Todays mobile phones have now evolved to incorporate all types of online activity, here is a little breakdown of some of the latest technology to grasp the mobile market.

WiFi Technology

What is Wi-Fi?

WiFi is a wireless technology brand owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance intended to improve the operating of wireless products. Common applications for Wi-Fi include Internet and VoIP phone access, gaming, and network connectivity for consumer electronics such as mobile phones, laptops, game consoles, MP3 players and PDA’s. Wi-Fi also allows connectivity which enables devices to connect directly with each other. This connectivity mode is useful in consumer electronics and gaming applications.

It’s faster and has a greater range than Bluetooth, and is ideal for home or office connectivity. In the near future, wireless networking may become so widespread that you can access the Internet just about anywhere at any time, without using wires. The easy access of emails for business orientated individuals is also a bonus, as urgent messages can be downloaded on the go once the email settings are configured on to the WiFi enabled handset.

The mobile phones market has received a lot of attention lately as several operators across the world have launched various types of handsets which allow users to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, the iPhone being the ultimate example.

Mobile VoIP

A new study from a London-based research firm claims that mobile voice-over-IP will become a mainstream form of communication by the end of 2012, based on rapid growth of voice-over-3G wireless users. Disruptive Analysis said its research shows mobile VoIP will eclipse fixed-mobile convergence services that use dual-mode handsets with voice-over-WiFi capabilities.

VoIP has become popular largely because of the cost advantages to consumers over traditional telepone networks. VoIP calls can be placed across the Internet. Most Internet connections are charged using a flat fee structure. Using the Internet connection for both data traffic and voice calls can allow consumers to get rid of one monthly payment. In addition, VoIP plans do not charge a per-minute fee for long distance. For International calling, the monetary savings to the consumer from switching to VoIP technology can be enormous.

Today, Skype, TruPhone and a company called Fring already offer VoIP over 3G smartphones and 3G-enabled laptops allowing users to communicate with other VoIP users via the Internet. This service is expected to provide customers with a cheaper alternative to connecting calls via GSM in the near future.

HSDPA

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.4 Mbit/s. Further speed increases are planned for the near future.

4G Technology

What is fourth generation (4G) mobile?

4G, an acronym for Fourth-Generation Communications System, is a term used to describe the next step in wireless communications. A 4G system will be able to provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data and streamed multimedia can be given to users on an “Anytime, Anywhere” basis, and at higher data rates than previous generations. There is no formal definition for what 4G is; however, there are certain objectives that are projected for 4G. These objectives include: that 4G will be a fully IP-based integrated system. This will be achieved after wired and wireless technologies converge and will be capable of providing 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s speeds both indoors and outdoors, with premium quality and high security. 4G will offer all types of services at an affordable cost.

4G is being developed to accommodate the quality of service (QoS) and rate requirements set by forthcoming applications like wireless broadband access, Multimedia Messaging Service, video chat, mobile TV, High definition TV content, DVB, minimal service like voice and data, and other streaming services for “anytime-anywhere”. 4G in principle will allow high-quality smooth video transmission. It will enable fast downloading of full-length songs or music pieces in real time.

The business of 4Gmobile is predicted to be huge. By 2009, this 4Gmobile market will be over $400B. This 4Gmobile technology will dominate the wireless communications, and its converged system will replace most conventional wireless infrastructure.

What will the data rates be for 4G?

At present the download speed for mobile Internet connections range from 9.6 kbit/s for 2G cellular, up to 200 kbit/s (nominally 384 kbps) for the new Vodafone 3G service (mentioned above). However, in actual use the data rates are usually slower, especially in crowded areas, or when the network is “congested”.

4G mobile data transmission rates are planned to be up to 20 megabits per second That’s about 10-20 times faster than standard ASDL services.

In terms of connection seeds, 4G will be about 200 times faster than present 2G mobile data rates, and about 10 times faster than 3G broadband mobile. 3G data rates are currently 2Mbit/sec, which is very fast compared to 2G’s 9.6Kbit/sec

These industries produce three items of interest, namely, connections, interface and content. Developments in connections include the internet and, increasingly, wireless communications. Development of interfaces includes voice command, head-up displays and body motion detection (computer-controlling gloves, gaze readers). Developments in content include the supply side of the market for games, where annual revenues have grown beyond Hollywood box office revenues. All three industries are expanding at a rapid rate. Whatever emotional experiences people seek, it may become possible, in the near future, to effortlessly connect to a virtual world that provides that experience at fairly low cost. Kurzweil argues that the explosion of computing power alone may be sufficient to change the daily course of life.

