Introduction

1 Introduction 1.1 The Convergence Device Convergence has been one of the major technology trends of the last decade. Like all trends, its roots go back much further; in this case you would probably trace them back to the first combination of computing and communications technologies that led to the birth of the Internet. Human interactions that had previously taken place via the physical transportation of paper could now occur almost instantaneously to any connected computer in the world. Increases in computing power, digital storage capacity and communications bandwidth then enabled more complex media – such as voice, music, high resolution images and video – to enter this digital world. Today, near instant global communications are available in multiple media, or multimedia, as they’re commonly described. At the same time this was happening, communications were shifting from fixed wires to mobile radio technologies, allowing people to connect with one another from anywhere. Computing has become increasingly portable, freeing users to work and play on the move. Imaging and video converged with computing to give us digital cameras and camcorders. Music and video distribution and storage have gone first digital and then portable. Global positioning technology combined with portable computing has brought us personal navigation devices. Almost inevitably, miniaturization and integration have led to the development of the ultimate convergence device – the multimedia smartphone. The term ‘smartphone’ was first applied to devices which combined the features of a mobile phone and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). As technology has advanced, that functionality is now available in some fairly low-end models. In response, the definition of what constitutes a smartphone has changed over time. High-end models are now differen- tiated with additional features, including hardware-accelerated graphics and video, multi-megapixel cameras, GPS and more sophisticated and 2 INTRODUCTION intuitive input methods – smartphones are getting smarter! Symbian currently defines a smartphone as: a mobile phone that uses an operating system based on industry standards, designed for the requirements of advanced mobile telephony communica- tion on 2.5G networks or above. The key distinction between a smartphone and a less capable ‘feature phone’ is the operating system. A smartphone operating system is capable of supporting the installation of native applications after the device has been purchased. Examples of smartphones include devices based on Symbian OS and Microsoft Windows Mobile as well as RIM’s BlackBerry devices and Apple’s iPhone. Smartphones are often referred to as the Swiss Army knives of the consumer electronics world – they have multiple functions, as Figure 1.1 shows. Arguably, the screen size of current smartphones isn’t ideal for web browsing or viewing pictures and videos, the input methods are limited and the quality of camera optics and speakers are constrained by the size of the device. However, there are massive advantages in cost and in having all of these functions available at any time in a single device. Unlike the humble Swiss Army knife, the smartphone is programmable – enabling new synergies and combinations of features not Figure 1.1 Some of the functions of a typical convergence device: taking still and video images, playing music and radio, navigating by GPS, browsing the web and, of course, making voice calls and SMS TRANSFORMATION OF THE MEDIA INDUSTRY 3 possible on separate devices. For example, you can discover, purchase and download new music and video content direct to your device; a blogger, social network user or Internet journalist can capture, compose, upload and view content with a single gadget – no need to transfer between devices or convert between formats. Better still, because most smartphones are open to third-party software, you can customize your device and add new features throughout its life as new technologies and services become available. When discussing the importance and utility of the smartphone, it is cer- tainly worth considering the developing world. When current smartphone users evaluate devices their perceptions are shaped by their experiences with the Internet on a PC, video on their televisions and DVD players, music on their home stereos and possibly photography on a high-end camera or camcorder. In contrast to that, there are many hundreds of millions of people whose first experiences of the Internet have been, or will be, on a mobile phone. As devices become cheaper and today’s latest model is replaced with something more powerful it seems very likely that, for many of those same people, their first experiences of television, photography and other applications will be on today’s smartphones. Perhaps some will even be able to share their world and perspectives with a wider audience for the first time. Although it’s easy for most users to take new technology for granted after a very short time, it isn’t only engineers, enthusiasts and those who’ve skipped earlier generations of technology who can get excited about the multimedia capabilities of smartphones – mobile multimedia is big business too! 1.2 Transformation of the Media Industry The media industry is familiar with disruptive technologies coming along and changing its business models. In the early 1980s in the USA, film companies fought to suppress the spread of mass-market video recorders, fearing that copyright violations would damage their business. They failed, but in the years that followed they found that video recordings of their products had become a major source of income. In the twenty- first century, the convergence of technologies described above permits an unlimited number of copies of media content to be produced and distributed globally for very little cost. Traditional media distributors are challenged and again the content owners are understandably concerned about copyright infringement. Newspapers and magazines are being replaced by websites. CD and DVD sales are being replaced by Internet streaming, downloads and peer-to-peer file sharing. Combined with this, the new technologies have also seeded a very rapidly growing trend in social networking and consumer-generated content. 4 INTRODUCTION The primary tools for creating and consuming this content are convergence devices. Sales of camera phones exceeded those of dedicated digital cameras in 2003. The world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia, is also the largest manufacturer of digital cameras and music players. In Japan, 90% of digital music sales are on mobile devices, while South Korea has become the first market where digital sales have overtaken physical music sales. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2007–2011,1 digital and mobile spending in the sec- tor will rise to $153 billion in 2011, by which time spending related to the distribution of entertainment and media on convergent platforms (convergence of the home computer, wireless handset and television) will exceed 50% of the global total. It should be noted that smartphones are not the only ‘convergent platforms’, although they do account for a large volume of such devices. To provide some more mobile-specific figures, Juniper Research predicts total mobile music revenues – including ring- tones and ringback tones2 – to rise from around $9.3 billion in 2007 to more than $17.5 billion by 2012, with much of that growth coming from full track downloads. Additionally, Juniper expects mobile TV, broadcast and streamed, to experience spectacular revenue growth from just under $1.4 billion in 2007 to nearly $12 billion by 2012. The projected rise in spending on downloads of music to mobile devices is illustrated by Figure 1.2, with figures taken from the 2008 Netsize Guide.3 A lot of the revenue generated will belong to the content owners but the shifting landscape, combined with the rapidly increasing number of smartphones,4 will produce plenty of opportunities to develop new services and business models. New companies and brands can grow and market share is likely to shift between established brands as everyone competes for the attention of the mobile consumer. One great weapon in that competition is the ability to provide an optimal experience for the end user with a customized client or player application. To this end, Symbian empowers developers by providing the means to extend and enhance the features of the latest smartphones with applications and utilities. The part of Symbian OS concerned with multimedia content creation and consumption, known as the multimedia subsystem, is the subject of the rest of this book. 1See www.pwc.com/extweb/ncpressrelease.nsf/docid/E042C329AE02897485257301 0051F342. 2In Asia, ringback tones are provided by a popular subscription service: users select the music that is heard by callers while they’re waiting for an answer. 3See www.netsize.com. 4Cumulative sales are forecast to pass the 1 billion mark by 2011 according to both the Yankee Group and Canalys (www.symbian.com/about/fastfacts.html). SYMBIAN OS 5 $18,000 Africa & Middle East $16,000 $14,000 Rest of Asia Pacific $12,000 India Sub Continent $10,000 China & Far East $8,000 $6,000 Eastern Europe $4,000 Western Europe $2,000 $0 South America 2007 2008 2009 North America 2010 2011 2012 Source: Juniper Research Figure 1.2 Total user-generated revenues ($M) from mobile music (forecast for 2007–12) 1.3 Symbian OS Symbian creates and licenses Symbian OS, the market leading, open operating system for mobile phones. It’s not the only smartphone operating system you can target with multimedia applications and services but it is by far the most popular. According to Canalys,5 in 2007, Symbian had a 67% share of the market for converged device operating systems (Canalys combines smartphones with other wireless handhelds in their statistics). For comparison, next in the list was Microsoft with 13%. Symbian does not make smartphones itself, but works with its licensees, which number the world’s largest handset manufacturers.

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