eReaders Becoming Niche Market Players?

I've always been a fan of the Kindle and other eReader type devices, especially when compared to bulkier and heavier tablets that are difficult to view in direct light conditions. Lately though, I've been wondering how long eReaders would continue to exist as tablets become lighter and smaller with better displays. Well, I just read an interesting study from ABI Research titled eReaders and the Digital Publishing Market that takes a look at where the eReader market is going.

Here's some details from the ABI report:

• Eleven million eReaders are projected to be shipped globally in 2012, down from a peak volume in 2011 of 15 million devices.
• The growing popularity of media tablets along with declining US “baby boomer” population and lack of organized digital bookstores outside of the US and Western Europe will reduce the eReader opportunity over the next five years.
• Despite the average tablet selling for more  than $465 as a result of Apple’s dominant market position, tablets are expected to outsell eReaders 9 to 1 this year. 
• Over the next five years, annual eReader shipments are projected to drop by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1%. In contrast, global media tablet shipments are predicted to increase from approximately 102 million annual device shipments in 2012 to nearly 250 million in 2017.

All bad news for eReaders. Well, not so fast.... the report continues... However, eReaders maintain advantages over media tablets for reading purposes. Electronic paper (ePaper) displays are able to better replicate the print reading experience and are usable in direct sunlight conditions unlike LCD technologies. The eReader battery life of weeks between charging is significantly greater than the media tablet. And of course, eReaders are priced significantly less than entry-level tablets.

ABI senior mobile devices analyst Joshua Flood is quoted “Regardless of the tremendous historical eReader success, the market tides have already begun to turn. Nevertheless, the eReader market will not be totally cannibalized by media tablets. We believe there will always be a niche market for the dedicated reading device for voracious readers, business travelers, and educational segments, particularly ones that are low-priced.”

ABI senior practice director Jeff Orr continues “The decline of buying audiences for dedicated digital readers in the US is more rapid than the digital publishing ecosystems organizing for growth in Asia or Eastern Europe. Development of content digitalization systems and services in all world regions should continue without delay as the effort will be necessary for developing mobile app catalogs that provide easy search, discovery, and monetization.”

Be sure to check out the full ABI Research report.

Curiosity on Mars Bringing Back Memories

The Mars landing of Curiosity has brought back some memories when it comes to sensors and systems in space.....

It was 1980. I was a year out of college with an undergrad degree in microbiology and working in a hospital lab trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. At one time I had thought I wanted to go to medical school but the more time I spent in a hospital working in a clinical setting the more I realized I was not cut out for that kind of work. I loved the biology but I was struggling with the procedures - the work was 100% protocol - the same procedures over and over again with zero room for mistakes. So many of the people I worked with were so good at it - they thrived on it.  Me - I had always loved tinkering, taking things apart and trying to put them back together. Trying new things that did not always work was what I liked. Trying this instead of that. What if I did this? What would happen?

But.... when you are dealing with people's lives you can't do that kind of stuff. I have so much respect and envy for people who do this kind of work but I knew it ultimately was not for me. I loved the science but knew I had to change directions with respect to my career. Fortunately, something came along (as it often does in life) that helped me with my dilema.

In the lab one day we started testing a machine called the VITEK for McDonnell Douglas and NASA. VITEK was a fully automated microbial identification and susceptibility system that had been developed in the 1960's for use in space. The system is based on microbial growth in thin plastic identification cards that have small wells with sugars, enzymes, etc. After the cards have been inoculated with sample they are incubated at 37 degrees C and photometrically scanned every hour for either color change or turbidity. Different bacteria ferment different sugars, produce different byproducts, grow or don't grow based on nutrients or conditions, etc. Basically how they grow or do not grow is how they are identified.

McDonnell Douglas was looking to move the product from outer space into the hospital lab and we had engineers coming in and out of the lab weekly tweaking the system. We were running tests in parallel - we'd run a sample using traditional microbiological ID methods and run the same sample through the VITEK, comparing identification results. There was about a three week period when the engineers were in lots - the system was not working properly - something was screwed up in the incubation cycle and they were having a hard time figuring it out.

