Why 4G is still a dream in India

KOLKATA: Rajeev Shenoy, a Bangalore-based techie (not his real name), splurged nearly Rs46K on his sleek iPhone 5 to experience 4G on-the-go. But his thrill turned to bitterness when he found out his fancy smartphone won’t run on fourth generation networks in India.

The reason: Apple’s new smartphone does not support the TDD or ‘time division duplex’ version of LTE technology that powers 4G networks in India, but runs on its older and more globally trusted variant, FDD or ‘frequency duplex division’, deployed by most 4G operators in the US and Europe. As a result, the iPhone 5 supports LTE or ‘long term evolution’ technology only on the 1.8 GHz band and not on the 2300 MHz band frequencies auctioned in India two years ago.

Varsha Saxena, a graphic artist in Kolkata (again not her real name), suffered a similar fate with her iPad 3 tablet, which supports LTE only on the super efficient 700 MHz band that won’t be available in India for at least another two years. Rajeev and Varsha are on Rs 1999 LTE data plans from Bharti Airtel, the country’s leading mobile carrier and sole LTE operator yet.

Far from being stray cases, they represent the first wave of data-hungry customers who signed up for 4G thrills like video conferencing, interactive gaming, streaming HD movies to making video calls on the move. But, instead, they learnt the hard way that “true bang for the LTE buck” remains a pipedream in a country where 4G services arrived seven months ago.

To be precise, LTE is only nearly 4G. True 4G will arrive only with LTE Advanced. But LTE itself brings with it enormous benefits. It has high spectral efficiency and low latency. It offers lower costs for every megabyte transmitted, high throughput and backward compatibility with existing CDMA technologies. Operators can provide voice-over LTE as well, but the one of the best advantages is in operational efficiency.

Small-cell LTE is nearly-impossible to manage without self-organising networks, which improves operational efficiency. But the march to this ideal state is long and with several hurdles on the way. All buzz about 4G data speeds being at least five times faster than 3G hasn’t really translated into mass LTE adoption levels in India. 4G subscriber growth has failed to happen accentuated by a near non-existent devices ecosystem.

LTE has mind-boggling opportunities but it faces substantial hurdles now, like absence of compatible 4G handsets, pricey data plans, expensive dongles and customer premise equipment — both priced over $92 (Rs 4,999). Paucity of 4G-centric applications, content and services coupled with limited coverage haven’t helped either. Another turn-off undermining 4G experience, claim the users, is the drastic speed rollback from a normal 40 Mbps to a paltry 128 kbps once a customer exhausts his monthly quota of free gigabytes.

The company’s president (consumer business) K Srinivas is quick to stress that it “takes several years for a new mobile broadband technology like TDD-LTE to mature just like 3G took years to gain traction in western markets,” but concedes Airtel’s fledgling 4G operation won’t gain momentum unless it launches LTE in Mumbai and Delhi where it acquired Qualcomm’s wireless broadband permits earlier this year.

Right now, it offers 4G services only in Bangalore, Kolkata and Pune. “Mumbai and Delhi are the two largest data markets and our network teams are working furiously to roll out 4G in both cities at the earliest,” says Srinivas declining to reveal potential launch timelines.

The company, along with China’s Huawei, is also conducting trials of the Huawei-Ascend P1 LTE smartphone, the first TD-LTE-compatible 4G handset in India. However, it is yet to take a call on its pricing. Apple refused to comment on the feature.

“I don’t expect 4G to see any meaningful traction unless Airtel launches the service in high-value markets like Mumbai and Delhi, and more important, till Reliance-owned Infotel Broadband launches,” says consultancy Ovum’s principal telecoms analyst (emerging markets), Shiv Putcha.

Infotel Broadband is the only firm with a pan-India broadband wireless access permit, which allows it to offer high-speed data services on mobile devices. Small wonder, most analysts believe the new telecom policy 2012 (aka NTP 2012) paves the way for Infotel to eventually offer voice services (read: VoIP) over data networks, which they claim, can be a proverbial gamechanger for LTE adoption.

“Infotel Broadband could disrupt established telecom businesses if it can offer cheap VoIP and data services over converged, smart devices,” says Putcha adding that “voice could well be the sweetner in an LTE scenario since there “are no successful cases of data-only telecom businesses worldwide”.

Analysts at Forrester agree Reliance’s 4G service could be a potential gamechanger but say VoIP won’t play a huge part. “Infotel can transform India’s LTE space but not due to VoIP. Apart from some advances by South Korea, ‘VoIP over 4G’ is still at a nascent stage globally and call quality remains poor,” says Katyayan Gupta, analyst & connectivity lead (Asia-Pacific & Japan) at Forrester.

