my fortnightly column, A Dose of IT, that discussed on the 64-bit chips architecture for healthcare ICT Kapil Khandelwal EquNev Capital www.equnev.com

1. cmyk cmyk
DC
US Federal Samsung says YouTube
Bengaluru ● Monday ● 2 August 2010 15
Agency quarterly increases
accuses
Oracle of
fraud.
profit has
surged by 83
percent.
video upload
limit to 15
minutes. Technomics
A dose
of IT
Bitter smartphone war pinches bITs
Google search,
ads blocked
64-bit chips handset vendors’ profit margins
TARMO VIRKI and for high-end phones
with touchscreens in mature
in China
are the future
HELSINKI
regions.
Aug. 1: An increasingly Growth in the global cell-
heated battle in the global phone market is set to slow
smartphone market is set to slightly to 12 percent in the
G
KAPIL KHANDELWAL weigh on handset vendors' July-September quarter, but oogle said Thursday
memory. In Windows profit margins for the rest of there are no signs of a major that its search
operating system that the year, analysts said on slowdown, Strategy Analyt- engine was “fully
T
here is an interest- runs the healthcare ICT Friday. ics said. blocked” in China, along
ing paradox in the applications, that 4GB is All top cellphone vendors The researcher and CCS with Google ads and
ICT industry, that split between the operat- including Nokia, Samsung Insight both estimated the mobile search.
has become part of the ing system and the appli- Electronics and Research in market grew 13 percent in This is the first time that
digital rules from the cations. That means the Motion are rolling out new the April-June quarter, Google has been blocked
1990s till recently, most memory any given smartphone models for the while IDC saw the growth at since March, when it closed
“What Andy Giveth, Bill application can access is holiday sales-fueled fourth 14.5 percent. its search service in China
Taketh Away”, meaning 2GB. This is what Bill quarter. Top vendor Nokia said last and began automatically
that every time Andy Taketh Away! A 64-bit “The smartphone market is week the market grew 14 redirecting users to an
Grove, then CEO of chip, on the other hand, becoming heavily congested percent from a year ago. uncensored search engine
Intel, brought a new chip can address up to 16 as a host of players seek to The phone market saw a in Hong Kong after a stand-
to market, Bill Gates- exabytes of memory boost margins. The reality in sharp downturn last year as off over censorship.
then CEO of Microsoft (that's over 16 billion the second half is set to be the recession sapped Although it has been fairly
would upgrade his soft- gigabytes). This means very different,” said analyst consumer spending on new common since then for the
ware and take away the that A 64-bit processor Geoff Blaber from British gadgets. search engine to be partial-
incremental power of the will improve both the consultancy CCS Insight. Canada’s Research in ly blocked, which Google
new chips. But beyond encoding and decoding “The market will swell in Motion — which broke into describes as between 10
the laugh, there's deep of video for many health- volume but price erosion the No. 4 position in the percent and 66 percent
truth. Moore's Law con- care ICT applications will inevitably result in A pedestrian walks past advertisements of Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S smart- global market in the first blocked, it has not been
stantly enables new soft- and in clinical areas of casualties as value is cap- phone, outside the company's headquarters in Seoul. quarter — held on to it, sell- fully blocked, or 67 percent
ware. Often the new soft- radiology and data heavy tured by a minority rather ing 11.2 million to 100 percent blocked.
ware is just an incremen- applications such as elec- than the majority,” Blaber refreshing its respective and profit growth in the sec- unit margin fell to 9.5 per- Blackberries in the last The announcement came
tal improvement. tronic medical records said. product portfolio, with ond half after reporting tele- cent in the second quarter quarter, just ahead of Sony on a Web page where
But every few years the containing videos., Research firm Strategy greater emphasis on smart- com unit margins slumped and was likely to slip again Ericsson's 11 million Google monitors the avail-
world gets a wild break- Doctors and clinicians Analytics said the ramp-up phones during the second to 7.2 percent as it boosted this quarter. phones. ability of Google services
through-graphic comput- see a noticeable differ- in supply will drive higher half of this year,” said IDC marketing spending in the LG's phone unit made a Both firms held roughly in China. The Web site
ing in the 1980s, web ence in speed, resulting volumes, but this will pres- analyst Ramon Llamas. absence of a strong smart- loss last quarter and had a 3.6 percent of the global notes that “service status in
browsers in the 1990s, in more frames per sec- sure margins as vendors “Still, the upward pressure phone model. negative margin of 3.5 per- market. China has a fluctuating
fast search engines ond and a more film-like fight to outsmart rivals. from vendors outside the Samsung is making a big cent. It has forecast another Market shares of the top nature.” Ms. Hazelbaker
around the mid-2005s playback of the pictures The world's three largest current top five vendors, bet on its top model Galaxy loss for the business in the three changed little in the said that it does not provide
and now the mobile and and videos. There is cellphone makers — Nokia, particularly Apple and S, which went on sale last current quarter. quarter, with Nokia holding updates in real-time, which
mobility computing. The nothing much more Bill Samsung and LG Electron- Motorola, will provide month, while Nokia is Market growing again: 36 percent, Strategy is why the outage last night
paradox held fine till Taketh Away! While ics — all saw smartphone tough competition in the counting on its upcoming The cellphone market Analytics said. showed up late Thursday.