Since these developments all involve networks, they may seem to suggest a monopolistic market structure. If economic life online involves getting your email and hanging around with friends, there will be positive externalities with respect to the sheer size of the virtual world one visits. If I spend my time on Rubi-Ka, while you spend your time in Albion, we cannot talk to one another, and we cannot do things together. Thus, our time in virtual worlds is more valuable if everyone we know is in the same world. Moreover, if two worlds compete and one has more players than another, wouldn’t everyone have an incentive to join the larger world, so as to enjoy the larger network of society, communication and entertainment that it affords? Might such network externalities lead to a domination of this market by one player?For example,some network games such as lotro gold,runescape gold,guild wars gold etc.

There are reasons to expect, however, that this market is not likely to be monopolized. First, there seems to be a great diversity of tastes for the different features of a world. Mr. Bird may want to be on Pluto, while Mr. Castronova prefers medieval Britain. One of the major attractions of life mediated by avatars is the anonymity it affords, and anonymity requires a person to have exit options: other worlds to escape to if one’s reputation in this one gets unpleasant. Perhaps a savvy game developer could make a world so large and varied as to provide the essential minimum level of entertainment and anonymity to a sufficiently large number of people, so that membership in that one world becomes optimal for all. This seems unlikely, however, given that there is a marginal cost to creating and maintaining game content. Moreover, there are no economies of scale on the supply side to match the increasing returns on the demand side (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1994). Production of game content and its maintenance are both labour-intensive activities. One could perhaps increase production of content by allowing other producers (say, by opening game code to the public), but continued control of the world being created would be problematic. On the whole, it seems very unlikely that one developer could produce a world big enough to monopolize the market.

A second reason involves congestion. Virtual worlds are virtual because they are online, but they are worlds because there is some physicality to them. Avatars take up space. If a world has a certain amount of entertaining content in it, that content will almost always be subject to some kind of congestion effect. The cool monsters are in the Dungeon of Befallen, but if tens of thousands of us go there to hunt them, none of us will have a good time. Sometimes the only way to reduce congestion is to add content, but this, again, is labour intensive. There will also be congestion effects related to connection speeds and bandwidth.

A third reason that the market will probably not be dominated by a few companies can be found in the many competitive strategies that are available even now, but have not yet been exploited by new entrants. For example, the current set of developers have managed to impose huge switching costs on players by structuring gameplay around the time-intensive development of avatar capital. A player starts the game with a weak avatar, but gameplay gives the avatar ever-increasing powers. As power increases, the avatar is able to take more advantage of the game world, to travel farther, do more things, see more people. A person with a high-level avatar then faces a high hurdle in switching games, because in the new game he will start out poor, defenceless and alone again. This situation definitely locks in the game’s player base, but it is also open to defeat by any number of schemes to reduce the switching costs. Surprisingly, no competitor to a current game has offered new players the opportunity to start their avatars at a higher level of wealth and ability if they can provide evidence of a high level avatar in another game. On the other hand, two games (Ultima Online and Dark Ages of Camelot) now offer methods to effectively start out ahead: in Ultima, you can directly buy your levels; in Camelot, you can start a new avatar at level 20 if you have already gotten one to level 50. These strategies help companies discourage the buying and selling of avatars outside the game, perhaps at a cost to the atmosphere within the world. In sum, what appear to be strong lock-ins and switching costs in the game market today may not be as strong as they seem; when savvy competitors appear, the player bases will generally be at risk. For example,some network games such as lotro gold,runescape gold,guild wars gold etc.

A final argument against a monopolization tendency comes from the nature of the content itself. Games are art, for the most part, and markets for artistic output exhibit a great deal of churn due to herding effects and the star phenomenon (MacDonald, 1988). If a company designs a better game, it will attract players. And while it is true that development costs can be significant, it will always be possible to produce a fun virtual world for a tiny amount of money and then scale it up as it becomes more popular.Whatever network externalities, supply-side returns to scale, and barriers to entry may exist in the market for virtual worlds, they seem insufficient to produce domination by a single company. The distribution of populations in virtual worlds is perhaps less like a natural monopoly market than a club goods market. Populations will sort according to the services, ambience, and fees of the various worlds. Virtual worlds will compete, as clubs do, but their size will be limited by congestion effects and by the marginal cost of increasing the scale of the world.

