3D Untethered and Untouched

February 23, 2010 — Steve Waite

Mobile devices are proliferating worldwide. Analysts estimate there will be five billion mobile phone users by the end of the year.  Smartphones are hot, but currently account for a relatively small share (14%) of the total mobile phone market. We expect the penetration of Smartphones to rise sharply in the months and years ahead, a trend that will benefit companies like Apple, Research in Motion, Google and Motorola. Indeed, it’s fairly easy to see a time in the not-too-distant future where the majority of phones will be Smartphones.

Speaking of Smartphones, Texas Instruments made an announcement at the Mobile World Congress last week that caught our eye. The company announced a technology called OMAP™ 4.  TI’s OMAP 4 platform includes applications processors, a comprehensive software suite and power management technology to bring next-generation Smartphones and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) to market. TI believes the technology will fundamentally change the way consumers watch and interact with mobile devices.

TI’s OMAP 4 enables a set of applications classified as Human Device Interactions (HDI).  One of the interesting things about the technology is that it enables touch-less gesture recognition, something we’ve been anticipating as the conventional computer interface seems antiquated and beyond tired. TI’s object-recognition software allows users to control mobile devices with their hands without touching the screen.

With OMAP 4-enabled mobile devices, users can point, click, drag, scroll, zoom and rotate images without touching the screen, thus taking the interface beyond conventional touch displays. TI’s technology reminds us of Microsoft’s Natal technology. It’s clear to us that the future of computer interfaces is touch-less and far more friendly in terms of human interaction.

The other interesting feature of TI’s OMAP 4 technology is that it enables 3D-HD viewing on mobile devices. According to the company, the OMAP 4 platform is the only mobile applications processor that can deliver stereoscopic 720p at 30 frames per second per channel or enable true 3D image capture today. The advanced display controller from TI supports auto-stereoscopic displays, creating a 3D image without the need for special headgear or glasses, as well as providing support for external 3D monitors.

TI’s technology fits nicely with the view Kris and I laid out in our GigaOM Pro report titled, “3D Untethered: A Look at Mobile 3D technology.” The company expects devices with its OMAP 4 technology to debut in the market later this year. TI is part of Research 2.0’s RealVR ecosystem. We’ll be taking a closer look at the stock in the days ahead for consideration into the Research 2.0 Technology Model Portfolio.

(Disclosure: Research’s 2.0 Technology Model Portfolio currently has positions in Apple, Research in Motion, Google and Motorola)

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Skype Everywhere

January 7, 2010 — Steve Waite

We’ve been big fans of Skype since the service was launched. We were pleasantly surprised when eBay acquired the company several years ago thinking they could make hay with Skype’s technology. We subsequently became dismayed many months later when eBay failed to capitalize on what we viewed as a golden opportunity with Skype. We were delighted to see a group of seasoned private investors last year acquire a majority of Skype shares from eBay. Under the right ownership and management, we continue to believe there is plenty of upside ahead for Skype.

Skype has over 500 million users currently. The company employs a freemium business model.  Skype-to-Skype calls are free no matter where you are located. The company derives revenue by charging competitive rates for people to call regular phone numbers and for add-on services like voice mail. Increasingly, Skype has been used for video calls. The company says video chats account for 34 percent of calls on the service today.

Skype has been thus far confined to computers, smartphones and iPods, but the application will be moving into family rooms in the near future. Two major manufacturers of TVs – Panasonic and LG Electronics – recently announced they are integrating Skype into their Internet-connected TVs (so called NeTVs). According to the folks at Insight Media, over a million NeTVs were sold last year. That’s just a trickle compared to what we are likely to see in the years ahead.

Skype’s CTO Jonathan Rosenberg notes that 2010 is the year when NeTVs will start to take off. He believes every TV that ships in the near future will have built in Wi-Fi, webcams and microphones. NeTVs will be equipped with web browsers, and widgets will used by TV networks to integrate their delivery models with NeTVs. Put simply, TVs will become part of the network in the home.

According to Skype, the service on a TV will work much as it does on a PC, but with some limitations. A TV program will stop playing once a Skype call is made or answered. Apparently, the processors in TVs are not yet powerful enough to allow people to chat while they watch a show. We expect this situation to change in the future with the development of more powerful processors.

It may take a while for NeTVs to penetrate family rooms in a significant way. That said, there is no doubt in our mind that NeTVs will become the norm in the future. We think Skype’s strategy makes a lot of sense. It will be fun to watch how this space evolves.

In terms of the bigger picture, we see NeTVs playing a growing role in the evolution of the RealVR Cloud.  NeTVs will be a gateway to deliver more immersive, 3-D viewing experiences in the home. This will open the door to more technological innovation and new products and services in the years ahead.

We are hearing that Skype may file for an IPO this year. If that’s true, we’ll be taking a close look at the deal.  We believe it could be a great investment opportunity at the right valuation.

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Wishful Thinking

April 1, 2009 — Steve Waite

I was reading a book recently by Nicholas Carr titled, “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google.” Near the end of the book, Carr mentions a product that Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has always wanted to build. The product would be a search engine, but it would have artificial intelligence embedded in it. Rather than waiting to respond to a query, the search engine would tell you what you should be typing. It would, in other words, provide the answer without hearing the question.

I imagine more than a few people might be spooked by a product that could tell you what you should be typing before you typed a query into Google’s search engine on the Internet. Is Schmidt’s product feasible today? I don’t think so. Could we ever see such a product in the future? It’s possible.  When it comes to advanced technologies, it’s always best to keep in mind Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


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From the Quotography

June 30, 2008 — Steve Waite

“Our experiment made us realize that industrial electronic devices have now reached the level where we can study and manipulate the state of a single atom. This is the ultimate limit, you can not get smaller than that.”

- Gerhard Klimeck, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue and associate director for technology for the national Network for Computational Nanotechnology

Click here to read about Professor Klimeck’s latest research into quantum computing.

Incidentally, I have a bet with my friend Josh Wolfe, editor of the Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Technology Report about quantum computing. Josh says quantum computing will never become a reality. I, on the other hand, believe quantum computers will become part of the technology landscape in the future.

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