Microsoft’s Windows Intel, on the other hand, rivalry hitting their profit quarters to come,” Llamas N8 model to win a larger grew in April-June for the Samsung holds 21 percent Since July, when China
Vista operating took have also launched their margins in the April-June said. share of the high-end third quarter in a row, boost- of the market and LG 10 renewed Google’s license
away the incremental of 64-bits versions of their quarter. Samsung on Friday market. ed by demand for low-end percent. to operate there, it has oper-
the dual core chips of Atom D series proces- “Each is in the midst of warned of weaker margins Nokia has said its phone models in emerging markets — Reuters ated its Chinese Web site,
Intel and AMD that pow- sors to give the benefits Google.cn, and some Web
The cloud’s on notice, its being watched
ered the desktops and of the 64-bits versions of services, and enabled users
laptops. netbooks that would be to click to search the uncen-
The paradox reversed preferred by doctors and sored search engine in
when Intel launched the care givers as they are Hong Kong,
Atom processor that light and easy to carry ASHLEE VANCE you will get the same per- Google.com.hk.
powered the netbooks around, Microsoft has on NEW YORK formance as Google.com or — Reuters
and made mobility com- its part started shipping Amazon.com,” Mr. Mouline
puting within the reach
of common consumers.
the 64-bit versions of its
Windows 7 operating
Aug. 1: The cloud has been
put on notice: It’s being
said. “That’s the first idea
we need to make sure peo- Tool released
This meant that Windows system and the Office watched. ple get away from.
operating system had to 2010. A new graphical tool from “The cloud is opaque,” Mr. to attack
down grade to meet the What is surprising is Compuware, CloudSleuth, Mouline added. “If you’re
computing power of
Intel’s Atom processor.
that 64-bit chip being
around for a few years,
has arrived, in beta form, to
measure and display the
running an application in the
cloud, you really don’t
Android OS
As a result of this chip Microsoft’s 64-bit Inter- speeds at which cloud com- know what is going on at the
innovation, Microsoft net Explorer does not puting services run. The infrastructure level.”
had to innovate and have compatible 64-bits CloudSleuth tool already The physical location of
change the architecture Adobe Flash Player tracks Amazon.com, data centers plays a huge
of is operating system which runs many web- Microsoft, Google and a roll in response times. For
and launch Windows 7 in based medical video couple of other cloud example, someone in Wash-
2009. Around the same applications. On the providers. And it demon- ington, D.C., requesting a
time in the late 1990s, other hand, healthcare strates that response times file from Amazon.com’s
AMD showcased the 64- ICT communications do indeed vary from opera- East Coast data center
T
bits chips for computers front, many high-end tor to operator. It displays should receive a response in wo security experts
and servers. The 64-bits phones that are used for these results on a map that less than a second, while the said on Friday they
chips were based on medical applications run- gives people an idea for the same task would take about released a tool for
Intel’s core technologies ning on the Blackberry worldwide performance of 11 seconds to complete if attacking smartphones that
and what ensued was a and Windows Mobile 6.5 different data centers at a the request came from Cali- use Google Inc's Android
battle of supremacy Professional are also not quick glance. fornia. operating system to per-
between Intel and AMD compatible 64-bits Imad Mouline, the chief Cloud providers have tend- suade manufacturers to fix
on cross-licensing of the Microsoft Office 2010 technology officer at Com- the speed it takes to com- OpSource ranks second at systems are complex ed to offer service-level a bug that lets hackers read
chip technologies for syncing together. puware’s Internet monitor- plete the request. 6.61 seconds, followed by because companies have all agreements that focused on a victim's email and text
between the two comput- Microsoft and Blackber- ing division, Gomez, said he In addition, Gomez per- Google at 6.77 seconds and types of different applica- the overall uptime of their messages.
