Originals and Copies. Britain and Smartphone Manufacturing

Originals and Copies. Britain and Smartphone Manufacturing

A recent post at Global Sources discussed the Chinese smartphone manufacturing competition and the design, technical and feature competitiveness of home-grown brands in comparison to Apple's iPhone and Samsung.

Chart image courtesy of Global Sources

It is possible to read the data in chart as signalling a dynamic chinese marketplace presenting its wares to the World that can compete not only locally but at the international level. It is equally possible to read the data that Andoid has driven that evolution or that Western skillsets brought to China to exploit low costs has actually turned the 'student' into a 'master', such that the original 'master' is being forced to step aside and be replaced. To draw a different analogy, but with similar outcomes, was noted by Dr Carroll Quigley in his book Tradegy and Hope a history of the world in our time (1965).  Quigley identifies the Age of Expansion by defining four common expansion factors that re-occur throughout history: (i) of population, (ii) of geographic area, (iii) of production, and (iv) of knowledge.

Furthermore, Quigley equally notes that expansion ebbs and flows by noting that expansion occurs through trade-offs between centres (cores) of expansion and peripheries. The use of circles within circles provides the mental image the author wants the mind to imagine to understand where the core is located and where the periphery can be found. His use of analogy helps the reader to understand that development (production/knowledge) occuring at the core eventually reaches the periphery. At the periphery the incoming development is received and subjected to localised influences. 

Fast fowarding from that 1965 commentary to today's manufacturing and placed in context with the above data in the chart, it can be seen that the Chinese have taken western developments and are enjoying expansion from the harvest (production/knowledge) brought to their door whilst the Western core is shrinking. Problematical with expansion ebbs and flows is the change that occurs and the ability to keep up with changes. Those changes have created problems regarding visual identity (mirroring), hardware functionality (imitation) and software (reproduction). Whilst Android OS may not have a problem with reproduction, given the widescale use of it in single country block manufacturing, eventually it would be cheaper for Chinese manufacturers to agree their own smartphone OS and use that to rival Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, etc etc.

Subtle change can be seen by the shift towards differentiation between local manufactures product. As Global Sources comments "Most large suppliers combine the Android OS with proprietary UI, widgets and mobile applications for differentiation." Eventually, and it is not far off, that differentiation will impact on Android. As Nokia and other European manufacturing was caught cat-napping when the Americas hit the stage with two big band anthem songs called the 'iPhone' and 'Android', which endeared them to the World, so Chinese manufacturing is heading, at a fast rate, for the pinnacle. Granted we don't know the OS name, but it really isn't about the name but what the OS will do that will create challenges Western manufacturing has not yet fully understood, even less are they ready for it.

However, in a quirk of fate just as China is starting to reach the peak, scientific technological breakthroughs that will impact on hardware means that there is no one dominant force in the World that has yet to or will control solely those breakthroughs. This is where Britiain should demonstrate it is leading with a/the British lionheart approach to industrialisation as opposed to 'I have a hug here with your name on it'. Britain must learn the lessons from throwing away (as it did in the 1970s - 2000s) the national treasure of quality manufacturing: - read up on the loss of British Steel, the confusion of the early Airbus project and the mistakes with British Chrysler.    

PM Cameron and the British Government may be learning from these changes. The Government should have by now a blueprint for re-industrialisation for manufacturing in Britain. Rather than being dominated by people 'crying into their soup' about manufacturing pollution, perhaps set out the vision where a manufacturing industrial revolution in the UK can take place and explain where all these "green" policies are leading Britain? Answer the question is 'Britain is being artificially held back in manufacturing after billions of pounds of taxes have been spent on so-called non-pollutants to show our "green" credentials that have been and are paraded around the globe? Also, ask the British people to recall any significant programme for British industrialisation and manufacturing and then note the deafening silence? There is also curiousity why only a handful of entrepreneurs are working to get Britain out of the dulldrums.

Industrialisation, and to use that in context with smartphones as one example of a manufacturing stream that Britain can and should be capable of performing, could be adopted in manufacturing areas to see Britain mass produce smartphones and the components to go with them:

- new ultra fine silicon
- smartphone design and casing
- new electronic production technqiues
- a British labelled operating system (OS) -
- etc

In this day and age it does seem inconceivable as to why Britain is not noted for being a mobile phone manufacturing base to a level that is noted for other countries that come to mind when the spoken brand names are heard: Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Apple and Samsung etc.

