As a plethora of studies point to video as the culprit for massive data usage in the future, Research in Motion's co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said it isn't clear whether video will become the "killer app" for smartphones.
Speaking at a conference hosted by the Toronto Dominion Bank, Lazaridis said that nevertheless, the smartphone maker is looking at how to develop more efficient ways of delivering video to prevent log jams on wireless networks as it is presenting a challenge to wireless networks.
"If you think that today's 3G as a browsing experience is a challenge to these data networks, imagine what a video streaming or download experience is going to be as these screens start to look like HD televisions in terms of resolutions," Lazaridis said.
RIM routes most emails, web browsing, Facebook, Twitter and data from BlackBerry apps through its own server, making browsing and apps via BlackBerry three to eight times as bandwidth efficient than on rival devices, Lazaridis said.
"What that means for the carrier, though, is after they have committed all those billions of dollars on new network technology and new network spectrum, they can have three BlackBerrys using the same network capacity as one of the other smartphones."
Still, video presents challenges, prompting RIM to invest more in technology that offers data efficiencies to operators. For instance, the vendor acquired in 2006 SlipStream, which specializes in data acceleration, compression and network optimization technology.
"They had some amazing technologies for compressing everything from web content, documents, and video. So, you never know, the research that we do is very important, it's always borne fruit and we are hoping that we can continue to ... provide tangible efficiencies to the carriers."
For more:
- see this Reuters article
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