Ben Grubb

Deputy technology editor,  theage.com.au

Who needs a mouse?

Gesture-based computing will become one of the biggest trends in 2013 as devices begin to make use of our eyes, and different movements of our hands.

Just like the technology in the 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report, gesture-based computing will enable people to control their smart TVs and computers using only their hands, and without having to touch a remote or keyboard.

In 2002, gesture-based computing was the stuff of sci-fi films.

Gadgets such as Samsung’s MV900F – a digital camera that can zoom in and out or capture a shot just by waving your hand – already make use of gestures.

But it will take a company such as Leap Motion to truly revolutionise gesture-based computing in 2013 with the release of its iPod-sized controller, which senses your individual hand and finger movements so you can interact directly with your PC.

On Friday, ASUS announced it would bundle Leap Motion’s gadget with select new computers “later this year”. This deal will ensure widespread adoption of the technology. Eye-tracking is also set to become more prevalent in computers by way of accessories such as REX.

Made by tech company Tobii, REX can be used with software to track exactly what you’re looking at on a screen, allowing you do things such as scroll sideways or blast moving asteroids with your eyes. Tobii is due to sell 5000 REXs later this year with pre-orders starting in March.

Vodafone Australia begins to make a come back

Can Vodafone’s rollout of 4G help it make a comeback? Photo: Getty Images

It might sound like a bit of a stretch, especially when you consider that in the two years to July 2012, Vodafone lost a million customers (a loss attributed primarily to poor network performance).

But hear me out. The company said last year that in “early 2013″ it would begin rolling out a 4G LTE network “in selected areas” (something Telstra began rolling out in September 2011 and Optus in April 2012).

With that in mind, and the fact that it has been upgrading its 3G network to cope better with traffic by utilising dual-channel HSPA+ (DC-HSPA+) technology, I predict that the telco will make a significant comeback this year after users begin to notice significant network improvements.

Once its 4G network is rolled out in capital cities, Vodafone’s iPhone 5 users will be some of the first users to notice faster speeds. Those who use 3G phones will probably also notice a difference once 4G users jump off the 3G network and onto 4G, meaning the 3G network will become less congested.

Essentially, 4G will lighten the load of its 3G network. But will it be enough for the telco, whose reputation has been damaged by past under-investment in its network, to win back customers?

Telsyte senior research analyst Chris Coughlan believes “post 2015 as a more realistic turn-around timeframe”.

Augmented reality gets closer

A Google employee wears a pair of Glass. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

Debuted in June last year, Project Glass, a research and development program by Google to make an augmented reality head-mounted display, will start to gain some traction this year after prototype devices ship early in the year to US Google I/O (input/output) developers who pre-ordered them for $US1500 ($1436).

A consumer version is expected to be ready within a year of the device shipping to developers. Project Glass has a lot of potential, and that potential will start to become clearer once developers get their hands on it.

Looking at the sky might show you the weather; looking at someone whose name you’ve forgotten could also become less awkward with facial recognition built-in; and remembering to get the milk and bread your husband or wife told you to get at the supermarket will become easier when notifications based on where you are pop up with reminders.

Smartphones flex their muscles

Nokia shows off its bendable prototype device

Cracked and broken screens are a common smartphone curse, but Samsung has developed bendable screens to make phones more flexible – and much less prone to breaking. The company is expected to unveil a 5.5-inch bendable display with a high-definition resolution of 1280 x 720 and 267 pixels per inch at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month.

Samsung isn’t the only one testing out bendable screens. Nokia previewed a prototype flexible mobile computer in October 2011 that you twist and bend to control, and also a special coating that can be applied to gadgets to repel water, oily fingerprints, dust and dirt.

Wi-Fi technology gets faster

Wi-Fi is set to become faster this year. Photo: Jamie Brown

The 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard is expected to be ratified this year, meaning data transfers of up to 1.3Gbps will be possible, theoretically, on first-generation gear in perfect conditions.