Gupta believes Reliance’s comparative 4G edge lies in the ability to build better economies of scale by offering a pan-India service, attracting more customers by offering nationwide 4G roaming – since NTP 2012 has abolished roaming — and even subsidising 4G devices like CPEs and dongles by leveraging scale.

Industry experts aware of developments claim Reliance has approached the telecom department to conduct VoIP trials on its TDD-LTE network in the run up to launching 4G services in Mumbai and Delhi, but Reliance did not reply to ET’s specific queries. The company is also tight-lipped on the launch of its 4G services originally expected in June.

Former VSNL chairman BK Syngal, who is now senior principal at Dua Consulting, says Reliance-controlled Infotel Broadband may not be able to immediately offer VoIP services on a 4G data network. “Reliance only has an ISP licence which allowed it to acquire BWA airwaves to provide data services nationally.

He also believes it is early days for TDD-LTE tech since the device ecosystem on this platform trails the more evolved FDD version and mass adoption in India could be nearlythree years away.

Ovum’s Putcha and Forrester’s Gupta believe mass TDD-LTE adoption may not take that long given the surge in global industry support for this version. “Network vendors may be more focused on FDD now but chipset vendors are rapidly developing dual-mode chips that support both TDD and FDD variants of LTE,” says Gupta adding that TDD shares most of the FDD designs and standards and uses a common core network, which is why, the world’s top network gear vendors like Nokia Siemens Network and Huawei to chipset vendors like Qualcomm, Samsung and Broadcom are supporting the TDD-LTE platform.

Bharti Airtel’s Srinivas seconds this claiming over 100 global telecom carriers are currently at various stages of deploying TDD-LTE, even though the total number of 4G operators backing FDD worldwide exceeds 400. In fact, the seeds of the LTE ecosystem were sown when Airtel teamed up with some of the biggest TDD-LTE backers like Japan’s Softbank Mobile and China Mobile at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to launch the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI).

User number potential are not insignificant either. Ovum expects India to have 37 million TDD-LTE subscribers by 2017 while Forrester pegs it at nearly 50 million by 2018.

Spectrum availability remains a concern though. Airtel’s Srinivas declines to confirm whether the firm would put all LTE expansions on hold till the government auctions airwaves in the 700 MHz band considered thrice more efficient than the 2300 MHz frequencies auctioned in 2010. Forrester’s Gupta feels stalling expansion or rollout plans may be a dumb thing to do since Airtel “cannot sit on licensed spectrum for too long as it would be unwise not to lock customers before Reliance launches.”

Most stakeholders also believe an evolved TD-LTE ecosystem opens up efficient multi-network management scenarios, in that, it can be an enabler of ‘self-organising networks’ or SONs.

“Self-organising networks are likely to be a hit with telcos in India, especially since many domestic carriers may soon be managing multiple technology networks in the forseeable future,” says Gupta of Forrester.

Samsung to seek details of Apple-HTC deal: Filing

SAN FRANCISCO: When Apple Inc and HTC Corp last week ended their worldwide legal battles with a 10-year patent licensing agreement, they declined to answer a critical question: whether all of Apple’s patents were covered by the deal.

It’s an enormously important issue for the broader smartphone patent wars. If all the Apple patents are included -including the “user experience” patents that the company has previously insisted it would not license – it could undermine the iPhone makers efforts to permanently ban the sale of products that copy its technology.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which could face such a sales ban following a crushing jury verdict against it in August, now plans to ask a US judge to force Apple to turn over a copy of the HTC agreement, according to a court filing on Friday.

Representatives for Apple and Samsung could not immediately be reached for comment.

Judges are reluctant to block the sale of products if the dispute can be resolved via a licensing agreement. To secure an injunction against Samsung, Apple must show the copying of its technology caused irreparable harm and that money, by itself, is an inadequate remedy.

Ron Laurie, managing director of Inflexion Point Strategy and a veteran IP lawyer, said he found it very unlikely that HTC would agree to a settlement that did not include all the patents.

If the deal did in fact include everything, Laurie and other legal experts said that would represent a very clear signal that Apple under CEO Tim Cook was taking a much different approach to patent issues than his predecessor, Steve Jobs.

Apple first sued HTC in March 2010, and has been litigating for more than two years against handset manufacturers who use Google’s Android operating system.

Apple co-founder Jobs promised to go “thermonuclear” on Android, and that threat has manifested in Apple’s repeated bids for court-imposed bans on the sale of its rivals’ phones.

Cook, on the other hand, has said he prefers to settle rather than litigate, if the terms are reasonable. But prior to this month, Apple showed little willingness to license its patents to an Android maker.

Holy patents
In August, a Northern California jury handed Apple a $1.05 billion verdict, finding that Samsung’s phones violated a series of Apple’s software and design patents.

