Is MHL a mega trend? Mobile High-Definition Link becomes a mainstream feature in 2013 in phones, TVs, more. Make the connection.

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: MHL, the mobile home, television, ecosystems, 1080p, MTK, screen-mirroring.
EVENT HORIZON: ½ year.

Mobile device and alternative platform vendors: Is MHL on your device roadmap? No! Better get crackin'.

I came across a story about a series of bargain 1080p television sets Walmart will begin selling under the brand "Hisense." For $378, you can buy a 40-inch 1080p LED smart television stuffed with features including a Mobile High-Definition Link connector.

MHL has been around for several years already, and most high-end Android-based smartphones currently on the market support MHL. And I have noticed more higher-end audio and video equipment supporting MHL and even some newer in-car entertainment systems.

But now as mainstream equipment on the receiving end is becoming MHL enabled, now is the time to ask if Mobile High-Definition Link has become a smartphone "hygiene" feature.

Samsung announced two Mega smartphones the other day, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 and the Galaxy Mega 6.3. The latter is the hardware leader of the two, but neither is a killer device. But notable is the fact that the Mega 6.3 supports MHL, the 5.8 does not. So let's call MHL a semi-mega trend at this point.

Asus, Huawei, HTC, Lenovo, LG, OPPO, Pantech, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Xiaomi, ZTE, and several other Android vendors already support MHL on many of their higher-end smartphones. In February, MediaTek announced an MHL-enabled smartphone platform which can be expected to help drive the feature even lower and deeper into the market. And now that MHL is trickling down to many living-room black boxes, it could be time for all vendors to make the connection. Link up while you still can.

The $378 Hisense K360M 40″ 1080p LED TV with MHL support:
Mid-level smartphones now make MHL connections to mid-level TVs.

Some good MHL use cases shown here:

BLU Ocean Strategy. Miami-based BLU Products finds a low-cost, dual-SIM smartphone niche in Latin America.

( With Chinese-made products of course. )


ENGADGET STORY >>

COMPANY SITE | http://www.bluproducts.com/

Related articles:
Here’s Where They Make China’s Cheap Android Smartphones. Apple & Samsung, beware >>

MediaTek to see revenues rally 50% sequentially in March >>


KEY MOBILE TRENDS: commoditization, MediaTek, China

There are many smartphone vendors around the globe that I have never heard of. Most of them are based in China or India or other Asian markets. Here is one that is not. BLU Products. BLU who?

I don't think I had heard of BLU until earlier this month. According to the company's website, BLU was founded in 2009 "by Latin American entrepreneurs" and is headquartered in Miami. "More than one million BLU mobile devices have been sold in 25 countries throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and the U.S." These are not huge volumes for the handset market, but BLU seems to have found a niche.

BLU sells both feature phones and Android-based smartphones, all of which are certainly imported from a Chinese manufacturer. The newsworthy point here is the relatively low prices of their recently announced devices. One Android phone, called "LIFE Play," will sell for $229 on Amazon and other sites. Life Play is 7.9mm thin, has a 4.7-inch HD (720p?) screen, an 8 megapixel camera with 1080p recording, a 2 megapixel front-facing camera, a microSD expansion slot, and support GSM and HSPA networks. And apparently it's dual SIM. There's no LTE support, but this might not have much consequence in some target markets. This smartphone and other Android handsets recently announced by BLU are based on top of a MediaTek quad-core chipset.

Last week we saw a 5-inch, 1080p smartphone from a Chinese called Neo for around $145 in China. It's clear where things are headed.

BLU Products "LIFE Play," a dual-SIM, 4.7-inch Android smartphone for $229:

MediaTekifikation. For those in the handset business who still haven't heard of MediaTek, it may soon be time to meet your maker.

Many people I speak with in the wireless industry have still never heard of MTK. To me, that's like meeting a kid who has never heard of Lego's.