PM Cameron needs new ideas

PM Cameron needs new ideas

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, needs new ideas. If £30 million (just spending £2 million on a cyber centre is not the true cost) can be found for cybercrime, like finding loose change in a pocket, then things aren't as bad as we are all being led to believe. Indeed, if there is more public money being put into even more CCTV surveillance in this country then a clear picture is emerging that there is money, which, maybe, it might be accepted the money is being spent wisely, it is still being spent nonetheless.

Speaking on national television and radio, the PM espoused the virtuses of hardwork. Excellent! People are already working longer hours for less pay and much lower pay than the real value of their jobs. So they have already taken on board that principle before the PM said it. By way of illustration, a class of person, rapidly being turned into and treated like an underclass of person are those in their 60s and 70s with a wealth of knowledge and experience who are being ignored at shop-floor level. They have the guts and courage to still be working. Perhaps its the younger generational thing, but the older generation are without doubt an inspiration. I admire the woman of 67 I saw working at the supermarket customer desk at 7pm at night. The customer counter, by the way, is situated by the main doors so as the cold air rushes in it blasts her in the face and body. Seems to me she is doing her bit and I see many women and men of a similar age still soldiering on.  So there is harmony between the PM words and the factual practice of the hard work ethic by British workers. But that needs to be turned into tangible value we can all enjoy (and not merely enjoyed for people at a certain level) for that is the way distribution of wealth and value is supposed to work.

Much has been openly spoken on, and laughed at, by various sources having a hoot that British parliament and politics has been run like episodes from the comedy series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. I wonder whether if equal attention has been paid to the rebuilding programmes e.g. introduced through the concept of the Kindergarten. Indeed, perhaps looking at working/worker & management participation backed by an industrial franchise. George Osbourne made a mistake recently when he referred to workers, management and the taxman all working together. The original idea is infact worker, management and 'government' (not a single department of it) working together.

By the way, some good news about mobile technology can be found in the latest World Bank Report - IC4D 2012: Maximizing Mobile

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTINFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECHNOLOGIES/0,,contentMDK:23190786~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:282823,00.html

or

http://go.worldbank.org/0J2CTQTYP0
 

Smart phones overtake basic mobile phones in Europe

Smart phones overtake basic mobile phones in Europe

The Guardian newspaper, thursday 8/9/11,  reported "New data released by research company IDC show smartphone shipments up 48% compared to the same period in 2010, reaching nearly 22m, as Samsung, Apple, HTC and BlackBerry maker RIM dominated the market and Finland's Nokia saw its previous dominance wiped out. Last year smartphones made up just over a third of mobile phone sales in the region."

However, alternative research from IMS suggests that, infact, there is a SIM card sales explosion: "Of the 4.2 billion SIMs sold in 2010, 85% were to existing SIM card users, i.e. existing users of cellular handsets. This means that more than 80% of SIM-based cell phone users replaced their SIM cards last year. This may seem a little surprising as the proportion of cell phone users that replaced their actual handsets last year was much less than this. In fact at a global level, only 24% of cell phone users replaced their handsets with brand new handsets last year."

Moreover, IMS research further suggests when dealing with 4FF embedded SIMs: "With the current removable model, the volume of SIM cards sold in 2016 is set to pass 6 billion. If all cards were embedded by this time the number would be nearer 2 billion, around half what it was last year! As the SIM card market represents more than 80% of smart card volumes, this would be very bad news for many card and semiconductor suppliers."

On the basis of both reports the news in quite uplifting and a useful indicator of growth. At a time when the Prime Minister, David Cameron, looks to re-assess economic imbalance (services -v- manufacturing) in Britian, the elements to bring about the stimulus for wealth-creation, productivity and employment maybe here. Why would that be so? Because here is an area where services and manufacturing are required to forge a union in order that both can co-exist, such that they work not only in practice but in principle, too.

I am happy to revisit the sub-text of my 1988 proposal 'Putting Britain First' and reference to other reading materials if it would help put meat on the bones of this one.

Cyber What?

Cyber What?

We had a short discussion recently about "cyber" labels and their meanings. The wave that has been engulfing society for the last decade, driven by Psychology "with everything" NNNOOOOWWWW!!!!  and the use of 'label-ism' phenomenon to influence us that we need/must have/do something, is now causing much confusion. 

Cybering was discussed, done and dusted, in the late 1990s early 2000, thus cybering has not just occurred as a new phenomenon. Label-ism, in the case of cybering, isn't helping its cause either when announcing cyber threats to the UK or the World (for that matter) where mistakes in the use of definitions are publicly announced. It wont help the security services to do their job - protect the Realm - if society doesn't understand what the heck is discussed.  There must be a drive from top Government (David Cameron top table people) to make a substantive effort to clarify label-ism when discussing publicly threats we are led to believe are imminent.

