Phone
IBM is talking “with virtually every large carrier,” including AT&T Inc., Vodafone Group Plc and France Telecom SA, about Web programs and services, said Paul Bloom, head of telecommunications research, in an interview yesterday. AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple Inc.s iPhone.
The mobile Web can provide a new growth engine for IBM, the worlds largest computer-services provider, Bloom said. Global shipments of smart phones, those with advanced Web and e-mail features, increased 22 percent last year, double the pace of personal computers, researcher IDC said. Until now, IBM had limited activity in wireless, such as formatting its Lotus software for some smart phones, he said.
“Its a very different ballgame,” said Bloom. “Now you move to digital data and sensor technology and analytics and IT.”
The company is also focused on emerging markets, where many people will bypass personal computers and use phones as their main medium of communication, said Mark Dean, a vice president of research.
“Often times emerging countries will leapfrog established countries in technologies,” Dean said in an interview in Hawthorne, New York. “We thought the PC era was big, the mobile era is going to be just huge.”
IBM, based in Armonk, New York, rose 56 cents to $108.18 at 2:57 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. It had gained 28 percent this year before today.
Developing Markets
Mobile-phone shipments in Brazil, Russia, India and China, will increase this year, compared with a 15 percent decline in the U.S., according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC. Growth might be fueled in countries with stimulus plans, such as China, where the government is considering giving low-cost smart phones to some citizens, Bloom said.
“The price of smart phones is going to go down, and the capabilities are going to go up,” said Bloom.
IBM has no plans to make its own handset, said Dean, who said he personally uses Research In Motion Ltd.s BlackBerry Curve.
IBM can use sensors in smart phones to analyze population flows, such as traffic down a highway, Bloom said. Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano has been pushing IBMs Smarter Planet program, based on the idea that anything can be digitally monitored and made more efficient.