Smartphones Expected to Make Next Major Leap With Launch of 5G
LAS VEGAS -- Smartphones are getting more sophisticated, but the big change will come with 5G and all that the new generation of wireless brings, speakers said at a mobility panel Monday as CES kicked off here. Interest in the topic appeared to be huge, with people packing a large conference room at the event. CES isn't generally considered a major venue for smartphone announcements, with most of those coming at the Mobile World Congress in February. Meanwhile, other speakers said many questions remain about the IoT, a focus of much of the technology at CES.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The big change for smartphones will come with 5G, said Jeff Yee, ZTE vice president-product marketing and strategy. “We have been seeing incremental steps, but I think we’ll see a big shift when we get to 5G,” he said. Consumers don’t know how important low latency and spectral efficiency will be to how they use their phones, he said.
“You will always see waves of innovation,” said Justin Denison, Samsung senior vice president-product marketing. Fifth generation will mean a network that's 100 times faster with much lower latency and massive IoT, he said. “Now you can have everything around you connected to the network,” he said. Augmented reality and virtual reality could take off with the huge increases in bandwidth, he said.
When asked why they bought a new smartphone, 60 percent of consumers cite device innovation, Denison said. “You deploy innovation that really does take hold,” he said. Intelligence in the phone is “ripe for taking off,” he said. The new normal “is what you’re building around the device,” the ecosystem and what you can offer to consumers, Denison said. People are using their smartphones for four or five hours a day, he noted. “We’re striving to offer meaningful innovation that changes people's lives that becomes the new norm.”
Part of the problem today is that most smartphones look the same and it’s easy to miss the changes that keep making them better, said Keith Kressin, Qualcomm Technologies senior vice president-product management. Device makers are spending a lot of money on battery life and improving how fast the phone charges, he said. “When you move from phone A to phone B … you start to recognize there really are a lot of leaps and innovations,” he said. “There are a lot of leaps yet to come.” Kressin said everyone in his family got a smartphone for Christmas: “My kids were blown away by the pictures they can take.”
Kressin said the wireless industry saw big changes with every new generation. With 2G, voice quality improved and with 3G people were able to get online with their phones, while 4G meant mobile use of social media, video streaming and calling Uber for car service, he said. “With every jump in communications there’s also a jump in computing,” he said. People expect their devices to have a good chip, a great camera and display, and good battery, Yee said. The story today is advancements in all those categories, he said.
Speakers on a second panel questioned the future of the IoT. “A lot of IoT devices are kind of solutions looking for problems,” said Alex Manea, BlackBerry chief security officer. “We’re taking ordinary devices and connecting them to the internet and we’re asking now that they’re connected what problems can we solve," he said. One of the first lessons in product management is “look for problems and create solutions,” he said. Hundreds of IoT use cases will be on this display this week at CES, Manea said. Will all solve real world problems? he asked. “I’m not sure that’s the case and I’m not sure if five, 10 years from now we’re going to still see all those products,” he said. “It’s going to be the consumers that decide.”
Pressure is growing to turn simple devices like coffee makers into connected products, said Venkat Rapaka, Google director-product management. The kind of technology it takes to make a device work on the IoT and then keep it secure requires huge investments “because your brand is at stake,” he said. “That’s a lot of upfront and ongoing costs.” A lot of device makers are getting “pulled in,” Rapaka said. “You almost feel like you have no choice, but you don’t know why.” Some investors are losing money every day, he said.
The number of skill sets required to develop IoT devices is a huge issue, said James Stansberry, Samsung senior vice president-IoT business. “It’s network knowledge, it’s big data analytics, it’s mobile app development,” he said. Another big question is how to make money, he said. “There has to be a way to monetize the data that device manufacturers are creating,” he said.
The industry experts agreed consumers are growing more comfortable with the IoT as the IoT grows in importance. People are still learning to trust connected devices, Rapaka said. “I couldn’t imagine five years ago putting microphones that always listened to me in multiple rooms of my house,” he said. “Today, it doesn’t feel that strange.”