Iridium satellite services and gear are being distributed in South Korea, the satellite company said in a Thursday news release, saying it signed a distribution deal with South Korean navigation and communications equipment company Arion Communication. Arion will resell such products as Iridium’s Pilot wireless service for ships and its Go! Smartphone. The company’s Certus broadband service, which will come from its NEXT satellite network set to begin going into orbit later this year, will follow, Iridium said.
Chinese consumers (65 percent) tend to prefer to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, while those who buy online, generally 30-somethings, do so to avoid crowds and to find the best bargain, said CEA Chief Economist Steve Koenig in Shanghai last week at CES Asia. He presented results of an online survey of 3,000 Chinese consumers along with half-hour conversations. Seventy-two percent had a smartphone that’s six months to two years old and 66 percent own a wearable that’s less than a year old, Koenig said. Fifty-seven percent said they replace their smartphone every two years and 63 percent plan to replace their wearable every two years, Koenig said. Forty-six percent buy a new smartphone to replace a non-working model, while 43 percent buy to upgrade to a newer model. In TV viewing, 36 percent of Chinese consumers spend their time watching live content, 20 percent view digital video files, 16 percent watch VOD, 10 percent view streamed content and 10 percent use a DVR, Koenig said. The cutoff age for predominantly live versus DVR content is 40, he said.
Evoking a connected future where “everything that consumes electricity computes and communicates,” Intel Senior Vice President Kirk Skaugen outlined the future of Intel-powered devices and solutions. Skaugen spoke Monday at CES Asia in Shanghai of the PC being the “incubator” for technologies that “waterfall” to smaller and smaller devices due to miniaturization, increased processing power and “halved” manufacturing costs. Shaping the consumer electronics industry over the next five to 10 years are innovation in personal computing; creating new technology experiences by eliminating wiring and passwords; and buildout of the IoT. Skaugen cited the 50 billion connected devices expected to be in the market by 2020, where anything that can be made to compute and connect “will do so.” The results will benefit users’ lifestyle, health, safety and “many unimagined results,” while creating volumes of cloud-based data, he said. Intel’s version of “cord-cutting” means cutting out cords altogether, said Skaugen, citing the Rezence wireless charging standard and proximity-based peripheral syncing that will cut the cord between a monitor and a PC. This wire-free computing, based on WiGig, enables monitors to start up automatically when in proximity to a PC, he said. Intel’s vision by 2016, said Skaugen, is to “eliminate all wires from computing,” and that includes charging cables, data transfer and HDMI cables for convenience and e-waste reasons. Intel is working on new ways to interact with mobile devices including a facial or iris scan as a way to log in to a PC, said Skaugen.
Though most consumers own a mobile device they can use to take notes, “60 to 65 percent of us still prefer pen and paper, and 20 percent type with a keyboard,” Gilles Bouchard, CEO of the paper-based computing platform Livescribe, told us in a London briefing. “So let’s not fight, let’s join them.” Bouchard was previewing a new app that lets owners of smartphones and tablets with Android 4.4.2 or newer use them with the latest Livescribe 3 capture pen. Previously, the pen worked only with iOS devices. The smart pen captures text as it is handwritten in a Livescribe paper notebook, while Livescribe’s Android app stores a synchronized sound recording of anything being said at the same time on the Android device. So students, for example, can jot lecture notes while recording the lecturer. The text is displayed on the device’s screen and tapping on a written word triggers playback of whatever was being said as the note was written. Unlike the original Livescribe Echo and Pulse pens, the Livescribe 3 smart pen has no on-board screen, mic or speaker for audio capture and play. That functionality is now handled by the Android device. The pen uses a Bluetooth Smart data link to connect to multiple devices, and can deliver up to 14 hours of continuous writing on one charge. Recognizable words are digitized in the Android device for searching and saving. Users can also share notes and recordings as PDFs that play on other mobile devices or computers. The Livescribe 3 smart pen has a USB socket for charging only, not data transfer as in the previous pens. Bouchard demonstrated the system with a Nexus 9 tablet and it worked well. We then tried the pen with a new upmarket Huawei P8 smartphone and also with the low-cost Hudl 2 tablet heavily promoted in the U.K. by Tesco. The system was easy to set up and use with the P8, but we couldn't get it to work with the Hudl. Livescribe said it’s investigating why.
