ATIS announced the formation of the IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) to develop ATIS standards and related technical and operations activities that enable the interoperability, interconnection and implementation of IPTV systems and services, including video on demand and interactive TV services. �IPTV will enable consumers to use television as never before,� said Bill Smith, CTO of BellSouth and chairman of ATIS. �Video on demand and interactive services are among the exciting �killer apps� that IPTV will make possible. The ATIS IIF will provide the neutral ground for carriers, service providers, application developers, content providers and equipment manufacturers to work together and make the wide-scale deployment of standardized IPTV a reality.� The ATIS Board of Directors launched the IIF at its quarterly meeting Thursday on the recommendation of the ATIS IPTV Exploratory Group (IEG), which was formed in April to examine the technical issues surrounding the successful wide-scale deployment of IPTV. �The ATIS IIF will provide the industry with the big picture for IPTV technology standardization,� said Kevin Schneider, CTO of ADTRAN and co-chair of the IEG. �ATIS will create an overall reference architecture supporting deployment of IPTV and work with standards groups external to ATIS to establish standards that produce an end-to-end IPTV solution.�
There is a pivotal shift within the global smartphone market. Recent data from IDC highlights a more cautious outlook for 2025, with projected worldwide smartphone shipments seeing a significantly reduced growth rate. This revised forecast underscores the intricate interplay of global economic factors and geopolitical dynamics on pervasive personal communication devices. IDC's latest update projects a mere 0.6 percent growth in worldwide smartphone shipments for 2025, a stark reduction from the earlier 2.3 percent expectation. Global Smartphone Market Development This recalibration is largely attributed to prevailing economic uncertainties, including inflationary pressures and rising unemployment, alongside the persistent specter of tariff volatility. Despite these global tensions, it's interesting to note that the United States and China are still identified as the primary drivers of this modest growth. China, a critical market, is forecast to achieve a 3 percent year-over-yea...