On Monday at its keynote speech during the WWDC event Apple made a big thing about the Android platform and its fragmentation, but it seems that Apple is about to let the iPhone platform become fragmented in the coming months.
The company showcased its new iOS 6 operating system along with its new features, but as we reported yesterday some of these features won’t be coming to the likes of the iPhone 4, and Cnet are wondering if Apple is fragmenting the iPhone. The company are still marketing and selling the likes of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone, and iPad 2, but it makes you wonder if eventually only certain Apple apps and services will run on some devices and not on others.
The turn-by-turn directions won’t be coming to the iPhone 4 along with Siri, and it basically got no speech to text at all, and some may see this as an aggressive move by Apple to get users to upgrade to a newer iPhone. The iPhone 4 is two years old now, but the CDMA version wasn’t released until February 2011, which will mean some Verizon customers have had the device for less than eighteen months.
Then we have the much delayed white iPhone 4 that didn’t arrive until April 2011 so many of these are just over a year old, and then we saw the 8GB version released last October. Some may say that the iPhone 4 is not capable of handling turn-by-turn directions, but there are a number of midrange Android smartphones that support this feature as well as speech to text. There are also a number of iPhone GPS navigation applications that provide turn-by-turn directions, which includes the free MapQuest among others.
So it is obvious that the iPhone 4 can easily handle such features but this makes you wonder if Apple left them out to try and get more people to upgrade to the iPhone 4S, or the next version of the smartphone later this year. As an iPhone is a premium smartphone and priced accordingly, you would have expected it to receive new features to keep up with the competition for more than eight months with regards to the 8GB iPhone 4.
Apple has three different versions of the iPhone for sale, each with different features, and the same can be said for the iPad. So customers picking up a free 3GS or a discounted iPhone 4 will be surprised to find out their device can’t do things that has been on Android devices for years. That’s not to say though that Android fragmentation is not a big problem for the platform, and are far worse than what iOS 6 will bring.
We may not see true fragmentation on the iPhone platform, but the iPhone 4 is a capable and powerful device even now, but leaving it behind is unnecessary and inconsiderate, and the company has always had a rapid upgrade agenda, but not while still selling the older versions. This could eventually backfire for the company as the competition continues to grow.
Do you have an iPhone 4 and feel let down with Apple’s plans?
3G subscriber base in India to reach 371 million by 2017 despite slow start: Maravedis-Rethink - telecomtiger.com
Despite slow start 3G subscriber base in India to reach 371 million by 2017, according to Cellular Market Analysis and Forecasts, 2012-2017” from Maravedis-Rethink.
“ We expect the active 3G subscriber base in India to reach 74 million by the end of 2013 and 371 million by the end of 2017. The market share growth will depend on how fast operators can deploy 3G networks in their respective licensed circles, and how rapidly they can address the demand in rural areas”, the study said.
With overall stagnant 2011 broadband penetration at 13.35 million primarily DSL subscribers, the Indian market represents a significant growth opportunity for the broadband wireless sector.
3G is starting to make inroads in India and the active 3G subscriber base will reach 41 million by the end of 2012, “In India, the growth of 3G has been slower than many expected, mainly because of the high price of services,” said Basharat Ashai, author of the report. “However, we believe that the availability of lower cost smartphones in the US$50 range will drive 3G growth in India in the coming years.”
“As long as TD-LTE is the de facto technology for mobile broadband in India, the challenge operators face lie in bringing an inexpensive multimode (2G/3G/TD-LTE) device to consumers. Multimode devices give operators an opportunity to expand 4G with the option of fallback to 3G networks in rural and suburban areas. Operators are pressuring chipset/device manufacturers to accelerate their efforts to get the cost of multimode devices down substantially,” added Caroline Gabriel, research director for Maravedis-Rethink.
Samsung TecTiles NFC stickers control your phone with a tap - Crave
Stick'em up! Samsung has unveiled a very cool accessory for the Samsung Galaxy S3 and other Android phones: TecTiles NFC stickers, which let you perform any task on your Android blower by simply waving it at a sticker.