Transferring data via 802.11ac should also mean longer battery life for devices using it, as data will be delivered quicker. Reports suggest Apple’s 2013 MacBook line-up will make use of the new standard care of chip maker Broadcom.

Devices such as the iPhone 5 currently use 802.11n technology, which supports up to 300 Mbps under the best conditions. This makes 802.11ac more than four times faster than what’s currently available.

Hackers target your mobile/tablet

“Ransomware” has been customised to scare Australians. Photo: Botnets.fr

Ransomware – hacker software that holds a user’s PC to ransom for money after they visit an infected website – will continue to be a problem and will rise to become one of the best ways for criminals to scam money.

Security company McAfee predicts that Ransomware will this year begin to affect mobile and tablet users, as well as PC users. Similarly, hackers will continue to hold businesses’ data to ransom by breaking into their poorly secured servers and demanding money for files to be decrypted.

Although this type of hacking has been possible for some time, hackers will begin targeting new industries that haven’t thought about computer security in the past. One such industry affected in late 2012 was the health industry: at least three medical centres were targeted in Queensland.

‘Find my iPhone’ comes to anything and everything

StickNFind … the technology that helps you find things you’ve lost that use it.

Apple made losing your iPad or iPhone and then attempting to find it almost fun with its Find My iPhone app.

Now, a Florida start-up is taking a similar experience to other gadgets with its “StickNFind” Bluetooth-powered locations stickers.

The stickers, which are being crowd-funded on indiegogo.com, can be attached to almost anything including people, iPads, cameras, books or wallets, and then found using a smartphone app with a radar-like screen, which locates them within a 30-metre range.

StickNFind plans to distribute the stickers to backers of its project beginning in March.

TVs get bigger, better and clearer

LG’s 55-inch OLED TV that is just 4-millimeters thick.

You’d think TVs couldn’t get any thinner, but just this week LG started taking pre-orders in South Korea for its wafer-thin, 4mm-thick, 55-inch OLED TV.

Large OLED TVs were meant to come to market late last year but were delayed because of manufacturing issues. This year, we’ll finally start to see LG and Samsung bring them to market.

It’s unclear when Sony and Panasonic will do the same. OLED is a new large-screen technology that is much more energy-efficient than traditional liquid crystal display (LCD) screens.

But with an expected Australian price tag of $10,000, the power savings will be hard to justify. An OLED display works without a backlight – hence why it doesn’t use as much power as an LCD. It can therefore display deep black levels, which is also why it can be a lot thinner and lighter than an LCD.

Wireless charging comes to gadgets

Last year, Nokia released its Lumia 920, which utilises wireless charging via an inductive charging power mat that uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy.

This year, wireless charging will become more prevalent on smartphones and gadgets as manufacturers figure out ways to make it work with their devices.

Inductive charging has advantages and disadvantages, but when used in conjunction with regular charging, it can be a neat feature for those who just want to place their device on a mat and have it charge without having to fiddle with a charger (especially in the dark).

Advantages of inductive charging include convenience and a lower risk of getting electrocuted, while disadvantages include its extra expense and the fact that devices can’t be moved while charging.

Anonymity on the web disappears

Foursquare is the latest social networking website to crack down on anonymity online, but it definitely wasn’t the first.

In September 2011, I wrote about the death of anonymity online and throughout 2012 a number of social networking sites moved to make sure you started using your real name. Many policies resulted in suspension if you used a fake name, and Facebook even started trialling a pop-up that asked your friends to confirm your identity to try to see if you were lying about your name. Because of this, I don’t see anonymity on the web lasting too much longer.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/augmented-reality-and-bendy-screens-in-a-handsfree-2013-20130104-2c8c6.html#ixzz2H5sfZyRb

The rises of China and India as two key emerging markets provide enormous opportunities to both multinational drug companies and professional outsourcing service providers. However, there are significant differences between these two countries, in particular in the areas related to drug R&D. Although multinational companies now could have more choices than ever, China and India each actually play different roles in the long value chain of drug R&D.

We recently conducted an in-depth study and analysis on the drug R&D capability of China and India. This article summarized part of the results found in our study.

