It brought a refreshing change to the “image” of mobile technology, which for several years now has been about communication networks and multimedia technology. App Planet brings in new creativity and the core idea of connecting people. In the App planet, “John”-s mobile device is much more than a phone!

This is John's life on App Planet. It is cool, isn't it?

This is the year for the Apps to bloom and we will taste the fruits in the coming future. Health management, CRM, location-based services, and e-money are the major topics in App Planet. They are bringing the concept of mobile technology into people's daily life. From business perspective, the range of the ideas covers content providers, service providers, infrastructure providers and device manufacturers. They all point to the basic concept of communications infrastructure, via which people want to stay connected all the time, but what is most important is the way mobile technology is ready to touch each and every aspect of our lives via innovative and practical applications!

SNRLabs' focus on QoE based connectivity and mobility in multi-radio devices has this additional advantage from the point of view of operators, which is, "smartly" moving traffic from cellular to WiFi (or femto cells). At MWC 2010, it was interesting to see the same problem addressed via infrastructure based and operators driven solution by technology power house Qualcomm and FMC experts Kineto Wireless.

SNRLabs’ device based convergence management products complements the above solutions by letting the device drive or co-operate with the network regarding best radio choices based on quality of user experience.

More importantly, in the absence of the infrastructure additions required by both solutions above, SNRLabs technology still provides a device driven offload of certain classes of 3G data traffic, thus giving operators the benefit of 3G/WiFi offload even if they choose not to make any changes to their infrastructure. SNRLabs’ Mobility Manager (part of CMS) uses algorithms for seamless mobility decisions that have been proven to maximize the use of WiFi whenever WiFi exists and meets the user’s QoE needs, as compared to the more typical RSSI-comparison based mobility decisions.

References:

3G/Wi-Fi Seamless Offload: A live demonstration of seamless offloading of operator-defined data services from 3G to Wi-Fi.

Kineto Smart Wi-Fi Offload Solution Addresses Network Challenges Created by Smartphones.

I guess the answer is “all of the above”. Convergence ensures that we cannot partition technology anymore. Silicon vendors, Platform designers, Operating system providers, Device manufacturers, and application developers are all Mobile. And if they aren’t .. they are missing the bus. And as Oracle and IBM showcase their wireless billing and customer management systems, along side SUN and IBM servers, we can safely rephrase and say “ The mobile internet is the computer “.

For end users the issue is where does the quality guarantee and customer support come from? In, embedded wireless devices and m2m scenarios, the wireless carrier may not be directly visible to the end user. Conventional wisdom would suggest that such support be provided at the first level by whoever is providing the actual service or utility to the end user, leading to a chain of customer support requirements rather than one-stop support and clear accountability.

Finally, the success of smooth network operation and services delivery depend one way or the other on every player in the chain being “good citizens” of the network. Over the last 25 years, this has been guaranteed via standardization bodies and certifications, as well as the expertise and experience of a relatively small number of companies. Now, with embedded wireless, the number of companies building these connected devices are expanding and so are application developers for connected devices. It will be essential that guidelines are set on how applications are written and the network accessed by these devices and their applications, to prevent signaling issues as well as minimize unnecessary traffic overhead.

So, what are some of the key features of these two software platforms? Firstly, simplicity of use and development and a solid foundation of core features that just work – without having developers to spend time tinkering and optimizing and looking around for the best place to start. Secondly, well defined interfaces to underlying components ranging from the accelerometer to the radios and GPS. Again straight forward and simple functional interfaces that are easy to program with. Third and related to the second one, is the right level of abstraction. In the case of the iPhone software, Apple dictates what level of access within the device the programmer and user can have. Android, even though open source, is also very well thought out in terms of programming access. All these features allow developers to focus on their unique value-add towards a polished end product ready for millions to use, without having to deal with messy interfaces and drivers and either too much access or no access at all to the necessary hardware components.

The last interesting feature common to both is how voice capabilities have been dealt with – integrated but some how still separate. Both frameworks realized up front that voice is a necessity but data is the focus. So, things like the dialer and telephony has not been ignored and even though there may be better frameworks to deal with voice related features, iPhone and Android users and programmers have a good basis to work with.

Before signing off, here is a good summary of the landscape in smart phone software frameworks published yesterday, including all the major players in addition to Apple and Google – Symbian, Palm, RIM, and several Linux frameworks.

SNRLabs, a small start-up company based in a glass and metal chalet in Richardson , Texas , may be far from the hills of Austria , but has found a unique and extremely effective way to manage these ornery children. They’ve brought in an objective family friend, Max, who is tolerated by the children and not accused of playing favorites. He gets to decide who talks when. Peace, harmony, love and satisfying conversation - just as Mother Superior would want it to be.

You can discover more of my favorite things about SNRLabs, just like Intel did. Just yodel me.