Building the next iPod
By Ed Sperling, Editor in Chief -- 6/7/2007
Electronic News/Electronic Business sat down to discuss the next hot products with Vojin Zivojnovic, VP of worldwide OEM sales at ARM, and Edward Valdez, president and COO of Parrot. What follows are excerpts of that conversation, which took place in front of a live audience at the Design Automation Conference earlier this week.
Q: What’s the next big thing?
Zivojnovic: The iPhone is the largest marketing effort ever done for a consumer device, so definitely people are looking for killer applications. Whether it’s music or phones or printers, the issue is how well they’re finding what the customer needs. You need to be connected into communities. What the customer needs is one thing, and your ability to give the customer what he needs is something else. I don’t know what the next big thing is, but talking to people, being part of the user community, the developer community and the software community are all key to developing the next killer device.
Valdez: More and more things are going to be going wireless. It could be a small form factor, it could be bookshelf speakers, it could be home theater. The whole idea is that the iPhone is going to extend what we have. But it’s not only what can it do for music, imaging and voice all rolled into one. It’s what are the products that are going to be created around this ecosystem?
Q: Was the iPod itself really a killer application, or was it the device in a business context of downloadable songs and connectivity into automobiles that made it a killer device?
Zivojnovic: They looked very carefully at what the market demanded. Good software packaging was very important. The hardware simply has to follow that and support the software. It has to happen on time, and it has to come out in good shape with no bugs. The design was part of that. Those parts of the IP that made the product unique were kept close to the vest, and everything else was available on the market and was added to that to make the product and get it out quickly. On top of that, like icing on the cake, came all the software, which made it extremely attractive. The same thing will happen with the iPhone.
Valdez: I don’t think the iPod or the iPhone are killer apps. I think they’re killer user experiences. If you think about Apple and what their whole experience is about, it’s not about making the best MP3 player. Apple is the king of marketing. They took the four P’s—product, price, place and promotion—and they rolled that all into a killer user experience. The user experience is a sleek product combined with application software, and one that has access to many things, and they rolled that all into a fantastic marketing promotion.
Q: We still don’t have the integration on a grand scale to be able to take a phone call at home, drive to work and then continue the call in the office. Is that going to happen?
Valdez: I absolutely think that is do-able. This seamless connectivity anytime, anywhere, is really what we’re striving to do in the Bluetooth ecosystem. Whether it’s Bluetooth or WiFi or WiMax or WAN, combining multi-band, versatile solutions are what we’re looking for from a product developer point of view. We’ll get there. It’s just a question of when.
Zivojnovic: When you look at the home, you have a wireless phone, 802.11, analog lines, the cable box—you don’t have to leave the home to think about better interfaces. You want a seamless environment in your own home. Why do I need to go to my car to find out it needs service? The home communication will be one of the very hardest problems to solve. There is immense bandwidth needed. There are limitations on power dissipation, too. You don’t want to put a set-top box in your cabinet and smell burning wood. Power, combined with all these interface boundaries, will be issues for developing new killer applications.
Valdez: When we think about the direction that Google and Yahoo! are going, imagine a day in which you’re able to walk through your house and say, ‘Temperature, 68 degrees,’ and, ‘Dim the lights a little more.’ Being not only wireless, but being able to issue a command with no touch, is a fantastic future.
Zivojnovic: If you look at recent discussion about public investment, the aging generation will need more and more of these kinds of features. There are not too many companies seeing that as a high volume market right now. But if you can help everyone on this planet, you’re talking about billions of users. ARM is traditionally in the communication business, so this is good for us, and blood sugar will have to be reported to someone. We will not build a new network for that, so all of these devices will have to be integrated. Analog will play a role in this, as well.
Valdez: We’re moving to an IP [Internet protocol] world where everything has an IP address. The question is whether we can imagine a world where everyone has an IP address. People have talked about implants. I’m not sure I’d want one, but we walk a thin line between too much information and not enough information. Do you want your vital signs communicated to your doctor? How intrusive or obtrusive does it become versus providing just enough information?
Zivojnovic: If you look at these medical devices, the limit is on the power. The implants can be very small, but we have not been able to break this power barrier. We will see more pressure to deal with power with these new devices, starting with the concept and going down into the physical levels.
