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The year of going wireless
THE year 2003 was one to remember with advancements in wireless, companies upgrading their aging four to five year old PCs, high performance computing, and true convergence of computing and communications becoming mainstream.
It could be said that 2003 was the year of going wireless. The industry has shown us that the use of wireless (also known as Wi-Fi or 802.11x) is quickly becoming mainstream for home, office and mobile users. For instance, the launch of mobile chips and wireless platforms, such as Centrino Mobile Technology for notebooks, brings new capabilities, including integrated wireless LAN connectivity and extended battery life that unwire the mobile PC and change where and how people compute and communicate.
Wireless access devices and hotspots have really taken off recently. According to Pyramid Research, by the end of 2003 more than half of the world’s Wi-Fi hotspot locations will be in the Asia Pacific region.
The research firm said the number of hotspots — locations where wireless is publicly available — will exceed 45,000 worldwide by the end of year, compared with 20,000 hotspots installed by the end of 2002. In total hotspot placements this year, more than 24,000 will be launched in Asia Pacific; an indication to how the region is leading the way for Wi-Fi deployment, Europe and North America will each account for over 10,000 hotspots.
The increased use of notebooks at work and at home continues to grow at an amazing pace, despite the sluggish economy that has put a lid on spending around the world. According to Gartner, the notebook segment represented 18 per cent of the overall PC market segment in the first quarter of 2003, compared with a 15 percent market segment share in the same period of 2002 . IDC also foresees an increase in the percentage of overall PC shipments represented by notebook sales. Notebooks are expected to account for 25 percent of worldwide PC sales in 2003 and 27 per cent in 2004 .
By 2005, it is estimated that 80 percent of all commercial notebooks sold worldwide will be wirelessly-enabled .
From PC makers to service providers to airports, hotels and retail locations, we are seeing strong acceptance for Intel Centrino mobile technology worldwide. When introduced in March there were 34 systems enabled with Intel Centrino mobile technology. Today, PC makers worldwide are shipping 92 different models, and we expect more than 130 designs to be available for sale by the end of the year. Intel has now verified the interoperability of Intel Centrino mobile technology with more than 20,000 hotspots worldwide, exceeding its end-of-year goal of 10,000.
Notebooks give the workforce new freedom to stay connected and take advantage of the extra efficiency gains that wireless technology offers. Mobility allows users to gain freedom and flexibility, and enjoy the productivity and lifestyle advantages at work, school or the home, or while on the go.
Mobility will definitely continue to ride the wave of success into the future.
In 2003, worldwide mobile phone growth exceeded 460 million units and the market is expected to continue to expand into 2004, according to IDC, surpassing 500 million units for the first time in history. Innovative form factors, a wealth of features and capabilities, and falling prices are reasons why consumers are expected to upgrade to next-generation devices. These reasons for existing users wanting to upgrade their devices, combined with new demand from emerging markets such as China, Thailand and the Philippines, will sustain handset growth for next year.
IDC believes that handset sales will enjoy an eight percent year-over-year growth in 2004 as shipments of 2.5G and 3G mobile phones accelerate worldwide.
As the number of mobile phone users approaches 1.4 billion individuals worldwide in 2004, IDC expects 42 per cent year-over-year growth in the 2.5G market as vendors ship more than 241 million units. Meanwhile, shipments of 3G mobile phones will surpass 48 million units in 2004, representing 140 per cent growth over 2003.
One of the features driving this growth is the emergence of camera-phones that incorporate digital image capture technology within the device. This segment will grow 64 per cent in 2004, to nearly 100 million units. Similarly, IDC expects nearly 30 million smart-phones to be sold in 2004, representing growth of 111 percent.
Like notebooks and mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants have become mainstream devices, not just a “nice to have technology.” PDA sales are expected to increase in 2003 according to a report published by Instat/MDR. The research firm predicts an 18.3 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the 2002-2007 period, with the highest growth rate anticipated for this year. Shipments will rise from 11 million units in 2002 to 13.9 million units in 2003, thanks to lower unit prices, improved operating systems, and a wave of multimedia and wireless functionality being integrated into PDAs .
