LAS VEGAS —
Infusing CE products with the power of
high-speed landline and wireless networks “will accelerate
innovation” and make it possible to deliver the same
TV content “to any device, anywhere anytime in a simple
way,” said Verizon Communications chairman/CEO Ivan
Seidenberg during his International CES keynote.
Seidenberg shared the stage with Verizon president/
COO Lowell McAdam, Time Warner chairman/
CEO Jeff Benkes, Motorola Mobility chairman/CEO
Sanjay Jha, and Google’s Mike Cleron to underscore
the potential for innovation.
McAdam pointed out that Verizon decided to “go
early and first with 4G LTE-based cellular broadband
to send a signal to the entire CE industry that the market
will develop very quickly” and “speed up the innovation
cycle.”
Networks will be as fast as PCs, he predicted, with
Verizon’s fiber-optic network to the home and businesses
having “no practical limit to speeds,” McAdam said.
4G-equipped smartphones “will be the biggest wave
to hit computing since the invention of the PC,” he
continued.
For his part, Time Warner’s Benkes said wired and
wireless broadband will usher in a second golden era
of TV in which TV content will be “going on demand
in every device,” from TVs to PCs, tablets and smartphones. TV, he said, is “becoming bigger than TV.”
To make “TV Everywhere” happen, Time-Warner has
brought together every content-distribution company,
including cable operators and telcos, as well as content
creators to develop a way for consumers who subscribe
to a TV service “to have it on demand in every
device” and have it work the same way and not pay
more for it, Benkes said.
Tablets will be one of the ways consumers will access
their TV programs, and to underscore the market
potential for tablets, Google demonstrated its Android
3.0 OS, designed specifically for tablets and adopted
by Motorola in its planed Motorola Xoon for Verizon’s
3G and 4G networks.
Motorola is targeting February availability of the 3G
Xoom incorporating CDMA 1x EV-DO Rev. A, but purchasers
who buy the 3G version will be able to upgrade
it to 4G LTE sometime in the second quarter, when the
4G version will also become available, Jha said.
At the keynote, Google demonstrated key 3.0 features,
including a new 3D-like visual design to the
user interface, the easy addition of widgets to multiple
home screens, ability to view windows on the home
screen showing a calendar and email inbox, and such
desktop features as tabs along the top of the screen
for various apps.
Google 3.0 tablets lack hard buttons on front, replacing
them with virtual keys that reconfigure themselves
depending on what the user is doing.
