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AWS generates more revenue than next three largest cloud service providers combined

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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AWS generates more revenue than next three largest cloud service providers combined
  • AWS holds 32% market share, followed by Microsoft with 19%, Google with 7% and Alibaba with 6% as of third quarter.
  • Infrastructure services spend benefits from Covid-19 to $36.5b, registering a 33% year-on-year growth.
  • Some organisations take a cost-driven approach by reducing capital expenditure on their own datacentres and cutting management costs from outsourcing contracts, Canalys says.

Dubai: Amazon Web Services (AWS) is still the leader in the cloud infrastructure market and generated more revenue than the next three largest cloud service providers combined in the third quarter.

As per research firm Canalys stats, AWS market share of 32 per cent in the third quarter is equal to Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud combined.

Microsoft had a market share of 19 per cent, followed by Google with seven per cent and Alibaba with six per cent.

Top four providers collectively grew 40 per cent in the quarter.

According to Synergy Research Group, AWS still leads the pack with 33 per cent market share, followed by Microsoft with 18%, Google with 9%, Alibaba with 5%, IBM with 5%, Salesforce with 3%, Tencent with 2%, Oracle with 2%, NTT with 1% and SAP with 1%.

Canalys reported that total infrastructure services spend benefited from the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic in the third quarter of this year to $36.5 billion, witnessing a year-on-year growth of about 33 per cent compared to $27.5 billion a year ago.

In the second quarter, the total spend stood at $34.6 billion.

Matthew Ball, Chief Analyst at Canalys, said that spending remains robust despite the global economic downturn, primarily for products and services enabling business continuity, including notebook PCs and peripherals, cloud-based services and cybersecurity.

Richard L. Villars, Group Vice-President at research firm International Data Corporation, said that based on lessons learned in the pandemic, most enterprises will put a mechanism in place to accelerate their shift to cloud-centric digital infrastructure and application services by the end of 2021, twice as fast as before the pandemic.

Spending remains robust

AWS’ businesses grew by $2.6 billion in the third quarter to $11.60 billion while analysts expect Microsoft Azure revenue to be about $6.3 billion.

Microsoft does not report on Azure revenues but said that is revenues grew 48 per cent on an annual basis.

AWS growth rate has been falling steadily for the past two years and it fell to 29 per cent in the second quarter of this year and it remained the same in the third quarter.

Google Cloud’s revenue, including Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) productivity tools and other enterprise cloud services – increased to $3.44 billion, compared to $2.38 billion in the same quarter last year.

Starting with Alphabet’s fourth-quarter results, the company will break out Google Cloud as a separate reporting segment.

Ball said that spending remains robust despite the global economic downturn, primarily for products and services enabling business continuity, including notebook PCs and peripherals, cloud-based services and cybersecurity.

Organisations take a cost-driven approach

 “Increased consumption has driven cloud infrastructure services spend this year, though some larger and more complex deals were delayed due to uncertainty caused by the pandemic,” he said.

But as organisations adjust to the new normal, he expects longer-term projects to accelerate again.

However, he said that some organisations are taking a cost-driven approach by reducing capital expenditure on their own data centres and cutting management costs from outsourcing contracts. “Others are taking a transformational approach, developing new cloud-native applications and business models. But they will all have to be more measured and cost-conscious, requiring greater control and visibility of spend, while also deciding not to migrate every workload,” he said.

Multi-cloud and hybrid IT will continue to gain momentum as organisations assess the optimal deployment and operating model for each workload, based on cost and performance.

“Cloud in all its permutations – hardware/software/services/as a service as well as public/private/hybrid/multi/edge – will play ever greater, and even dominant, roles across the IT industry for the foreseeable future,” Villars said.

Collaboration with telcos

Research firm Gartner states that spending on datacentre systems will experience the second-highest of growth of 5.2% in 2021 as hyperscalers accelerate global datacentre build-out and regular organisations resume datacentre expansion plans and allow staff to be physically back onsite.

Blake Murray, Canalys Research Analyst, said that the convergence of cloud and 5G at the mobile edge will form the next wave of growth for the leading cloud service providers.

 “It also represents a new front for infrastructure buildout and competition between AWS with Wavelength, Microsoft Azure with Edge Zones and Google Cloud with Mobile Edge Cloud,” he said.

