Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/1019582
Wireless World 1 5 Friday, September 14, 2018 JW: Many vendors have started to migrate to a Silicon-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, which enables them to price their chips for free and secure more profit through recurring service revenue. Let's look at the example of an IoT chip that sells for $0.05. The silicon typ- ically costs $0.01, then packaging and product each add another half cent apiece. This results in the vendor turning a profit of about $0.03 on each chip. In addition, the revenue opportunity ends there because that chip is a one-time sale. But a combination of technology trends – the high speeds and low latency of 4G and 5G, and the familiarity and comfort that most businesses have with cloud-based services – enables semicon- ductor vendors to offer SaaS. Now, they can offload 90 percent of the chip's func- tionality to the cloud, which helps reduce the chip's complexity and its cost and power consumption. When the functionality resides in the cloud, it's easy for semiconductor vendors and/or their business partners to continually develop and deploy innovative, market-differentiating serv- ices when they are not limited by a chip designed years earlier. That flexibility and future-proofing is particularly valuable for the transportation and logistics markets, where endpoints typ- ically remain in service for a decade or longer. That endpoint lifespan means ven- dors, and/or their business partners, have an installed base to upsell additional services for a decade or potentially longer. But this long-term sales opportu- Comtech (Cont'd. from p. 1) nity is available only to vendors with the foresight to adopt a SaaS business model. WW: Can you give an example? JW: Sure. Suppose a company has a blockchain-based IoT application that lets shipping companies verify each delivery has been made to the right loca- tion at the right time. That application provider could pay its semiconductor partner $0.005 for every transaction the chip enables. If the application verifies 10 deliver- ies per day, 365 days a year, the semicon- ductor vendor would realize a $0.1825 profit annually from each chip. That's far more than the $0.03 profit it would have earned under the traditional, non-SaaS business model. Obviously, the more chips the ven- dor sells under a SaaS model, the more revenue and profit it makes. And those amounts increase exponentially the longer each chip stays in service. It's also possible that the same chip could support multiple-application part- ners, including ones that the vendor adds a few years into the endpoint's decade-long service life. If a second one supports, say, the temperature, humidity and other conditions in the shipper's vehicles, the annual profit doubles to $0.365. Now that traditional one-time $0.03 profit looks even more like pocket change. Semiconductor ven- dors that don't switch to a SaaS busi- ness model are literally leaving money on the table. For more information, visitwww.comtech enterprise.com or stop by booth #S2838. 20th Century Fox, Panasonic and Samsung Forge New Partnership 20th Century Fox, Panasonic Corporation and Samsung Electronics announced a new partnership to create an open, royal- ty-free dynamic metadata platform for High Dynamic Range (HDR) through an associated certification and logo program, tentatively called HDR10+. Together, the three companies will form a licensing entity that will begin licensing the HDR10+ platform in January 2018. The entity will license the metadata broadly to content companies, ultra-high definition TVs, Blu-ray disc players/recorders and set-top box manufacturers, as well as SoC vendors, royalty-free with only a nominal administrative fee. "As leaders in home entertainment content and hardware, the three compa- nies are ideal partners for bringing HDR10+ into the homes of consumers everywhere," said Jongsuk Chu, Senior Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. "We are committed to making the latest tech- nology available in our TVs and are con- fident that HDR10+ will deliver premi- um quality content and enhance the way you experience television programs and movies in the home." HDR10+ is a cutting-edge technolo- gy, building upon the benefits of HDR televisions, which offers the best possible viewing experience for next generation displays. HDR10+ provides unprece- dented picture quality on all displays with brightness, color, and contrast auto- matically optimized for each scene. In previous iterations, static tone mapping applied a fixed enhancement across an entire piece of content. With HDR10+ dynamic tone mapping, every scene is individually enhanced to bring to life vibrant visuals and achieve unprecedent- ed picture quality. This new enhanced visual experience will allow consumers to see pictures that match the intention of filmmakers. "HDR10+ is a technological step forward that optimizes picture quality for next generation displays," said Danny Kaye, Executive Vice President at 20th Century Fox and Managing Director of the Fox Innovation Lab. "HDR10+ provides dynamic metadata, which pre- cisely describes every scene to deliver unprecedented picture quality. Working in partnership with Panasonic and Samsung through the Fox Innovation Lab, we are able to bring new platforms like HDR10+ to the market that more accurately realize the vision of our film- makers beyond the theater." There are several key benefits for partners who wish to adopt the platform for their HDR10+ compliant products. HDR10+ offers system flexibility, allow- ing a variety of partners, including con- tent creators, content distributors, TV manufacturers and device makers, to incorporate this platform and improve the viewing experience for audiences. The HDR10+ platform was designed to allow for future development and inno- vation in order to deliver a more power- ful technology in the years to come. "Panasonic has a long history of working with industry leaders to develop lasting technical formats. We are delight- ed to work together with 20th Century Fox and Samsung to develop a new HDR format, which will bring consumers so many benefits," said Yuki Kusumi, Executive Officer at Panasonic. "By offering considerable HDR picture quali- ty improvements across a wider range of TVs while accelerating the amount of premium HDR content available, we expect HDR10+ to quickly become the defacto HDR format." About Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC (TCFHE) is a recog- nized global industry leader and a sub- sidiary of Twentieth Century Fox Film. TCFHE is the worldwide marketing, sales and distribution company for all Fox film and television programming, acquisitions and original productions as well as all third party distribution part- ners on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD, Digital HD and VOD (video-on- demand). Each year TCFHE introduces hundreds of new and newly enhanced products, which it services to retail out- lets and digital stores throughout the world. About Panasonic Panasonic Corporation is a worldwide leader in the development of diverse elec- tronics technologies and solutions for cus- tomers in the consumer electronics, hous- ing, automotive and B2B businesses. Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2018, the company has expanded globally and now operates 495 subsidiaries and 91 associated companies worldwide, record- ing consolidated net sales of 7.343 trillion yen for the year ended March 31, 2017. Committed to pursuing new value through innovation across divisional lines, the company uses its technologies to create a better life and a better world for its cus- tomers. To learn more about Panasonic, go to www.panasonic.com/global. About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wear- able devices, tablets, digital appliances, network systems and memory, system LSI and LED solutions. For the latest news, visit the Samsung Newsroom at news.samsung.com. Genovation Cars: The Green Car Company By Steve Keyes, Communications Director, Centigrade for Genovation Cars Genovation's long-term goal is to be a premier provider of high performance sustainable automobiles. Genovation is committed to advancing the state of the art in EV technology with the knowl- edge that performance EVs will acceler- ate the delivery of sustainable products for future generations. The Genovation GXE Corvette all electric supercar has broken several significant world records on multiple occasions while reimagining an American icon. Genovation is raising the bar in energy storage, propulsion, composite and sus- pension technologies. We ask our cus- tomers to join us on this journey. In recent years, several issues have converged to create a demand for the kind of vehicle Genovation builds: Climate change, due to high carbon dioxide emissions, is now a widely accepted fact. As a global community, we must all take whatever actions we can to reduce harmful greenhouse gases. A recent draft report from the US Government titled Climate Science Special Report finds it "extremely likely that more than half of the rise in temper- ature over the past four decades has been caused by human activity." There has been an increase in the awareness of the negative effects of air pollution, especially on the young and old. The World Health Organization has estimated that up to 2.4 mil- lion people a year die from causes directly attributed to air pollution. Research has shown a correlation between air pollution and the incidences of asthma, particularly among children. As atmospheric CO2 levels rise, the gas dissolves into our oceans, causing the water to become more acidic. Ocean acidification negatively impacts biodiversity and is particularly damaging to shellfish and kelp, putting fisheries around the globe at risk. The Genovation team is comprised of a small and capable group of engineers and automotive experts that are commit- ted to building world class products. In order to achieve this goal, Genovation has teamed with one of the world's preeminent contract manufacturers, The Prefix Corporation, to make the GXE a reality. Steeped in Detroit and European auto- motive know how, Prefix is helping make the GXE a stylish, robust, world class electric supercar. At the same time, we have teamed with a number of smaller technology companies, like Stafl Systems, that bring a fresh approach to innovation in the automotive sector. The combination of large and small, of tradi- tional and new organizations, has result- ed in the creation of the world's fastest certified street legal electric supercar, the Genovation GXE. For more information, visit www .genovationcars.com.