The World Broadcasting Unions’ International Satellite Operations Group agreed to change its name and mandate, said the WBU in a news release emailed Tuesday. It becomes the International Media Connectivity Group, "more reflective of the many transmission methods broadcasters and content providers are using," said WBU. In "a connected world," broadcasting "is on every platform, both for collection and distribution," said Michael McEwen, WBU secretariat head.
ViaSat joined the DeSIRE II Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems Project Consortium, funded by the European Space Agency Integrated Applications Promotion program, European Defence Agency and industry to define regulations and civilian usage for satellite-controlled remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) also known as drones, said the company in a Tuesday news release. The company said it's taking the lead in developing the communication, navigation and sensing technologies for real-time RPAS command and control across Ka- and L-band satellites. ViaSat will help identify civilian service applications for RPAS usage such as environmental monitoring, maritime surveillance and emergency responses, it said. By the end of 2016, ViaSat said the DeSIRE II project is expected to complete a series of flight tests with the Piaggio Aerospace P.1HH Demo Hammerhead platform.
Sabre agreed to buy Abacus International, the leading Asia-Pacific global distribution system (GDS) for travel products like hotel and flight bookings, Sabre said in a news release Thursday. Sabre said it had a 35 percent stake in the company and will purchase the remaining portion of Abacus for net cash consideration of $411 million. Abacus will operate as a region of Sabre Travel Network, it said. Sabre expects the acquisition to benefit Sabre Airline Solutions and Sabre Hospitality Solutions, “which already provide mission-critical support to 78 airlines and thousands of hotels throughout the Asia-Pacific region,” it said. “Sabre also will continue its partnership to provide technology services to INFINI, a local Japanese GDS.” The deal is expected to be completed in Q3 and is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions, said Sabre.
Microsoft is developing a new cross-Pacific cable network, which will provide faster data connections for customers and aid the company in competing on cloud costs, said a blog post from David Crowley, managing director-network enablement. Over the past nine months, Microsoft has been investing in subsea and terrestrial dark fiber capacity by engaging in fiber partnerships that span oceans and continents, he said. Microsoft Monday announced deals with Aqua Comms and Hibernia, in which Microsoft is investing in a cable with each company to connect Microsoft’s data center infrastructure from North America to Ireland and on to the U.K., Crowley said. The cables will help deliver data at higher speeds, with higher capacity and lower latency for customers, he said.
Consumers in the U.K. are spending at least twice as much time online as they were 10 years ago, fueled by increasing use of tablets and smartphones, U.K. regulator Ofcom said Monday in its annual report on media use and attitudes. Ofcom researchers canvassed 1,890 consumers 16 and older and found they claimed to spend on average more than 20 hours and 30 minutes online in a given week last year, it said. That’s more than double the nine hours and 54 minutes of average weekly time online in 2005, it said. The biggest increase in online use came among those 16-24 years old, almost tripling from 10 hours and 24 minutes per week in 2005 to 27 hours and 36 minutes by the end of 2014, it said. “Increasing take-up of tablets and smartphones is boosting time spent online.” Though 5 percent of adults reported using a tablet to go online in 2010, that increased to 39 percent in 2014, Ofcom said. Using a smartphone also has more than doubled in five years, from 30 percent of adults in 2010 to 66 percent in 2014, it said. “Overall, the proportion of adults using the internet has risen by half” in the past decade, from six in every 10 in 2005 to almost nine in 10 today, it said.
Flexson’s VinylPlay digital turntable was selected by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Design Store to appear in its NYCxDesign 2015 London Tech City collection, “celebrating the best and brightest in British technology,” said the supplier of accessories for Sonos multiroom audio systems Monday. VinylPlay will be demonstrated and on sale in MoMA Design Store outlets during NYCxDesign 2015, a three-day exhibition that begins Friday, Flexson said. Also beginning Friday, VinylPlay will be featured on MoMA's Design Store website, MoMAStore.org, through the end of June, it said. Flexson's London-based design team created VinylPlay “to bridge the gap between complex, audiophile turntables and poor-quality digital decks,” it said. It's “a best-of-both-worlds solution, combining true hi-fi quality with plug-and-play usability and digital functionality, allowing vinyl fans to easily play and digitally archive their records,” and stream them via Sonos, it said.