Current Service Capabilities

At present the most popular services offered by majority Chinese CROs are early-phase drug discovery research, such as lead generation and optimization, assays and assay method development, etc. Only a handful of them are able to provide advanced discovery research services, such as high-throughput/content screening, computer-aided drug discovery (CADD), and structure-activity relationship (SAR) study. However, more CROs in India than in China are able to provide integrated discovery services besides the routine medicinal chemistry research services that are also offered by the Chinese CROs. A number of Indian CROs also have internal R&D programs. They thus generally have stronger capabilities and richer experiences than their Chinese counterparts in the SAR-based lead optimizations and pharmacological property optimizations.

However, the service features in preclinical development in these two countries seem just opposite. China is currently leading over India in drug testing in large animals such as nonhuman primates, as a large number of Chinese CROs possess good capability in this area. But in the in vitro studies and in small animal in vivo testing, the two countries have almost equal service capabilities.

In clinical development, India currently is a more ideal choice than China in terms of the service capability, experience, and CRO choice. However, if considering the factor of the attraction of the local pharmaceutical market, China seems to be more attractive than India as its current pharmaceutical market is much larger than the Indian market and, more importantly, poised to still grow faster than India.

Besides the professional CROs, a number of Indian major pharma companies are also involved in R&D outsourcing services. In contrast, at present, none of the Chinese major pharma companies have dedicated divisions that provide R&D outsourcing services to multinational companies. As they started R&D earlier than Chinese companies and currently have products in middle-to-late development stages, many Indian drug companies have gained experience in most stages of the drug R&D value chain, whereas the majority of the Chinese drug companies are currently still significantly inexperienced, in particular in terms of their ability of moving a drug from one development stage to the next. However, China currently is becoming one of the most focused countries for global pharmaceutical and biotech companies to look for outlicensing or co-development opportunities for their new products, largely because of the attraction of its pharmaceutical market.

Major Pharma’s Different R&D Strategies

Attracted by the fast growth of the pharmaceutical markets in both China and India, coupled with the fact that the skills and experiences of the scientists in these two countries are fast catching up and have become acceptable, it appears to most major pharma companies that the full-scale drug R&D outsourcing practice in these two countries has now become not only feasible but also meaningful. However, major pharma companies have also been implementing different outsourcing strategies in these two countries.

For example, China has so far been the main place for global drug companies to source focused compound libraries, especially those derived from the natural products isolated and purified from the Chinese herbal medicines. In the past few years almost all major pharma companies have sourced various sizes of compound libraries from China through hiring hundreds of scientists in Chinese CROs. On the other hand, almost at the same time many major pharma companies have also forged long-term, close partnerships with a number of Indian companies including both professional CROs and drug companies for both discovery research and early phase development. Their collaboration even included risk-sharing components.

As the life science research and technologies in China are better advanced than in India, China possesses advantages for conducting drug R&D over India in that it provides ease for major pharma to form a networked partnership with a variety of desired local capabilities while it is still easy for them to establish their own R&D facilities in the country, a similar operating model to what they have been doing in their home countries. This advantage has indeed been attracting more and more major pharma companies, making them willing to be committed to big R&D investment in China. In contrast, in India they more tend to conduct R&D in a model of partnership with local companies. To a large extent, to these major pharma companies, China seems to be aligned better with their long-term growth goals than India.

Future CRO Market Growth Potentials

Figure. Growth trends of Chinese and Indian CRO markets

The last several years have witnessed the fast growth of the CRO markets in both China and India. According to our research, the current market size of the Chinese CRO industry is about $1.58 B. It has been growing in a CAGR of about 31% in the past five years. The current market value of the Indian CRO industry is about $1.3 B. Its CAGR in the past five years was around 21.5%. In the global CRO market, which, according to our research, is about $42 B at present, the Chinese and Indian CRO markets currently account for about 3.8% and 3.1%, respectively, or about 7% if combined together.

