ABI Research Blog

Here’s a development I considered outright ground-breaking: a Calgary-based law firm is using its client’s Fitbit data to back up her personal injury case in court. The point is to prove that the person’s activity levels have been negatively affected by an injury she suffered in an accident four years ago. The used data isn’t raw data from the Fitbit band, but it’s first crunched by Vivametrica, which matches it against that of the general population.

 The consumption of mobile telecom services by consumers is no longer proportional to the revenue generated for mobile operators. In many countries, 4G LTE tariff plans have been introduced at the same price points as their 3G tariff plans. According to ABI Research, the global average traffic generated per user per month will expand from 275 megabytes in 3Q 2014 to 1.85 gigabytes in 2019. Video traffic is expected to reach 65% within 5 years.

I’m fond of acquisition news. Corporate acquisitions can serve as handy checkpoints for the state of the involved industry, since they by definition require companies putting their money where their mouths are. See for example Huawei’s recent purchase of Neul, whose reported valuation was a healthy reality check amid the otherwise overdriven IoT hype narrative.

I recently received an email from IEEE announcing its search for an editor for an upcoming series on green communications.   In a previous life I determined that LTE was much “greener” than 3G for delivering the bits to the mass-market mobile broadband.   Today you can use exploratory tools like Alcatel-Lucent’s G.W.A.T.T. where you can push the buttons and twist the knobs and get directionally correct guidance on where to focus your attention.   Hint:  Think LTE and Data-Centers as pointing to the biggest bang for the buck. 

Continuing, Einstein says knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand – that is the sand in the gears for many pundits.  Ask them about advanced technologies such as LTE Broadcast or Voice over LTE, and they cannot imagine anything new because tomorrow is like yesterday.  LTE Broadcast?  Qualcomm tried that with MediaFlo.  VoLTE?  Same-old voice but with a new coat of paint.  Been there, done that, no business case.  Move along please, nothing here to see. 

I had the pleasure of finally attending Black Hat this year; the European iteration which took place in Amsterdam on 16-17 October. From my understanding, the event is a much smaller and more reserved version of its Vegas counterpart, and primarily stocked by European-based researchers and attendees; although a few of the speakers had previously presented in the U.S. The briefings are mostly very technical -as they should be- although a few provided higher-level overviews (that were still however firmly focused on proofs and vulnerabilities of their specific subject-matter). Two of interest were the opening keynote by Adi Shamir (the S in RSA) and another by Veracode’s Erik Peterson (Bringing a Machete to the Amazon).

Recently, I came across an article that had questionable commentary about WiGig (or 802.11ad), which I have been covering since around 2009.  (I have been covering Wi-Fi since 2003.)  The article is from a journalist I respect.  I look forward to reading this journalists' articles.  The journalist relied on experts in the industry, but the experts are not experts on Wi-Fi and WiGig.  The article goes in the wrong direction because of their input.  The journalist's own commentary has no issues.  It really was just the analysts' commentary.  And yet they missed the most imporant points to raise about Samsung's announcements:

Today, Motorola announced initial roll-out plans for the latest Android OS build 5.0 codenamed Lollipop. 

GE provided an update on its “Industrial Internet” (I2) push during last week’s Mind + Machines event, which was also recapped in the form of two helpfully informative press releases. You can view them here and here, and in the following I’ll share a few reasonably idle observations. Note that in this context I’ll be using I2 as a synonym for IoT, because what humanity absolutely needs right now is another tech acronym.  

So Facebook is getting serious on advertising with its new Audience Network (FAN), which will extend its advertising potential beyond its own mobile app, providing a link between advertisers and applications. There isn’t a lot of information available with regards but FAN will enables applications that gather location data to leverage e.g. a navigation application that highlights nearby events, restaurants, etc. But it does not appear to be doing anything particularly interesting on indoor or location, which I think is good for the indoor location industry.