Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012 will take place next week in Las Vegas (as usual). As I had an opportunity to attend a number of CES events in the past few years, I feel an urge to engage in fun but futile exercise of trying to predict the dominant themes of the CES 2012 – sort of “what’s hot, and what’s not”. Here is what I think will be Hot:

Robots: I expect to see lots of products which will be based on robotic technologies. At least one area where I expect to see a lot of them is Telemedicine/Tele-healthcare, plus some “robotic tele-presence types” Why? I have a number of friends who now works for the companies dealing with robotics one way or the other, and I see the same in the news.

Natural Interfaces: from Kinect to Siri, there are many ways to control [anything] using your voice or hand gestures. There were some natural interfaces (like using your hand as a TV remote) shown at the CES 2011. As a newly minted owner of Kinect I can say that I’m very impressed with technology, and I’m sure natural interfaces will be widely represented. The potential of natural interfaces is unlimited.

Ultra-light notebooks: This is the only way to compete with all the “pads” – provide fully-functional windows-based feather-light computers. Intel is supporting it, and so the manufacturers will come.

iPad Apps and iPad-enabled solutions: It sounds routine, but there will be lots of innovative solutions presented, all relying on iPad (or an iPhone as a very least) as an enabler. Versatility, well thought concept and ease of use make iPad an ideal foundation for myriad of potential applications – I wonder if it will be possible to count them all at the show.

Wearable computing devices? : I’m not sure at all that there will be any products presented in that category, but it sounds so natural that the thought is “why not”?

What will be Not hot?

All sorts of “pads”: there had being a big number of fiascos, such as TouchPad or PlayBook – there will be very limited (if any ) new announcements in this category. iPad continues to be an uncontested leader, and no Fire will be able to dethrone it any time soon.

3D TVs: These were hot when they appeared “en masse” at CES 2008, at least as an attraction. Now everybody knows they are possible and exist, and we only need to wait for the technology to improve and become more affordable. I really wonder how Samsung and LG booth will look like this year, and what all the TV companies will be pushing (we all know about LEDs as well).

Will see what will happen at CES 2012 – for now, I plan to take lots of pictures, and yes, to provide the detailed report afterwards.

Patents Wars At The Mobile Space
News of Google purchases of Motorola is probably known to you already.
Google acquired Motorola for 12.5 Billion USD cash deal, most likely as a way to protect Android from the recent ‘Patent Wars’ from Apple and Microsoft.  Reuters supply a nice overview of the patent lawsuits in the following diagram by Reuters. A summary of the ‘Patent Wars’ situation and possible outcome is available at Zahid Ghadialy post at 3G4G: Click Here to see his post.

Vidyo CEO, Offer Shapiro Was Interviewed By Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble,  the worldwide known technological evangelist & blogger, interviewed Vidyo CEO about its technology, google hangout and mobile video:

Radvision CTO, Yair Wiener Joins UCIF Board of Directors
Mr.Wiener experience in Radvision’s H264 implementation will help guide UCI Forum pending implementation of H264 SVC profile.
For complete PR: BusinessWire

Verizon LTE Network Now Covers HALF of US Citizens
Verizon’s LTE network covers over 160 million Americans in 117 cities, less than a year after it launched.
Source: Intomobile.com

Is Android “Evil”?
Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile tries to give a broader explanation about how “open” Android really is.
Among the flaws mentioned – Rapid development rate of Android versions, leaving no time to phone makers to adapt and the Compatibility Testing Suite (CTS) requirements which does not cover only API but also Hardware and performance testings.
While its true Android has it flaws – Can Google really choose a different path?

One step closer to unified communications?
Apple announced it’s Facetime mac client beta, which is available to download today from Apple.com.
Facetime is the apple protocol powering iPhone 4 video-communications, being based on open standards.
While Facetime might become popular at the future – Apple has yet to enable interoperability with anything other than its own products.

Stream of reviews about the new Windows Phone 7 devices
The general tone toward the new Windows Phone 7 platform is positive. While the expected flaws of a version 1.0 product are there – Microsoft offers unique features like integration to Xbox-Live (Microsoft Social network for its gaming console – the Xbox 360) and Sharepoint integration which might prove useful in the corporate market.

