Image courtesy of Dustin D’Amour via the Creative Commons attribution license.

Some thoughts on Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Palm:

Palm, a pioneer in the smartphone business, was acquired for $1.2 billion by Hewlett-Packard this week. With this deal, the battle of the smartphone market just got edgier and more interesting. Responding to questions on the announcement, Vice President of Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group Todd Bradley said the market for mobile phones is “large, profitable and growing.” HP sees smartphones as a “very early stage market” and wants to compete with its own product.

Check out the live blog on HP’s announcement at The Wall Street Journal.

Initial media reactions:

Long story short, HP just (re)entered the mobile space in a major way. And look for webOS eventually to be used across the range of HP products. – TechCrunch

It's clear that smartphones are becoming better and better at replacing full-fledged computers for many tasks, and Dell and HP clearly don't want to be forgotten when everyone is debating Andoid or iPhone with the same vigor once saved for OS X vs. Windows. We say: Bring it on. - Switched

-Subhi Andrews

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The release of Apple’s iPad marks the introduction of a new class of device into wireless networks. While on the surface, the iPad looks like an iPhone in larger form, the bigger screen also enables richer applications.

Richer applications equate to more content, graphics, larger and higher-resolution images, etc. - which generate more data traffic on operators’ networks. Recent tests by Bytemobile show that applications on the iPad generate more than 150% of the data generated by the same apps on the iPhone.

Highlights of the Apple iPad test, by popular application, are as follows:

Source: Bytemobile

The actual data consumed by these applications is likely to be far larger since a better user experience will encourage longer usage periods - thereby generating even more data. 

Less than three weeks after its launch, Apple’s iPad already accounts for 26% of the mobile devices accessing the popular website Wired.com.

Source: Wired.com

This couldn’t come at a more sensitive time for operators already struggling to keep up with demand from smartphones and laptops. In the short term, operators are responding with large capital investments in network infrastructure. However, this is hardly sustainable with the pricing of data services dropping relative to the volume of data generated by the devices. For example, an unlimited data plan for the iPhone and the iPad are priced the same at $30 a month, while data consumption for the iPad is going to be more than double that for the iPhone. Further, there are currently no fair-use limits on the iPad plan, which could encourage runaway data consumption for users so inclined. In addition, the operators’ price wars limit the sustainability of large network expenditures in keeping up with overall traffic growth.

The fundamental reality is that network capacity is a constrained resource - even with technological advances and infrastructure expansion investments. However, capacity is not a problem everywhere in the network and at all times of the day. Capacity becomes a problem when congestion occurs in crowded cells and during peak usage hours. Managing congestion solves a large part of the problem for operators.

Bytemobile’s optimization solutions are a critical tools used by operators to manage network congestion. Optimization helps alleviate congestion by reducing data volume in the network and thereby improve the user experience. Optimization also detects the occurrence of congestion by monitoring connections and traffic in the data path. Finally, optimization reduces congestion using various techniques that streamline data flow and reduce bandwidth waste.

By acting as a proxy, these solutions are able to dynamically determine both the amount of bandwidth available and the amount required by the application in use. This information is intelligently combined with knowledge of the priority of various traffic flows to provide the best possible experience for the maximum number of users. As a result, operators can support the adoption of bandwidth-hungry devices like the iPad without unsustainable network expenditures. 

-Girish Wadhwani

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It seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry is in the Video Optimization space nowadays. Seriously, every vendor with video expertise claims to deliver a smoother video experience with little interruption. As a consumer, I applaud this attempt at creativity. As an industry insider, I’m amazed by the confusion in the market. Let’s review the relevant technologies and separate the hype from the substance.

First, what kind of videos are we talking about? Well…what kind of videos are you watching? YouTube! YouTube and other internet video sites typically deliver content over HTTP using Flash or MP4 encoding. While we watch the video ‘stream’, it is technically being downloaded in small chunks rather than truly being streamed. This means that a video optimization product must ‘inhale’ HTTP Progressive Download (that’s the techie term for the small chunks) and then ‘exhale’ HTTP Progressive Download toward the client. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to affect YouTube and YouTube-like content.

Many self-proclaimed video optimization companies focus on completely different content – that is, content streamed using RTSP to devices supporting 3GPP-compliant video players. This is useful to content providers (or network operators acting as content providers by offering subscriptions to premium video channels from their portal), but not to operators who are trying to deliver the content that you and I watch on popular internet sites through their network.