TecTiles are small square stickers that talk to your phone just by tapping the two together. Program the sticker with a specific job using a free Android app, and you can launch apps, change loads of settings in one go, or even call a preset number just by tapping your phone on the sticker.
And the tags don't just work with the tasks you program: if you tap your phone on someone else's sticker, you'll quickly access the task they've set up. For example, our CNET colleagues in the US first encountered a TecTile attached to a Samsung exec's business card -- pictured above. Tapping phone to card downloaded all the Samsung wonk's contact details straight to the phone. Click here for our full hands-on play with TecTiles.
Social network check-ins are also supported, so shops, bars or other attractions could place a sticker by the door for you to tap as you walk in, announcing to your online buddies that you've arrived. TecTiles work with other NFC phones too.
Samsung isn't the first to introduce NFC tags. New Xperia phones such as the Sony Xperia S can talk to Sony Smart Tags, little plastic discs you place around your life ready to quickly fire up pre-set tasks or change your phone's settings in one go -- you can stick one in your car, for example, and as soon as you drop your Xperia on your dashboard it could switch off Wi-Fi, divert all calls to voicemail and fire up a sat-nav app.
Samsung is into NFC in a big way. The technology can also be used to talk to specially equipped tills to pay for stuff, like contactless credit cards. There aren't many tills set up with NFC just yet, but during the London 2012 Olympics this summer Samsung and Visa are pushing no-touch payments hard, with much of the Olympic site kitted out for paying for stuff with your phone, and every athlete issued their own S3 to do just that.
Barclaycard also has NFC stickers, but Barclaycard PayTag is specifically designed for paying for things. The sticker can be attached to anything, turning your phone, wallet or the back of your hand into a credit card.
In the US, a pack of five stickers costs $14 (£9). I've contacted Samsung for more information on when TecTiles are coming to the UK, and we'll keep you posted when we know more. Where would you stick your TecTiles, and what would you program a phone to do when it met one? Tell me where to stick it in the comments or on our Facebook page.
Samsung TecTiles a warmup act for mobile payments - CNet
Samsung's free TecTile app can program NFC stickers.
(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)Samsung may present its new TecTiles near-field communications (NFC) stickers-and-app combo as a campaign for consumers to do more with their phones, but in the long run, Samsung hopes for much more.
The electronics-maker told CNET that TecTiles should ultimately help serve Samsung its slice of the mobile payments pie. Its TecTiles app lets you program an NFC sticker to do various things when you tap a compatible phone to it, like turn on or off certain phone settings, or check in to a location on your social networks.
Yet, NFC, a technology that uses short-range communication similar to Bluetooth, has yet to go mainstream in any capacity.
Part of the problem, according to Samsung, is that ordinary people are unused to physically using their phone to do things. Consumers know how to swipe cards and punch numbers, not to press a phone onto a terminal and authorize payment through an app.
Once upon a time Google Wallet stood as the best chance for NFC to take off, with Samsung providing the first phone to receive the app capabilities. Yet, Google Wallet's development stalled thanks to a Verizon push-back that kept the app off of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and by narrow requirements for using the app with a single bank and credit-card combination.
In addition, not many businesses accept Google Wallet, as CNET editors Brian Bennett and Roger Cheng discovered when they took Google Wallet on a test drive through Manhattan. They almost didn't make it out of a cab when the app stuttered.
Just this week, another report suggested that Sprint is working on a Google Wallet alternative.
It's no wonder, then, that Samsung thinks that NFC needs some positive press, and is furthermore tasking itself with making NFC lovable in ways that aren't related to payments. Once people feel comfortable with TecTiles, Samsung reasons, then using the technology to buy stuff is a logical next step, rather than a scary leap.
To that end, TecTiles can be seen as a social experiment, a warmup act before the main usage takes the stage.
Samsung's thinking seems to line up with others in the payment space, like American Express, which estimates a 4- to 6-year tipping point before mobile payments take off with gusto.
When NFC buying does succeed, Samsung wants to make sure that it's one of the movement's key players. And if that fails, well, at least Samsung will be able to make a few bucks or win a few hearts in the process.
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