All three are collaborating with mobile operators to deploy their cloud stacks at the edge in the operators’ datacentres.

“These are part of holistic initiatives to profit from 5G services among business customers, as well as transform the mobile operators’ IT infrastructure,” Murray said.

5G smartphone sales will increase more aggressively compared to 4G

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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5G smartphone sales will increase more aggressively compared to 4G
  • 5G smartphones will grow at an annual growth rate of 43% between 2020 and 2025 compared to the annual growth rate of 4.3% for total devices sales.
  • More than 60 per cent of all 5G smartphones shipped in 2022 will be priced below $600.
  • Share of 5G smartphone sales will increase from 15% this year to 73% by 2025.

Dubai: Share of 5G smartphone sales will increase from 15 per cent this year to 73 per cent by 2025, fuelled by more diverse and affordable devices.

David McQueen, Research Director at ABI Research, said that 5G smartphones will reach 1.15 billion units by 2025 compared to 192.1 million this year.

“5G smartphones will become the most accelerated mobile technology generation ever launched. It is expected that 5G smartphone sales will increase more aggressively compared to 4G and, in comparison to growth at launch, 5G will outperform its predecessor on nearly every metric, including the number of mobile devices, subscribers, and networks,” he said.

Furthermore, he said that volume sales will outstrip 4G for many years, largely driven by China in the early years.

The total smartphone sales will grow at an annual rate of 4.3 per cent from 1.28 billion in 2020 to 1.58 billion in 2025.

At the same time, McQueen said that 5G smartphones will grow at an annual growth rate of 43 per cent between 2020 and 2025 and more affordable 5G smartphones will accelerate the adoption after 2021.

“Many lead vendors expected to push deeper into the segment, quickly democratising the 5G experience and establishing a wider ecosystem,” he said.

Affordable 5G chipset platforms

More than 60 per cent of all 5G smartphones shipped in 2022 will be priced below $600, he added.

However, he said the seismic shift to lower price tiers will be underpinned by cheaper components and the continuing availability of more affordable 5G chipset platforms, notably those from Qualcomm, MediaTek and UNISOC.

“Conversely, with the expected frantic pace of plunging 5G smartphone prices, it means 5G at the high-end will be squeezed, witnessing rapid saturation while collapsing potential increases in revenue and margins,” he said.

Although the rapid growth of 5G will provide the mobile smartphone supply chain with new opportunities until 2022, he said the rapid saturation of the 5G smartphone market means that Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and chipset suppliers should reduce their reliance on the smartphone market beyond 2023 and starts to think about new revenue opportunities.

ABI Research believes always-on and 5G-connected personal computers (PCs), 5G customer premises equipment (CPE), and enterprise 5G devices all have the potential to become the new cash cows of the 5G value chain in the longer term.

Common architecture needed

According to the research firm, shipments of connected notebooks will grow to 21.5 million by 2025 at an annual growth rate of 46 per cent, with a 97 per cent share connected to 5G.

Despite the cellular-connect notebook market witnessing a series of false dawns, he said the notebook and mobile value chains are on the edge of converging with shipments of ”always-on” notebooks expected to grow significantly.

“This harmonisation will be brought about by positioning 5G connectivity as a central pillar in the design of notebooks and PCs, with a focus on long battery life, thin and light designs, offering always-on, always-connected experiences,” he said.

Such a move has been sparked by a shift to ARM-based chips, he said and added that it not only brings deep integration between software and hardware, harnessing innovation and connectivity that has been nurtured for years in smartphones but also gains in efficiencies and better battery life without sacrificing performance.

“So, implementing a common architecture will allow all mobile device types, encompassing smartphones, tablets, notebooks and wearables, to work together more seamlessly opening the door to unique value propositions and improved new User Experiences (UX), which will also be much easier for developers to create new types of mobile consumer and business applications,” he said.

Companies such as Qualcomm, Intel, MediaTek, Samsung, Huawei and Apple are all at the forefront pursuing this strategy, with many connected notebook models expected to appear starting in 2022.

Crucial to success, McQueen said will be partnerships within the sector bringing engineering, system integration, and connectivity expertise together, as well as the notable inclusion of Apple from 2022 to the 5G always-on notebooks camp, which could be the catalyst that the industry has craved to help bolster demand and deliver on the promise of enhanced, next-generation mobile compute experiences.