Cisco is rather sure about their network router capabilities
In a campaign for their ASR 9000 they allow costumers to pull RSP units out of the router, remotely via a robotic arm, while watching a video-stream uninterrupted:

MetroPCS Turn on its 4G LTE network in Detroit
MetroPCS, while not being one of the largest carriers in the United States was the first to offer LTE mobile phone – The Samsung Craft.
MetroPCS CEO, Roger D. Linquist, stated the company plans to expand to eastern and western Michigan throughout 2011.

Qualcomm acquires iSkoot Technologies
Qualcomm announced the acquisition of iSkoot – mobile application development company that known for it’s mobile Skype clients , social networking application and mobile internet platform – Kalaida.
Kalaida enables rich mobile internet experience on low-cost devices.

IMTC Annual meeting moved to November 3 !
IMTC Members, Please mark you calendars to join us for the 2010 IMTC Annual meeting on November 3 at the IMTC office in San Ramon, California, from 10:00-12:00 Pacific.  Remote attendance will be provided by both audio and video conferencing.

So what are the Business Tablets out there?
Fierce Voip explains.

IMTC President Anatoli Levin will participate in panels at two major events in October:

• The First – App-Time panel at 4GWE/ITExpo conference. Anatoli will participate in “The Future of Mobile Video” session, at Monday 04-OCT-2010 and in “How Video Changes the Way We Communicate” session. You can read about the event at TCMnet.

• The Second event is sponsored by IMTC - The 6th Annual VoIP Conference and Expo.

The VoIP conference and Expo is a two-day conference that include technical professionals, Telecom executives and Standards bodies. Anatoli will speak about mobile video communications in his panel – Video Communication on the Go – Realities and  Perspectives:

Also, among the speakers will be Amir Wolf, an IMTC fellow. His panel is called “Evolution of Mobile Video Streaming“:
“Mobile video streaming made a long a way in last decade.  Starting with what used to be called standard streaming over UDP, through tunneling solutions and recently the trend in http based streaming.  The session will describe the existing solutions for http streaming and the reasons for transition into http. We will also discuss the differences between mobile streaming , online streaming and TV broadcasts.”

If you happen to participate in one of the events and want to meet Anatoli or send him a specific question before the event – Feel free to contact him via Email at alevine@radvision.com.

A similar question would be – Can Amazon introduce E-books to the masses?
They are doing it right know – But how?

Amazon Fulfillment Center - A thing of the past?

Amazon kindle is an amazing product, with estimate sales of 1.5 to 3 million units for Q4 2009 and after selling more e-books than hard-covers in July 2010 – It is E-book for the masses.

But is it the Kindle device itself that enabled all of those E- books sales? Amazon won’t tell -
Judging by the popularity of the Kindle iPad-application, it’s probably not. According to analysts the iPad already sold more units than all kindle versions together – and the kindle is on the market for almost 3 years.
If this trend to continue and Amazon’s kindle application will remain so popular on the iPad – The Kindle hardware itself will become less relevant as most kindle users will read their E-books on the iPad.

Kindle Application on the Popular iPad tablet

It might be possible that in order for Amazon to keep it’s superiority in the E-book field they must support the most popular tablet on the market – The iPad. And while not an E-book device it seems to be an adequate reader by itself.
Unlike E-book readers that remains a niche product – iPad or an iPad like device is something many of us will find at out homes and briefcases within a few years.

Cisco doesn’t sell E-books, with the Cius they expect to sell something that is even more of a niche product – Telepresence systems.
As with the Kindle/iPad situation, Cius might kick-start the engine, but I don’t think it will fuel the revolution.
Cius and Kindle are niche products, they do what they do well, but most consumers prefer one thing that does everything – With the iPad, it is possible.
At 499 USD, the lowest cost iPad cost only 10 dollars more than the highest end Kindle DX. The Kindle is still a monochrome E-book reader and not a high-end tablet with high resolution color screen suited for video.

Cisco Cius - HD Video-Conferencing Tablet

Cisco’s Cius can’t really cost much less than a modern tablet, as it hardware should be suited for HD video.

So the question remains – At a similar price point to an all-around multimedia machine, with many applications – Can the Cius really compete?

