US20150124067 illustrates an improved technique for monitoring human health vitals without contact using the physiological signals extracted from video images captured by a video camera of a smartphone. One advantage of the contact-less vitals monitoring technique is the avoidance of contact measurement which can be a problem… Read More
Tag: smartphone
Connections to Internet Drives Semiconductors
We are going to see a big reversal in what connects to the internet in next five years. At the start of this century there were about 488 million internet connections; 85% of those were connected to people for web browsing, e-mails, on-line services etc. and only 15% were used for embedded systems, remote sensing and control, and M2M… Read More
Smartphone Trends Revealed
I’ve been using cell phones since the 1980’s and I’ll never forget my first one, the Motorola DynaTAC (aka Brick Phone). The data plan was paid for by my EDA employer, and it did make me more productive because clients, prospects and co-workers could get a hold of me by simply dialing, not having to go through a secretary… Read More
Surprisingly Phablets Bucking the Trend
Amid a fiercely competitive market for computing devices, smartphones, tablets, and so on, a number of devices were created in this decade to invade into each other’s functionalities to either eat away other’s market share or retain their own. The key contenders were smartphones, Phablets, tablets and mini notebooks, whereas… Read More
Cellphones on the Path of Extinction
Semiconductor based electronics has continuously improved lives of people through various kinds of technology upgrades in the gadgets for our daily use. Imagine the journey from a mechanical typewriter to a laptop computer connected through a laser printer, transition from black & white photography to exotic coloured… Read More
Smartphones in Q1. Sammy Back On Top
Because it is such a major impact on the semiconductor industry, being the largest and fastest growing market ever, I follow the ups and down of the mobile industry. So what happened in Q1?
Total shipments are up 2% to a record (for Q1) 440 million units but that is down 16% from Q4 which remains the biggest quarter ever.
First thing is… Read More
Sensing Without (much) Power
Do you have one of those step-tracker things? They seem to be one of the earliest IoT devices that are actually selling in large quantities. Smartphones are also starting to contain this sort of sensor to provide similar functionality without requiring a separate device, as are smart-watches such as the Jumpy watch for kids on the… Read More
Samsung Continues to Top 300mm Wafer Capacity
In 1992, when Samsungbecame the largest producer of memory chips, it was not in top10 list of semiconductor companies. It was ranked at #11. Since then it has strived to attain higher ranks in the top10 list. In around 2000, it climbed to the ranks of top5 and then since 2002 until now it is at #2 in the worldwide semiconductor sales which… Read More
How the iPhone Ended Nokia’s Reign!
The origin of ARM’s success in mobile phone space is largely traced to Symbian’s decision to exclusively support the ARM Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). This in turn was the consequence of a mid-1990s decision by Texas Instruments to use ARM in its mobile phone ASICs for Nokia, the driving force behind the inception of the Symbian… Read More
Facts Support New Emergence in Semiconductor Landscape
As we left an exciting year 2014 which is poised to record 7+ % increase in semiconductor revenue (~ $338 B) compared to 2013 (~ $315 B) and entered into another promising year 2015 for semiconductors, I looked back over the year bygone and collected inferences from some of the major important events which clearly convey how 2015 can… Read More