Let's start this week's review by asking a simple question. Should the FBI and other federal agencies have the ability to obtain your personal user passwords that unlock access to your smartphones and tablets? We think not - let us know what you think.
It's been an interesting week for new mobile announcements, with a number of Apple's key competitors - Amazon, Nokia and Motorola all focused on delivering new products. Let's start with Nokia, which offered up its new Lumia 920 smartphone. We were underwhelmed not only with the product, but also with Nokia's go to market strategy. We're not convinced Nokia is doing enough to move it forward.
Amazon, on the other hand, has announced its new Kindle Fire HD and Paperwhite E-Reader, two mobile devices that will allow Amazon to continue to execute a powerful game plan while keeping both Google and Apple off balance. Very nicely done by Amazon!
Motorola also dropped some new hardware on us this week - although the new toys, all of them next generation DROID RAZRs, do nothing more for Motorola than allow it to keep a toe in the smartphone game. The company is pushing screen technology a bit, by which we mean further out to the edges of the phones themselves, which provides an edgy look and feel. The company does continue to deliver on improved battery power for these devices - a differentiator that matters to many mobile users.
Research in Motion also made noise this week, thought for RIM it is never good noise that seems to materialize. This week the company acknowledged that enterprises will need to run an entirely new BES server to support new BlackBerry 10 hardware, while also needing to maintain old BES servers for BB 7 and older devices. Some photos have also leaked of a new BB10 device - unlike pre-release photos we've seen of iPhones and other hardware, this leak doesn't do much to inspire confidence in the hardware RIM is likely to deliver.
We all know that next week is Apple's big week for the next generation iPhone. We offer our very own wish list for what we want to see Apple deliver. This week also marks a full two weeks since Apple beat the pants off Samsung on its patent trial - but is it now time for Apple to move on beyond litigation? We definitely think so. Apple continues to power ahead, with a new report claiming it now owns over a third of the smartphone market.
On the Mobile Enterprise Application Side of Life
Long time cloud and mobile vendor Citrix has announced upgrades to two of its key mobile-centric applications, Podio and FileShare. Good Technology has moved to acquire Copiun to drive more secure SharePoint-based collaboration across multiple smartphone platforms. Will mobile printing - that is, the ability to easily discover available printers, connect to them and simply print directly from a mobile device ever really catch on? It seems like a no brainer that it would, but the reality is different than the perception.
Wal-Mart is testing new mobile technology that will allow its customers to literally scan and go through mobile devices - customers scan the items they are buying with their smartphones as they place them in their carts - the new system keeps track of everything and totals everything up. Users then checkout at special kiosks that allow for instant checkout and departure. It will do wonders for gathering mobile user business intelligence.
MobileIron this week delivered its new MobileIron v5 mobile device management and mobile application management platform, extending the range of its capabilities to include ensuring that mobile documents don't leave the enterprise unprotected and exposed by either explicit or unintentional end user acts.
Chinese vendor Huawei has unveiled an interesting cybersecurity report, in which the company (long a vendor that the federal government remains strongly suspicious of) calls for global efforts to create legal and technical security standards. The report also includes a pledge from the company never to cooperate with spying.
Hardware at the Chip Level
Intel has moved forward with several new offerings. First, the company is now pushing its latest and long awaited Core i7 Mobile Extreme Edition processor. Is it a game changer?
And the company is getting on board with wireless charging technology, and has confirmed rumors that it is developing a wireless charging solution and has plans to build and incorporate the new technology into its products, with commercialization to take place in 2014. 2014 strikes us as a truly long time to wait for this however.
Wireless Networks
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) drove some headlines this week - first, it has announced plans to more closely monitor the actual speeds of the major wireless networks - looking to ensure that advertised capabilities and reality are close to matching. We're not entirely sure what effect this will have for consumers, but truth in advertising is always a good thing, especially in this day of marketing hype. Second, the FCC is getting ready to propose a new way of judging whether airwaves purchased by various mobile companies raise anti-compete concerns. This isn't a trivial thing and may impact how the wireless operators do business going forward.
An interesting issue has popped up for the wireless carriers - in a sense it's an age old issue - are the carriers true providers of highly useful services or merely dumb pipes? The answer isn't the same for every carrier.
Finally, we'll close the week's review by noting that Super Wi-Fi (which isn't really Wi-Fi), but which will offer substantial capabilities in what is known as the white spaces spectrum, is moving rapidly towards real deployments.
Those are the week's mobile highlights. For much more make sure to scope out Mobility TechZone directly.
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