India trails behind Pakistan in mobile download speeds

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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India trails behind Pakistan in mobile download speeds
  • Pakistan’s mean download speed over 4G comes in 51.3% faster than India’s 12.05Mbps.
  • India has the slowest mean upload speed compared to Pakistan and Bangladesh.
  • India has the highest 4G availability among the largest South Asian countries.

Dubai: India has one of the biggest telecom operators in the world but when it comes to mobile download speeds, it trails behind Pakistan as of third quarter of this year.

As per Ookla Speedtest stats, India showed the second fastest mean download speed over mobile among the largest South Asian countries during the third quarter.

Pakistan has 39.7 per cent faster mobile download speeds than India and Bangladesh was third for download speed and second for upload speed.

India had the slowest mean upload speed on the list at 4.18Mbps.

In September mobile speedtest, Pakistan is ranked 116th globally compared to India’s 131st and Bangladesh’s 133rd.

In fixed broadband, Pakistan is ranked 159th while India is ranked 70th and Bangladesh is ranked 98th globally.

Both India and Pakistan showed improved mean download speeds over mobile when comparing the third quarter of last year to the same period this year.

India saw an 11.6 per cent increase while Pakistan’s mean mobile download speeds increased by 24.1 per cent during the same period. Bangladesh saw a smaller increase of 6.3 per cent in mean download speed over mobile.

Upload speeds remained mostly flat across South Asia’s largest countries, with only Pakistan showing a slight improvement year over year.

Looking specifically at performance over 4G LTE, Pakistan’s mean download speed over 4G comes in 51.3 per cent faster than India’s 12.05Mbps. Bangladesh closely followed India for download speed.

Upload speeds over 4G varied considerably more by country than for download speeds.

India showed the slowest mean upload speed over 4G at 4.25Mbps — 65.6 per cent slower than Pakistan.

India has more 4G availability

However, India had the highest 4G availability among the largest South Asian countries with 93.7 per cent of tested locations showing 4G available.

Bangladesh followed with a 4G Availability of 78.6 per cent, while Pakistan had the lowest 4G Availability during this period at 72.9 per cent.

Looking inside India, Vodafone Idea (Vi) has the fastest download and upload speeds than Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

Vi stays ahead of Jio and Airtel

Vi has been losing its market share and subscribers to its rivals Jio and Bharti Airtel amid an ongoing tariff war and huge dues to the government weigh on it but when it comes to download and upload speeds, Jio has much to do to catch up with Vi and Airtel.

 When it comes to downloading speeds, Vi has 13.74Mbps compared to Airtel with 13.58Mbps and Jio with 9.71Mbps.

Jio had the highest 4G availability among top providers in India at 99.7 per cent, followed by Airtel with 4G available in 98.7 per cent of the tested locations. Vi India was third at 91.1 per cent.

Hyderabad had the fastest mean download speed over mobile during this period at 14.35Mbps, followed closely by Mumbai at 13.55Mbps and Visakhapatnam at 13.40 Mbps.

The slowest mean download speeds on our list were measured in Nagpur (10.44Mbps), Kanpur (9.45Mbps) and Lucknow (8.67Mbps).

The mean download speed in first-place Hyderabad was 65.5 per cent faster than that in Lucknow.

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Apple App Store revenue doubles that of Google Play Store

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Apple App Store revenue doubles that of Google Play Store
  • Google Play accounts for 81.5b downloads compared to 26.5b on Google store.
  • Spend on mobile games across all app stores projected to top $100b in 2020.

Dubai: Even though Apple’s iOS controls only 25 per cent of the mobile operating system market globally, it earned revenue of $51.8 billion in the first nine months of 2020.

In contrast, Google earned revenue of $27.6 billion from consumers despite Android controlling a lion’s share of 74.43 per cent.

According to data published by SafebettingSites.com, consumer spending on the App Store grew at 24.7 per cent year over year in the first half while Google Play revenue grew at 21 per cent. The overall revenue grew 23.4 per cent year on year in the first half.

However, App Store spending grew by 31 per cent year on year against Google Play’s 33.8 per cent while the overall revenue grew 32 per cent.