Q: Do batteries have to last longer than they do today, or do we need to make the applications more efficient, or is it okay as it is?
Valdez: We always need more power. Whether it’s harnessing the kinetic energy from walking or the crank radio or PC, we always need more.
Zivojnovic: I recently decided to upgrade my set-top box to include a DVR [digital video recorder]. They so far have exchanged four of these boxes because of heat. In the past, people didn’t worry about power. But these devices are now part of our lives, and dissipation is becoming a problem. You don’t want a phone in your pocket if it is heating all the time. The whole power issue will become more serious.
Valdez: If you look at cell phones sold in the U.S. in 2006, more than 60 percent of the cell phones had cameras. About 49 percent had Bluetooth, and 32 percent had digital music capability. Knowing that mobile TV is just around the corner on many devices, there’s a big challenge on power drain and power needs. What I ideally want is a device like an iPod that can do all those things, but have enough juice to last from morning to night.
Q: The key drivers we’ve discussed so far are mobility, power and integration. A fourth factor is cost. What will drive the cost down?
Zivojnovic: On one side, you want to drive the cost down. On the other side, you want to differentiate from other products in the market. This is an interesting decision—how to focus on the important part of a new device and focus on sharing other parts. We are seeing the ARM instruction set in a variety of phones, the same compiler, but you can’t recognize that because the key differentiation is on the software and features like how big is your screen, how thin can you make the phone, how many days of battery life you get. Selecting the IP [intellectual property], putting effort in to the IP that is important and then to verify it and make it available not just for one generation but for others, and then working with the outside providers to provide the EDA and software development tools and other IP, that is the best way to do that.
Q: We’ve been dealing largely with audio and text. How will video change this?
Valdez: It will certainly have an impact on power drain. But can we see the day when we have a video call, iPhone to iPhone? Yes. We have camera capability and the bandwidth. That will enhance the user experience, allowing you to watch your favorite TV show on a plane as you go on business trips or vacation. And it will enhance getting in touch from person to person. We’re very close to a camera-to-camera connection.
Zivojnovic: As we move forward with video, there is a need to understand the verticals.
Valdez: That’s a good point. Just in Bluetooth alone, we are working with OEM car manufacturers for cameras because they’re a heck of a lot easier to install than wired cameras for after-market applications. There are countless applications where this can come into play.
Q: One other killer application would be fewer devices. Why hasn’t that happened?
Zivojnovic: I wish it would. It would be much easier when you go through security. But this is about the software. We have hardware in all these devices that is extremely similar. You can attach an accelerator or co-process for graphics or video applications, but the base structure with a core or multiple cores and the memory subsystem is very similar. If it’s memory hungry, you have to fine tune your bus and access structure. But all of that is not a problem on the hardware side. It’s how you access the content. The iPod has had a nice connection between the hardware, the software and the content. In the future, bringing this content together will be the major issue.
Valdez: For as long as humanity is around, there may be no one size fits all. There will be some people that want a 17-inch display on their laptop. You might want to watch videos on a larger display.
Q: How about a virtual display?
Valdez: It goes back to some of these knobs that are being turned from a manufacturer or a component supplier side and the packaging. That’s a tough challenge.
Q: But for years we’ve been hearing about a virtual display, keyboard and mouse. What’s holding this back?
Zivojnovic: Big companies have big ideas, but the seed of new products often comes from smaller companies. From the spark of the idea, until they compete in the market and provide that either through companies like Best Buy or develop their own channel for selling these products, is very long. Fewer and fewer people have the patience or enough money to develop these products to the level of being acknowledged on the market. What we are seeing challenging companies are questions like what is the essence of their IP, what horses should they bet on, and what should they openly take from the market and put into these devices. We don’t have a great understanding of how IP should be developed and we don’t have many examples of smaller companies being able to excite the market. Internet radio has succeeded, but there are not many others.
Valdez: It’s a question of how you cross the chasm from transferring the technology to a usable product. You can get all those pieces, but putting them together in one product has a huge barrier to entry and it requires a huge investment.
Q: So what makes a new gee-whiz product successful? If you do have the low power, the mobility, integration and low cost, will that guarantee success?
Zivojnovic: It still goes back to the spark of the idea. You have to have the right feeling for what people need in their every day lives. If it’s properly managed and funded, it will lead to a good product.
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