The world is getting ready to see what the Consumer Electronics association is cooking up for the world to see in Las Vegas, "The Super Bowl of Technology in 32 football fields of exhibit space. There are so many announcements, we figured we needed a Too Short to Report Wireless News round-up. New quad-core processors were announced by Qualcomm, NVIDIA and Intel. There will also new products, predictions and profits.
Tonight Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm delivered the pre-show keynote a VIP slot that was previously filled by Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.
Jacobs introduced the Snapdragon 800 Series processor - a quad-core chip with more power than previous Snapdragons and has 75 percent better battery performance than its other top line Snapdragons. Jacobs said that the chip is powerful as those used in laptops, but can be used in smartphones, tablets, TVs or even cars. Jacobs also shared the stage with Big Bird, Steve Ballmer and the rock band Maroon 5.
Nvidia announced the Tegra 4 quad-core processor with a core dedicated to graphics. Intel also revealed a a new low-power Atom™ processor-based platform for value-priced smartphones.
Intel introduced Bay Trail a quad-core atom-based processor for tablets and
Smartphone screen size will continue to grow. "We expect 2013 to be the Year of the Phablet," said Neil Mawston, at Strategy Analytics. Consumer need larger screens for consumption of media.
The fourth quarter of 2012 was Verizon's best with 2.1 million net adds which are credited to come from the "Share Everything Plan."
If you want to locate your prepaid phone there's now a card for that. LiveViewGPS turns a prepaid cellphone into a location device. Sign up at http://www.mobilephonelocate.com, select a plan. Prices range from two free locating, $19.95 for 30 for 90 day or options. You must have the users permission to locate the phone. It works with Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile prepaid phones.