This week, I have been thinking at times about wireless display technology. As long term readers will know, I have been saying for some time that the eventual desktop system for all but those needing the most powerful workstations will be a mobile “brain” – be it a smartphone, tablet or notebook, and a docking monitor.
At the recent CES show, I saw a number of demonstrations of the Continuum function in Windows 10 that allows a Windows-based smartphone to connect to a monitor, allowing the CPU on the phone to use the full screen resolution to run standard Office applications. The smartphone acted as a touch panel for the system and supported a wireless mouse and keyboard. The set up is just what I imagined.
The most convenient way to dock is to use wireless technology, but displays need a lot of bandwidth and in an office productivity application, delay and latency from the system is not acceptable, so WiDi or Miracast are not acceptable solutions. I was keen on WiGIG as a mechanism for wireless display, and was very pleased to see the technology being picked up by the Wi-Fi Alliance a couple of years ago with a plan to integrate it into the next generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ad.
Since then, not much has happened. The major PC vendors all now have wireless docks that can connect to an 802.11ad notebook and can connect to ethernet and DisplayPort/HDMI as well as USB and peripherals. They don’t yet have wireless charging, but everything else is wireless (and we have seen prototypes in the past from Fujitsu and others that could offer wireless charging as well).
However, these docks are not seeing high take up. That’s partly because, at the current stage of adoption of 802.11ad, there are not many notebooks that have this version as standard. In turn, that means that the cost of the notebooks is high, as PC makers are only including 802.11ad in premium models, so mainstream adoption is very unlikely. It’s hard for a corporate IT manager to justify the cost of the dock plus the cost of premium notebooks, just for the convenience. It’s also the case that the first routers and access points with 802.11ad are only just rolling out – Qualcomm was showing some at CES and LeTV was showing a TV running video from one on its booth.
It’s especially hard for IT managers to support wireless when an alternative may be to use USB Type C with DisplayPort as a docking system, as it can also charge the notebook as well.Another alternative is to use a “universal” dock based on technology from DisplayLink. (USB is, in the longer term, hoping to have something like DisplayLink – i.e. monitor support over USB – as part of the standard as it aims to become “the only interface you need”).
So, the key driver for the adoption of 802.11ad will be the speed of adoption and support in smartphones, which would drive costs right down, because of the scale of the market. And, of course, some smartphones already support wireless charging. The question of the speed of 802.11ad roll out is a topic that we’ll be pursuing at Mobile World in a couple of weeks. However, as someone pointed out to me at CES, early Wi-fi adoption was driven by a lot of money and a huge push from Intel and its Centrino chipsets. 802.11ad is not in line for this kind of investment, as far as I am aware.
By the way, after our CES issue last week, we posted some videos at http://www.displaydaily.com/content/videos including some highlights and an interview with Tobii.
Bob