Apple quickly asked US District Judge Lucy Koh to impose a permanent sales ban on those Samsung phones, and a hearing is scheduled for next month in San Jose, California.

In a surprise announcement on Saturday, however, Apple and HTC announced a license agreement covering “current and future patents” at both companies. Specific terms are unknown, though analysts have speculated that HTC will pay Apple somewhere between $5 and $10 per phone.

During the Samsung trial, Apple IP chief Boris Teksler said the company is generally willing to license many of its patents – except for those that cover what he called Apple’s “unique user experience” like touchscreen functionality and design.

However, Teksler acknowledged that Apple has, on a few occasions, licensed those holy patents – most notably to Microsoft, which signed an anti-cloning agreement as part of the deal.

In opposing Apple’s injunction request last month, Samsung said Apple’s willingness to license at all shows money should be sufficient compensation, court documents show.

Apple has already licensed at least one of the prized patents in the Samsung case to both Nokia and IBM . That fact was confidential until late last year, when the court mistakenly released a ruling with details that should have been hidden from public view.

In a court filing last week, Apple argued that its Nokia, IBM and Microsoft deals shouldn’t stand in the way of an injunction. Microsoft’s license only covers Apple patents filed before 2002, and IBM signed several years before the iPhone launched, according to Apple.

“IBM’s agreement is a cross license with a party that does not market smartphones,” Apple wrote.

Apple’s seeming shift away from Jobs-style war, and toward licensing, may also reflect a realization that injunctions have become harder to obtain for a variety of reasons.

Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara Law in Silicon Valley, said an appellate ruling last month that tossed Apple’s pretrial injunction against the Samsung Nexus phone raised the legal standard for everyone.

“The ability of technology companies to get injunctions on big products based on small inventions, unless the inventions drive consumer’s demand, has been whittled away significantly,” Chien said.

The case in US District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

It’s Off to the Tablet Races for Amazon’s Big Kindle Fire

Amazon began shipping its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD on Thursday, ahead of its original planned schedule. The specs and price point of the device are interesting enough that it will certainly make some inroads in the tablet market: Among other features, it sports a front-facing HD camera, 16-GB or 32-GB storage options, and 10 hours of battery life.

The 16-GB model is priced at US$299 and the 32 GB at $369. Later this month, an LTE option will ship for $500.
Content Is King

Amazon is lucky among tablet makers, of course, in that its primary goal is not necessarily to make much — or even any — profit from hardware sales. Its interest lies in the anticipated revenue stream from content users buy or rent to consume on the device.

This approach to the market allows Amazon to try just about anything it thinks will meet market demand. Whether it will or not — try anything, that is — is a matter of debate.

The Full-Sized Tablet Market

The 8.9-inch form factor was a bet Amazon had to make if it wanted to go head-to-head with Apple’s full-sized iPad, and it exhibited some confidence going into this venture.

“What few know is that while the larger and more expensive Kindle didn’t sell as well as the original size, the users were far more active and loyal,” Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group, told the E-Commerce Times. “Keeping your most loyal users happy is a good strategy for any vendor.”

The 8.9-inch model completes Amazon’s line of Fire tablets and Paperwhite e-readers, and Amazon will expand into other areas only if this model moves well, he predicted.

“They aren’t interested in becoming a generic device maker — at least not at the moment,” Enderle said.

Competing With the Surface

However, Amazon is interested in taking down its competition, which now includes Microsoft’s Surface tablet.

As it continues to compete with the iPad — and now the Surface as well — Amazon could find itself focusing more on expensive, high-end hardware.

The head of Amazon’s Kindle division, Mike Nash, spent 20 years at Microsoft, noted Laura DiDio, principal of ITIC. “He is a very savvy marketer who has worked on many different projects at Microsoft. I don’t think Amazon has fully leveraged his expertise — not yet, at least. There is more to come from him.”

Amazon’s next move will be to take on the Surface with a more full-featured product, she predicted.

“Amazon seems to be watching and trying to improve on both Apple and Microsoft,” observed DiDio. “They are saying to consumers, ‘we can innovate too, and we can do it at a lower price.'”

That’s All, Folks

Then again, Amazon might be hesitant to stray far from its content-oriented business model.

“While the Kindle is clearly a media consumption device, Microsoft is positioning the Surface more as a general- purpose computing platform that supports well-known productivity apps,” Charles King, principal of Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times.

“Frankly, I don’t think Amazon is capable of playing that angle unless it has something up its sleeve in apps,” he said.

“Google is a much clearer opponent of the Surface in this sense, given the strength of its Docs, Calendar, Gmail, and other services — let along the size of the Android app market,” King pointed out.

Amazon also must consider that other vendors are attempting to make content plays, Azita Arvani of the Arvani Group told the E-Commerce Times.