One of the engineers I had got to know came in with a large stack of green-bar  paper with thousands of lines of code one day. I had never seen actual code before - it was so logical and simple and organized. Really cool! I was able to look at it and quickly pick out where the error was - the incubation line was not properly placed in the incubation cycle loop. I showed the engineer what code lines needed to be swapped around and remember him scratching his head and shrugging his shoulders. Still, he made the mod and....... it worked! It was so trivial but it worked!! The engineers were looking too deeply into the code - this was sort of like a TV not working because it was not plugged in type of thing. That simple. I remember the guy telling me I should have been an engineer. I also remember him telling me the first time someone writes a program it never works and you always had to go back and troubleshoot it. I was intrigued - engineering - could it be for a tinkerer like me who likes to learn from my mistakes?

Well - long story short - my sister and two brothers had degrees in electrical engineering. They had been bugging me for a while to check out engineering. They talked me into going to see Dr Jim Masi (the same Jim Masi who was our first Director at www.ictcenter.org) at Western New England University and we were able to work out an agreement where I could pick up the undergrad courses I was missing and then move into an MS Electrical Engineering program. It took a while and most of the time was incredibly hard but I was able to complete the degree.

As an engineer I could now tinker and try new (sometimes off the wall) things and make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. And that microbiology background has never gone to waste - I know it has helped me think and approach problems a little differently than traditionally trained engineers. All good!

The Future of Wireless: Spectrum and Cell Technologies

John Garvey from Garvey Communications dropped me an email last week and asked if I could write up a post about small cell wireless technologies. He had read a piece in Business Week titled Want to See the Future of Mobile Coverage? Go to a Baseball Game that describes how Verizon Wireless is using 4G LTE COWs (Cells On Wheels) and COLTs (Cells on Light Trucks) at sporting events. Both of these technologies provide portable bandwidth where and when it is needed. If you've ever been in a packed stadium and tried to make a call, upload a picture to Facebook, or post a tweet you've likely had problems getting a connection.

The more I thought the more I realized a good discussion will take a little more than a single post so I'm going to write a series on new antenna technologies over the next few weeks. Today let's discuss the way cellular is done now and why it's not going to work in the future.

Everyone know what a cell tower looks like and most would describe them as big, tall and ugly with lots of antennas hanging on them. If you look on the ground at the base of the towers you'll typically see a few "huts" that contain (among other things) large amplifiers that provide signal up to the antennas at the top of the towers. Connectivity to the towers (referred to as "backhaul") is provided by fiber. Here's a simplified drawing of a big tower setup.

The towers are fed by fiber and optical signals transmitted on the fiber get converted back and forth to wireless signals, giving us connectivity on our mobile devices. Seems pretty simple and if we need more capacity all we need to do is run more fiber to the towers, right? Well..... not really. Providers can bury as much fiber as they want and convert it to wireless frequencies but that's not going to solve the problem. The bottleneck today is spectrum and (especially) in congested areas this bottleneck is causing the dropped calls and slow wireless data access we've all experienced.

So, spectrum is a problem - what exactly is it? Each provider - AT&T, Verizon Wireless, etc - have licenses from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to use specific frequencies for information transfer. It is important each providers spectrum be allocated in a way that it is kept separate for interference free communications so different providers cannot typically share licensed spectrum. When I think about spectrum I think about tuning the radio in my car - each station is licensed by the FCC and has it's own "channel", broadcasting at a specific frequency.

Now - just like the numbers on your car radio tuner - there is only a finite amount of total spectrum available. This finite availability, along with not being organized in the most efficient way, limits things like coverage, connection speed and quality of service. The spectrum issue is really coming to a head now with high bandwidth LTE services being rolled out by all providers - higher speeds, more bandwidth requirements and more people using their phones for voice, video and data services.

What's being done by the wireless providers to get around this spectrum bottleneck? There's been a mad scramble to purchase as much spectrum as possible but..... utilizing a finite amount of spectrum the way it is currently being used is not going to solve the problem long term. They'll still end up running out. What's being done?

There are a number of solutions. We're also seeing providers building WiFi networks (WiFi uses unlicensed spectrum) to offload some of the licensed spectrum traffic. There's a bunch of other technologies including small cells (the COWS and COLTS John was asking about), spectrum re-farming and cell-splitting that look promising. I'll take a look at some of these in my next few posts.

Wireless Options: Virgin, Verizon, Sprint and CDMA

Virgin Mobile has announced they will soon be selling a pay-as-you-go iPhone4 and iPhone 4S, offering contract free service starting at $20 per month, moving all the way up to $50 per month for unlimited talk and data.

