Fall of the Titans

For decades, Blackberry was the most dominant player in the smart phones market while Nokia dominated the low end phone market. The dynamics have swiftly changed in the recent past, with entry of other players such as Huawei, Samsung, Apple, Sony, LG and many others, the titans of the phone market have been falling. In a bid to recover, Nokia announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft in February 2011, leading to the replacement of Symbian with Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system in all Nokia smartphones. Following the replacement of the Symbian system, Nokia's smartphone sales figures, which had previously increased, collapsed dramatically. From the beginning of 2011 until 2013, Nokia fell from its position as the world's largest smartphone vendor to assume the status of tenth largest. On 2 September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business unit in which Stephen Elop, Nokia's former CEO, and several other executives will join Microsoft as part of the deal.

Looking at Nokia’s nostalgic past, for a brand familiar from black rubber boots with an unusually clever heel design, it was highly unlikely that the company would reign the telecommunications world in the late 1990s.  Even more fascinating, the company had a triple-layered Nokia toilet paper that gave you that luxurious wiping experience. While most of the electronic companies like Apple, Siemens, Sony and Philips focused on televisions, gaming, computers and so on, Nokia took a leap into the mobile telephony industry.  Nokia’s main rivals were Ericsson and Motorola but Nokia was dominant at a 30% market share. In Kenya, Nokia took the lion’s share with the most popular device being the Nokia 3310, with consumers convinced of its reliability and durability.  A Kenyan based company, Virtual City, developed applications based on Nokia’s Symbian OS due to its popularity and through which the company won $ 1 Million in a Nokia sponsored global competition.

On the other hand, Blackberry’s Research In Motion is quickly becoming one of the most troubled companies in the mobile technology industry. For years, the company was atop its game, delivering some of the finest products in the business and generating stellar earnings for shareholders. But this has since changed and the company has lain off some of the staff to contain the operational costs. The financial statements of the company paint a downward trend of performance; the reported profits fell from $797 million to $329 million in 2013. The major Blackberry outages have not been helping either. The devices access data via propriety Access Point Name (APN), which could be based on RIM infrastructure - BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) - or on-premise infrastructure- BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES). In April 2007 and again in February 2008, there were outages on the BIS platform that affected Blackberry customers but none of the other smart phones which normally ride on a public APN. The outages have overshadowed the security benefits that a Blackberry APN offers and customers now prefer a public APN with security features onboard on their phones.

RIM has also been lagging behind in providing a more user friendly interface of their mobile devices. Consumers would find the device complex to set up and use, opting for other friendlier devices. Until the Blackberry Storm, the company did not provide touch screen phones unlike their competitor such as Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, HTC, Motorola Droid and many others. Another growing trend in the enterprise space is Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) such that different employees have varying devices depending on their preference. This means that enterprises find investing on BES less lucrative than before.

According to Gartner, the total global sales of mobile devices declined by 1.7 percent in 2012 compared to 2011, a worrying trend for companies whose profits are already declining. Partly could be because of the hard economic times throughout the world but also because the market is saturated by companies producing smart devices based on free Android OS. The populous markets such as in Asian have more and more home branded devices and import sell of the foreign established smart phones manufactures such as RIM. The future is bright for tablet though, researchers predict a PC-less future.

Credits

http://www.eweek.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

http://www.gartner.com

Future Outlook Of Public Transport In Kenya

A few months ago, Equity Bank in partnership with Google launched a payment smart card for the public transport industry known as BebaPay. The aim of this card was to introduce as cashless mode of payment that would be convenient for both commuters and conductors. The owners of the vehicles would also benefit as they would be assured of money in the bank for every transaction. Commuters can load the cards using mobile money transfer or Equity agents and while on transit, the conductors would use a card reader or smartphones with Near-Field Communication (NFC) to deduct the fare. The commuter then receives a text message confirming the payment. This way, passenger do not have to keep lose change every time they require to travel by public means.

Another interesting launch in the transport industry was the free Wifi Internet in matatus and long-distance travel buses. Considering the many hours we are stuck in traffic in Kenya, this is a useful feature in public transport. It may also bring along other applied applications, such as advertising through digital media signage and so on. In the railways sector, the Rift Valley Railways launched the Syokimau Train Station, which would be the first to utilize smart cards. Nairobi Commuter Railway (NCR) prepaid card allows a commuter to pay electronically for both Rail to Bus and Bus to Rail services. The prepaid smart card provided by KAPS solutions provider, will improve passenger flow and efficiency at the train station. Given this trend, the face of public transport in Kenya is set to change in the near future.