ing chip giants for perpe- ry and many other ven- designed the cloud tracking forms similar operations Amazon.com 6.82 seconds. tions running in the same services. Amazon.com says “It wasn’t difficult to
tuity till they merge or dors are now going to be system to provide customers from people’s PCs. (The Amazon figure is for data center. The interaction it will be up 99.95 percent of build,” said Nicholas Per-
get acquired by another. releasing their 64-bits with a way of judging the All told, it can build a pic- its East Coast data center. Its of all this software can pose the time, for instance. coco, head of Spider Labs,
The benefits of a 64- compatible applications various services on the mar- ture of how the cloud servic- West Coast, European and performance challenges and But Mr. Mouline urged who along with a col-
bits chip is that doubling by 2011. Looks like the ket. es perform on both high- Asian data centers had slow- makes the cloud services customers to begin thinking league, released the tool at
the amount of data a paradox has now “I thought, ‘Why don’t we speed corporate networks er response times.) less responsive than the con- about making response time the Defcon hacker’s confer-
CPU can process per changed to “What Paul put these guys to the test?’” and slower home connec- The rankings were the trolled, fine-tuned data cen- demands as well. ence in Las Vegas on Fri-
clock cycle. Today's 32- (Intel’s CEO) Innovates, he said. tions. same for the availability of ters that the likes of Ama- “We have already seen day. Percoco said it took
bit Intel and AMD chips Steve (Microsoft’s CEO) Gomez has set up identical Looking worldwide over the cloud systems, leaving zon.com and Google run for huge improvements in per- about two weeks to build
can address up to 4GB of Loses to Catcheth Up” servers in data centers the past 30 days, Microsoft as the fastest and their internal operations. formance,” Mr. Mouline the malicious software that
around the globe that Microsoft’s relatively new most reliable cloud “Just because you run your said. “We know the cloud could allow criminals to
Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare and request the same files from Azure platform has per- provider. application on Amazon’s guys are watching this and steal precious information
ICT expert. Kapil@KapilKhandelwal.com the various cloud computing formed the best, responding Mr. Mouline stressed that EC2 or Google’s trying to improve their from Android smartphones.
systems. It then measures to requests in 6.46 seconds. the inner workings of cloud AppEngine, do not think scores.” — NYT — Reuters
RIM plans a
$200 textbook vs free, you do the math tablet launch
in November
ASHLEE VANCE an online hub for free text- cialized, pricey technology. adopted the open-source dures that will let open-
R
NEW YORK books and other course And then, in what seemed mantra of the software source textbooks begin mak- esearch In Motion
material that he spearheaded liked a flash, Sun’s business world and started financing ing their way through the will introduce a
Aug. 1: Infuriating Scott G. six years ago. came undone as a wave of open-source books. Experts arduous approval process. tablet computer in
McNealy has never been “We are spending $8 bil- cheaper computers and free, — often retired teachers or Last year, Texas passed a November to compete with
easier. Just bring up math lion to $15 billion per year open-source software groups of teachers — write law promoting the use of Apple Inc's iPad,
textbooks. on textbooks” in the United proved good enough to han- these books and allow any- open, digital texts and is Bloomberg News reported
Mr. McNealy, the fiery co- States, Mr. McNealy says. dle many tasks once done by one to distribute them in reviewing material that on Friday, citing two peo-
founder and former chief “It seems to me we could put Sun computers. digital, printed or audio for- might be used in schools. ple familiar with the com-
executive of Sun Microsys- that all online for free.” At first, Sun fought the mats. Schools can rearrange In California, a state board pany's plans.The Waterloo,
tems, shuns basic math text- The nonprofit Curriki fits open-source set, and then it the contents of the books to is studying whether open Ontario-based maker of the
books as bloated monstrosi- into an ever-expanding list joined the party by making suit their needs and require- texts meet state require- BlackBerry smartphone
ties: their price keeps rising of organizations that seek to the source code to its most ments. ments. The CK-12 Founda- will call the device the
while the core information bring the blunt force of valuable software available But progress with these tion, a nonprofit financed by Blackpad, according to one
inside of them stays the Internet economics to bear to anyone. open-source texts has been another Sun co-founder, of the sources. The Black-
same. on the education market. Too little, too late. Sun’s slow. Vinod Khosla, has created pad is expected to have
“Ten plus 10 has been 20 Even the traditional text- Scott G. McNealy, with his 12-year-old son, Dakota. Mr. sales continued to decline, California and Texas dom- several texts that have met about the same dimensions
for a long time,” Mr. book publishers agree that McNealy is trying to bring open-source textbooks to making it vulnerable to a inate the market for text- the board’s criteria. as the iPad and cost about
McNealy says. the days of tweaking a few classrooms, from kindergarten to high school. takeover. books used in kindergarten “In three and a half years, as much as the $499-plus
Early this year, Oracle, the pages in a book just to sell a Houghton Mifflin Har- through high school, and we have developed nine of Apple tablet, the report said
database software maker, new edition are coming to an president of Houghton Mif- els.” court and other top textbook publishers do all they can to the core textbooks for high RIM is expected to unveil
acquired Sun for $7.4 bil- end. flin Harcourt. “Our cus- Mr. McNealy had his own publishers now face their, meet these states’ require- school,” says Neeru Khosla, a revamped version of the
lion, leaving Mr. McNealy “Today, we are engaged in tomers are asking us to look encounter with value-based forgive me, moment in the ments and lock in their mil- Mr. Khosla’s wife and the BlackBerry, aiming to
without a job. He has since a very different dialogue at different ways to experi- pricing models while run- sun. lions of students for years. head of CK-12. “If you compete more effectively
decided to aim his energy with our customers,” says ment and to look at different ning Sun. The company had Over the last few years, Both states have only don’t try this, nothing will against iPhone and other
and some money at Curriki, Wendy Colby, a senior vice value-based pricing mod- thrived as a result of its spe- groups nationwide have recently established proce- change.” — NYT smartphones. — Reuters