Will KaiOS bring smartphones to everyone?

16

October

2019

5/5 (1)

Smartphones have revolutionized the way we communicate, work, travel and live. There is barely anything in our lives that has not been touched by the emergence of these smart devices. From the viewpoint of a person living in Western Europe, smartphone technology and apps have become ubiquitous.

But what about people in countries where the average wage does not provide enough money to afford such an expensive communication tool?

In 2019 more than 5 billion people owned a mobile device of which over half were smartphones (Silver, 2019). While a median of 76% across 16 developed countries owns a smartphone, this number is way lower in developing countries where a median of 45% call a smartphone their own (Silver, 2019). While populations, particularly in developing countries, are getting more and more access to smartphones, there is still a great imbalance between a developed country such as South Korea where 95% of the population owns a smartphone and India where only 25% of its citizen own a smartphone (Silver, 2019).

KaiOS, a new operating system (OS) is about to change all this. In 2019 KaiOS phone shipments have surged by 65% making KaiOS the third-largest mobile device operating system worldwide (Huang, 2019).

But what is KaiOS and what makes it so successful in the last years?

KaiOS was born after Firefox OS (an open-source operating system developed by Mozilla) was discontinued in 2016. KaiOS used the open-source characteristics of the failed Firefox’ operating system to launch its own version targeted at feature phones (Lunden, 2018). KaiOS saw that Android and iOS had created a de facto duopoly for smartphone OS around the world which was almost impossible to break due to strong network externalities. While the market for smartphone operating systems was saturated, the feature phone market still had no dominant OS mainly due to the lack of functionalities these phones can offer. By developing an OS that targets these low-end feature phones KaiOS wants to “close the digital divide in societies around the world” (KaiOS, 2019) by creating software that brings smart functionalities to low-end feature phones. In 2019 KaiOS users can use WhatsApp, Google Maps and Google Assistant (and several other features) on their feature phones.

Now you might be thinking: Why is this a big deal? I have had WhatsApp and Google Maps for 7 years on my phone already?

Here is why: KaiOS is technically enabling affordable feature phones that sometimes cost less than 20€ to become smart and access the internet. The market for these phones especially in the developing world is tremendous. KaiOS claims that there are currently more than 3 billion people that have no access to the internet (KaiOs, 2019) which indicates that there is enough room for a new OS that can create its own ecosystem. The plan seems to pay off big time:

In 2019 KaiOS received an investment of $50 million with $22 million coming from competitor Google (Lunden, 2019) indicating that Google acknowledges the potential of KaiOS being a real long-term competitor to its own Android OS.

I am intrigued by the emergence of smart Technology becoming accessible to everyone around the world! What is your opinion on KaiOS’ quest to bring smartphones to the poor? Please let me know in the comments!

 

Bibliography

Huang, A. (2019). KaiOS phone shipments to surge 65% in 2019, says Digitimes Research. [online] DIGITIMES. Available at: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190919PD205.html [Accessed 16 Oct. 2019].

KaiOS (2019). Who is KaiOS- A Powerful Operating System. [online] Kaiostech.com. Available at: https://www.kaiostech.com/who-we-are/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2019].

Lunden, I. (2018). KaiOS, a feature phone platform built on the ashes of Firefox OS, adds Facebook, Twitter and Google apps – TechCrunch. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/26/kaios-a-feature-phone-platform-built-on-the-ashes-of-firefox-os-adds-facebook-twitter-and-google-apps/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2019].

Lunden, I. (2019). KaiOS raises $50M, hits 100M handsets powered by its feature phone OS – TechCrunch. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/kaios-raises-50m-more-hits-100m-handsets-powered-by-its-feature-phone-os/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2019].

Silver, L. (2019). Smartphone Ownership Is Growing Rapidly Around the World, but Not Always Equally. [online] Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/02/05/smartphone-ownership-is-growing-rapidly-around-the-world-but-not-always-equally/ [Accessed 13 Oct. 2019].

Picture:

TechCrunch (2019). [image] Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/kaios-raises-50m-more-hits-100m-handsets-powered-by-its-feature-phone-os/ [Accessed

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The internet of skills: is 5G changing surgery forever?

7

October

2019

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Imagine the year 2055: a Parkinson patient is receiving brain surgery by a surgical robot. The patient is in urgent need for a deep brain stimulation implant. As the procedure requires a highly specialized surgeon who is currently not close to the patient, the surgery is conducted by a surgeon sitting in another hospital thousands of kilometres away. This sounds crazy for us today. But now imagine that this remote surgery on a human Parkinson patient took place in the year 2019.

In March 2019 Ling Zhipei, chief of PLA General Hospital collaborated with China Mobile and Huawei to successfully conduct the implantation of a deep brain stimulation device into a Parkinson patient’s brain (Loeffler, 2019). The surgeon (located in Hainan hospital) used Huawei’s ultra-fast 5G network to control a surgical robot more than 3000 kilometres away in Beijing’s PLA General Hospital that executed the surgeon’s movements in real-time (Loeffler, 2019).

Key to the emergence of remote robotic surgery is one of 5G’s most groundbreaking attributes: the incredibly low latency of data transmission. Latency in computing is “the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer” (Lexico, 2019). Latency essentially describes how long it takes for a network to transfer data and is therefore essential in environments such as autonomous driving or remote robotic surgery in which transmission speed is crucial. The new 5G network standard reduces end-to-end latency by 10 times compared to contemporary networks (Qualcomm, 2019). Thus, 5G’s low latency enables surgeons (and potentially other skilled people) to transmit their tacit skills with almost no latency to the other end of the world. Dohler et al. (2017) call this paradigm shift “the internet of skills” or “human 4.0” and suggest that “the internet of skills” will democratize labour in a similar way the internet democratized knowledge.

So, what does this all mean for robotic surgery? Dohler et al. (2017) describe important disaster operation applications for people in urgent need of specialist surgeons as one example of how 5G can be used to provide better healthcare. This would most likely create a global competition for skilled surgeons all around the world as tacit skills will compete globally. It could potentially be possible that your surgery at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam will be supervised or led by a specialist surgeon from Boston or the other way around. Ultimately it could also mean that hospitals in high-income countries will make use of cheaper labour from lower-income countries.

How do you think the internet of skills will revolutionize industries around the world?

 

Bibliography:

Dohler, M. et al. (2017) ‘Internet of skills, where robotics meets AI, 5G and the Tactile Internet’, in EuCNC 2017 – European Conference on Networks and Communications. doi: 10.1109/EuCNC.2017.7980645.
Lexico (2019). Latency | Definition of Latency by Lexico. [online] Lexico Dictionaries | English. Available at: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/latency [Accessed 1 Oct. 2019].
Loeffler, J. (2019). China Performs Country’s First-Ever 5G Remote Brain Surgery. [online] Interestingengineering.com. Available at: https://interestingengineering.com/china-performs-countrys-first-ever-5g-remote-brain-surgery [Accessed 1 Oct. 2019].
Qualcomm (2019). How 5G low latency improves your mobile experiences. [online] Qualcomm. Available at: https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2019/05/13/how-5g-low-latency-improves-your-mobile-experiences [Accessed 1 Oct. 2019].

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