The Hindu Business Line : Mobiles

LOW-COST, high-impact technology: $5 cell phones? That's a headline on http://psdblog.worldbank.org, the new kid on the blog-block, from the Private Sector Development Department. PSD is the first among World Bank Group units `to venture into the blogosphere', says the Bank's e-newsletter.

That's fine, but what about the low-cost mobile? The blog links to a June 29 press release on www.semiconductors.philips.com, about Philips's `global initiative' and `roadmap for sub-$5 hardware and software platform to drive handset costs below $20', to reach an `untapped global customer base of 3.3 billion people'. Currently, the lowest cost mobile phones on the market are just below $40, says the communiqué.

The first product from the project will be a sub-$5 system solution - an integrated hardware and software platform constituting all the electronics needed in a mobile phone, it informs, citing what Thierry Laurent, an executive vice-president of Philips, said at the Ultra Low-Cost Handset Conference. Remember that we are talking about the phone's chipset or the brains that makes up only about a third of a mobile phone's cost.

PSD blog has a posting by Pablo Halkyard, who cites The Economist to point out that tax can gobble up what consumers save on the hardware. "In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax."

The initiative is to be based at Philips' facility in Shanghai, one learns. The company aims to drive down total handset costs below $15 by 2008. A few more details are that the sub-$5 system will be "a GSM device capable of making calls and sending SMS messages", have "a black & white screen" and "will be able to play polyphonic ringtones".

El Nano!

IF `cheaper' is good, `smaller' should be better. "Researchers at the University of Glasgow have cracked a puzzle that has baffled scientists for half a century, and could potentially decrease the size of computers, phones and ipods even further", a press release on www.scottishdevelopmentinternational.com informs.

It talks about a `breakthrough in metal oxide-based nano-clusters' - literally a hollow device built from metal atoms and oxygen, that is, basic materials found on the earth's surface. Chemist Dr Lee Cronin compares the clusters to the Trojan horse because "they appear pretty and benign, but when they are heated they release charge that could potentially be harnessed to have an effect on their surroundings".

Another analogy, when explaining why it's called a `cluster': "... since the metal and oxygen atoms are all linked together to form one surface, like a football or a cigar shape." We are assured that devices can become tinier, or nanoscale, because "metal oxides are now 10,000 times thinner than a human hair"; and that the `nanoscopic metal oxide clusters' can be made `smart' so as to respond to "an input or stimulus - such as light, heat, electricity or the presence of another molecule". El Nano, shall we say?

New technology patenting

FOR the law-minded and the nano-brained, a recent research paper of interest is Patenting Nanotechnology by Mark A. Lemley of Stanford Law School, on http://ssrn.com. "Universities and companies are rushing to the patent office in record numbers to patent nanotechnology inventions," notes the abstract. As a result, there are now `nanotechnology practice groups ` in law firms; and the US Patent and Trademark Office has a new technology class for the purpose.

Lemley says that there are `three big differences' between the small nanotechnology and other inventions. "First, this is the first new field in a century in which people started patenting the basic ideas at the outset. In most other fields of invention over the past century - computer hardware, software, biotechnology, the Internet - the basic building blocks of the field were unpatented. In nanotech, by contrast, companies and universities alike are patenting early and often."

Nano-inventions, we may call them, perhaps. The second difference, according to the author, is that the new technology is `cross-industry'. Thus, "a significant number of nanotechnology patentees will own rights not just in the industry in which they participate, but in other industries as well".

And the last factor, which may apply also to the Scottish story above, is that a large number of the basic patents have been issued to universities, over the last about three decades. "While universities have no direct incentive to restrict competition, their interests may or may not align with the optimal implementation of building-block nanotechnology inventions," opines Lemley. Spare a few million nanoseconds for a thorough read of his paper!

Similarity index

PATENT brings to mind intellectual property right. Do you know about a new product to help protect your organisation "against the devastating financial and legal effects of a plagiarism scandal"? It is `CopyGuard' from LexisNexis, a content-provider.

"Our technology can also be used to identify possible infringements of your company's intellectual property," informs a recent communication on www.lexisnexis.com. The product uses `pattern-matching technology' and identifies `suspect passages in submitted documents'.

Then comes a report from CopyGuard underlining and colour coding `questionable sentences, with links to the original sources', to save you the time in checking and thus improve productivity.

"Each document has a similarity index, which indicates the total percentage of the document containing text originating elsewhere".

Amazingly, the software travels through "more than seven billion relevant, searchable documents available through the LexisNexis news services and the archived Web pages indexed by iParadigms, LLC" to offer `the most accurate results possible' and assist in due diligence.

ITworks@TheHindu.co.in

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