Samsung looks like it might be lining up its ducks for a really serious assault on the global mobile handset market. The company hasn’t been to only develop what are reported to be some very nice new handsets, on show at the 2005 CES.

Today the company announced the release of what it says is the first eight-die multi-chip package (MCP) for mobile phones.

 

MCPs are all about packaging a device's functionality into the smallest physical space, and so are massively important for mobile phone designers; consumers are quite rightly demanding that form-factors on advanced phones shrink.  The new Samsung MCP is 1.4mm thick.

When trying to predict the future of networked products and services, I’ve always found a little thought experiment useful: what if bandwidth was infinite and free? The recent signing of an agreement  to develop even higher bandwidth wireless mobile technologies than the currently emerging 3G, makes it a good time to ask that question with mobile phones in mind.

To start with, then, let’s begin with the question: what are more convenient to people: wired networks or wireless networks?   I think the current success of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth attest to the fact that people would find a world without wires is far preferable to one with.  So, if people have a choice between two networks of equal capability (infinite bandwidth, zero latency) and equal cost (free), they’re likely to choose the one that’s most convenient to them.  The wireless one.

Now, which of the several wireless networks has the best coverage in your home today: mobile phone wireless networks; your own Wi-Fi network; or Bluetooth?   Be honest.  Bluetooth has very poor range.  Yes, I know it’s supposed to be a personal network – but not everybody knows that.  I feel sorry for the customers of electronics companies who’ve bought Bluetooth-driven Chip and Pin credit card validation units, so they can supposedly take the unit to their customers (e.g. in restaurants).  Or the future customers of the not-to-be-named electronics giant that’s about to release a wireless home media server, streaming content over… Bluetooth! Of course these don’t/won’t work.  But the poor consumers of this equipment will have to find out the hard (and expensive) way.  And what about Wi-Fi?  If you have anything larger than a small home, you’re in for a bit of disappointment.  The signal strength drops of pretty dramatically with the number of intervening walls.  That means if you want to site your wireless access point in your home office, and use your laptop in the conservatory, forget it.  And if you live in a smaller home, you’re increasingly likely to suffer the opposite problem of interference from your neighbours Wi-Fi network.

So, if the mobile phone network has the best coverage in your house already, what’s wrong with using it for everything now?  Well, it’s too slow, and too expensive for data-intensive applications at the moment.  But in our future world of infinite, free bandwidth that won’t be a problem.  And that creates massive opportunities for mobile phone network operators; and developers and publishers of mobile phone software.  And of course… for network applications that are light on data, some of these opportunities exist today…

 

As we approach the end of the year, it seems as good a time as any to take stock of the current state of the mobile phone software market, and where we're heading in 2005 beyond. Today, the total annual market for mobile phone software stands at around $1B per year; and high-quality venture capital groups such as Apax continue to make major investments in developers and publishers of mobile phone software. For example, Digital Bridges based in London, UK, successfully closed their $18M third round in November this year - they're doing a fabulous job in the mobile games space. It's great to see mobile phone software companies competing so successfully for capital - that's a real testament to the potential of our industry. In case you don't undersand the investment rationales of medium and large venture capital groups in start-up software companies (mobile or otherwise), a successful exit requires that a portfolio company achieve a valuation in the low hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the next five years, then, many people believe that the market for mobile phone software will grow to around $8B per year, with the fastest growing segment being mobile entertainment software. And I'm confident that the overall market will be much bigger than this, with many analysts massively underestimating what mobile phones are going to do in the Enterprise... but mobile phones and the Enterprise is a subject for another day.

I can't tell you, yet, what our plans are in the mobile entertainment space, but I can say I'm pretty excited about them! We've known exactly where we are going in mobile entertainment software for the last couple of years, and have been biding our time for the market to move in our direction, which it is now. So... roll on 2005... it's going to be an exciting year!

The last couple of years have seen the emergence of a new type of mobile phone - the so-called smart phone which combines phone with hand-held computing functionality. Sales of these devices are growing at a rate of about 40% per year, outpacing PDA growth. Currently, around two million smart phones are sold per quarter. In all the devices available today, there are compromises to be made in terms of usability - but some of the best are made by Nokia and RIM.

My favourite smart phone of 2004, however, is the Sony Ercisson P910.  With the flip closed...

'Twas a couple of afternoons before Christmas, and as I'm sitting here, realising I'm rapidly running out of time to get my remaining Christmas shopping done, I find my mind wandering to the subject of my hopes and wishes for developments in mobile phone technology.   One thing's for sure - 2005 is set to be the year of the 3G mobile phone.   It's only a matter of time now before nice 3G smart phones (with great Java support!) begin to appear.

So I don't need to wish for that.  If I could ask Santa for one thing, it would be a good solution to the problem of data entry on mobile phones.  I don't want SMS style T-9 predictive input.  I don't really want hand-writing recognition (as impressive as it sometimes is).  And I don't even want fiddly little QWERTY keyboards, even though this is the probably the best solution we have right now.

No, what I want is something that lets people be as productive entering data on their phones, as they are at entering data on their PCs.   So... I wish... that this kind of technology (a full-size virtual keyboard, where an image of a keyboard is projected onto a flat surface by a laser, and you simply type on the image as you would a real keyboard)...




... is improved, minituriased, and integrated nicely into a Java-enabled Smart Phone.  Then we'd be cooking!


But enough of all that. Time for me to start really thinking about Christmas now.  I wish everyone out there a wonderful Christmas, and a prosperous New Year.  'Tis the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la...

I'm often asked why our main technology focus area is Java (J2ME for mobile devices).   One word. Volume. And volume wins. There are hundreds of millions of Java-enabled mobile phones out there already. And almost two BILLION Java-enabled devices in general.

First things first. A short introduction is order. I'm the CEO of Psynixis, a software company specialising in the development of (Java) software for mobile phones. I will be updating this blog often enough to try make it interesting (although you, the reader, will naturally be the final judge of that). The broad subject, given our business, will be mobile phones: everything from the technical through to business and culture.

I'm a firm believer that mobile phones will become the world's most important computing devices during the next five years. The influence of mobile phone software will be felt in areas as diverse as entertainment and the enterprise (both users, and in the data center). There's a revolution going on...

So welcome! Comments are enabled on this blog, so please feel free to jump in and join the discussion.