Recent developments in mobile technology have shown the viability
of video phones, writes Antony Savvas.
There must be many potential customers of future, faster mobile
technologies who question whether it really will be possible to use
video on mobile phones.
But the promise of real-time video and video-on-demand services,
promised as part of the third generation (3G) mobile revolution,
seems to be taking shape.
The speeds promised from 3G are as high as 2megabits per second
and it would be fair to ask why anyone would need a link as fast as
this just to read e-mails on the move.
Of course, cynics may point out that when general packet radio
service (GPRS) was previously marketed, we were promised speeds of
about 115kilobits per second (kbps), not the 10-20kbps we are now
looking at in the near- to medium-term.
Whatever speed the final 3G service actually delivers, it will
offer greater bandwidth than e-mail and Web-browsing alone require
and something like video will move in to fill this mobile
headroom.
There have been three recent developments in mobile technology
that illustrate how businesses could advertise to their customers
with video clips on a phone, or hold a videoconference with their
employees on a mobile network.
- Toshiba has just introduced a new type of handset display
material which promises to increase standby time on the phone and
is able to handle full-colour video transmission.
The company claims this as a breakthrough that integrates static
random access memory (SRam) with the LCD of a mobile phone.
This could significantly improve the display's performance by
cutting the power consumption of the display by half and will
extend the overall standby time of the phone by 25%, which is
particularly useful when using battery-draining applications like
video.
Toshiba says its technology will soon be embedded in the next
generation of mobile phones. No one can really argue with the need
to cut power consumption, considering the problems handset
manufacturers had in building GPRS phones which were supposed to
offer higher speeds than the ones which will now be commercially
available.
Toshiba will initially make the technology available to 2.1in
mobile phone screens, and will then extend this to larger formats,
which are expected to also cover personal digital assistants (PDA)
screens.
This latter solution is particularly important if the next
generation of PDAs are going to be in a position to offer full
colour HTML, while being wireless-enabled with 3G capabilities.
After all, the bigger the device running these applications, the
more juice that will be consumed running them.
- The next development to encourage businesses that there really
is a unique marketing and organisational opportunity on the
horizon, is a video chip from an Israeli company called GEO
Interactive Media Group.
The viability of its solution has been demonstrated by One2One,
which has signed up to use GEO's Emblaze chips to offer its
customers a video messaging service before the first 3G networks
even appear.
One2One has held trials with a group of "heavy airtime"
subscribers with a view to offering a commercial video messaging
solution on both existing GSM and the soon-to-be-rolled-out GPRS
networks.
Subscribers to such a service would be able to send and receive
video messages with audio via video-enabled phones or
wireless-enabled PDAs.
The first 3G chips will rely on technology developed by US
company Qualcomm, whose CDMA chips will support the US and parts of
the Far East, and variants of which will support Europe.
- What Qualcomm is now doing with video is the third development
which illustrates the potential of mobile video. The company says
it intends to provide its solutions to the initial 3G Korean market
by the end of this year, and on 3G networks in both Japan and the
US during 2001.
It says its chips, which will be available for use in the UK
market when 3G appears in 2002, can already offer two-way
multimedia applications, including video, at speeds of 307kbps.
These fledgling services, two years before a commercial 3G
launch in the UK, show that video may become a stable and popular
medium for companies.