Stories for your consideration:
— MediaTek & OmniVision tie-up for ADVANCED SMARTPHONE IMAGING >>
— Forbes: More Americans Learn About Taiwan's Amazing MediaTek >>
— Taipei Times: MediaTek’s chips transforming China’s smartphone market >>

...some thought continuation from my post about the "Chinafication" of the global handset industry:

Back in early 2008, in an internal report I wrote for Nokia management, I noted that a Chinese handset vendor named Tianyu had become a top-10 global brand. Even though I followed the industry closely, I had never heard of Tianyu before this. I decided to highlight the potential competitive threat of local vendors such as Tianyu who could appear out of nowhere in short order in vital growth markets.

I received some immediate feedback about my observations from one manager based out of Nokia's Beijing office: "Forget Tianyu: the company to really keep an eye on is MediaTek." That was a great tip.

Taiwan-based MediaTek may not be a direct competitor to smartphone vendors, but the company is an enabler of increased competition, lowering barriers to entry to the handset market. MediaTek offers complete chipset and software solutions allowing anybody with the desire to enter the handset business. It is MediaTek which enabled many of the "shanzhai" players to beat major vendors such as Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola to market with what appeared to be very similar-looking feature phones with risible brand names such as "Nokla" and "Sansung."

About two years ago, MediaTek announced their intentions of entering the market for smartphone ARM-based chipset solutions. The impact has been enormous: last year more than 110 million Chinese smartphones were based on MTK chipset solutions. This is greater than Qualcomm's market share in China.

MediaTek now offers solutions for both the higher-end of the smartphone market (quad-core) as continuing to enable very low-cost Android-based devices.

MTK has found its place in the mobile value chain. There are times when you shouldn't just look sideways to find your emerging competition, but at the bottom of the stack.

MediaTek's MT6575 optimized for low-cost Android 4 smartphones:

How low can they go? How will the market adjust to lower revs and margins?

CNET STORY >>

TECH CRUNCH on $50 Androids >>

Informa: 1 in 2 smartphones to be sub $150 by 2017

There were several interesting stories this week directly related to the on-going trend of smartphone commoditization and dropping ASPs. Forget the $100 laptop, we're entering the world of the $50 smartphone.

Let's look at MediaTek's plans to begin offering low-cost quad-core smartphone chipset solutions. Taiwan-based MTK says that their quad-core platform will be available during Q1 2013 and already one big-name smartphone vendor, Sony, is kicking the tires. MTK provides the guts for hundreds of millions of handsets per year. While most of these are feature phones, the company has been pushing into smartphones over the past few years. Expect more competitive disruptions to come and a plethora of even more new industry entrants.

At a conference talk, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales highlighted the popularity of a $50 Android-based Huawei smartphone in Africa. And that's street price according to Wales. Frankly, I wasn't aware prices had already come down so low as only a few years ago, the sub-$80 trade-price smartphone still seemed years off. But it's a nice story about the march towards the democratization of information.

Today, industry analysts at Informa released some info from an interesting report saying that 50% of "smartphones sold in 2017 will be priced below US$150."

Informa:

The average smartphone price will drop from US$188 in 2011 to US$152 in 2017 as a result of it balancing the huge demand for entry-level smartphones in emerging markets and the demand for “super-smartphones” in developed markets. The devices’ average gross margin is expected to remain flat – in the range of 20 -25%.

I suppose they are referring to retail prices. Informa believes that Apple and Samsung will continue to maintain profit margins well above average, which runs under the assumption that the value of those brand names will continue on a linear trajectory.

In the year 2012, it seems like a safe bet to state that Apple and Samsung will continue to be the mind-share leaders in 2017. But let's recall that the Motorola RAZR and Nokia's N95 were two of the market's premium devices about half a decade ago.

I am not sure about brands, but one trend is clear: smartphone prices and margins are coming down and it's time for vendors to adjust to the competitive environment. And what happens to the market for feature phones when smartphones are retailing for $50?