higher end notebooks. The WiMAX Forum predicts that 133 million users worldwide will use WiMAX by 2012.

Experton Group believes Intel has a good chance at competing with ARM-based alternatives given the perceived simplification in porting desktop applications to mobile devices. Users of handheld devices are interested in attaining greater performance including elongated battery lives and richer, interactive multimedia more akin to what they are accustomed to using on PCs.

Corporations should expect for their investments to continue along a similar trajectories for the next 18-24 months, but expect big changes to occur after that time. Technologies including service oriented architectures (SOA) and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are making it increasingly easy to adapt back-end applications to a variety of platforms with minimal rewrite. The latest batch of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wireless spectrum auctions and the beginning of WiMAX deployments should offer corporations and consumers far better performance and coverage over the next 30 to 60 months. Changes will abound from handheld device vendors and wireless carriers as multiple different technologies vie for dominance and acceptance, and IT executives should experiment with many of these – as long as they are based on standards and offer redundant network technologies – as the future of mobile computing is up for grabs. IT executives should take this opportunity to start a discourse with preferred vendors to understand how they intend to roll out network and hardware changes over the next several years, although timelines and product capabilities are still in a state of flux for most.