VoIP telephony is increasingly being adopted in use around the world and Wi-Fi handsets are playing an ever larger role in this sector. Milos Djokovic, CEO and president of Zi Corporation, a company that specializes in interface solutions for wireless technologies, shared his thoughts with Digitimes about the current Wi-Fi handset market and future trends of the industry.
Q: Can you provide a little background to Zi Corporation?
A: Zi Corporation is a technology company that delivers intelligent interface solutions for wireless and consumer technologies. The company provides device manufacturers and network operators across North America, Europe and Asia with a full range easy-to-use input solutions.
Q: What kinds of products/services do you offer?
A: Zi products for the Asian market include eZiText for one-touch predictive text entry; eZiType for keyboard prediction with auto-correction; JoyZtick for predictive text on any device; and Decuma for predictive pen-input handwriting recognition.
Q: Who are some of the company's partners?
A: Zi has recently announced a partnership with Wi-Fi handset manufacturer BCM of Taiwan and the company's other partners include WistronNEWeb, also from Taiwan, and handset and mobile equipment manufacturer UTStarcom from China.
Q: What kind of experience does the company have in the Wi-Fi handset market?
A: We have been supplying text entry products to the Asian market for many years and earlier this year we launched a predictive text portfolio in the Asian market at an event in Beijing. Equipment manufacturers are now seeing the benefits of our software for Wi-Fi handsets and our products are rapidly being deployed by this market as manufacturers want the latest on-device technology developments to grow this market further.
Q: How do you assess the Wi-Fi handset market?
A: In 2006, worldwide Wi-Fi handset sales for both single- and dual-mode reached over US$500 million. Wi-Fi VoIP phones are the fastest growing segment in the market by far and the market is strongly moving towards dual-mode handsets as they offer the user more flexibility and services. North America currently leads the way with single mode handsets but it is Asia-Pacific that leads in revenue for dual-mode handsets.
The Asia-Pacific region has over 45% of the world's mobile subscribers.
Q: What is the expected growth in the market?
A: The massive growth in Wi-Fi is fueled by users wanting a greater breadth of services on devices and stronger offerings from mobile operators and service providers. Researchers predict that the Wi-Fi phone market could double, possibly almost triple, each year between now and 2009. Currently, Wi-Fi handsets are mainly adopted by the enterprise market but more and more consumers are demanding the low cost calls Wi-Fi handsets can offer.
Q: Which global regions are seeing the fastest growth? How about the Asian market?
A: The growing trend seems to be that wireless technologies are developed and deployed first in China and India, rather than Europe and North America as in the past. The result is a significant shift in industrial influence and a positive development for the Asian mobile market. The statistics show that Asia is in fact the global leader in dual-mode handsets and is predicted to be the most dominating force pushing Wi-Fi forward.
The main growth area in Asia is the adoption of private Wi-Fi networks in the household sector, which has grown significantly during the past four years, as general awareness about Wi-Fi technology among consumers has been effectively improved.
Q: What are some of the benefits and disadvantages of Wi-Fi phones?
A: Wi-Fi handsets can operate at high data speeds and the call quality is rapidly improving to the point where in many cases it's equal to or better than cellular. Wi-Fi handsets can offer users cheaper calls and can use VoIP services such as Skype and other free telephony services to operate.
On the down side, the reliability question is the biggest reason that organizations haven't adopted VoIP more quickly. Because it's a real-time application, VoIP is more sensitive to network problems than most data-oriented applications.
Also, because Wi-Fi is usually fixed to one area, calls can be dropped if you leave that area. However, many manufacturers are making dual-mode Wi-Fi/GSM handsets to address such issues and one of our customers, UTStarcom, was one of the first in Europe to launch a dual-mode handsets directly to consumers.
Q: Who are some key players in the Wi-Fi handset market?
A: Worldwide Wi-Fi leaders include Cisco, Samsung, SpectraLink and Motorola, but in China UTStarcom is one of the leading Wi-Fi handset manufacturers, and in Taiwan Wistron NEWeb and BCM.
Q: What is your overview of the future of Wi-Fi phones?
A: The future of Wi-Fi will most certainly be through dual-mode handsets. The handset market is moving to a stage where no one wants to carry two or three devices in their pocket, so the ability to have a single device for all calls will really appeal to consumers.
It is predicted that there will be over 175,000 Wi-Fi hotspots globally by the end of 2007 but over 70% of current hotspots are found in North America and Europe. The Asia-Pacific region is growing very rapidly but growth in China has been much slower than originally thought. Still, it is predicted that the Asia-Pacific region will come close to matching the number of North American hotspots by 2012.
Milos Djokovic, CEO and president of Zi Corporation
Photo: Company
Article edited by Eric Mah