Interestingly, Google Play accounted for 81.5 billion downloads during the first nine months of 2020.

In contrast, the Apple App Store had a total of 26.5 billion downloads during the same period, three times lower than Google Play Store.

Glued to smartphones

Lexi Sydow, Senior Market Insights Manager at mobile data and analytics platform App Annie, said that the coronavirus has advanced mobile usage by two to three years with the consumer demand for mobile offerings surging in the first half of the year.

Spend on mobile games across all app stores projected to top $100 billion in 2020.

Based on a study by App Annie, April hit an all-time high of 200 billion hours in total, with an average of 4.3 hours every day. In the third quarter, users spent at least 180 billion hours on their devices each month, a 255 per cent increase year on year.

In the first half, consumers spend on apps and games hit $50 billion globally, up 10 per cent compared to the second half of last year. Consumers spend on games peaked in May at $6.8 billion. Consumers set new records for global app store consumer spend in May 2020 at $9.6 billion.

Downloads in 2019 alone topped 12.3 billion while consumer spend touched $120b in 2019.

Consumers spend over 1.6 trillion hours in the first half only on a mobile. It peaked in March, more than 25 per cent from the weekly average in the second half of last year.

In 2019, consumers averaged three hours and 40 minutes on mobile. Time spends are likely to soften as countries are easing lockdowns but it will still be better than pre-Covid.

How would the iPhone look like in 2040, any guess?

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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How would the iPhone look like in 2040, any guess?
  • Will smartphones be too big to use?
  • The average length of a female’s hand is 6.8-inches and men have an average hand length of 7.6-inches, according to a study by NASA.
  • Current iPhone 12 Pro Max is almost double the size at 6.7-inches when compared to first 3.5-inch iPhone in 2007.
  • With foldable displays, bigger screen sizes could become a reality, industry experts say.

Dubai: The size of smartphone screens has been increasing over the last decade while the average hand size has remained the same.

With the current growth in smartphone displays, up to what size the displays can go. Any guess…

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, one of the most important figures in the technology industry, was not fond of large smartphones and didn’t believe in their success.

When Samsung launched its 4-inch Galaxy S and HTC launched Evo 4G in the first half of 2010 and started luring customers, Jobs said that smartphones should be able to be operated with one hand and for that, 3.5-inch is the standard size and that is why iPhone 4 was still sporting a 3.5-inch screen, just like the original iPhone from 2007.

Samsung introduced the phablet concept with its 5.3-inch Note 1 in 2011 and others followed.

Now, Apple without Steve Jobs and led by Tim Cook, Apple launched its first 4-inch iPhone 4 in 2012 and the screen size have been going bigger every year.

The current iPhone 12 Pro Max is almost double the size at 6.7-inches when compared to the first 3.5-inch iPhone in 2007.

In total, that equates to a 91 per cent increase and an average growth of five per cent year-on-year while Samsung and Google phones have grown seven per cent year-on-year.

Samsung’s Note 20 ultra’s had 6.9-inch and Google Pixel 4A 5G’s had 6.2-inch.

If Apple continues to grow at its current rate, the iPhone will be bigger than an Apple Mac keyboard by 2040, with a display size of 17.5-inches it will also be taller than a bottle of water.

While the predicted size of the iPhone may seem extreme, there are many features Apple could introduce to make it practical for users while taking advantage of the opportunities such a big screen would create.

Liam Williams, Director of phone accessory company Wrappz, said that tech giants are constantly innovating and evolving their devices so it has been fascinating to compare the development of the iPhone to its competitors.

Keeping up with the technology

“While a large display size offers a great user experience, it is clear to see a compromise will need to be had in the coming years to ensure smartphones remain practical. As research continues into the development of cutting-edge technology, Apple will be keen to stay one step ahead of its competitors by implementing the latest technological advancements in the next two decades,” he said.

Nathan Moore, co-founder of mobile entertainment company Live Tech Games, believes that the continued evolution of smartphones will be particularly welcome in the gaming industry.

 “Working in the gaming industry, we know how much of an impact it can make on user experience if the graphics and audiovisual content are of the highest quality. A holographic display feature would create a gaming experience as close to real-life as possible, without stepping into the world of virtual reality,” he said.