As Sagee Ben-Zedeff from Radvision said in his blog-post about Cius – Cisco isn’t targeting Apple with this move. But if we look further ahead – Cisco might gain more from going the Amazon way, and enabling iPad users to communicate with its Telepresence platforms.
While it’s true the iPad don’t have a built-in camera, adding one shouldn’t be problematic; it’s quite easy to speculate that as with the iPhone – a front facing camera will be added eventually.

We all understand the importance of Interoperability as in this case, it might help make a niche product a commodity. The ability to phone-call a Telepresence session makes Telepresence useful for meetings that are not only-management level.

The next step, as it seems, just like the kindle service (which is now, more than just Hardware) is not only connect Cius to every other device, but to connect every other device to the Cius ecosystem. If Apple and Cisco will understand the potential video-conferencing interoperability holds for both of them – both will profit.

So the time is finally on. Long-planned and even postponed (thanks to the Iceland volcano with the unpronounceable name), IMTC SuperOp! 2010 is taking place in a small town of Jesi, near Ancona in Italy, June 14-18. Big Thank You to our hosts RADVISION Italy, Aethra.Net and Telecom Italia, as well as our sponsors Tandberg, Polycom, Cisco and Vidyo!

What is behind the name “SuperOp”, which sounds both big and cryptic at the same time? SuperOp!, a.k.a. “major interoperability event” is an annual gathering of IMTC member companies, getting together to conduct interoperability testing of IP Multimedia Communications solutions over one big network setting. Our First SuperOp!, took place in 1997, and then continued annually. SuperOp!’s goal is to help engineers to advance the level of interoperability of their companies’ products. Latest and greatest solutions, quite often include simply unreleased [yet] versions of software and hardware, that are tested for interoperability with each other. One can truly look at the SuperOp! as a giant development lab, where experts from the competing (sic!) companies work together to improve their products.

Is SuperOp! still relevant? It seems that interoperability is a key word, coming from every corner of the communications industry. From newly formed alliance, UCIF, which promises to focus on interoperability of unified communications, to the just announced Apple’s iPhone 4, which will provide video communications based on open standards, interoperability is a key topic for the whole industry. And interoperability is the major area where IMTC made the difference from day one – iNow profile and H.323 Forum Certification Program, numerous improvements in mobile video streaming standards and technologies, adapted by 3GPP, 3G-324M interoperability testing plans used by GCF as a foundation for certification program for mobile video telephony, MONA standardization in ITU-T, SIP Parity (video control enhancements over SIP)  definitions which are now making it into IETF, and latest efforts in the GSMA VoLTE and Telepresence multi-streaming and TIP – these are IMTC contributions into making technologies better in the practical hands-on terms.

So what will be happening at the SuperOp! 2010? First of all, there will be a lot of interoperability testing done in all of the Activity Groups – video conferencing using both SIP and H.323 (thanks to the year long hard work of the SIP Parity activity group, SIP-based video communication is becoming a reality), IP video streaming in PSS Activity Group, mobile video conferencing using 3G-324M. Then there will be a traditional SuperConnect – all-participants with all the video conferencing devices, always done on the last day of the event. In addition to this traditional activities, this year IMTC will also conduct Telepresence Workshop, where industry leaders from Cisco, Polycom, Vidyo, AT&T and others will present current state of affairs in the Telepresence Interoperability and lay out the plans to make Telepresence ubiquitously interoperable (audience poll: who thinks it is achievable, raise your hands J). All in all, we are looking at a busy week, a lot of work and a lot of fun! IMTC is open for every company interested in improving interoperability of their products (and enjoying the process at the same time!), so … c’mon over!

Apple announcement of FaceTime, their new video telephony solution, included various standards: H.264, AAC, SIP, STUN, TURN, ICE, RTP, and SRTP. If this is the case, it would offer great start for interoperability, as the very same standards are widely used by the modern video communications solutions by majority of the vendors.

