There is also an agreement to provide live streaming available on NFL Mobile only from Verizon, which provided exclusive live mobile streaming of the past month’s playoff games—another first for pro football.

Both NBC and the NFL will be gathering worldwide data about how many fans tune in, using what types of devices, how long they stay, and which advertisements they see. In addition, the live stream will provide enhanced features, such as additional camera angles, in-game highlights, updated statistics, and other interactive elements. NBC’s long-time hosting of the Olympics has given them an understanding of how to stream live and on-demand video events, so streaming the Super Bowl is a logical step in anticipation of the Summer Olympics in London.

The NFL began providing an enhanced online video stream of selected Thursday Night Football games, which air on the NFL network during the latter part of the regular season. On those webcasts, viewers have a choice of up to six different real-time camera angles, and they get instant Tweets from NFL reporters who are on the playing field bringing fast updates on injuries, coaches’ comments, and in-game anecdotes.

Like their counterparts at Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media (MLBAM), the NFL has been developing its online presence for many years. NFL.com also has a playoff package, which provides live and on-demand streaming of every playoff game for a one-time payment of $14.99. An “offseason” subscription for $19.99 permits on-demand viewing of every regular season and playoff game through the end of July.

NBC has also been streaming some Sunday Night Football games live during the regular season and reports having about 300,000 unique viewers per game. Their expectations for this year’s live streaming of the Super Bowl are pegged at about 1.5 million. However, it is possible that four times that many viewers may take a look at the website during the first quarter to see what’s new and different with the online experience. Ultimately the total viewing audience will be crucial, as advertising revenues are becoming increasingly important to multiscreen services.

The simple fact that NBC and the NFL feel confident enough to put the Super Bowl online is a watershed moment for over-the-top video. Do you remember the 1999 and 2000 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show online streaming debacles, when 1.5 million requests brought down the network and only a few percent of all viewers saw anything? In the decade since, video compression has improved, network capacity has grown tremendously, and adaptive bit rate streaming has made it possible for today’s internet to actually support live streaming of the most-watched TV event of the year.

Though not quite as often mentioned in the general media, the technologies required to make tablet and ultrabook displays are also hot topics in the world of FPD manufacturing. One of the key elements is high resolution: the iPad 3 will adopt a 9.7” 2048 × 1536 LCD, and displays with more than 230 pixels per inch will become common for other high-end tablets and ultrabooks. Our recently-released TFT LCD Process Roadmap Report analyzes the key trends and technologies that enable high-performance displays for tablets and ultrabooks:

• Oxide Semiconductors: Sharp is expected to mass produce IGZO-based LCDs for the iPad 3, and Korean makers are developing their own oxide semiconductor mass production strategies.
• Advanced Resolution Lithography: Critical for increasing aperture ratio, 2.0 µm resolution large-area photo lithography tools are now available.
• Thin Glass/Glass Thinning: Thin and light are required specifications for tablets and ultrabooks and offer competitive design advantages. To reduce substrate thickness down to 0.2 mm, a combination of thin glass and glass thinning are being adopted.
• FFS Mode Liquid Crystal: Even more than its sister LC mode IPS, FFS offers superior transmission, high contrast, and resistance to touch mura,; this has helped FFS become the LC mode of choice for mobile applications.
• Super High Aperture (SHA) Pixels: One quarter of all LCDs displays now adopt pixel designs that increase the distance between bus lines and pixel electrodes in order to reduce noise and increase aperture ratio.
• Optical Alignment: Sharp is also leading the adoption of optical alignment for its iPad 3 FFS displays.

Interestingly, most of these technologies focus mainly on increasing panel transmission in order to increase battery life and reduce backlight costs.

Thanks to these manufacturing technologies, tablet displays now offer unprecedented visual experience in the thinnest and lightest of form factors. Tablet displays are now driving the cutting edge of FPD production technology. And that is part of the reason tablets are now the hottest, most-discussed CE device.

Verizon added 1.5 million new customers, but added slightly more (872 thousand) prepaid phone customers than AT&T, and about 400 thousand modem/mobile hotspot customers. Verizon had 7.7 million new and existing customers activate a smartphone in the quarter, with 4.2 million, or 54%, of these iPhones, and another 1.6 million, or 21%, LTE smartphones.