Discussing cyber defintions with Simon "Si" Biles, the security specialist at Thinking-Security dot com, he offered these descriptions assigned to their labels identifying possible security threats that might be engineered from within cyber space:

"There seems to have been a general mixing of the terms : cyber-warfare, cyber-terrorism & cyber-crime : the news, as is oft the way with things they don't/can't/won't understand, interchanges them without consideration.

"cyber-crime is no better or worse than it has ever been, phishing, cracking etc. are much the same as allways - there are highs and lows, but nothing particularly extreme. Of course these figures are allways exagerated by the number of crimes that are committed that have a computer used in their research/planning/excecution - but this isn't cyber-crime anymore than stealing a knife is "knife crime".

"cyber-terrorism, to take the traditional use of the word "terrorism" ( or arguably "freedom fighting" depending on where you are standing ) is the "guerrilla warfare" of the computer world - denial of service, defacements etc. For example the "Anonymous" attacks on the Copyright crowd. Where this "terrorism" impacts on the general public is few and far between - a denial of service against a particularly greedy bank might impact on a few, but in real terms, this doesn't, and is unlikely to, create problems on the scale or magnitude of a traditional terrorist attack. And again, this has been going on, much of a muchness for sometime - highs and lows - usually associated with world events - but predominantly from individuals or insignificant groups.

"cyber-warfare is a bit different, and, really hasn't been seen except in Georgia - and even then, although that was suspected to be from Russia, that was never really proved - it could as well have been from a reasonable size hacker group just stretching in a country where there was little chance of prosecution or repercussion. I guess what Greg is suggesting above is probably the worst case scenario where the internet is compromised in some way that means that businesses can't communicate funds transfers - e.g. PoS - in reality though, as "the internet" is built on a wide variety of technologies ( from many and varied manufacturers ) and is designed to be resilient in the case of nuclear war ( or not ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet#The_ARPANET_under_nuclear_attack ) the chances of "taking out the internet" for a given country are fairly limited in a cyber-warfare scenario. Infact you'd stand a better chance of taking out the internet in the UK with some more traditional arson against certain backbone sites ...

"It is this, final, threat that is both having it's bandwaggon jumped on and is being blown out of proportion. Like most things - it's exciting, so it gets a lot of press - you are more likely to be burgled, have your car stolen, be involved in a hit & run or have your pocket picked than you are to be a victim of cyber-crime. Even Identity Theft ( which is portrayed as cyber-crime) is considerably easier to achieve through a dust-bin sift than a computer. Cyber-terrorism ? I'd be delighted to sell "cyber-terrorism" insurance to anyone who wants it ! "

The term 'Cyber' has been discussed above in context with types of threats that could be generated using it. The discussions above do not rule out or suggest that cyber is or could be put to good use too.

Mobile Phone outsourcing goes insourcing pt2

Do you remember back in March I wrote the piece about "Mobile Phone outsourcing goes insourcing" ( http://trewmte.blogspot.com/2010/03/mobile-phone-outsourcing-goes.html ), well yesterday I was given a link to Kent Police website and to the webpage dealing with public meeting notes:

http://www.kentpoliceauthority.gov.uk/public-meetings/audit-governance-committee/23-september-2009?p=2

Download and have a look at the report (link and heading as at Kent Police Website):

Item 19 Mobile Telephony Ananlysis

That is one heck of alot of money either way it is looked at for just one micro-section alone that overweights the scales on one side for public funds and yet when working as defence experts we have been systematically starved and drip fed minimal funding for the last 5 years. It could be quite laughable really (because the scales of justice are shown as balanced) if the times we are in weren't so dire. We will just have to wait and see how the new Government handles the way forward.

UK MTEB Mobile Forensics Conference 2010

UK MTEB Mobile Forensics

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Conference - September 2010

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Conference Centre - TBA

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Practitioners - Exhibition - Business

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Britain is a World leader in GSM and 3G mobile telephones, forensics, examination and evidence; GB remains the international centre for commerce, business and manufacturing, designers, software & programming and technology services. Forensics should be Stock Exchange commodity for the future.

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On the strength of Britain's position we hosted the first UK MTEB Mobile Forensics Conference on the 25th and 26th November 2009 and following the success of that conference there is to be a second Conference in September 2010.

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Grow your mobile and telecommunication business, manufacturing and forensic services in GB plc.