Here’s a short explanation on the role of each standard:

H.264 – one of most prominent video compression standards in use today. Used by every major and minor video communications solution today, from the mobile video to desktop to room system to Telepresence system. Has AVC (advanced video coding) and SVC (scalable video coding) profiles – AVC profile is what is widely used and interoperable today, while SVC profile holds great promise once interoperability will be established. Already used on the iPhone and other i-devices.
AAC – advanced audio coding standard. Widely used today in audio and video communications and has established interoperability. Used by iPhone and other i-devices.
SIP – Session Initiation Protocol – de-facto standard of IP Communications solutions, including both Voice and Video communications. Used by majority of video conferencing vendors, such as Cisco, Tandberg, Polycom, RADVISION and more. Also one of the core standards in 3GPP IMS ( IP Multimedia Subsystems) communications.. Highly interoperable, however, lacking dedicated definitions for IP Video Call Control – IMTC SIP Parity Activity group developed set of best common practices and use cases to improve interoperability of SIP –based video communications.
STUN, TURN and ICE – typically used together to support Firewall and NAT traversal functionality. STUN ( Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) allows to map internal IP addressed behind the NAT to the external IP addresses. TURN (Traversal Using Relay NAT) is used in rare cases where STUN doesn’t provide a solution. ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment) is used as an umbrella standard utilizing STUN, TURN, uPnP and others in order to find possible way to transfer the NAT and Firewall.
RTP, which stands for Real-time Transport Protocol, is used in Voice and Video over IP implementations to carry over real-time media and collecting of the statistics, such as jitter and latency, which in turn allows to implement better quality solutions. Today used by absolute majority IP voice and video vendors.
SRTP – Secure RTP, profile for secure RTP communication which supports encryption, message authentication and integrity. Widely used in both IP Video and Voice implementations.

We are looking froward for further implementations of this new technology. Things are getting very interesting in visual communication products.

—
More about Facetime:

• Facetime Technical Analysis on packetstan.com - Part 1(TCP, UDP, AKAMI, STUN, SIP), Part 2 (Sip & Data Streams), Part 3 (Call Connection Initialization).

Packet Switched Streaming Activity Group is a part of the IMTC testing groups, consists of over 20 companies and helping interoperability happen in the PSS field.

We asked the PSS chairs, Farid Benamrouche and Ari Heikkinen to talk about the PSS group activities:

First, what is the PSS activity group?

The abbreviation stands for Packet Switched Streaming Services Activity Group.
The main focus in PSS AG has been testing the 3GPP PSS specifications from release 4 to release 9.

In general the functionalities to test are based on member companies’ needs and wishes, as expressed through group discussion and consensus. In addition to basic streaming the recent testing activities have focused to features like HSPDA, rate adaptation, NAT/Firewall traversal, and fast content switching. The group is not limited to testing 3GPP specifications – for example, one feature which has raised interest in the group has been HTTP streaming according to the IETF draft submitted by Apple; the group developed a test specification and began testing this feature in March 2010.
Also the new 3GPP HTTP streaming specification is clearly one of the features to be tested in near future.

We have 21 members within the group including both server and client companies, and 10-12 of the companies contribute actively to regular calls and testing events. PSS AG gives direct feedback to 3GPP and other relevant SDO’s (e.g. IETF) for clarifications/modifications based on the experiments within the group.

* What does your activity group offer to companies in the PSS field?

First of all, participation in PSS Activity Group and in IMTC activities in general is an excellent way to simply improve your company’s product by finding and fixing possible interoperability issues early. This also helps reducing the time to market for new features deployment. We have an advanced web tracking tool based on test documents which manages test results and provides this information in report format directly to the relevant engineers. Besides face-to-face and virtual testing events remote testing is possible on a continuous basis.

PSS AG membership also enables early involvement on testing and deployment of emerging new standards with other leaders and experts in the industry. From the expert technical discussion within PSS-AG, one can for instance get easily answers to problematic issues which the engineers may be facing.

Active PSS AG participation also serves as de-facto proof for interoperability which is certainly recognized by potential customers.

* What is the role of the group chairmen?

I would say that the main role is facilitating the activities in different areas like hosting conference calls, collecting feedback in general, coordinating test case creation and feature planning, liasons for SDOs, provision of needed tools for testing, planning the events etc.  So you could say that the group chairmen are to help the member companies’ to fulfill their common (and individual) needs.

One part of the work is also to represent the group to external parties as well as towards the IMTC organization.

* What are the group greatest achievements to date?