But how does a smart card work and what are the requirements? A smart card, chip with engrafted integrated circuits and are made up of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, or polyethylene terephthalate.  A good example of a smart card is a SIM card on your mobile phone. A smart card holds information and it can be programmed for several applications. Smart cards can be designed to be inserted into a slot and read by a special reader or to be read at a distance. For a smart card read at a distance, contactless smart card, the chip communicates with the card reader through an induction technology similar to that of Radio-frequency identification (RFID) at data rates of 106 to 848 kbit/s.

Contactless cards require only close proximity to an antenna to complete a transaction and are often used when transactions must be processed quickly or hands-free, at train stations and parking lots. Smart phones with Near field communication (NFC) feature and communicate with smart cards at close proximity, that is, they can be used as card readers. Once the cards readers have obtained the required information, the data is sent to a transport management system for authentication, say if a PIN is required and transaction completion, in this case fare deduction. Connectivity between the card readers and the transport management system can be on 3G or other Wide Area Network technologies.

Globally, mass transit agencies, such as railway companies, have been using stored value prepaid cards for electronic ticketing since the 1970s. Through the late 1990s, this market steadily began transitioning from magnetic stripe technology to contactless smart cards. In London, SquidCard.com, offers a smart card-powered bicycle renting program. The program will allow members to rent one of 6,000 bicycles at 400 locations. Members of the service are issued with a plastic card, which is used to release the bicycles. The service costs £3 to register, with access charges of £1, £5, and £45, depending on the frequency at which the customer uses the service. In order to keep the bikes in circulation, members will be charged additional fees after a half hour of use. In South Africa, the use smart cards in mass public transport were essential during the world cup in 2010. The public transport system ferried approximately 3 Million fans in and out of stadia on daily basis.

The benefits of smart cards are directly related to the volume of information and applications that are programmed for use on a card. A single contact/contactless smart card can be programmed with multiple banking credentials, medical entitlement, driver’s license/public transport entitlement, loyalty programs and club memberships and more. Multi-factor and proximity authentication can and has been embedded into smart cards to increase the security of all services on the card. There are challenges facing the smart cards though. The most important challenge is that the cards are susceptible to a security breach. In particular, though uncommon, malware can override communication between the user and the underlying application and modify the transaction input. This calls for continual scanning of the systems to ensure that any malware is detected. Security threats can also be non-invasive. For instance, an attacker may develop equipment that can be disguised as a normal smart card reader. Using the gathered information, the attacker can regenerate a similar smart card and carry out transactions. The other risk of smart cards is physical damage; most users would keep them in wallets or back pockets leading to damage of the chips.

Cyber Attacks Become Epic

Recently, the world witnessed the largest ever cyber heist, where cyber criminals hacked various debit card companies and $45 Million vanished from customers’ accounts. 45 Million dollars, approximately 4 Billion Kenya Shillings! The gang of eight withdrew monies from 26 countries throughout the globe in a coordinated manner. The first instance of the criminal activity happened on December 22, 2012 and the second on February 19-20 this year. After allegedly manipulating the withdrawal limits set by banks, casher gangs worldwide hit the ATMs, conducting some 4,500 transactions worth $5 million across about 20 countries. In the second attack, the group broke into the Bank of Muscat based in Oman. Then in the space of 10 hours, casher cells in 24 countries conducted some 36,000 transactions, withdrawing $40 million from ATMs.

Let’s not forget that on 20 March 2013, three South Korean television stations and a bank where cyber attacked, leaving all workstations frozen such that most of the staff could not work. About 48,000 PCs and servers in the organizations were struck during the incident. The assault shut down computer networks at TV stations KBS, MBC and YTN, and halted operations at three banks - Shinhan, NongHyup and Jeju. Some ATM withdraws and mobile payments could not be transacted. The malware, known as “DarkSeoul” in the computer world, evaded some of South Korea’s most popular antivirus products and to render computers unusable. Globally, a growing trend of cybercrime is through ATM fraud. Cyber criminals can gather ATM credentials from the magnetic strip of ATM cards and create replicas that are used to withdraw customer’s funds without their knowledge.

