LAS VEGAS — Apple’s iPhone, unveiled 567 miles away at Macworld in San Francisco, combined with Cisco’s faster-than-a-speeding-bullet trademark lawsuit against Apple, threatened to relegate last week’s Consumer Electronics Show to a footnote.
LAS VEGAS — Apple’s iPhone, unveiled 567 miles away at Macworld in San Francisco, combined with Cisco’s faster-than-a-speeding-bullet trademark lawsuit against Apple, threatened to relegate this week’s Consumer Electronics Show to a footnote.
Nonetheless, what could be seen at CES was a new excitement about next-generation wireless LANs, the spread of multiple wireless technologies into portable devices and continued price declines. Also evident at the show, which attracted 150,000 attendees, 2,700 exhibitors and headliners such as Bill Gates and Cisco CEO John Chambers, was how a wide range of companies are changing and adapting to apply these technologies to new areas.
Sure, you had to sift through things like Atech’s Stereo Dock for iPod with Bath Tissue Holder and Lifepop’s Atom Amp purses and bags with tiny built-in speakers for MP3 players and music phones. But you could also find evidence of intriguing trends in mobility.
WLAN chip makers and equipment manufacturers showcased advances in the next generation of Wi-Fi: products based on draft 1 of the still-developing 802.11n standard. Attendees saw new WLAN access points delivering at least 150Mbps and more, and able to carry two or more high-definition TV signals at the same time through several walls. Where 11a and 11g networks might drop to 1Mbps at 100 feet or even less, 11n will be able to sustain double digit throughput rates, according to vendors.
For the first time, attendees saw new pre-11n WLAN access points, such as Buffalo Technology’s new AirStation Wireless – N Nfiniti dual-band router and access point, that can deliver 150+Mbps simultaneously on two frequencies, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, with up to 27 channels total. “We’ll offer buyers, in effect, two 802.11n networks in that one product, one on the 2.4 band, the other on the 5 band, and they can run at the same time,” said Brian Verenkoff, product marketing manager for Austin-based Buffalo.
In a related move, chip makers are now beefing up access-point network processors, which are packaged with the radio chipsets, to manage the flood of data, voice, video and audio packets that 11n makes possible. That data will overwhelm the current generation of processors.
Airgo Networks, just acquired by Qualcomm, is now sampling what it calls a draft 2-compatible 11n chipset, even though draft 2 has not yet been finalized by the IEEE task group, which is scheduled to meet later this month. “Of the things still being discussed [by the task group], we’re dealing with a very small number of issues,” said Greg Raleigh, Airgo founder and now vice president, wireless connectivity for Qualcomm. “We just don’t see any hardware issues ahead.”
Airgo plans to make first commercial shipment of the new chipset in February or March. The Wi-Fi Alliance is on schedule to begin certification testing for draft 2 products around May, by which time the task group is expected to have voted to adopt draft 2.
Qualcomm’s purchase of Airgo is itself part of a trend toward trying to bring together several different wireless technologies into the next generation of mobile devices, said Mike Concannon, Qualcomm’s vice president of strategic products. “We wanted to beef up connectivity outside of [just] the cellular modem, and apply these to products outside the [voice] handset space,” he said. The goal is to bring together wireless LAN with advanced wireless WAN, Bluetooth and ultra wideband so that mobile users simply get, and stay, connected for voice, data, messaging, audio, video and gaming.
Microsoft pushes Vista
Operating system vendors are making mobility a priority. Microsoft used CES to put on a full-court press to promote its Vista Windows release, due out later this month. About nine months ago, Microsoft reorganized some units, creating a mobility marketing group, charged for the first time with evaluating what operating system changes and improvements were needed to optimize Vista for the “mobile experience,” said Mika Krammer, director, Windows product management, for that group.
In part this meant changes in the user interface itself, to make it simpler for users to figure out and fix a faulty or broken wireless connection, for example. Windows Meeting Space was simplified to let users quickly create a shared wireless “meeting” in a conference room, where documents can be viewed, updated and changed by up to 10 meeting members.
Other changes included demanding requirements for WLAN vendors seeking the coveted premium Vista certification for their products. Among other things, WLAN vendors had to show they support simultaneous operation on 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.
The pervasive character of broadband wireless is becoming evident in the automotive market. Much of the activity there, as CES this year showed, is around entertainment technologies, such as media centers for digital video and music, often with Bluetooth as the wireless connection between portable MP3 players and a dashboard-mounted equivalent.
Microsoft and Ford demonstrated a sophisticated version of such a system, dubbed Ford Sync, based on Microsoft’s Windows Auto software, itself a Windows CE variant that was developed originally by Microsoft in Japan. Drivers use a combination of voice commands and steering wheel buttons to dial their Bluetooth-enabled cell phone or listen to text messages being read to them or play music stored on MP3 players or USB drivers. It will start appearing in about a dozen Ford models next fall, being offered as an option on all models in 2009.
But two companies, Azentek and Xenarch Technologies, have taken mobility beyond entertainment. They showcased full-blown Windows XP computers, with 1GB of RAM and a 40GB hard disk, a crisp color touchscreen and the full Windows desktop, along with a suite of applications from iMobile for navigation, messaging, and vehicle monitoring and diagnostics. MP3 players and other devices can connect via USB 2.0, Bluetooth or built-in Wi-Fi. Azentek even has a slot designed for an EV-DO or similar broadband cellular card to wirelessly link the in-dash computer to the Internet.
The systems are designed as after-market units that slot into standard dashboard form form-factors, just as you’d install an advanced CD or DVD unit. Whether drivers want to do Windows-based personal computing, on the PC model, remains to be seen. But the idea of making the car, in effect, an Internet node is intriguing.
One company that’s betting on that trend is Dresser Wayne, a century-old firm that started out making oil tanks and today is a global supplier of fuel pumps, increasingly high-tech ones. At CES, the company showcased its latest: the Ovation IX fuel dispenser, with embedded Windows CE 5.0, a powerful Intel XScale processor and wired Ethernet switch. It also sports a brilliantly clear, crisp, color,10.4-inch full VGA touchscreen, and has a built-in 802.11b/g wireless access point.
It supports the ISO 14443 contactless payment standard, which is being aggressively backed by Visa, Master Card and others. This standard is implemented in part through a set of protocols defined by the Near Field Communications Forum. A set of development tools, based on Microsoft .Net Framework, lets users customize the on-screen displays and create a wide range of multimedia applications. The main purpose of the system is to draw drivers into the associated convenience stores, since the gasoline chains make most of their profits on food, drink, snacks and sundries.
