Symbio is a product engineering and R&D outsourcing firm founded in 1994 with over 1,400 experts skilled in areas like mobile, web services, and software engineering. They take a holistic approach to user experience (UX) working across technologies from hardware to applications and considering requirements from concept creation to UX design. Symbio also contributes to open standard multimedia APIs and has led the development of tools to test and implement these standards.
Technology know-how to enable superior User Experience for multiple technology platforms, mating hardware with content Unique expertise of User Experience Technology Pipeline from driver and integration level up till services and tools Forefront knowledge about the next generation of the key technologies like graphics, video, audio and composition and updating continuously in the standardization work Working closely with IP and platform vendors to efficiently deploy features and performance of existing hardware to applications and services Partnering with Concept Creation and UX Design houses to understand non-technical requirements of User Experience Reference Example: OpenGL ES2.0 Software Implementation to enable exact visual appearance in SDK’s and emulations Blitrix, 2D blitting library to boost blitting in major platforms like Maemo, WinMobile and Symbian from 2x up to 5x times. UI Framework implementation to ease design and implementation of 2D vector UIs.
One of the areas that I’ve been most surprised by has been the impact of Moore’s Law. To recap, Moore's Law basically states that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated chip doubles every 2 years (btw, some have said it ’ s more like 18 months, but Gordon Moore said 2 years so we ’ ll stick with that benchmark). This exponential growth has also applied to almost every other measure of digital electronic devices as well, including processing speed, memory capacity, sensors, and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras. But let me pose this question - when was the last time that there was a significant increase in perceived productivity based on a chip design? Sure the Pentium was a big step-up. But did anyone really notice when we went from Pentium to Pentium II and then III and IV? Do any of you really care anymore if we go from Core 2 Duo to Dual Core Itanium? I don ’ t think most people are paying attention anymore and that ’ s because of a simple result of Moore ’ s Law - hardware advances have basically outstripped software advances. Hardware improvements are really not impacting computing performance anymore and that ’ s because hardware performance I no longer a limiting factor in the development of technology products - SOFTWARE is. One point that is not so obvious about Moore’s Law that I wanted to point out to everyone is that the effect of having exponential growth over the course of around 40 years is that costs have fallen by 1 million times. That’s an astonishing phenomenon and what it essentially means is that hardware essentially becomes worthless over time. Think about it this way. My very first computer - the IBM PC XT - cost about $8,000 list price. My father was able to bring one home from work, so I don’t think we spent that much on ours, but that prices is staggering. Considering that you can buy four computers with 20,000X the processing power each, and you can see why I say that hardware is essentially worthless over time. A different way to think about this is that the computing power you carry around with you - every computer, mobile phone, or digital device in your pocket or briefcase - is essentially essentially going to be free in a few years. Supply chains for building technology products have also become super efficient over the past couple of decades. In the old days, most technology companies were vertically integrated, where they kept R&D, component manufacturing, assembly and test, and of course sales, marketing, distribution and logistics in-house. Today, companies like HP distribute their value chain all over the world. The result is a super efficient supply chain. Incidentally, it’s not just the big guys who can enjoy these super efficient supply chains. A few years ago a cottage industry grew up in China in what’s called sanzai mobile handsets. This industry began by making illegal knock-off phones, coping designs from Nokia, Motorola, and the such. In recent years, they really got advanced and started making knock-off iPhone and other smartphones, including hacking the software out of Linux. What’s remarkable about this black market is that they have started to become legit, and there are now many new brands like K-Touch which are marketing legitimate phones that have great functionality and a really low price point aimed at the masses in China. By some estimates, the sanzai market in China is around 20 million units per month! My point in bringing them up isn’t to talk about the handsets - although I’ll show you some later on. The result of all this volume and activity is that there is not a fully formed networks of thousands of suppliers and service providers ranging from mom-and-pop shops all the way up $20 billion dollar publicly traded companies that are providing the entire value chain for creating mobile devices. I said devices because we’re talking everything from mobile phones, to netbooks, and everything in between. Anyone can go to southern China and place an order for netbooks with a BOM of $90. And the minimum order? Just 1,000 units. Anyone can now have a just-in-time, on-demand supply chain for any hardware device they want to build thanks to a bunch of Chinese knock-offs. I’m not going to talk much about cloud computing in this group since you’re all experts and I understand TTI/Vanguard did a whole conference on this subject. But I did want to bring up a few points here. The first is that all the software that sits below the browser on the software stack doesn’t matter anymore. Sorry Microsoft - the operating system doesn’t get anyone excited anymore, and I’m absolutely convinced that ChromeOS is going to really blow some holes in Microsoft’s market share just like Android and iPhone did to WinOS. One of the reasons why many people haven’t felt the effects of hardware improvements over the past few years is because we spend most of our personal computing time through the browser. Other than some productivity apps like Office, we’re essentially living on the Web. The second related point to make here is that because all the software that sits underneath the browser no longer really matters, all that stuff about compatibility and interoperability that made people switch from Apple to Microsoft and Netscape to IE, also doesn’t matter anymore. I think it’s great that Apple builds its own operating system that runs only with its own hardware. As long as I can get on the Web, we’re connected and compatible. Ubuntu and other Linux users are no longer on the fringe, but now part of the network.
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
If you can’t create low latency, fake it – launch visuals while network and processes spin up Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used
Apple applications launched fast, even if they couldn’t be used