Solid State Storage is Coming

It appears that the Asustek Eee PC was among the top-ten notebook PCs sold by Amazon over the Christmas season. That might be interesting for several reasons, including the fact that it is a Linux machine or that it uses solid state storage.

Up to this point, solid state storage has been expensive enough, compared to hard disk alternatives, that its use has been limited. The smallest iPods use solid state, but the larger-capacity devices use hard disks, for example.

But Moore's Law continues to operate. Even if solid state costs an order of magnitude more than hard disk storage, costs are declining fast enough that one can predict a point where solid state storage is cheap enough to be useful in a much-wider range of settings, including many that currently rely on hard disk drive storage. And it isn't simply consumer devices where that trend will be important.

So far, the biggest barriers to adopting solid-state drives (SSD) in the data center have been price and capacity. Hard disk drives (HDD) are much less expensive and hold much more information. For example, a server-based HDD costs just $1 to $2 per gigabyte, while SSD costs from $15 to $90 per gigabyte, according to IDC. So far, the cost disparity has been so high that SSD has not been an option, though some would argue it has other advantages.

Alan Niebel, Web-Feet Research Inc. CEO says the average cost of solid state storage per gigabyte is $10 while and hard disk drive storage costs 30 cents for a gigabyte of storage. Many observers say a price point of $1 per gigabyte is the inflection point at which solid state really takes off. And at an expected 50-percent annual price decline, that might happen by 2011. Of course, hard disk drive storage will cost just three to 10 cents a gigabyte at that point.

And prices are falling fast. Right now, the industry trend is a 40 percent to 50 percent drop in SSD pricing per year, according to Samsung.

At that rate, how long can it be before solid state storage starts to become a bigger factor in both enterprise data center, consumer electronics and computing devices, especially mobile devices?

Assume a gigabyte of hard disk storage now costs about one dollar. Assume the highest price for solid state storage is $90 a gigabyte in 2007, and that prices will drop 50 percent a year. By 2010, one then sees solid state storage at about $5 to $6 a gigabyte, competitive enough with hard disk drive storage to be reasonable in some applications where energy costs, extended battery life or light weight are important considerations. Make that data center storage applications, notebook computers and portable gaming or music devices as primary examples.

By 2011, one is down to about $2.50 a gigabyte of storage for solid state media. Of course, hard disk drive costs will decline as well. If hard disk storage costs drop at the same rate, a gigabyte of hard disk storage will cost three cents per gigabyte by about 2011. That's still an order of magnitude difference, but for many applications the cost of solid state storage will no longer be a barrier to use in many consumer device or data center applications.

iPhone Mobile Browsing Tops Windows Mobile

In December, it appears that the iPhone OS was used by twice as many users as Windows Mobile, according to Net Applications data for that month. Considering the vastly greater number of Windows Mobile devices in use, that's something.

Mac OS Gains in December

Though Windows remains the overwhelming leader in operating systems, December browser data shows a surge by Apple, iPod and Linux, says Net Applications.

The Mac OS was in use by 7.3 percent of users, up from 6.8 percent in November. The iPhone nudged up to 0.12 percent, up from .09 percent in November.

Microsoft’s Windows still dominates, with a 91.8 percent share.

Net Applications’ monthly surveys represent data from visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by the firm’s clients.

The Linux operating system also showed strong growth, up better than 10 percent to hit a .63 percent share.

60% Medium Enterprise IP Comms in Korea, China, India and Hong Kong

More than 60 percent of mid-sized companies with 2,500 to 9,999 employees in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and India currently are using managed IP PBX and hosted IP telephony for their voice communications, according to researchers at The Yankee Group.

Although enterprises experienced or expect savings on domestic long distance and international direct dial charges when using IP telephony, they also experienced or expect increased spending premium on network equipment, telephony equipment and network security by up to more than 25 percent, Yankee Group says.

User training seems to be the biggest challenge for enterprises deploying IP telephony and UC is user training issues. By geography, user training is a more pressing challenge for companies in Hong Kong (56 percent) and India
(58 percent). Inability to understand the link between technology and business process challenges Korean companies the most (52 percent).

48% Increase in Local Online Ad Spending This Year

Borrell Associates expects a 48 percent increase in local online ad spending in 2008, bringing spending to $12.6 billion. Local search and online video advertising will drive much of the activity, Borrell says.

Local search advertising will more than double to $5 billion, while locally placed online video will triple to almost $1.3 billion.