What's interesting about this is Virgin uses something called CDMA for channel access - that's the same technology used by Sprint and Verizon Wireless. And get this - Virgin is considered a virtual mobile network operator, purchasing network capacity from Sprint. This means when you use a Virgin phone, you're using the Sprint wireless network. Sprint service is just as good as AT&T or Verizon in my opinion. The latter two just do a lot more advertising to make us thing they are better.

So, let's think about this, Virgin uses the same access technology as Sprint and Verizon and Virgin's a lot cheaper. You're also not locked into a 2 year contract. Hmmmmm......switching sounds like a no brainer. There is a catch though - Virgin is charging $650 for a iPhone 4S - full price. It's still cheaper though over the long run. Let's compare Sprint's $80 per month unlimited data service (two year contract) to Virgin's $50 per month service (pay as you go).

I have not included Verizon Wireless in the table because Verizon is eliminating the unlimited data plans. If you've recently bought a Verizon iPhone 4S though you could switch by unlocking (not recommending you do this but many have or are considering) it and switching over to the Virgin network. To break your Verizon contract you would have to pay around $600 which sounds like a lot but it may be worth crunching some numbers to compare total cost.

If you've got an AT&T iPhone you're out of luck - it uses a different technology for channel access called GSM which is not CDMA compatible.

Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) - June 2012

I've written in the past about the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) in Holyoke, MA. The project is a collaboration of five of the state’s most research-intensive universities (Boston University, Harvard, MIT, UMass Amherst and Northeastern), state government and private industry — the most significant collaboration among government, industry and public and private universities in the history of the Commonwealth, and the first facility in the nation of its kind.

The facility is currently under construction and when completed will provide a world-class computational infrastructure, indispensible in the increasingly sensor and data-rich environments of modern science and engineering discovery. Today, virtually no major breakthrough, be it designing a new drug, developing new materials for clean energy or addressing climate change -- can take place without computation. In silico experimentation adds a powerful new dimension to knowledge discovery in all fields, alongside theory, physical experimentation and observation. With the increasingly integrated role of computation in fundamental and applied research, the MGHPCC represents a critical piece of infrastructure that will continue to fuel the world-leading innovation economy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through cooperative research, education and outreach activities.

On Wednesday afternoon a group of got to tour the construction site. Here's my picture set.



We all left with our jaws hanging. An incredible facility and some amazing people doing some things nobody else has ever done. Thanks especially to Claire and John.

See You Later WiMAX

I've written here in the past about WiMAX and the slow but inevitable take over by LTE. Well, it's starting soon - at least with Sprint's wireless services. Here's some details from an Inside Sprint blog post yesterday:

• On 6/7, smartphone customers in markets slated for LTE will be notified via text message of the upcoming launch.
• The message states: SprintFreeMsg: Ready for some GREAT news? Sprint is rolling out an all-new network in (insert city here). Learn more at sprint.us/sat Reply End to stop.
• Sprint’s all-new network launches by mid-summer 2012 in 4 cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta.
• More cities launch later this summer and throughout the year.
• The all-new network includes the launch of 4G LTE and improvements to Sprint’s 3G network.

Benefits include:

• More reliable connection to voice calls, emails, and apps, and the internet
• Expanded coverage in their area
• Faster downloading, surfing and streaming
• Improved indoor/outdoor signal strength
• Enhanced voice quality
• Fewer dropped calls

See you later WiMAX!

Likejacking Using Social Media Spam

Social media spam is taking off and it is not good. Up until a year or so ago, spam was primarily delivered using email. As email spam filters have improved - spammers have turned to an easier target - social media sites including Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

How bad is it getting? Mark Risher, CEO of Imperium is quted in a recent Business Week piece claiming spammers create as many as 40% of the accounts on social media sites. He also says about 8 percent of messages sent via social pages are spam. This is twice the volume of six months ago.

Here's how it works in Facebook - it can be as simple as liking or sharing an image or page which could allow a spam app access to your profile and friend list. Many are now referring this as "likejacking" or "clickjacking". Pinterest is extremely vulnerable with spammers embedding links in pictures - click a thumbnail to view a picture and you may end up linked to someplace you do not want to go.

Social media sites are playing catchup now, hiring hundreds of programming specialists and security experts to protect users from spammers. It will get better.

Last January, Facebook sued Ascend Media, an advertising firm that, according to the same Business Week piece, is pulling in around $960 thousand per month.  In addition, Twitter recently sued alleged spammers Skootle and JL4 Web Solutions.

Bottom line - don't friend, like, share, click, users and things that look spammy.