USB Wins As the Sideloading Interface of Choice for Handsets

Driven by consumers' desire to sideload mobile content and applications onto mobile phones, USB was employed in more handsets than all other interface standards combined in 2006, according to iSuppli. By the end of 2010, USB will still be the leading local interface, being included 764 million of all handsets shipped that year.

"All the excitement and hype in the marketplace has been about Wi-Fi and Bluetooth integration in mobile handsets. However, as consumers endeavor to move both personally and professionally created content on and off of their mobile handsets, the local interface selection of choice clearly will be USB," said Frank Dickson, principal analyst with iSuppli. "Nonetheless, Bluetooth is gaining ground fast. By 2010, Bluetooth and USB will be available on nearly every handset, and WLAN and NFC will have established a significant market presence."

The increasing prevalence of these local interfaces on mobile handsets, and the mobile applications they enable, is spurring increased demand for mobile handset memory. Applications such as digital imaging, video and audio streaming, music downloads and interactive gaming are imposing significant changes on mobile handset memory.

Shipments of flash memory add-in cards for mobile phones are expected to increase dramatically during the coming years, growing to 640 million units in 2010, up from 186 million units in 2005. Much of this growth is being driven by mini and micro versions of the flash memory cards suited for mobile phones.

Other notable iSuppli findings regarding mobile-phone interfaces include:

• Local interfaces on handsets, particularly WLAN, threaten to diminish potential revenues generated from premium content services. Content download, data management and peer-to-peer file sharing will be enabled through local interfaces and will drive traffic off of the wireless network.
• Mobile applications now generating Short Message Service (SMS) traffic, such as participation TV and mobile wallets, will continue to increase the amount of data traffic they produce during the near term. However, as mobile handsets are more capable of interacting directly with other devices, applications may become more integrated, bypassing the mobile network.
• While mobile data revenues are becoming increasingly important to mobile operators, voice continues to be the largest revenue opportunity and thus it is exceedingly important to protect voice traffic from cannibalization from Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The emergence of Voice over the Wireless Local Area Network (VoWLAN) is imminent and thus it is time for mobile operators to develop a business model for this service.
• The local interface is a new development on the handset, and applications are just now beginning to emerge to develop its potential. There presently is not a great deal of forward thinking regarding the future of inter-device communications. However, iSuppli anticipates a marriage of mobile application visionaries in order to realize the potential of the local interface. The offspring from such a marriage is expected to result in a true market for applications based on inter-device communications that likely will arrive in the 2010 timeframe.

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Posted to the site on 23rd February 2007