Another form of cybercrime that’s been growing is Identity theft. This is a form of stealing someone's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. A person’s details illegally obtained could include email addresses and their passwords. Using such details, cyber-criminals can initiate and authorize transactions at the victim’s expense. For Google Mail users, an easy way to avoid this is by using the two-step authentication method to access your inbox. Two-step verification adds an extra layer of security to your users' Google Apps accounts by requiring them to enter a verification code in addition to their username and password, when signing in to their account. It helps protect a user's account from unauthorized access should someone manage to obtain their password. Even if a password is cracked, guessed, or otherwise stolen, an attacker can't sign in without access to the user's verification codes, which only the user can obtain via their own mobile phone.

Coming closer home, for the last few years, there has been a rising number of ATM fraud cases. According to PricewaterCoopers (PwC) Global Economic crime survey, some regions including Kenya, South Africa and UK reported an increase of 40 per cent in fraud cases in 2011. Last year, Deloitte Kenya reported that commercial banks in Kenya are losing more than Sh3 billion a year, with Automated Teller Machine (ATM) fraud. This has been compounded by the rising number of carjacking incidents, which result into forced ATM withdrawals. Despite the rise in ATM fraud, the banking sector maintained a low profile on the matter. Shouldn’t they publicize the incidents to create awareness for their customers to be weary of this form of cybercrime? Statistically, there were more than 10.7 million ATMs, credit and debit cards in circulation by end of 2012, representing a 6 per cent increase over the previous year in Kenya. This is in tandem with the growth in the purchasing power of the population but so has the risk of ATM fraud, a larger target for the cyber criminals. To curb future ATM fraud, banks are now migrating from the magnetic strip ATM cards to the chip-based ones.

One of the effective ways of preventing cybercrime is by use of public key infrastructure, which allocates virtual identities to internet and digital services users. A PKI-public key infrastructure- enables users of a basically unsecure public network such as the Internet to securely and privately exchange data and money through the use of a public and a private cryptographic key pair that is obtained and shared through a trusted authority. The public key infrastructure provides for a digital certificate that can identify an individual or an organization and directory services that can store and, when necessary, revoke the certificates. Last year, Kenya was said to planning to adopt PKI through the Kenya ICT Board. Has there been any progress?

The Battery Life Challenge

The Mobile World Congress 2013 took place on 25–28 February at Fira Gran Via, in Barcelona, Spain. The event was the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a conference featuring prominent executives representing mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content providers from across the world. This year, a different dynamic trend was taking shape; focus on the battery life of mobile devices. Previously, mobile devices manufacturers have been embroiled in a battle for supremacy in terms of processing power, memory, operating system and applications. However, as much as these components may be perfected, a cell phone's battery life has become one of the most important considerations when manufacturing a mobile device. In fact, customers are now keen on evaluating smart phones based on their battery lives. Most customers have seen their smart devices run out of charge while they are in the middle of an important call or replying to an urgent email. Most rural customers may not have the privilege of electricity and thus cannot maintain devices that require daily charging. Even though battery technology has improved 300% in the past 20 years, mobile technology has advanced more than a thousand-fold during the same time period.

The mobile devices manufacturers can borrow a leaf from the medicine fraternity. Batteries are used in implantable cardiac pacemakers to generate electric pulse in the heart. This presents unique challenges to their developers and manufacturers in terms of high levels of safety and reliability. In addition, the batteries must have longevity to avoid frequent replacements. The cardiac pacemaker uses half of its battery power for cardiac stimulation and the other half for housekeeping tasks such as monitoring and data logging. Using modern technology, the battery of a cardiac pacemaker lasts for about ten years and even today is the power source for many manufacturers of cardiac pacemakers. The initial pacemakers could only last for two years and required the patient to undergo a surgical procedure to replace the battery. The good news is that the procedure to change your pacemaker's battery is often quicker and requires less recovery time than the procedure to first implant your pacemaker.



At the Mobile World Congress 2013, Nokia unveiled a stripped-down cell phone aimed at the budget-conscious consumer and long battery life. The Nokia 105 mobile phone will retail for approximately Kshs. 1,500 and has a feature a battery that only needs charging. The phone features include 1.45-inch, 128 x 128 resolution color TFT screen, 8 MB ROM memory, no camera, flashlight, FM radio, speaking alarm clock, and five basic games, like Sudoku and the classic Snake. On a full charge, the Nokia 105 can deliver 12.5 hours of talk time or remain powered for up to 35 days on standby. On other hand, Samsung has recently released an infographic titled “Resolving the Battery Challenge in Mobile Devices” to show how modern mobile memory solutions help solving the battery life challenge in mobile devices. Samsung’s mobile memory solution, known as LPDRAM, can lower operating power consumption by 33% and standby power consumption by nearly 90%. That’s enough power to keep mobile devices on standby for more than 500 hours. There is also a new kid on the block, SpareOne. The cellular phone runs on a single AA battery, similar to the ones used in the torch or remote control, providing a constant line of communication even in the absence of electricity as well as the ability to pre-program important phone numbers for easy access to visitor, travel and emergency services. The phone can offer ten hours of talk time and can hold charge for up to 15 years if unused.

