Re:Viewing 2004: Mobile and wireless

Half a dozen predictions - and more weird news than we can fit in

In all things mobile and wireless it has been a year of consolidation, launches, wireless everywhere and some familiar battles between well-known standards and companies. But 2004 was also 12 months where some of us became a little more sophisticated in how we use mobile devices and even the higher-ups learned - sometimes the hard way - that this remains one of tech's most exciting areas, one that can make a real difference to the bottom line.

The year began with a huge tug-o-war to buy AT&T Wireless in the US. By February, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin was saying he wasn't that upset to lose out to Cingular, not at the price they paid. Then as this article is being written, another two of the US big boys - Sprint and Nextel - appear to be putting pen to paper for a merger of near equals.

Let's expect more consolidation in 2005, certainly not just in the US. There's prediction number one.

Talk of what has been going on in the US should remind us that while Japan and South Korea have a clear lead in some areas of mobility, North America is no longer a laggard. But approaches vary and - whatever the standard - one of the themes of 2004 has been to get wireless access on the move. Much of this has been centred on wireless LAN technology, often the common Wi-Fi, which used to be just 802.11b but now is shorthand for all manner of faster variations on that.

While Vodafone followed T-Mobile's lead in saying it is important to provide Wi-Fi as well as cellular data services and wireless wholesaler The Cloud raised a whole lot more cash, train companies were keen to get broadband wireless onboard, often as a way to entice upgrades. Eurostar was up to it as was Virgin Trains, which later on said it had proved its business case.

Very much taking off was airborne Wi-Fi. Lufthansa led the pack, opting for the Connexion by Boeing system (you may have seen the ads - here's this writer's thoughts on them), but Tenzing, a rival offering backed by Airbus, was also making some headway.

A CIO at one prominent airline wondered with silicon.com just how much we might want conversations in the seats next to us while up in the air - think about it, it's a short hop from Wi-Fi access to voice over IP calls - but it seems this was one area of mobile and wireless bound to move forward. In the US, a CDMA pico cell was being trialled for cellular voice calls.

Prediction number two - soon expect to overhear annoying and/or mundane conversations in more places than you ever thought possible.

This article could easily focus entirely on Wi-Fi. Certainly the villages, towns and even whole metropolitan areas such as Bristol or Philadelphia that are planning blanket rollouts see its value. But I must get to the year's big 3G launches. After much hard work and at times ludicrous hype, the UK saw major network launches from two operators. Around the world, there were around 50 or so based on the W-CDMA standard, often referred to as UMTS in Europe. (For a comparison between W-CDMA and rival CDMA2000, see this Cheat Sheet.)

Vodafone launched its 3G for business back in April. The eye-catching little red data cards have proved quite popular, though they're still too expensive. This writer used one on a 45-minute taxi ride into London from Heathrow airport and it was great - albeit it was 11:00pm so I got constant 3G on an obvious route and I wasn't picking up the bill - but try surfing and downloading like that using Wi-Fi.

Vodafone Live! with 3G made it by the last quarter of the year - great glitzy launch but slightly dodgy marketing, we thought.

Orange and T-Mobile took a similar approach in launching a data card before 3G handsets, aimed more at consumers, and the former even snuck in its handset launch at the start of this month, not quite in time to make a huge splash for Christmas, it's widely thought. At least it was ahead of T-Mobile and O2 - now talking about next summer and jumping to 3.5G.

However, now most people in the industry and most senior decision-makers in organisations that will buy this stuff for work purposes (might that just mean you?) know the network launch is just the start. Ask 3, who have been doing this whole 3G lark far longer than any of the existing operators and is still finding its feet.

No, issues such as devices, device management and content will remain big into 2005 and beyond. Predictions three, four and five right there, then.

The usual operating system wars continued in 2004, with Microsoft, PalmSource and Symbian looming large in the smart phone space. Microsoft in February at the 3GSM industry get-together claimed to be happy with the way its Windows Mobile assault is going - some pundits remain non-plussed - while UK-headquartered-yet-cosmopolitan Symbian made steady advances, in what for now remains a niche sector.

