Chameleon Points to the Future

Why did the announcement of Intrinsyc’s UX-Zone “chameleon” femto application generate so much interest? I think there are several reasons, and they point to the new ways we will use our mobile phones in the future:

• Touch-Screen Potential – Phones with large touch screens are a blank canvas for multiple experiences: home, mobile, work, retail, and so on. But until now it has been all about personalising one screen, not using multiple screens with different functions according to location. It’s a new way of thinking about interface design.

• Open Handset OS – The Android operating system from the Open Handset Alliance is specifically designed for complete customisation. Intrinsyc made full use of these features when developing UX-Zone, demonstrating the power of the original Google vision.

• Femtocell Automation – Clever features and endless options for customisation usually lead to complex products that most people don’t have time to learn or use. But femtocell presence triggers hide all of this complexity, making all location-based changes automatic. This leaves users with a simple , fun and useful experience rather than the fiddly apps that never make it beyond a narrow niche.

It’s amazing seeing it in real life. You feel like there’s a whole world of opportunities opening up in front of your eyes. Imagine this chameleon experience not just in the home; but also as you move between small “femto” cells in your everyday life, whether the office, stores, cafes, railway stations, airports, museums etc. The list is endless (well almost).

Femtocells for Business

This week I spoke at the Femtocells Asia conference in Tokyo on the subject of business femtocells.

Here are the main points:

• A grid of modular “Lego bricks” of coverage that can fit any business space and which can be easily expanded or remodelled

• Self-organising capabilities that eliminate the need for expensive RF planners to do site surveys or network engineers change the macro network to accommodate
  

• Simple enough to be sold through an operator’s existing direct and indirect channels.

It’s clear why picocells have had limited success to date. ABI Research senior analyst Aditya Kaul captured it: “One major reason for picocells’ low penetration has been their high total cost of ownership." Equipment costs are one aspect, but complexity of install has made deployment expensive and has limited the channels to market to the highly skilled.

How femtocell grids change this is by bringing complexity of install down to the level of WiFi, thus opening up the channels to market to include IT resellers as well as mail order self install.

There will always be the real high value enterprise customers where mobile operators will want to apply the personal touch and oversee the install themselves, but for the vast majority from SOHOs upwards a femtocell or femtocell grid, will enable, at last, new and compelling business packages to become available.

The Femto Forum meeting, also here in Tokyo, seems to be making good progress, and membership of the Forum continues growing almost weekly.

Commercial Femtocell Spotted at Tokyo Conference

I'm in Tokyo this week speaking at the Femtocells Asia conference.

When I arrived, mobile operator SoftBank had set up a display to demonstrate Ubiquisys-made femtocells working with a range of their mobile phones.

I took this (poor) picture because it captures an important moment.

Why? Because this femtocell is the real thing:

• It's a commercial femtocell, not a vendor prototype - a boxed product that ran off the Ubiquisys production line at Sony.

There are doubters here that UMTS femtocell systems are commercially ready. Well here's conformation that ours is at least, which probably comes from being the first to start.

My speech at the conference was about business femtocells, something I'm very passionate about. I'll let you know shortly how it went.