Moreover, he said that these predicted features are not only viable but the growth they offer for user experience would drive the direction of the industry.

According to Wrappz, the iPhone will have outgrown men who have an average hand length of 7.6-inches and Apple smartphones could be larger in size than a MacBook by 2040.

According to a study by NASA, the average length of a female’s hand is 6.8-inches and men have an average hand length of 7.6-inches.

With foldable screens, it could become a reality

Foldable smartphones are just growing in popularity and haven’t hit the mainstream yet despite Samsung, Huawei and Motorola launching it.

Apple could be the next as it follows the trend and developing a foldable phone would enable the iPhone to continue growing in size while remaining practical for people to carry around in a pocket or bag.

An industry expert said that with foldable phones, displays can get bigger but it is difficult to say up to what screen size.

“Cameras are improving and vendors are adding five cameras at the back which you could not have imagined a decade ago. With the technology advancing, there are chances that the smartphone screen sizes could go bigger and with foldable displays, it is a possibility,” he said.

IIT-Kharagpur develops Digital Twin in march towards Industry 4.0

Mohammed Fahad
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IIT-Kharagpur develops Digital Twin in march towards Industry 4.0
  • IIT Kharagpur, along with TCS, has developed a new automation technology that can remotely control factory operations and perform real-time quality correction.

Bengaluru: The IIT-Kharagpur has developed a new Industry 4.0 technology that can remotely control factory operations and perform real-time quality correction to take India’s manufacturing sector to more advanced levels.

The new innovative technology, developed by Surjya K Pal, professor in-charge at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, IIT–Kharagpur, in association with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has upgraded the industrial process of friction stir welding to a multi-sensory system capable of automation, quality check and quality control, all on a real-time basis, thereby meeting a key requirement for the fourth industrial revolution.

Source: IIT- Kharagpur

Explaining the choice of friction stir welding, he says: “We chose the welding process as it is at the heart of any industrial operations, be it in the aerospace or other key industries. If we could improve the weld quality in real-time during batch production it would enable us to reduce rejections in post-production sample checks.”

“The component criticality is much higher. Our multiple sensor process involves various signal processing and machine learning techniques to predict the ultimate tensile strength of the weld joint when fabricated,” he says.

Real-time control

The technology is connected with a vast experimental knowledge base to conform to a standard system and prediction of the weld joint strength. Any defect identified during the monitoring procedure is corrected in real-time by sending modified parameters to the machine thus ensuring the standardised quality of the process.

The concept of this technology can further be evolved for real-time control of other industrial processes and such work will be carried at the Centre with other industrial partners soon, Prof. Pal confirmed.

According to him, the development is significant.

“We have managed to demonstrate, using low-cost methods, how the industrial sector in India can use advanced technology to remotely control, assess, quality check and correct errors during the production process.

“We managed to develop this within the first three years of the five-year project. We are working on creating advanced digital twins, another key component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It will be ready within the next two years,” said Prof Pal, during a telephonic interview to TechChannel News.

India has an edge

A digital twin is a virtual replica of a product or service or even a person which when connected or paired with the physical enables simulation to understand, or even predict problems before they can occur.

“The rollout of 5G will facilitate the advancement required for Industry 4.0. The factories of the future will be fully connected and automated,” he says adding that India has a leading edge when it comes to creating production units capable of producing high-quality products at affordable costs.

“India is nowhere inferior to others. There has to be a more active collaboration between academia and the industry. Currently, not many come forward to spend on R&D or collaborate with academic institutions,” he says.

The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology was formed through the support of the Department of Heavy Industry of Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Government of India, along with a consortium of six industry members such as Tata Motor, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Steel, Tata Sons, BHEL, and HEC.

This project was funded by the Department of Heavy Industry, Govt. of India and TCS.

K Ananth Krishnan, Executive Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, in a note, termed such innovation as an enabler of technology-based transformations in the country.

“The Embedded Systems & Robotics, IoT and ICME platform teams from TCS Research and Innovation are working closely with IIT Kharagpur’s CoE towards AI-driven prediction/control of weld strength using a scalable and robust platform. Academic partnerships are an important part of TCS Research and TCS CoInnovation Network (TCS CoIN) in creating real-world solutions with scientific rigour,” he added.

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