And then there’s the tablet trend. January’s 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas revealed new touchscreen tablets from Lenovo, Dell, and HP. Some of these are pretty cool, especially the Lenovo IdeaPad U1, which has a detachable keyboard (Fig. 3). But the real tablet to beat is the new Apple iPad (Fig. 4). It has it all. Tablets of the past have done poorly, but this new movement looks like a winner with Apple probably leading the pack, as usual. HP is using the term slate to describe its devices, but who really knows what a slate is today anyway?

Network Impact

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The whole smart-phone movement is finally revealing the weakness of the networks. They do fine with voice, texting, and minimum data, but the blizzard of smart phones is causing real problems. New York City and San Francisco have had their problems with outages and lack of speedy service. Too many iPhones, BlackBerries, and other devices are hogging the cell sites with video, e-mail, and whatever.

Featuring a detachable keyboard, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 made its debut among a host of other tablet computers at January’s International CES in Las Vegas.

I witnessed such outages myself at CES. I had the feeling that at any given time, one-third to one-half of those 112,000 attendees were on the phone talking, texting, or getting e-mails. I have never seen cell-phone rudeness to this degree before. At times, I couldn’t get a call through as the network was overloaded. Expect more outages to come in high-density user areas as the smart phone becomes the de facto handset of the masses.

However, the carriers are fully aware of the problem. With AT&T activating more than 10 million iPhones in 2009 alone, the carriers created the problem for themselves. AT&T plans to invest upward of $19 billion this year to upgrade its cell sites with 3G and its backhaul with fiber. That will really help. Verizon is also in the upgrade mode despite recent losses and layoffs. As the legacy landline business continues to decline, Verizon and AT&T are looking to wireless data services to stem the tide of continuing cancellations of traditional phones. We may even see Verizon be the first to launch 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) in the U.S.

Garnering lots of hype—and most likely, lots of market share—the Apple iPad sets a new standard for mobile computing.

One possible source of relief may come from the increased presence of the fastest version of Wi-Fi, designated 802.11n, in smart phones. It was only present in less than 1% of phones last year, but ABI Research expects that to increase to 87% by 2014. That should really ease the data downloads on the cellular networks if users take that route instead of the cellular network to access the video and other data services they want.

It’s exciting times for the cellular business, and the new technology will continue to drive its growth. The next new thing, the tablet, is here now and will have an additional impact on the wireless business if it is the success that Apple and other companies hope. And by the way, Mobile World Congress will be held February 14-17 in Barcelona again. We will be reporting on the show. Watch for some additional major announcements to come.