We can draw two conclusions from these numbers. First, the iPhone still holds considerable influence in the US smartphone market, garnering over 61% of Q4’11 sales for these two operators. While updates always lead to increased sales, the 4S only offered incremental updates over previous models.

Second, for US consumers upgrading their phones, LTE wasn’t a major draw, with only 13% of new smartphone purchases from these two operators being an LTE model, despite the fact that both Verizon and AT&T are starting to achieve sizable coverage in the US. Overall, these observations clearly indicate that US customers favor a proven smartphone with a good ecosystem over a smartphone with the latest and greatest technology of the day.

The system leaves much to be desired in terms of pricing and network architecture, however. Individual tubes that can drive up to three secondary lights cost ¥19,800 ($257). Secondary lights cost ¥14,000 ($182). If that wasn’t enough, you also need a NetLED Server to control the lights. The server is ¥60,000 ($779) and can control up to 100 tubes.

It is clear that this particular device is targeted at the business market and not the consumer market. But with the large installed base of wireless routers and gateways in the consumer market, and the cost for low-power Wi-Fi chips declining, more and more consumer devices will begin to incorporate Wi-Fi as a connectivity option.

But what about consumers who do not have a Wi-Fi network in their homes? Well, with Wi-Fi Direct that becomes less of a problem. By being able to link two Wi-Fi-enabled devices directly, Wi-Fi Direct does not need a traditional Wi-Fi network to operate. There are many Wi-Fi Direct devices already on the market, and with the new applications enabled by the standard, that number will continue to grow rapidly. This month Universal Electronics Inc. and Ozmo Devices announced a partnership to produce remote controls for televisions and cable boxes that incorporate Wi-Fi Direct.

Setting aside the complexity and cost of the NetLED device, it is indicative of a new trend—Wi-Fi appearing in new applications and devices. From tablets, laptops, and cellphones, to toy helicopters, televisions, and wireless VoIP phones, Wi-Fi is already included in a variety of electronic devices shipping today. As the pricing and power usage decrease for Wi-Fi chipsets, new usage cases will become more economically competitive vis-à-vis other wireless connectivity standards. Wi-Fi will begin to challenge connectivity standards, specifically Bluetooth and ZigBee. Wi-Fi is not best suited for many use cases, but it is gaining traction, especially in line powered applications, because Wi-Fi is ubiquitous. And while these devices are in an early stage, the potential for new markets for Wi-Fi is undeniable.

Vendors who sell to service providers were showing home control at CES 2012. Motorola, which bought 4Home in December 2010, was showing its 4Home Connected Home Gateway. The gateway connects via Z-Wave to the devices in the home, as designed by the consumer, and allows remote management of the devices from a PC, mobile phone, or tablet.

Technicolor was showing home control solutions in partnership with iControl. The two companies had previously announced a Home Control and Security edition of the Technicolor MediaTouch tablet. In the future, Technicolor envisions that the software to operate the home can be run on a media gateway, rather than requiring a PC.

The 4Home system is now being used by Verizon, the service provider at the forefront of home control offerings in North America. Verizon’s focus is making home control easier for consumers to implement. For $9.99 per month, the company will enable remote management of the system no matter how many devices the consumer adds to the network. Verizon stated that kits enabling home monitoring as well as home and energy monitoring have generated a great deal of interest. The company has been surprised at the number of subscribers choosing the DIY option, although it makes sense that the early adopters would be more tech-savvy and inclined to install the equipment themselves.

Initially, RIM developed wireless modems and introduced the BlackBerry in 1999. Touted as a two-way pager, the BlackBerry became a favorite of the Wall Street crowd and soon became a must-have device for business professionals. During the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, the Blackberry platform gained a reputation for high-reliability, working at ground zero when other cellular networks jammed to a halt.

Watching RIM these last few years has been painful. After growing wildly through the 2000s and breaking-out of the enterprise mold, Blackberry devices gained favor with non-business customers.  In 2007, consumer Blackberry sales exceeded those in business. But in 2007, the iPhone was introduced and the smartphone world quickly shifted to applications, while RIM stuck to the same business model that had worked so well in the past.

