More content for mobile phones
The last few months have seen both Telstra and Optus launch 3G networks, matching competitors 3 and Vodafone in providing high bandwidth mobile services to Australian consumers. Live footage of the cricket can now be accessed on 3 for a monthly fee, while downloadable ringtones continue to be huge business. In the US and UK, meanwhile, online video provider YouTube inked deals with Verizon and Vodafone respectively to provide YouTube content directly to mobile phones.
Prediction: Telstra will be slow to introduce value-for-money 3G services, meaning the capabilities of its ‘NextG’ network will remain largely untested in 2007. Telstra will nevertheless heavily promote the new network, against fierce competition from Optus. Most Telstra 3G subscribers will be existing Telstra customers, as it is unlikely to woo many 3 or Vodafone customers.
Processing power ramps up
Later this year, Intel and AMD will release to the mass consumer market CPUs that feature four separate processing engines, or ‘cores’. But this is only the beginning. Intel recently demonstrated an experimental CPU with 80 cores, giving it one-chip computing power equal to the world’s fastest supercomputers of a decade ago. And, Intel has already started working on commercial versions of a chip that will feature hundreds of cores.
Prediction: Expect 8 or even 16 core CPUs to be commercially available by the end of the year. This will herald ever more powerful software, for example, automated video editing tools that can create highlights based on visual recognition parameters, such as the viewer’s favourite football players. These CPUs will also support the move to parallel computing, where virtual operating systems (think Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Linux) all run simultaneously on a single processor.
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