Meanwhile, as we continue to use our smartphones, there are a few tips on how to keep our batteries going. Due to the huge displays screen, a lot of power charge is consumed whenever we use our mobile devices. The best way to reduce this power consumption is by dimming the screen, especially during daytime when we can easily view the content of the screen. The lower the brightness, the lower the power required. The next thing is to ensure a short lock screen timeout, could be a few seconds, such that the phone locks and shuts the displays within the shortest period after use. Another aspect that most of us are not aware of is to avoid vibration mode. For a phone to vibrate, a micro motor is power to initiate the vibration mechanism, and this consumes power. A ringtone alert will suffice in most of the occasions. Now, we are fond of applications such as Google Navigator, four square and so on, that indicate our current location using the Global Positioning System. Most of the time, we forget or ignore to switch off the GPS functionality on the phone once we are done. With continue updates from the satellites, the phone consumes a great deal of power, thus turn off GPS when it’s not necessary.

Whenever we find a hotspot, we turn on our phone’s Wifi to take advantage of the low cost speedy Internet. Yet again, we often forget to turn it off afterwards. Though Wifi consumes less power than the GSM signal, we can save power by turning off Wifi when we are not using it. The same case applies to activation of Bluetooth. The other aspects is to abort applications that run in the background while we multitask, the more the applications, the more the processing power and the more the processing power, the more the battery power consumed. Lastly, we need to limit the notification we get; facebook, twitter, emails, meeting reminders and so on, or reduce the frequency.

Women in Technology

According to Wikipedia, in the US, women’s representation in the computing and information technology workforce has been falling from a peak of 38% in the mid-1980s to a lower value between 29 % and 27% in the 2000s. This is despite the tremendous growth in the two over the last decade. A similar situation prevails in the education sector, the number of women represented in undergraduate computer science education and the white-collar information technology workforce peaked in the mid-1980s, and has declined ever since. In 1984, 37.1% of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women; the percentage dropped to 29.9% in 1989-1990, and 26.7% in 1997-1998 and less than 12% of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women in 2010-11. Would the challenge be attitude towards these fields, the fear of being a geeky lady?

However, despite this trend, there have been remarkable women technologists throughout the world taking leadership roles in the IT industry. Starting with Kenya, we can sight a few examples. Dr Katherine Getao, ICT Secretary, Directorate of eGovernment, leads an organization whose mission is enhance efficiency in Government operations, data integration and in delivering public services using IT. Dorcas Muthoni is the founder and chief executive of Openworld Ltd, an open source consulting firm in the east African region. Muthoni is also a co-founder of the regional organization LinuxChix Africa, a technical capacity building initiative for women in the region. Hital Muraj is the Corporate Affairs Manager Cisco Systems, Kenya. She is responsible for the Networking Academy Program in 11 countries in East Africa; managing and recruiting academies and engaging with the leadership of the countries to build the ICT workforce and encourage socioeconomic development.

Ory Okolloh is the policy manager and government relations manager for Google in Africa. Before joining Google, Okolloh co-founded Ushahidi which initially was a website developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election violence at the beginning of 2008 but has since been used to manage crisis across the world. Okolloh’s co-founder at Ushahidi, Juliana Rotich is also a co-founder of Mobisoko, a mobile marketplace for language and location relevant apps in Africa. Dorothy Ooko was the Communications and PR manager for Nokia Eastern Southern Africa until recently she joined Google. Dorothy is now serving as Communications & Public Affairs Manager for East & Francophone Africa. Njeri Rionge is a former Director and Co-founder of Wananchi Online Limited, a leading IP communications solutions provider. She is now the Chief Techpreneuer at Insite Limited and Executive Director at Ignite Consulting Limited.