This analysis allows a tentative answer to the first question of the study: in the medium-term future, the online multiplayer gaming market will probably consist of a number of large, densely populated worlds, with varying degrees of portability between them. The worlds will generate large revenue streams and will occupy many hours of human time, some of it considered play, some of it considered work. The hours that people devote to games will result in the accumulation of stocks of digital capital goods. These objects will have considerable economic value. Given the expected growth in connectivity, interface technologies and content, there is reason to believe that this digital capital stock may eventually become quite large.

These considerations then lead to the next set of questions: If virtual worlds do become more important, how will this affect the real Earth economy?

For many software developers or IT companies, a key hurdle is the challenge of partnering with a vendor they can trust to match their own high level of quality assurance in localized product versions, and to seamlessly build localization QA into their own development process. Consequently, IT companies have typically gone through a series of different vendors, or have relied on their own developers to localize their products for foreign markets.

For this reason, Conversisglobal.com’s technology solutions are a key response to demands from IT companies and other clients needing a single-source localization vendor that can offer pre- and post-localization and translation testing, QA testing, debugging, Website localization and more for software products that must be market-ready for global distribution.

Some of the key technology solutions offered include:

* Quality assurance; functionality and multi-language compatibility;
* Functional, cosmetic and linguistic testing;
* Bug reporting and resolution;
* Software Internationalization (I18n) and Localization (L10n) testing;
* Technical authoring:
* Website globalization readiness.

Today, our society is driven by technology and some would accuse me of being an anti-technologist. Having been actively involved with the Information Technology industry over the last 30 years, I can assure you this is simply not true. I have witnessed many different technological enhancements over the years, but what intriques me most is how it affects us socially. I firmly believe technology is purchased more as a fashion statement as opposed to any practical application. Consequently, we tend to under utilize or abuse the technology thereby costing companies millions of dollars. Instead of “Ready, Aim, Fire,” people tend to, “Fire, Aim, Ready.” In other words, people tend to implement the latest technology before they understand precisely what it is or what business need it serves. To me, this is putting the cart before the horse.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the 20th century and the 21st is how technology has changed the pace of our lives. We now expect to communicate with anyone on the planet in seconds, not days. We expect information at our fingertips. We expect to be up and walking shortly after a hip or knee replacement. Basically, we take a lot for granted. But this frenzied pace has also altered how we conduct business and live our lives. To illustrate, we want to solve problems immediately, and have no patience for long term solutions. Consequently, we tend to attack symptoms as opposed to addressing true problems, and apply Band-Aids to pacify the moment as opposed to tourniquets which are actually needed. We are easily satisfied with solving small problems as opposed to conquering major challenges. Personally, we tend to live for today, as opposed to planning for tomorrow. This mindset concerns me greatly.

What if someone pulled the plug on our technology? Would engineers still know how to draft products? Would we still know how to ship a product or process an order? Would our financial transactions come to a halt? Would business come to a standstill? The answer, unfortunately, is Yes. This highlights the overt dependency we have developed on our technology and is cause for alarm. We are being driven by technology as opposed to the other way around. By unplugging our technology, we are unplugging the human-being. Think I’m wrong? Watch what happens the next time the power goes out at your office or home.

Because of the domination of technology, people have allowed their socialization skills to slip. Small things, such as common courtesy, appearance, and our ability to network with others, have all deteriorated in the workplace. We may be effective in communicating electronically, but we are becoming complete failures in communicating socially. Throughout the book I mention how people act on perceptions, right or wrong. These perceptions are based in large part on our ability to communicate, such as through the messages we transmit verbally or written, our appearance, our body language, and how we treat others. If we cannot communicate effectively in this capacity, no amount of technology will be able to alter the perceptions of our coworkers, our managers, our customers, our vendors, or our friends and family.

To this end, I have introduced a new Bryce’s Law:
“As the use of technology increases, social skills decreases.”

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