A major component of local video advertising will be long-form pieces for home, automotive and health-related categories, the firm argues.

Most yellow pages publishers, cable companies, newspapers, radio stations and TV stations are still pinning their hopes on their traditional sales reps being able sell online ad packages. But local sales entities might have to create separate online-only sales forces to get the job done.

Most sales entities face the same problem: it is tough to grow sales for new lines of business when those new lines represent a small percentage of the overall sales opportunity and might even cannibalize the existing business.

Will Femtocells Change Behavior?

According to iLocus, Nokia has found in its most-recent smart phone survey that 35 percent of packet data was consumed on the move, at-home use was 44 percent and in-office use was 21 percent of total.

Overall usage also increased from 6 megabytes a month to 14 megabytes a month.

What will be interesting is to see what happens when appreciable numbers of mobile users have access to femtocells--local transmitters that allow them to use a standard handset with better signal coverage in an indoors setting.

Aside from greater usage because signal quality is better, one wonders if the exposure to high-quality data bandwidth indoors might somehow lead to sustained and permanent changes in use of packet data outside the femtocell or indoors setting.

The other issue is whether users start to rely on mobile handset access in a setting where PCs also have broadband access. What applications or use modes start to become more attractive, even when there is the possibility of using a PC to conduct the same operations?

Of course, the same sort of questions can be asked of dual-mode devices able to switch to Wi-Fi access indoors.

Sprint LG Rumor Bug Found

Sprint has halted shipping new LG LX260 Rumor units to stores because of a bug that can trigger a complete erasure of the phone's firmware, says Christopher Price at PhoneNews.com.

Sprint has isolated the issue to a specific debugging menu, intended for LG engineers to work on the device during development, says Price. Sprint has not disclosed the specific code, to prevent abuse.

The trigger is timed to function only at start up, so users can avoid the problem by not pressing any buttons on the phone for at least 30 seconds after it has fully powered on, Price notes.

The phone, once triggered, cannot be restored except at the factory. The debugging code even erases the portions of the firmware that would allow a Sprint Store to recover the device (requiring what is known in the industry as a JTAG restore, Price notes.

Thriving Even When a Market "Vanishes"

Every trusim must be qualified. Consider the gradual folding of the "long distance" calling business into a "triple play" or "mobile calling" bundle. One might correctly note that long distance increasingly is a feature of some other product that a customer buys.

Some of us have said over the years that long distance has ceased to be a stand-alone business, pointing to the physical disappearance of firms such as at&t and MCI, which were built around long distance calling. But that general statement must be qualified.

It might be true at a high level that long distance has changed, and cannot support a firm such as the old AT&T. But that doesn't mean every stand-alone long distance business disappears. Calling card revenue still seems to be growing, for example.

And one has to point to Skype, Gizmo, Jajah, Rebtel and others as examples of companies making a living on long distance calling.

In the same way, some observers have argued that VoIP increasingly is becoming something sold as part of a triple play bundle, or as the technology underpinning for analog voice. The salient example is Vonage's stand-alone VoIP service contrasted with cable operator digital voice.

Again though, one must say the general rule does not rule out the continued ability of some entities to grow their "stand alone" businesses, even in the face of the existence of the larger trend.

At the same time, voice calling and voice features and services are emerging as an attribute of experiences for which there is some alternative revenue or business model.

Stand alone VoIP will be difficult, in many cases. It will not be impossible or unprofitable. The cost structure of such businesses will have to be optimized. But even the pedestrian calling card has continued to offer some firms an opportunity even as ubiquitous mobile phone usage has become a dominant trend.

Newspapers Not Dead Yet

But the trend line is clear enough. Newspaper advertising has been declining for decades.

But changes of this sort, where some older ways of doing things are replaced by newer ways, can take quite some time to play out, and will inevitably create new opportunities.

"Long distance," for example, has been in a long rate-per-minute decline, but usage has continued to climb. That meant the strategic task for every AT&T executive for years was simply to moderate the decline to the extent possible and prepare for some new business model.

The difference between long distance calling and newspaper advertising revenue is that newspaper ad volume is not rising, as long distance calling continues to do.

But the newspaper ad market is sizable enough that it still offers opportunity for players such as Yahoo, which has a deal with seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country.

Yahoo is sharing content, advertising and technology, initially by newspapers posting their classified jobs ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, while newspapers use HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads.