As both China and India currently still possesses a number of advantages over other emerging countries, there is almost no doubt that the CRO markets in both countries are expected to still experience healthy growth in the foreseeable future. However, as the Chinese pharmaceutical market is currently larger and still exhibits stronger future growth potential than the Indian market, and as targeting the local market will still be the key motivation of major pharma companies in all emerging markets, it is thus expected that the Chinese CRO market will likely still experience more robust growth in the near future than its Indian counterpart.

We thus forecast that the Chinese CRO market will likely grow in a CAGR of around 16% in the next five years or so and the Indian CRO market will likely grow in a CAGR of around 9% during the same time period. Accordingly, the market value of the Chinese CRO industry will likely reach close to $4 B by 2017 and the Indian CRO market will be likely around $2.2 B by then (Figure). According to our research, by 2017 China and India combined together will likely account for about 10% of the global CRO market.

Source: gen eng news　

By Vivian Yeo

Businesses operating in Asia are becoming more open to outsourcing core capabilities such as research and development (R&D) in a bid to derive greater operational efficiencies. But, industry watchers warn that these companies should take care when doing so.

The Economist Corporate Network (ECN) revealed last month that product development and product design were the least likely to be outsourced or considered for business process outsourcing (BPO) among companies with Asian operations. The study was based on a survey of over 130 companies in various verticals, of which 2.4 percent were from the IT sector.

However, the ECN report noted that the number of enterprises evaluating the potential of outsourcing product development and design, exceeded or was comparable with those that indicated likewise for human resource administration or finance and accounting. Part of The Economist Group, the ECN is a membership-based service that provides analysis on economic and business trends.

Ross O’Brien, director of the ECN in Hong Kong and author of the report, revealed that the company’s tech industry clients were indeed stepping up engagement with third-party providers for R&D processes.

ECN clients, typically large multinationals, “deploy in-region R&D to help them create a virtuous cycle”, he told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview.

“[A] locally-developed product, which responds to application needs, form factors and price-points of Asian markets, is increasingly needed as tech companies depend on sales in Asia to shore up their global growth objectives,” explained O’Brien.

Jens Butler, Ovum’s principal analyst for IT services in the Asia-Pacific region, concurred. He noted in an e-mail that there is “certainly an increase in BPO interest” among tech organisations of core capabilities such as R&D.

However, Butler added that companies tend to be selective about the R&D aspects to outsource, where the focus is usually on functions such as testing rather than the actual design and architecting of products and services.

R&D outsourcing not for all – Rolf Jester, Gartner’s Distinguished Analyst and Asia-Pacific vice president for IT services, noted in a phone interview that there is a “decent amount of external R&D” being carried out in the industry today.

According to Jester, it is common for major software vendors to have outsourcing partners involved in product engineering. Mobile manufacturers also look to companies in China and Vietnam, for example, to develop embedded software, he said.
Sydney-based Jester added that one factor that could encourage businesses to outsource R&D is that a product has reached “commodity-stage” or is a common product with a large pool of providers.

In contrast, companies that deal with an “early-stage technology”, such as a security company with leading-edge development, would want to keep a proprietary hold over its R&D-related processes, he noted. This category of businesses may still outsource some aspects, particularly if they deem outsourcing as the best option to obtain a specific expertise, the analyst said.

“Ultimately, any organisation that is considering R&D-related BPO needs to discern whether that function is a competitive differentiator,” said Jester.

“Each company competes on different characteristics. R&D and the ability to truly design innovative things may or may not be one of those characteristics, and each company needs to make that decision,” he explained.

For instance, he noted that Dell during its early days competed on the basis of having a supply chain that was heavily customised and ensuring that products were brought to market and delivered to the end-customer uniquely and quickly.

Butler added that while there may be proper structures in place for companies to govern the outsourcing of core capabilities, there may be reasons holding them back.

“As greater control associated with advanced architectures and more rigours are built into development functions, there will be ‘stages’ that will fit into an outsourcing function reasonably straightforwardly,” the Ovum analyst said. “However, a lot also depends on the organisational culture, risk profile and strategic direction. More often than not, it requires a specific incident to drive organisations down this path rather than a gradual shift.”