The report also comments on the growing trend towards more powerful processors and higher memory, which will make multimedia and wireless capabilities more useful. 802.11 and Bluetooth wireless technologies will continue to be integrated into PDAs through the next five years. In 2003 we shipped the Intel PXA800F and Intel PXA800EF Cellular Processors, the industry’s first products to fully integrate a GSM/GPRS (EDGE for PXA800EF) baseband solution with a high-performance application processor and Flash memory on a single chip.
Delivering space-saving wireless-Internet-on-a-chip processors for PDAs as well as mobile phones allows manufacturers to include more functionality into devices and transition the wireless market segment to an applications focus faster than ever before.
This year the industry saw signs of improvement as companies began to invest in IT, to improve their business operations and employee productivity.
The industry also saw a need for mobility in the workforce. A mobile workforce increases productivity and convenience and helps save costs.
A Gartner report found that enterprises with less than 35 percent of the workforce using notebooks may not be receiving full capacity from their workers. And a Siemens Business Systems study found that companies had an average three-year lifecycle for their PCs, and that these devices should all be replaced by the fourth year in order to keep up with new and emerging applications that require more processing power, including accessing web services on the desktop and videoconferencing.
That same Gartner report also estimated that normal failure or breakdown rates for notebook PCs during their three-year life span was about 20 per cent. This increased to 50 percent just by stretching their use another year.
The same goes for desktop PCs. According to Meta Group, extending the desktop life cycle from three to four years costs an enterprise approximately US$350 per user/per year. You can imagine how much greater the costs are for businesses who have been keeping their PCs for four to five years based on large pre-Y2K instalments. It makes financial sense that executives are seriously considering upgrades.
Companies continue to look for ways to increase competitive advantage. Businesses today recognize the need for speed - to have users get more done in less time. This increase in productivity allows workers to focus on their core business, and not be concerned with technology’s connectivity or performance. This rationale is why we’ve seen strong demand for Pentium 4 Processor supporting Hyper-Threading (HT) with 800MHz Front Side Bus, which maximizes the efficiency of the processor by allowing it to complete more tasks in a given amount of time.
High performance
Our new Intel Itanium 2 processors helped to usher in the era of significant, cost-effective performance in the backend enterprise server market segment. More than one-third of the world’s most powerful computers have Intel processors inside them and we’re now seeing deployment in commercial settings.
Rising performance, standardization, and plunging costs are just some of the factors that are driving the evolution beyond its academic and technical scientific research origins into mainstream business applications, which include manufacturing, finance, energy, life sciences, and digital media.
As the evolution of server processors have expanded into mainstream commercial settings, we also experienced strong support for the Itanium 2 processor in the area of high performance computing (HPC) in 2003. There are dozens of life sciences and bio-IT initiatives across Asia Pacific now powered by Intel®-based HPC clusters and servers. This is a direct result of a worldwide shift towards cost-effective, industry-standard technology platforms for the new HPC supercomputers that are needed to accelerate bio-IT discoveries.
Goodbye 2003, Hello 2004
Many companies are working with Intel to globally catalyse industry growth and advancement by driving standards efforts, investing in innovative technologies and enabling the building of new infrastructures. By doing this, the industry can realize the full benefits of converged technologies in all market segments worldwide.
Over the past 12 months the industry has focused on mobility and the convergence of computing and communications. This means that every device, such as your mobile phone, PDA and notebook, will communicate with each other seamlessly, easily. We have seen two types of convergence occurring — micro-convergence and macro-convergence. Micro-convergence is the collapse, the bringing together of things at the smallest scale. An example would be Intel moving from the 130nm silicon process technology to 90nm, which allows us to fit more transistors into a piece of silicon. When we do this level of micro-convergence, it dramatically reduces the cost of devices so we’re able to make them at much lower price points while enabling all sorts of new capabilities.
Micro-convergence helps us reach a level of macro-convergence, the potential that will have for us as an industry, when we realize collectively the new usage models, the new infrastructure, business models, and the impacts and changes on society on a larger and broader scale.
For next year and beyond, there will be a continued focus on mobility and upgrading PCs; this will become even more relevant as we see people look at how to build their IT infrastructure to support growing businesses. Going forward, our strategy remains the same: invest in leading-edge capacity, develop innovative new products, and target growth opportunities in Asia and worldwide.
The writer is Intel country manager for Pakistan
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