Mobility Madness at CES

This year's Consumer Electronics Show included a cornucopia of evolutionary notebook, smartphone, and wireless carrier announcements.

Focal Points:

• In the wake of Apple Inc.'s huge success of the Macbook Air and the surge in component availability to non-Apple hardware manufacturers, the major PC vendors announced numerous competing ultrabook subnotebooks this week. Since the ultrabook category is predicated on the use of Intel Corp. components, all feature current-generation Intel consumer ultra-low voltage (CULV) Sandy Bridge mobile processors. Lenovo Group, Ltd. announced two IdeaPad U series ultrabooks with 13.3-inch screens and the choice of integrated or dedicated graphics. Prices start at $700. Hewlett-Packard Co.'s new Spectre has a 14-inch screen, is only 20 millimeters (mm) thick and features 4 gigabytes (GB) to 8 GB of memory, up to nine hours of continuous battery life, and Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.  Available by early March, Dell Inc.'s new XPS 13 is aimed at business professionals with a 13-inch screen but has the footprint of a smaller notebook while maintaining a full-sized keyboard. Starting at $1,000, the XPS 13 can accommodate up to 256 GB of solid state disk (SSD) storage. Weighing less than 3 lbs., Acer Inc. says its new S5 is the thinnest ultrabook available, uses a 13.3-inch screen, and features cloud-based backup and the company's Green Instant On technology to speed system resume times.
• In an effort to expand their respective market reaches and encroach into each other's venues of dominance, Qualcomm Inc.  and Intel announced new product efforts. Dissatisfied with Intel's monopoly in the ultrabook space ("ultrabook" is an Intel classification), mobile processor behemoth Qualcomm is looking for its ARM-based Snapdragon S4 chips to become a serious alternative. The company is negotiating with PC vendors to get them to build PCs around the new processor, which will be able to run Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 8 operating system. System designs would potentially feature integrated 3G and/or 4G network technologies as well as instant on functionality. Meanwhile, Intel demonstrated new smartphones using its upcoming "Medfield" Atom processors. It also announced that both Lenovo and Motorola Mobility Inc. will ship devices based on the processor later this year. Previous Intel offerings were poorly received due to their poor battery consumption.
• As the carrier looks to bolster its strength with and the revenue derived from enterprise clients, AT&T Mobility LLC announced a platform to help business manage, control, and secure application deployment. The AT&T Mobile Application Management powered by Apperian uses Apperian's Enterprise App Services Environment to deliver an enterprise application catalog and allow IT departments to manage application and data access, as well as wipe smartphones if lost. The company is also offering developers assistance in application building and releasing the AT&T Mobile Application Management's optional software developer kit (SDK) to assist with authentication, authorization, reporting and tracking. The company is also providing a new application programming interface (API) platform to encourage developers' use of HTML5 and connect with smartphone functionality integration including location, MMS, mobile-health capabilities, and SMS. Most of the functionality other than geolocation is tied to devices using the AT&T network.

Experton Group believes the onslaught of new ultrabook notebooks has only just begun as manufacturers aim to inject the slowing market segment with a dose of excitement and improved margins. Notebooks and their designs have been regarded as passé over the last several years as interest in smartphones and tablets has stolen a majority of the attention. While ultrabooks remain more evolutionary than revolutionary, and only account for low double-digit percentages in sales, manufacturers are hoping that enough excitement can be created to reach up to 50 percent of sales over the next several years. IT executives should expect ultrabooks to become the new standard for notebook purchases within the next three to five years as sleeker designs and the inclusion of SSD offer improvements in portability and durability. Ultrabooks are both an improvement on existing designs and will gain enough mass appeal to quickly become the new standard. Qualcomm's desire to expand its presence into notebook designs is understandable and admirable, though it seems a bit of a reach given current capabilities. While ARM designs are able to run the "Mango" portion of Windows 8, the majority of enterprise and consumer users will require full-fledged application access on their notebook platforms. Moreover, while the world is headed towards being continuously connected to the cloud, this effort is unlikely to get far without full-fledged x86 compatibility. IT executives should know that this may be the next Smartbook and should pay little attention. Intel's movements into the smartphone space may be similarly mired in past failures, though it has a better chance of moving into the space given recent improvements in battery management. AT&T's desire to expand beyond offering network availability is logical given, if done correctly, the ability to add customer value in a highly profitable space while encouraging lock-in.  As IT executives know, carriers have a long history of trying to deliver such packages before and exceptionally poor track records. IT executives should expect most of these efforts to endure the same fate as prior efforts and should continue to adopt agnostic platform choices to secure future flexibility and choice.