Over time, the intention is to optimize newspaper content for search and indexing on Yahoo.

DTV Campaign Starts

The digital TV transition campaign has begun. With a Feb. 18, 2009 deadline for complete transition to digital over-the-air broadcasting, Comcast has begun advertising around the subject, with a "we'll take care of" message.

Also,$40 government coupons will be available starting Jan. 2, 2008, to defray the cost of decoders that convert over-the-air digital signals back to analog television for display on analog-only TVs.

The decoder boxes are expected to cost between $50 and $70 and will be available at most major electronics retail stores. Starting Jan. 2, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will begin accepting requests for two $40 coupons per household to be used toward the purchase of the boxes.

To request a coupon, consumers can apply online at http://www.dtv2009.gov. The government also has set up a 24-hour phone line to take requests, 1-888-DTV-2009 (1-888-388-2009).

Outshouts Launches Voice Mashup Service

Outshouts has launched the beta version of its Web service allowing users to create introductions of their favorite audio tracks with their own voice before sending the files to anyone with an email address or mobile phone.

Outshouts can be sent to one person, or a group; marked public or private; or posted as a widget on blogs or social sites like Facebook or Myspace. Recipients do not need to be registered to receive Outshouts and the service is free.

Outshouts supports targeted, personalized micro-casting by making it easy to mash together your own commentary (recorded by phone or computer) on top of your favorite MP3s, and send or posted.

Tracks uploaded from a computer are accessible for sending directly from a mobile phone using an Ineractive Voice Response system.

Knol Could Push Google into Content Creation

Up to this point Google has built its business on helping people find information. In the future, Google also will help people create information. It inexorably will move, in other words, from being a search utility into an information utility. The reason is pretty simple.

What Google does is amass user interactions and attention by giving people powerful search tools. But its monetization scheme is classic media: ad revenues. In some sense, Google "packages" and "distributes" information and content, as does a cable TV operator, magazine or radio or TV broadcaster.

Google also creates its own content, as when it supports Blogger users, for example, or when it pays people for creating compelling content for YouTube. In that role Google is akin to a movie studio, newspaper or record label, in paying for the creation of content.

As some might note, Google has had a mixed record of success in launching new services. It owns YouTube because its homegrown video site wasn't getting traction. GTalk hasn't moved the needle in the instant messaging space. So there is nothing inevitable about the commercial success of Google's Knol effort.

Knol is a new Web service being developed by Google meant to serve as a storehouse of knowledge on the Internet. It apparently will be based on content contributed by various experts on different topics.

Knol will allow people to create Web pages on virtually any topic, and where Wikipedia attempts to create unified entries representing the best information the entire base of users can create, Knol might aim to aggregate various expert opinions on subjects, even if conflicting, rather than a unified view of any subject.

Think of the approach as a library of great books rather than a dictionary.

Google says the Knol project is meant to focus attention on authors who have sufficient expertise on particular topics. Something more akin to a research tool than Google's engine might be, in that sense.

Also, keep in mind that Knol has been described as a project. As sometimes happens, Google might simply decide to go another direction or cancel the project.

The overall impression, though, is that Google is slowly adding content creation to its content-finding mission. Another change is that Google also is a large ad placement entity. In that sense it redefines media in other ways.

It acts as an advertising agency for placement of ads and publishes content as well. So Google is not simply providing search or ad placement. It is contributing to a reshaping of the traditional way media and other parts of the value chain have operated.

300 Million Text Messages New Year's Eve: Verizon

This New Year’s Eve, Verizon Wireless expects its customers to send and receive more than 300 million messages in the 16 hours between 12 p.m. today and 4 a.m. ET New Year’s Day. This forecast of SMS use by Frost & Sullivan shows how expectations have grown over the past couple of years as Frost & Sullivan analysts raised their forecasts.

Australian ISPs will Have to Filter Web Content

Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says Australisan Internet Service Providers will be required to provide filtering of pornography and violent Web sites as the default option for schools and consumers. Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.

Firm Acquires 10 Percent of EarthLink

Steel Partners, a New York-based investment firm, has acquired nearly 10 percent of the shares of EarthLink Inc., or 11.9 million shares. Steel Partners said the total purchase price of the shares is $97.3 million.

Steel Partners is controlled by Warren G. Lichtenstein, a young corporate raider and associate of investor Carl Icahn. Steel Partners may now be EarthLink's largest shareholder.