“The competition has changed on the content side of the tablet market,” she said. “Apple, Amazon and Google are all trying to not just sell devices, but use the devices as a conduit to sell other digital goods.”

iPhone 5 a success, but is Apple losing its sheen?

NEW YORK: Apple, the world’s biggest and perhaps most admired company, seems to have lost some of its luster.
Despite the hugely successful launch of the iPhone 5 and iPad mini tablet, shares in the California tech giant have slid some 20 percent from all-time highs, and analysts are questioning whether Apple remains the leader in “innovation.”

A flubbed mobile maps programme and a major shakeup in key management have also tarnished the image of the firm that had seemed nearly invincible just months earlier.

A more competitive landscape for mobile phones and tablets, including the surge in devices using the Google Android operating system, have also changed the outlook for Apple.

Last month, Apple parted ways with Scott Forstall, the executive in charge of mobile software, following embarrassments over its glitch-ridden maps programme, as well as John Browett, who headed Apple’s real-world shops.

Some analysts say the company lacks the vision and commitment to excellence after the death last year of its admired chief Steve Jobs.

Apple stock hit a record high above $700 in September, but have since slumped more than 20 percent to $547.06 on Friday.

“Investors are confused and have lost faith in Apple management,” said Trip Chowdhry, analyst at Global Equities Research.

“Apple today is not as customer centric as it used to be, and the rate of innovation is declining when the rate of innovation of competitors has dramatically risen.”

Others argue that it is too soon to say Apple has peaked.

Charles Golvin at Forrester Research said that in a season filled with product launches from Amazon, Motorola, Nokia and others, Apple has been able “to exert a superior gravitational pull on its customers and partners than its competitors.”

And Forrester’s Sarah Rotman Epps said Apple “is entering the 2012 holiday season with its strongest product lineup ever, with wider retail distribution than it has ever had.

“Apple is already leading every game it plays. But these products will maintain Apple’s momentum,” she added.

Yet Apple has lost market share both in the tablet market, which it created with the iPad, and in smartphones.

Research firm IDC said Apple held a 50.4 percent of the tablet market in the third quarter from more than 65 percent in the second quarter, as rivals like Amazon and Google gained in the growing market.

IDC’s Tom Mainelli said many consumers interested in buying a tablet “sat out the third quarter” waiting for the new iPad mini.

“We expect Apple to have a very good quarter. However, we believe the mini’s relatively high $329 starting price leaves plenty of room for Android vendors to build upon the success they achieved in the third quarter,” Mainelli said.

In smartphones, it was a similar story with Android grabbing 75 percent of the market and the Samsung Galaxy S III getting the crown as the world’s top selling smartphone, based on surveys.

IDC said Apple’s smartphone market share slipped to 14.9 percent in the third quarter from 16.9 percent the prior period.

Even though the figures came as Apple launched the iPhone 5 — which combined with the iPhone 4S, outsold the Samsung flagship — the news was sobering for the Cupertino, California firm.

Many analysts remain bullish on Apple and say the recent stock slump is nothing to fret over.

“The sell-off in Apple’s stock in recent weeks has spooked investors but this correction is similar to the three others experienced over the past 13 months, all of which proved to be attractive buying opportunities,” said Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets.

Gregori Volokhine of the investment firm Meeschaert said one problem for investors is that Apple, because of its huge success in recent years, has become the largest holding for nearly every investment fund in the US and elsewhere.

That means any move is likely to be amplified as investors follow the trend.

“Having too much of one stock means portfolio managers will sell on declines to reduce exposure,” Volokhine said. “It’s a vicious circle.”

Tech wars take Microsoft, Apple and Amazon out of their comfort zones

Watch out for the snafus and the mess-ups. When Apple released its version of a maps app for iOS, it received a reaction quite out of sync with the usual fawning adulation that an Apple product launch gets.

Noticeably inferior to Google maps, or even the kind of mapping app available on (gasp!) Nokia phones, it drew howls of derision, led to a public apology by chief executive Tim Cook, and earlier this week, to the sacking of the company’s head of iOS software, Scott Forstall.

Also watch out for the confused messaging. Microsoft launched Windows 8 earlier this week, and along with that, the Windows Surface, its bid for tablet market dominance.

Given that Surface is being heavily marketed along with a range of colourful covers which double up as keyboards, Microsoft seems to be at least hinting at the fact that Surface, unlike iPad or Android tablets, could be used for something more productive than simply checking mail or playing Angry Birds. Indeed, the tablet will ship with versions of Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

A New Microsoft?

But it won’t run Outlook, an odd omission, for those who would like to take it along on business trips rather than lug a bulky laptop around (though there are alternatives). And the version of Windows on Surface won’t run most Windows applications on the desktop — they will be incompatible.