Integrated devices

Intel’s non-voice mobile devices to jumpstart WiMAX?

In what may well be a key announcement for the industry, Intel revealed that it had 25 partners working with it on portable Internet devices, or “mobile Internet devices” (MIDs) in the new-speak. These boxes will be designed for use while away from home or work but not mobile as the driver of a vehicle, and are larger than a cellphone but smaller than even the smallest laptops. Intel and others believe that the future of wireless non-voice services will lie in these devices, whose screens are large enough to deliver a credible viewing experience. Intel hopes these will jumpstart the WiMAX market, a key market sector for Intel and also one that has seen recent rumors of partnerships involving Intel, Sprint, Clearwire and Comcast.

CES show to prompt wireless hub upgrades?

The CES show next week will likely introduce many to the new and almost-emerged 802.11n standard for wireless LANs. Capable of supporting data and video concurrently, this is the wireless standard that many hope will cause consumers to upgrade their wireless hubs. To date, wireless hubs are one of the least likely to be replaced home technologies, with many users having theirs in place unchanged for five years or more. Another such technology set are home switches and routers, which have installed lives as much as a quarter longer than the wireless devices. WirelessHD, which is faster but shorter in range, is also expected to be demonstrated at the show.

Cisco ISR features target branch locations

September 27 2007: Cisco is expanding the feature inventory of its popular ISR line to include things like acceleration, VoIP, and security. The move is targeting the branch offices of multi-site businesses, and is intended to reduce the success of one-off vendors in these spaces, including Juniper. As a market leader, Cisco can link secondary features to router products and have the combined product set fulfill its revenue requirements even though integrated devices have a lower user cost. We believe this to be a direction that is also aimed at creating a more generic branch access appliance to counter rumored moves by IBM in that direction, possibly in partnership with another network vendor.

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