PSS-AG had a significant role in facilitating deployment of the original 3GPP PSS based media services, and it continues to facilitate deployment of new features today. This success has significantly increased the group of member companies participating in tests. The PSS AG has a liaison relationship with different SDOs, and liaisons have been posted regularly on our testing experience. Such liaisons often result in the SDO’s accepting PSS-AG feedback and making changes and improvements to the specifications.

* What are the major goals for 2010?

Naturally we continuously want to keep PSS AG as an interesting and growing forum for interoperability testing, and via that to enable the industry wide deployment of PSS related features and applications.   At concrete level the upcoming SuperOP event in June will be the main event of the year, where all basically all features having a PSS test specification can be tested onsite. Feature wise, http streaming from Apple and 3GPP will be perhaps the most significant new features to be tested (or a test spec to be created) this year.
—

Farid Benamrouche is currently Project Manager of the R&D streaming solutions at NXP Software. He is an expert on wireless streaming protocols ranging from 3G to Bluetooth and various multimedia technologies. Farid is currently Co-Chairman of the Packet Switched Stream (PSS) activity group in International Telecommunications Consortium and was before that actively contributing to the Bluetooth SIG interoperability.

NXP Software is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) with local sales and support in eight countries, and has established partnerships with key vendors to ensure optimum flexibility, ease-of-integration and interoperability between HW and SW platforms. Their software is supporting customers to translate their innovative ideas into consumer lifestyle experiences that truly stand out from the crowd.

—

Ari Heikkinen is Director of Programs in PV Finland. Before joining PV in 2007 he worked in various research and management positions in Nokia from 1995 to 2007. Dr. Heikkinen received a Ph.D. in Signal Processing in Tampere University of Technology in 2002. He has several publications and holds 5 patents. In his current role he manages several customer programs related to multimedia communications systems and services. Dr. Heikkinen acts as a co-chair for Packet Switched Streaming (PSS) Activity Group in International Telecommunications Consortium.

PacketVideo (PV) is recognized and awarded pioneer in creating and innovating various multimedia software solutions for both mobiles and connected home devices. PV’s software powers the world’s leading mobile entertainment services and has shipped in over 300 million units worldwide in hundreds of different handsets and CE devices. PV is a US based company with headquarters in San Diego, California. European research and development offices are located in Germany, Switzerland and Finland.

HTML 5 and  its effect on the industry will be discussed at IMTC virtual conference “2025″. For more details check this link.

Apple doesn’t like Flash. We know that already. Steve Jobs recently called Adobe lazy, and we all know that iPhone and iPad doesn’t support Flash. But the story is a bit more complex than that.

Apple’s opposition to Adobe is linked to HTML 5 – an open standard that would enable developers to use open formats to deliver rich media experiences. As such, this format is a threat on Adobe. And as Apple Insider analyzed in a great post about Flash vs. Apple:

By not putting Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, Apple is creating a significant installed base of affluent users who simply can’t be reached via proprietary binaries like Flash and Silverlight. That has successfully shifted attention both to Apple’s own App Store platform for mobile apps and to the open web, encouraging developers to embrace standards-based rich web apps and multimedia delivery based on open specifications.

Yesterday, I quoted this post on my Facebook profile, stating that Apple are promoting open web standards, by supporting HTML 5 over Flash. This created an interesting thread of responses, that you can see here.

I’d like to better explain why I still believe that Apple are supporting open standards in comparison to Adobe. HTML 5 is not propeatiery format. It is not owned by a single company. Also, Apple played a key role in creating H264 format – one of the key events in online videos in the recent years. As such they are clearly more supportive of open standards then Microsoft (especially if looking at the browser wars) or Adobe.

Now, it doesn’t mean that Jobs help old ladies cross the street. Apple are supporting open standards from selfish reasons – they want to diminish Adobe’s power, and especially keep it out of Apple’s ecosystem. Also, they can support open standards, and still build a closed garden such as the app store.

You see, supporting open standards is not good, bad or anything else. It is, first and foremost, a business strategy.  But from some reason, some think that open is “good” while close is “bad”.

Do you think that Skype is evil? No. But they have a proprietary  protocol. They chose this strtategy as it got them to the market faster then going the standards route.

For more about this topic, from Skype, Cisco, Jabber and Radvision, check out this panel that I had the honor to moderate couple of years ago as part of my role in IMTC. We discuss the value of standardization as business advantage in details:

Originally posted at www.pravdam.com