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'Open' SIMs, brain chips and Google's Nest: What to expect in wireless in 2015

We look at events that will shape the industry this year

APRIL

Nadella cuts the Windows umbilical cord at last

The most important moment for new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella came with the release of Office, still the firm’s most iconic application, for the iPad before it was shipped for the company’s own Surface tablets.

Nadella had indicated that he was breaking with predecessor Steve Ballmer’s policies of putting Windows ahead of everything else, and of integrating devices too. But with this move he put substance behind his cross-platform, "cloud first, mobile first" mantra and cut the umbilical cord with Windows, which limited Ballmer’s freedom of action for far too long. He has followed the symbolic release of Office for iOS with many other decisions that point to a cross-platform future – and even, eventually, one without Windows at all, but this was the starting point.

GE seeks to turn its Industrial Internet into a standard

Consumer and enterprise markets are, unsurprisingly, served by very different technology ecosystems, even when underlying standards are the same, and the split will continue into the internet of things (IoT). Much of the sound and fury is about the consumer side – smart home, wearables, connected cars and so on. But many of the profits will come from the vertical and enterprise side of things and that market may not be driven by operators or mobile providers, but industrial giants.

General Electric is the most important so far, and in April turned its internal initiative, the Industrial Internet, into a consortium of the same name, aiming to set a global standard. The IIC (Industrial Internet Consortium) was initially supported by GE itself, AT&T, Cisco, IBM and Intel, and the aim is to establish standards-based interoperability for gadgets and sensors, particularly those embedded in machines, and thus to support the massive big data opportunities in these markets.

MAY

Qualcomm foresees super-smart mobile devices with Zeroth ‘brain chip’

Many of the more futuristic stories of 2014 were about "5G", but just as important for the future mobile experience are R&D efforts focused on user experience. Many of these revolve around reinventing searching and browsing in a fully immersive, multimedia, context-aware way, to support highly personalised services and, of course, big data opportunities for the firms with the smartest AI-driven analytics engines in the cloud. Such advances will also require new user interfaces, some driven by virtual reality (Facebook’s purchase of Oculus is one indicator).

Google’s Physical Web project is looking at new ways to interact with objects and services without the barriers of apps.

And Qualcomm had one of the most sci-fi initiatives of all, with its work on a "brain chip" – the Zeroth neuromorphic chip platform. This claims to mimic the way the brain works, and could be a significant new source of revenues and IPR power if its neural networking techniques really can solve some of the challenges facing robotics. The aim is to create a widely applicable "neural processing unit" (NPU) to perform the core functions to support activities such as deep learning, in the same way that a GPU supports key underlying functions to drive graphics. It feels like a long term bet – and an area where Intel is also active – but the pay-off could be huge if neural networking, after so many false dawns, becomes mainstream in the internet of things, and if Qualcomm establishes the leading platform to deliver it.

Intel’s Rockchip deal in China shows off Krzanich’s new thinking

Intel threw down its biggest challenge yet to ARM’s mobile ecosystem, announcing an alliance with China’s Rockchip to push x86-based chips into the mass market for the first time, and making a bold break with its past models. It later followed this up with a similar deal, including hefty investment, in the company which controls Spreadtrum, the biggest rival to MediaTek among the Chinese/Taiwanese ecosystem.

These alliances allow Intel to adapt more easily to the challenging economics of mass market SoCs and give it powerful entry points to the Chinese base. They also have three points of significance beyond the immediate shipments potential – if successful, they will be a powerful proof point that the x86 architecture really can compete with ARM in terms of cost and power consumption, after many years of trying; they will open up new ecosystem partners to distributed x86 designs (vital in China’s fragmented and often inward-looking market); and most importantly of all, they indicate CEO Brian Krzanich’s willingness to embrace new business models in pursuit of success in mobile and internet of things (IoT) segments – identified, when he took the helm last year, as critical for future growth.

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JUNE WWDC - a quiet revolution will chip away at iOS’s garden walls

Apple’s annual WWDC developer conference came at a time when the firm’s share price had been under pressure for a year (though it was – and is - still the world’s most valuable company); and whose recent products had been criticized for lack of innovation and magic.

The event showed the firm making some adjustments to the changes in its world, particularly the need to shift from native apps and a tightly walled garden, towards cloud services, streaming and openness. It then followed this up in the fall with its strongest new iPhones for several years, adding a large-screened model and restoring a great deal of confidence with innovations like Apple Pay.

WWDC laid the groundwork for that however. There were no new devices, but plenty of signs of significant changes to come, notably more openness in iOS, more convergence with OS X, and some indications of how Apple will handle the cloud and IoT.

And it really did live up to its name – as a developer conference, not a corporate marketing shindig. That was a sign, in itself, of Apple responding to the pressures it is under and acknowledging the need to listen to its developers and modernize its platform for a web-based age. Another announcement which may prove significant for the future was support for Wi-Fi Calling, which could be a powerful tool for Wi-Fi-first and over-the-top providers, not just for cellcos.

Cisco buys Tail-f as AT&T turns its world upside down

The network equipment vendors have to adapt to the slow but real transition to software defined networking (SDN), which could commoditise their hardware and transform their competitive landscape. Cisco has been responding on many fronts, but a quiet turning point came with the acquisition of privately held Tail-f Systems, a Swedish developer of multivendor orchestration systems for physical and virtualised networks, for $175m plus incentives.

It brings useful technology for Cisco’s significant, if reluctant, push into SDN, but more importantly, it buys the giant a slot in AT&T’s Domain 2.0 SDN/NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) project. As well as being a major investment in its own right, Domain 2.0 is also critical to vendors as a showcase for their software capabilities, since it is one of the earliest and most comprehensive telco SDN programs in the world and will be closely watched. The carrier has added to its supplier list through the year (see separate item) and is now the poster child for the new-look carrier network, and the squeeze that could put on equipment revenues.

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