By December, PalmSource had through an acquisition announced its attention to work on a Linux base, porting its well-liked user interface, and one-time brother in arms PalmOne was thought to be looking at a non-Palm OS handhelds. Cats with dogs.

(If you, like many others, are wondering what exactly constitutes a smart phone, we did what some analysts are shying away from and made this stab at a definition in a Cheat Sheet.)

Java-centric start-up SavaJe made more and more noise as the year progressed, arguably being in the thoughts of a new network-led alliance and winning a place on LG phones last week.

But RIM's Blackberry continues to get most plaudits. It may, for now, be quite one-dimensional but end users and many IT departments love the things. Over two million sold and a household name. Well done guys.

What the Blackberry proves, however, is that managing mobile devices can be tough in the enterprise and user organisations don't want to do too much work on that front or expose themselves through weak security.

So we heard how smart phones are defeating many users, leading them to plump for simple devices. The public sector was surprisingly said to be at the vanguard of usage and wireless email was forecast to be in half of all organisations by 2007.

Unsurprisingly, bosses were found to be the worst at mobile security and mobile devices were found to be a major source of data leakage, leading to industry moves such as Sybase buying XcelleNet.

And finally on this subject, spare a thought for maintaining some downtime. An anywhere-always-on working culture can seriously damage your private life, is the view of silicon.com.

While we found CIOs and other top IT users are being pretty level-headed about ignoring 3G hype, it became clear that besides simple access for applications such as email, content over next-generation devices is critical. So we get 3 leading the way through deals with all manner of content providers and Vodafone turning to brands such as Harry Potter and Looney Tunes. Playboy has got into mobile but barriers are being put in place to stop kids seeing adult content, and we've been told that consumers will pay for content - at least they will when there's no choice.

In 2005, look out for mobile blogs - or moblogs - and expect Nokia to be talking about its Lifeblog software.

The Mighty Finn started 2004 poorly, improved and finished no worse than the end of 2004. Prediction six - it will have a good 2005 but don't ever expect its market share to hit previous highs. That shouldn't be the main measure of its success.

The past few months have seen several major mobile-related flotations - Virgin Mobile in the UK and Cambridge Silicon Radio spring to mind - but as ever mobile and wireless was an area ripe with news of the weird.

We must take some blame, joking as we did on 1 April about Londoners being exempt from the driving-with-mobile ban and Wi-Fi being provided free in prisons, but the nuggets kept on coming regardless. There was the monarch who sacked a prime minister via text message, the Filipino rebellion against a tax on texts and the local council that encouraged citizens to pester network CEOs because of sex cards left up in phone boxes.

And that's all without mentioning the woman arrested by cops for talking too loudly on her phone, a camera add-on in Japan that supposedly allowed users to see through bikinis or the finding that tight trousers can seriously damage your hardware.

On slightly more sober notes, 2005 will see the spread of standards in addition to cellular and WLAN. To stick with cellular a moment, we've heard it will be the norm by 2009 in Europe, video is supposed to be a key driver and there may be a lot to be said for 'second mover advantage'.

But spare a thought for the rise of long-range and super-fast WiMax (here's our Cheat Sheet on that standard); ZigBee, now with the backing of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Bob Metcalfe; Near Field Communications, being used to chip the Great Wall of China as well as in phones shortly; and mesh networks. TV will start to be received over mobiles - though not particularly using cell stations, as a trial in Oxford and a big project by Qualcomm in the US are possibly showing us.

Though don't let the latter be construed as a prediction for next year. The big issues will remain manageability, experimentation with terminal design/software improvements and the spread of content, work-related data and voice into more corners of our lives than we probably once thought possible.

Even Sir Tim Berners Lee, picking up our award for 'lifetime contribution' in September, put it plainly: the next big frontier is taking everything mobile. We'll not argue with him.