On Tuesday in San Francisco, Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM) gave reporters a preview of its International CES. Trying to play off our love of gadgets, they called it a "geek peek."
Wirelessness was the prevalent theme. Location-based technologies and so-called 5G wireless (Broadcom's nicely confusing term for 802.11ac Wi-Fi) are going to be among the CES highlights for the chip maker. So is near-field communications, which Broadcom thinks is on the verge of big things. (See Broadcom Thinks NFC's Time Is Nearing.)
I also snapped a few photos. Click here for thumbnails, or move to the next page for a little more explanation....
Ground Floor
One Front Street, site of Broadcom's Geek Peek and home of Broadcom's PR agency, Brunswick Group.
In connected cars, they didn't talk about smartphone controls; it was more about the Ethernet inside the car. (100M ethernet, enabled through a technology called BroadR Reach.)
They're using it for the cameras on the car bumpers right now, and would like to spread it throughout the cabin and into the engine compartment. The engine part is what's tricky, because the qualifications are insanely strict, rightfully so.
What was the spin on connected cars? I'm still in favor of running everything through the smartphone and just using the vehicle radio/microphone as a controller for what's on the phone. Has it gone beyond getting Pandora on-the-go?
A location service occurred to me that's *not* all that creepy, although I'm not sure it's feasible ...
Broadcom talked about how with Bluetooth sensors around you and MEMS in your phone, it's possible for the network to know not only precisely where you are but what direction you're headed in. This would be most useful in a store, where you can seed those sensors all over and were the aisles limit your directions.
What we'd mainly get out of this is in-store marketing and ... yeah, that's creepy. Annoying, at the least.
But I think back to the times we went to Disneyland. Even with texting available, it was complicated figuring out where everybody was (you're not gonna text while on Space Mountain, for instance). But here's a place where it would be helpful to see where the rest of your group is and whether they're standing still or not.
Why it won't work: You'd need *so* many sensors all over the place. They'd probably use Bluetooth only for the very congested spots with lots of attractions, and go with lower-granularity wifi in the more sparse areas (obscure sidewalks, etc.)
Just a thought. I'd really like to see location to be used *for* me, rather than as a tool to market things *at* me.
The blogs and comments are the opinions only of the writers and do not reflect the views of Light Reading. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
More Valley Wonk
Where SDN Is Going Next 6:00 AM Well, it seems to be going everywhere, but here are some guesses as to what might come of that
Juniper Cracking SDN Open 5:00 AM The $176M acquisition of startup Contrail looks like an attempt to create an open-source movement in software-defined networking
Buying Into the New Cisco 6:00 AM For all the talk of a software-and-services makeover, Cisco might not be ready to let the switch/router market fall prey to SDN
SDN & the Commodity Question 6:00 PM Software-defined networking won't eradicate Cisco or Juniper. At least not right away
To save this item to your list of favorite Light Reading content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
