CNN's I-Report

I just knew about CNN's I-Report recently. Oh, boy! Am I late!
http://www.cnn.com/exchange/

I-Report was launched in August, 2006 by CNN. It enables regular citizens to submit stories, photos and videos from where breaking news is. Understandably, CNN would not open up this citizen news portal totally free of CNN's point of view. In the Terms of Use section of I-Report, it includes the following,
"CNN has the right to edit and/or alter any submission. CNN reserves the right not to use the material you submit at all and/or as little of the material as it chooses."

Nevertheless, this is the power of Internet. A grass root news portal that breaks free from government control, or any rich and influential media, conglomerate, and individuals has the potential to dwarf any popular social networks. Well, that is at least theoretically possible, if the portal can break free from big advertisers, which can be rich and influential media, conglomerates, and individuals. Even CNN is not free from all that. For this, we have Wikipedia to look up to.

I would like to give my applause to CNN for its effort and bravery. And hopefully there will be more similar sites showing up for the community.

3G Smartphone for Under US$100

NXP Semiconductors said it has a solution to 3G cell phone at a transfer price below US$100.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/28971.php

For people not familiar with NXP, NXP is one of the top ten semiconductor manufacturers in recent years. It is to EU as Texas Instruments to the US. In the announcement, NXP said it is a solution for entry level 3G phones. But what makes 3G interesting, besides its bigger capacity to reduce operator's cost, is its data service. That implies a more sophisticated phone to run applications that utilize 3G data service. We may see a 3G smart phone with a retail price at $250 in a year or two.

It is nothing to be excited or surprised to see the price decreasing for a consumer product while it becomes more sophisticated. It is very natural during the evolution cycle of a mass-market consumer product. What can be exciting is that, in three to five years, we may see the majority of the cell phones in use running multimedia-rich Internet applications. That will open the door for all kinds of possibilities for the cell phone. Today smart phones are expensive and designed for business users. And the smart phone experience is a minimal transplant of the desktop experience. Creativity for cell phone applications will not blossom until the community realizes the Internet is in everyone's pocket.

The cost for hardware is the key to all that to happen. Once that starts, we can then discuss what the long tail effect is to be played out on such a ubiquitous and mobile network. In this view, NXP's announcement is an important milestone.

A Modular Cell Phone to Plug In

It is an interesting idea to have a minimal cell phone plugged into other electronic gadgets.

With the "basic" cell phone function taken out and made into a stand-alone module, it is possible to make any electronic device into a cell phone by "linking" the two. A cell phone enables its user to receive voice calls and have data connections. It is a "driver license" for a subscriber to use the network. Nowadays cell phone manufacturers want to make your cell phone to be your movie/MP3 player, camera, portal computer, and also your credit card. But a cell phone can not have the best user experience for everything at the same time. A bigger screen is always better for movie viewing and Internet browsing. A full-size keyboard or hand writing pad will make input easier. A better lens and CCD make a better camera. Those special purpose devices will always provide a better user experience.

I like this modular-cell-phone idea a lot, but not the idea of "plug-in", even if it uses a standard interface. It immediately eliminates combined use cases. One or two extra wireless connections will make the usability much better. Some people may have doubts about the need to bring more things than just "one phone". I don't think this will be a problem. Since it is as small as a credit card, it will mostly likely always be in your wallet, pocket, or purse. All you need to bring is your ear piece or the electronic gadget that you would bring with you anyway.

There are already blogs discussing similar ideas and even companies dedicated to this idea. You can search the web and see for yourself. My recommendation to those companies is to stick with near-term use cases and take the product off the ground. Those futuristic use cases will realize when time comes. And those futuristic use cases can disrupt and renew the industry profoundly.

Samsung Will Have a Google Android Phone in 2009

Samsung Electronics said it hopes to have a phone based on Google's Android platform by early 2009.

This was what I expected in my blog, Google Android Is Coming to Town: "Unless LG, Samsung and Motorola make some sizable commitments soon, Android will still be a very small player in the high-end market, even by 2010." And now, Samsung seems to feel more comfortable discussing its plan for the Android platform. I would imagine there is a hardware prototype floating around at Samsung, ready for review and software integration on top of it.

However, Samsung did not give any detail regarding the form factor, phone features, target consumer segment(s), price range, or geographical market focus. Samsung did not say whether it will be an Android for announcement or for sale by that 2009 time line, either. Usually, an announcement like this would have been accompanied by one of those details to entice the market or to distract competitors. Since it did not elaborate on any of these, I am guessing this prototype is really just a prototype to conceptually prove Android's capability.

I'd like to give Samsung more credit at this moment. Samsung was able to capitalize on Motorola's weakness the most during last year and that was a job well done. Like I said, if the market momentum shows for the Android platform in the near future, it is Samsung that has the logistics to ramp up volume, which is something the Android community should be contemplating.

Garmin nüvifone

Garmin announced on January 30, 2008, that it will release the "nüvifone" later this year. (http://www.garmin.com/nuvifone/) This is another non-player transforming into a cell phone vendor over an announcement, overnight.

As a first-timer, Garmin had to specify the "phone" product, decide on its design, identify the hardware BOM, and put together the OS and applications. It is all plausible that Garmin recruited some OEM/ODM vendor for collaboration. Even so, this is not a coffee and cake run for a first-timer. The difficulty can be illustrated without going into details. Just look around: It has been more than a year since Apple announced iPhone at MacWorld Expo 2007. How many cell phones on the market today have a similar form factor, a big touch screen, and software integration with comparable user experience? Not many. I can think of LG KU990 Viewty as a close one and Viewty is not available until this fall. It is an eighteen months gap at least for a big cell phone vendor. For a product like this to be released on time in Q3 this year, Garmin may have started the project two years ago. That would be sometime in 2006, before Apple announced iPhone. Either Garmin had planned this long time ago or its product and engineering teams are really efficient, there is something admirable.

You can see Garmin's press release for yourself. It will be at the trade show, 3GSM, in Barcelona next week. It will be the time to know more about the nüvifone, to see whether it is worth all my applause.