Singapore-based Data Security Systems Solutions (DSSS) is one organisation that currently does not outsource any of its R&D work, and has no intention of doing so.

In an e-mail, CEO Tan Teik Guan told ZDNet Asia that the “quality of the product is key to the success” of software companies such as DSSS.

“We choose not to outsource our product development and instead hire all our developers within the Singapore office to ensure security remains the highest emphasis during the product development cycle, and that the necessary security procedures and mechanisms remain in place while building the product,” Tan said.

He added that another reason DSSS retains development work in-house is to play its part as a “responsible corporate citizen” by exposing the current and future generation of engineers in Singapore to “high-tech entrepreneurship”.

Outsourcing core functions necessary for competitiveness – The ECN’s O’Brien, however, cautioned that companies may increasingly have no choice but to look to a third-party, including BPO service providers, for product development.

“Whole-scale outsourcing of all core development requirements to a single partner is rarely considered a good thing. But, with cycle time and cost expectations being as intense as they are in the region, IT firms can hardly afford not to leverage partners increasingly higher up their own ‘value stacks’ to reduce cycle time,” he pointed out.

“A portfolio management approach is how I am seeing firms mitigate this challenge,” he said. He related that one ECN member, who plays in the mobile applications space, distributes its code development among several geographically-dispersed partners, ensuring that no critical mass of IP (intellectual property) is in a single service provider’s hands.

According to O’Brien, in five years’ time, the majority of organisations will have no choice but to seek efficiencies from R&D outsourcing, especially since they are increasingly unable to squeeze cost efficiencies out of low-value production coupled with higher wages in Asia.

The option, he observed, is not one to dread.

“We tend to think of R&D as being only rarified moments of white lab-coated ‘Eureka!’ innovation, while in reality much of it is debugging, simulating and other labor-intensive processes materially indistinguishable from good old-fashioned manual labor.
“I believe this failure to recognise a lot of R&D for what it truly is in the IT value chain, is causing decision makers to make bad calls with regard to the extent they have to outsource, to stay competitive,” O’Brien said.
 
Source: ZDNetAsia.com

Outsourcing by U.S. technology companies is on the decline, according to a survey by BDO USA, the accounting and consulting organization.

About 35 percent of the one hundred chief financial officers (CFOs) of the companies surveyed indicated that their firms are currently outsourcing services or manufacturing outside the U.S. — down from a high of 62 percent in 2009, and a slight decline from the 37 percent decline in 2010.

The study also found that of the companies who are not currently outsourcing (65 percent), the majority would not consider outsourcing too far from home (58 percent), either choosing the U.S. (25 percent), Canada (13 percent), or indicating no plans to outsource at all (20 percent).

The CFOs indicated that while they are concerned about some U.S. regulations that may change taxes, they don’t expect jobs to head overseas any time soon.

“Outsourcing can be looked at as a bellwether of the economy,” said Don Jones, Partner in the Technology and Life Sciences Practice at BDO USA.

“Tech companies turned to outsourcing in 2009 in order to reduce operating costs and ride out the recession. Since then, we’ve seen a marked decrease as companies recover and look to create jobs and growth close to home.”

Since 2008, most foreign countries saw a decrease in the number of U.S. firms establishing outsourcing operations (the average destination saw a 29 percent decrease, while Western Europe was the only destination that saw an increase, 9 percent).

India now favored country to outsource to

Among U.S. firms that are still outsourcing, BDO states, India has surpassed China as the favored region for the first time (24 percent of respondents selected India, versus 18 percent for China).

Also, of the companies that seek to outsource, the most likely ones are involved in manufacturing (53 percent), followed by IT services and programming (43 percent), R&D (38 percent), distribution (26 percent) and call or help centers (12 percent).

“Manufacturing is most commonly outsourced because it can be both labor and capital intensive,” said Jones. “When done right, an outsourced manufacturing function can cut operating costs and help tech companies to realize significant savings.”

Read more at IBTimes