RIM was wrong and customers gravitated to Apple, and eventually Android, in huge numbers. RIM thought that it could at least keep its core enterprise customers, but once the iPhone and Android platforms incorporated enterprise security and support for Microsoft Exchange, even those customers left the RIM platform in droves. In an effort to reduce the bleeding, RIM launched the enterprise-friendly Playbook tablet, its answer to Apple’s iPad, but that plan also failed, and RIM has resorted to liquidation pricing.

Turning around RIM from its rapid decline will be a tough job. Shortly, RIM will be releasing its first QNX-based smartphones. QNX dates back to the early 1980s, but it has evolved over the years and is currently running in over 20 million automobiles. RIM purchased QNX in 2010 and used QNX in its Playbook.

While the odds don’t look good, RIM should not be ruled out. The company still has millions of followers in the U.S., Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa; in a few countries, the BlackBerry remains the top smartphone used, but even in these countries, the move to higher-powered smartphones is starting to take hold. This year will be a very important one for RIM, and if Heins can save the company, his appointment hasn’t come a moment too soon.

 Small cells cover areas where macrocells would be overkill and are essential to the success of heterogeneous networking (HetNet), the term used to describe modern cellular infrastructure architecture. HetNet is the practice of integrating small cells, distributed antenna systems (DAS), and Wi-Fi with existing cellular infrastructure to create the best environment for signaling integrity, optimal uplink and downlink capacities, and low latencies.

 Small cells include femtocells that serve as few as 4 users and have an effective range of 15-50 meters (typically used in residences and small enterprises); picocells, used to provide coverage indoors and outdoors for up to 100 users; and microcells, used to support as many as 1,000 users and have an effective range of 2-3 kilometers.

 The small cell market has become a battleground for SoC (system-on-chip) silicon suppliers. Currently, there are five approaches being used to power small cells, built around different SoC platforms:

• MIPS cores are being used in residential femtocells, like those made by Broadcom and Cavium.
• SoC vendors are adapting existing mobile processors to meet the needs of femtocells.  Qualcomm’s Femtocell Station Modem (FSM) is based on its Snapdragon platform, while Intel, in partnership with Ubiquisys, is developing Edge Cloud local cache processing using Atom cores.
• ARM processors are also being used by several SoC providers: DesignArt, Mindspeed, Picochip (acquired by Mindspeed), and Texas Instruments are using ARM processors in combination with DSPs in their chipset designs.
• x86 processors have had limited use in microcells and could become important in picocells. As HSPA and LTE platforms evolve into LTE-Advanced, greater computational power will be needed to process packets and signals over larger spectrum channels, which could be an opening for this architecture.
• IBM’s Power Architecture is an emerging platform in the small cell market; Freescale has been the most vocal proponent.

 For SoC vendors, the battle is worth waging. By 2015, we estimate that there will be 160.3 million active small cells, and the retail value of small cell shipments will reach $14 billion.  

 Naturally, it will not be the SoC vendors that ultimately determine who wins in the small cell silicon market. Mobile operators and MSOs will select products based on price, performance, and compatibility. The real wizardry will come from SoC suppliers trying to convince device manufacturers that their platforms are best.

But what exactly is a home media gateway? It is a high-end set top box that supports multiple services and capabilities, including support for IP video, ability to stream video to multiple screens, and multi-room PVR capability. Specific features of the home media gateway include an integrated hard disk drive, wired and/or wireless interfaces that connect to other CE devices, and either an integrated modem or Ethernet/Wi-Fi connection.

Set top box manufacturers such as Cisco Systems and Technicolor introduced their home media gateway products last week, while service provider Dish Networks spent an impressive amount of money trumpeting its Hopper-branded box. In particular, Cisco promoted its Videoscape architecture designed to help service providers integrate IP-based media into their traditional linear video delivery systems. Cisco announced the 9800 series multiscreen gateway, which receives video via 6 QAM tuners as well as IP;  Voyager Vantage, software connecting STBs to the cloud to enable service providers to offer richer user interfaces and EPGs; and Voyager Virtual, which allows legacy STBs to use a cloud rendered user interface and interactive applications. 