At the global scene, women are keeping an impressive record. Perhaps an apt example would be Virginia Marie Rometty, current Chairlady and CEO of IBM, who recently visited to launch the IBM research center in Kenya. Ursula M. Burns serves as Madam Chairlady and CEO of Xerox. She is the first African-American woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company. Marissa Ann Mayer is an American business executive. As of 2013 she is President and CEO of Yahoo. Previously, she was a long-time executive and key spokesperson for Google. Kim Stevenson is the CIO at Intel, where she had been serving as GM & VP of IT Operations and Services. Adriana Karaboutis is the VP & Global CIO at Dell. Most recently, Karaboutis was VP of IT at Dell. Cathy Lasser is Vice President and CTO for the Distribution Sector, IBM Sales & Distribution division. She began her career with IBM in 1978 as a programmer. Padmasree Warrior is the Chief Technology & Strategy Officer (CTO) of Cisco Systems, and the former CTO of Motorola, Inc.

Considering the brilliant women sighted above, and the growth trend in the IT industry, there are unlimited opportunities for both men and women. All that needs to change is notion towards IT and computing major at the universities. Probably, the attitude change can start with the parents, they should encourage their daughters to take on courses in the industry and rise to the apex. That said and done, same case applies to men.

The Next Big Thing For 2013

The year 2013 will be prominently an election year for Kenyans. For the rest of the world, it marks another year of innovations and technological progression. There is an upside though; the election itself provides a platform to test technology that would aid the electoral process and political ambitions of the incoming President, Governors, Senators, MPs and Women Representatives. We have already witnessed the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) and the consequent voter registration verification via SMS. Something not look forward to in 2013 is the turning off of the analogue terrestrial TV signal, considering the low access to digital TV set boxes. However, Kenyans are looking forward to a high-speed fourth-generation (4G) mobile data services network roll-out. The project is estimated to cost $500 million and is now pending awaiting approval from the Ministry of Finance, according to the Ministry of Information and Communication Permanent Secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo.

Now, looking at the rest of the globe, things will be very exciting in the world of technology in 2013. Lots of innovative ideas will be put to test and prototype products put to market. One of the interesting products is a folding car designed at Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT). The Hinoko, meaning "urban car", is designed in such a way that you can easily park it in small spaces. In fact, the modern car can to fit in one third of a parking space after being "folded" up. Hinoko is planned to be released across Europe and parts of the United States of America in 2013. Dwelling on auto technology, General Motors will be working on a sort of self-steering auto mobile. The Cadillac Super Cruise model will use semi-autonomous intelligence to monitor the side of the road and the car in front, with an aim of avoiding accidents.

Over the recent years, augmented reality has grown in popularity with its integration into smart device such as the Layar application of Samsung Galaxy Note series. In 2013, Google’s is expected to launch a product by name Google Glass Explorer Edition. The head-worn Google Glass is will have built in 4G with GPS technology, a camera, and a Bluetooth connection to Android based phones. Using these technologies, Google Glass will put a little screen right in front of your eyes as you walk around going about your life. This screen will present to you an augmented reality overlay as you view the world around you. The first Project Google Glass demo resembled a pair of normal eyeglasses where the lens is replaced by a head-up display but plans are underway to integrate it to eyewear and contact lenses.

Another new feature to look forward to in 2013 is the bendy smartphone. With the new Galaxy Skin, the user can bend, twist or even hammer the phone. The phone is based on OLED display technology. OLED-organic light-emitting diode- is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound which emits light in response to an electric current. OLED can be made from organic polymers which can be flexible. The features of the Samsung Galaxy Skin include a high-res 800×480 AMOLED screen, 8mp camera and 1 GB of RAM and a 1.2GHz processor. Apart from this innovation, Samsung is also working on a technology that would take any digital image and display it across the skin of a mobile device. This feature may be available on mobile phones coming this year.

For years, humans have been instructing machines by physical touch; touching of buttons, turning of knobs and so on. A feature that is gradually been integrated into devices is gesture control, recently spotted in Smart TVs from various brands. How about gesture control for your tablet and laptops? In 2013, such appliances as Leap Motion will be integrated to more electronic devices. The Leap Motion controller senses your individual hand and finger movements so you can interact directly with your computer. Just connect our iPod-sized device and instantly get 8 cubic feet of awesome, intuitive, 3D interaction space. Leap Motion detects your hand movements with an accuracy of 1/100 of a millimeter. Without touching your screen, you can flip through photos or reach into a 3D diagram and manipulate objects. For business users, the implication could be as simple as this: a way to answer the phone or give a presentation with just a flick of the hand.