Mobile mp3 phone ringtone

Introduction

The old adage about whether the glass is half empty or half full is as applicable as ever in the mobile industry. Although US and especially European markets are now experiencing strong growth in entertainment contents, the initial failures with business-oriented services are preventing many Westerners from understanding the full potential of the mobile Internet. On the other hand, continued growth in the Japanese market (see Table 1), in particular the continuous appearance of improved phones, services, contents and applications, has convinced many Japanese firms that the mobile Internet is one of the most important technologies of the early 21st century.

This article is based on my recent book, Mobile Disruption: Key Technologies and Applications that are Driving the Mobile Internet, and describes the basis for my optimism.

Technological improvements, which I describe in terms of technological trajectories, are expanding the applications for the mobile Internet. The initial success of entertainment contents in 1999 caused manufacturers to introduce phones with color displays, polyphonic tones, cameras and Java programs, and these functions are supported by other technological improvements like faster microprocessors, larger memory, faster network speeds and infrared and smart card functions.

Some of these technological trajectories will quickly fizzle out as customer needs are quickly satisfied. For example, increases in the number of polyphonic tones appear to have stopped at about 40, and color displays appear to have reached their limit at 250,000 different colors. Although some camera phones now contain more than 1 million pixels, 2 million pixels will provide quality that is equivalent to what is found in traditional photographs and will probably enable camera phones to read and process finely printed URLs, mail addresses and bar codes. On the other hand, other technological trajectories will likely continue for many years, making the phone a portable entertainment player, a new marketing tool for retailers and manufacturers, a multi-channel shopping device, a navigation tool, a new type of ticket and money and a new mobile Intranet device.

Larger displays

Japanese firms have increased the size of phone displays from a maximum of 2.0 inches (on the diagonal) in 1999 to 2.4 inches in 2003. New technologies will likely continue this trend. For example, displays based on EL (Electro Luminescence) are expected to be widely used by early 2004. These displays are thinner and thus 20-30 percent lighter than TFT-based displays because they produce their own light and thus do not require a separate light source. Displays that are based on light emitting polymers (LEP) also create their own light; more importantly, by applying a thin polymer film to a plastic substrate, firms can make displays that are thinner than one-10th of an inch and can be rolled and folded. It may be possible to double, triple or even quadruple the size of existing phone displays over the next five years.

Processing and network speeds

More immediate effects are expected from increases in processing power, memory and network speeds since they can improve the user interface without increases in the size of the display. Increased processing and memory capabilities reflect Moore's Law. Decreasing semiconductor line widths have caused computing speed and memory size to roughly double every 18 months for the last 40 years. Similar trends are already seen in the mobile Internet, where the need for lower power consumption requires different circuit designs. Phones released in 2003 had speeds in the 100 MHz to 200 MHz range, and speeds greater than 500 MHz are expected by 2005. Phones with more than 5 megabytes of internal memory were also released; some could save 2,000 photos (taken with a 300,000 pixel camera), 2,000 ringtones (with 40 polyphonic tones) or 100 Java programs.

Network speeds will also increase primarily through the diffusion of third generation services. According to Qualcomm, these services may cause packet charges to fall as low as $0.022 per megabyte, or 1/500 of current i-mode charges. If data charges were to fall as low as $0.022 per megabyte, a three minute MP3 file could be delivered for as little as $0.07, and a two-minute, medium resolution video clip could be delivered for a cost of approximately $0.13.

We can also expect other forms of networks to play an important role in the mobile Internet. For example, phones with infrared functions that use the IrMC standard are already being used in Japan to connect phones with cash registers, concert ticket machines and each other (to play games and exchange name cards), and control televisions and karaoke machines.

New infrared standards like IrFM enable credit card information to be securely transferred between phones and cash registers. Non-contact smart cards relying on short-range radio transmission are used for transportation, concert tickets and pre-paid cards (at less than $50); phones containing these functions are expected as early as 2004.

Increased processing power, memory and network speeds can improve the mobile phone's user interface through more client-side processing of pre-loaded or downloaded programs. Java is currently the most popular program for doing this, although other programs exist and the competition between these programs is not over. Users can download a Java program once, and then either utilize the program independently of the network or in conjunction with data that is subsequently downloaded from the network. Alternatively, the Java program could he pre-loaded in the phone, eliminating the need for downloading the program at till.

Although games were initially the most popular content for Java programs, many news and other text based sites now offer their contents as part of a Java program, since the use of Java programs can reduce the data downloading requirements of text and the user waiting time by as much as 80 percent.

Faster processors with lower power consumption and larger memory will facilitate the use of Java and other client-side programs. Faster processing times reduce the time to activate a program, enabling the use of larger programs. Lower power consumption enables the longer use of these programs. Larger memories increase the size and number of programs that can be saved.

Although some phones can now save more than 100 Java programs, if all content providers offered their own Java programs from which users were expected to download information, users would still only be able to save a small fraction of these programs.

Another alternative is for content providers to format their contents for standard Java programs. Phones released in the spring of 2003 facilitate the use of such standard programs because they can access data for a Java program from different servers. Added advantages of defining standard programs (or "objects" for making these programs) would be less development costs for content providers and better control of viruses for service providers.

Increased processing power, memory and network speeds may also improve the user interface in more radical ways. Increased processing power will improve the performance of voice recognition systems and 3D contents. Single word voice recognition systems have been available for several years in Japanese phones, and it appears that user resistance to making voice commands is a bigger bottleneck than actual technical problems.

As for 3D contents, phones with 50 MHz processors can display 10,000 "polygons" per second, while phones with 500 MHz processors can display 640,000 polygons per second; the latter will probably be available in phones in 2005 and is now available in the newest versions of the Playstation2. While most 3D contents are screen savers and games, 3D images of products might facilitate mobile shopping, 3D maps might facilitate navigation services, and 3D representations of data might facilitate business applications.

Entertainment

Games, ringtones, screen savers and other entertainment contents are already making the mobile phone a portable entertainment player, and faster network speeds, increased processing power, Java and 3D rendering techniques will reinforce this trend. The success of KDDI's vocal ringtone service (more than 3 million 45-second songs were downloaded in June 2003) suggests that lower packet charges will make the downloading of music and video on phones commonplace. However, it is the unexpected changes that are of greater interest, and the mobile Internet will likely create its own forms of entertainment, just as the radio, TV, video recorder and Internet have done.