Second, what kind of optimization are we talking about? Many vendors are talking about transcoding, which technically means conversion of content from one format to another. Sometimes transcoding doesn’t change the codec (format). Instead, it performs the function of reducing the number of frames or the resolution. By definition, these content conversions can only reduce the quality of the video – frame numbers or resolution cannot be increased in the process of transcoding. In fact, video quality will be reduced in any conversion process, even if the reduction is unintentional.

Hold on…so what’s good about transcoding? It seems that it can only diminish the user experience. Well…that depends. The wireless network is shared by many people using many applications. If the network is congested, your video may stall. Alternatively, your video may play, but my video will stall. If there is no congestion, then video transcoding can only reduce quality. But when there is congestion, video transcoding could help both of us watch videos with fewer interruptions (albeit at somewhat reduced quality).

This can get complex. Some users on the base station may watch videos, others may browse the web, yet others may interact with apps, and without even knowing it, some may be downloading updates to operating systems, media players, apps, and anti-virus software. As a result, one video user may negatively impact several users engaged in other activities. Should that one video user experience reduced video quality, or should the other users experience slower web downloads and less responsive applications?

Also, how do video optimization vendors know that we are all served by the same base station (shared network)? And how do they know that you are, I am or someone else is experiencing the effects of congestion? As you have probably concluded, optimization algorithms and policies have little to do with transcoding. The trick is to figure out if and when to optimize, and what optimization technique to apply to each transaction. Transcoding itself is just a small piece of the puzzle – a piece which happens to be a completely commoditized technology.

So…what is different about Bytemobile? We provide a holistic video optimization solution – not a discrete technology for an isolated problem. We religiously improve the user experience by averting, detecting and preventing congestion. Other vendors provide a piece of technology with the expectation that the operator will miraculously figure out how to apply it. We have proven the performance of our technology – not only on limited-capability wireless phones, but much more importantly on high-end smartphones such as Android and iPhone devices, as well as full-scale laptops, netbooks and, soon, iPads.

Unlike legacy vendors that designed their systems to handle low-bandwidth devices, our system was originally designed for high-end devices – those that you and I use to watch YouTube videos. This requires a unique architecture that enables us to make complex optimization decisions at the speed of the Internet. It requires tight integration within the core of the wireless network, and it requires visibility into users’ activities and experience. Our video optimization technology – like our web optimization technology before it – has been first to market and first to deploy in commercial network environments.

We humbly call it “optimization – video included”.

-Joel Brand

Image courtesy of Altair Libre via Creative Commons Attribution License.
 

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With iPhones already earning the reputation as ‘bandwidth hogs’, and networks with heavy smartphone use already under intense pressure, devices like netbooks and USB dongles are adding even more stress to carriers’ infrastructure.

With today’s introduction of the Apple iPad - a device for which users’ quality-of-service expectations are extremely high – operators’ capacity challenges are mounting and may push their networks over the edge.

What we know about the Apple iPad:

Every iPad has Wi-Fi, but Apple also has models with 3G.

There are two wireless data plans. The first provides up to 250 MB per month for $14.99. The second provides unlimited data for $29.99. AT&T is the exclusive service provider and includes free use of AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots. In the U.S., wireless operators typically charge about $60 a month for a laptop data plan.

There is no contract — service is prepaid, so consumers can cancel any time. That’s a big change from the iPhone. All iPad 3G models are unlocked, so consumers can use them with any carrier that supports micro-SIM technology.

The question is: are carriers’ networks equipped to handle another, even more massive, explosion of mobile data consumption?

If Apple’s new iPad lives up to the usage patterns – and more importantly – the bandwidth problems of the iPhone, then the answer is: probably not.

In a recent Wall Street Journal blog post, Niraj Sheth wrote:

…the iPhone is hardly the kind of data guzzler the tablet is widely expected to be. After all, it’s one thing to squint at movies on a 3.5-inch screen and quite another to watch them in a relatively cinematic 10 inches.

With this in mind, carriers can surely expect a ‘secondary’ explosion in video and other multimedia traffic. They need to prepare their networks now in order to avoid consumer backlash. Another quantum leap in data traffic will not only strain the network - and thus the user experience - but will also strain profit margins due to out-of-control infrastructure costs.

We should expect to see the wireless industry put a priority on intelligently managing network traffic and experimenting with new ways to curtail the margin squeeze - whether through tiered pricing plans, stricter enforcement of fair use policies or new value-added services.

-Stacey Infantino

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