Other manufacturers, like Motorola Mobility and ARRIS, used the CES spotlight to highlight their own media gateway products that were announced in 2011. Price points for the products have not been publicly announced, but In-Stat has been hearing about quotes in the $400 range, making them more than double the price of today’s midrange set top box products. 

For pay-TV service providers, deploying home media gateway products in 2012 is a high priority.  Pressure to counter the perceived threat from “over-the-top” video services, along with the necessity of integrating support for IP video into the set top box itself, are the key reasons spurring the development of home media gateways. 

In addition to Dish Network, other leading pay-TV service providers that have announced the deployment of gateways include Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Liberty Global, Shaw Communications, and DirecTV.

2012 looks to be “year one” for the deployment of home media gateways, especially in the North American market, and In-Stat’s Global Pay-TV service will soon be publishing a first look at this market.

 There seem to be good reasons for VIZIO to enter the PC market from a supply-chain perspective. Many of VIZIO’s panel suppliers and assemblers make both LCD TVs and PCs.  With VIZIO being a leading brand in the North American LCD TV market, it certainly has purchasing power for LCD panels, a key component of both AIO and notebook PCs.

 This announcement also makes sense from a distribution standpoint in that VIZIO is quite strong in US retail. While the brand fell from its number one spot in the North America LCD TV market in 2011, it still has a higher market share than Sony, Toshiba, LGE, Sharp, and Panasonic.   

 Finally, while it may seem strange, the PC market has higher margins than the TV market; therefore, the strategy seems to make sense for a TV-centric company to continue to diversity its portfolio. With AIO PCs growing 39% Y/Y from 2010 to 2011, there is likely room for additional players. At the same time, notebook PCs are forecast to see at least an 11% Y/Y growth rate in 2012, thanks to new form factors like ultrabooks.

There are some reasons, however, to question the strategy. VIZIO is not the first company of its kind to try to make the cross-over from TVs to PCs (and vice versa). Back in the early 2000s, Dell, HP, and other PC companies tried to parlay their flat-panel purchasing power from monitors and notebooks into TVs, without success. Maybe a better comparison would be ViewSonic, also a strong LCD purchaser, which tried to parlay its success in monitors—at the time a bigger market than LCD TVs—into both TVs and PCs; however, neither of them panned out. There are also differences; for example, ViewSonic was not a strong consumer brand.

 But ViewSonic was quite strong in small-to-medium (SMB) and other B2B markets, and had strong channel partner relationships and brand awareness. However, this presence and the supply-chain synergies were not enough to allow ViewSonic to compete in the PC market. One of the key challenges was meeting the support demands of end customers. VIZIO might indicate that it has gained experience in supporting demanding consumer needs, for example with smart TVs, but the combination of hardware, operating system, and software application support that PC users require will likely be much more difficult. 

 Digging deeper into the growth potential for the PC space also does not bode well for US-centric VIZIO. In 2011, AIO shipments in North America dropped 8%; the growth came instead from China (up 178% Y/Y) and Latin America (up 107%). Likewise, notebook PC shipments (not including tablet or mini-note PCs) were up only 3% Y/Y in North America. Of course the area of most significant growth will be tablet PCs, with a projected growth rate of 58% in North America in 2012, but VIZIOs 8″ tablet  has yet to catch the attention of consumers  the way Apple’s iPad or Amazon’s Kindle Fire have.

Maybe the tired legs and lack of sleep are getting to me, but one thought kept crossing my mind as I saw these demos: If tablets are really the future of mobile computing, why do these companies think consumers will be so anxious to transfer images from them to bigger screens? Do they believe tablet screens are too small to satisfy consumers for web browsing, video viewing, and other typical tablet uses? If this is the case, perhaps consumers would prefer a larger tablet screen to begin with, rather than a technology to get their tablet content moved somewhere else.

This is a subject that we will be exploring in more detail at USFPD Smart Displays: From Emerging to Mainstream in San Diego next month.