Born to be Wireless

There are some speculations about this phone would be the HTC Dreams that would be released on May 6th

Labels: android, htc

Apple’s iPhone is expected to be released into Canada later this year. It will be launched with Rogers Communications, the largest and only GSM carrier in the country.

Labels: apple, canada, iphone

Sony Ericsson has created Project Capuchin, a new tool that enables developers to combine aspects of Java and Flash technology in the same application. It will be available in the second semester.

According to SE, Project Capuchin will allow 'pure Flash Lite content to be encapsulated in Java ME applications'. SE also says more advanced capabilities will make it possible to create Java ME applications where some or all UI components are defined in Flash.

"[We are] excited to introduce our new bridging technology to the global developer community as it further strengthens our relationship with this community and underscores our ongoing commitment to support an open, healthy and thriving mobile ecosystem.", says Rikko Sakaguchi, SVP and head of portfolio and proposition at Sony Ericsson.

Source: Mobile Entertainment

Labels: Flash Lite, Java ME, sony ericsson

Mobile advertising network AdMob has announced the launch of AdMob Mobile Analytics, which the company says delivers a comprehensive solution for understanding user behaviour and makes it easy to measure the usage of mobile websites and ad campaigns.

AdMob Mobile Analytics, which runs independent of the company's other services, can be set up in less than 10 minutes and does not require ad spend or publishing activity with the company's flagship product, the AdMob mobile advertising network. AdMob Analytics will offer businesses a free, simple solution to maximize commerce, advertising and content on the mobile Internet and to improve the overall user experience.

AdMob has leveraged its existing user identification technology and global infrastructure in building its analytics offering. AdMob Analytics is a free service that works for any size of business and is not limited by visitors or page views.
AdMob Analytics is accepting limited private beta sign ups starting today. To find out more, click here.

source: http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk

Mobilestance has a great article with a couple arguments explaining why 2008 will be the year of QR codes in the United States.

The main idea is:

- Apple: it has created a near perfect platform for a QR reade: its iPhone (two megapixel camera, public SDK, bullet-proof distribution model, and most importantly, a highly-attractive, early-adopting, data-hungry user base).

- Google: Android mobile platform will have a non-proprietary QR Code reader embedded.

Labels: apple, google, qr code

Mobile games developer and publisher Gameloft is reporting consolidated sales of €25.3 million ($39.59 million) in its first quarter sales report for 2008, 11% higher than in the previous year.

94% of Gameloft’s sales came from its game sales, with the remaining 6% attributed to Gameloft’s console releases on the Nintendo DS and Xbox Live Arcade.

Europe represented 44% of Gameloft’s Q1 revenue, with North America at 29%, and the rest of the world 28%. The rest of the world saw the biggest growth, up 82% compared to the same period in 2007.

North America’s share of sales dropped due to the declining dollar. In 2007, Europe, North America, and the rest of the world made up respectively 44%, 34%, and 22% of Gameloft’s full year sales.

The 11% rise in its sales is in line with Gameloft’s first quarter expectations. The company expects its sales growth rate to continue its rise in the second half of 2008 with scheduled releases for the N-Gage, iPhone, Nintendo DS, and Wii.

Gameloft predicts its sales growth for the remainder of 2008 to reach 25% to 30%, with an operating margin between 10% an 15%. Stabilization of its mobile gaming employee headcount” and the return on investment from expenses for new platforms made in 2007 should both contribute to improving Gameloft’s operating margin.

Source: Games on Deck

Oi Brazil has announced the acquisition of Brasil Telecom for R$ 5.863 billions (US$ 3.5 billion). The value was above the expected by the market, something around R$ 4.8 billion (US$ 2.8 billion).

The deal is still waiting for a change in the Brazil legislation (it isn't allowed to a phone company to buy another one in a different market) and the approval of regulation agencies.

Source: Folha de São Paulo

Labels: Brazil, BrT, Oi

Skype has launched a beta version of a mobile thin client, available here. The application is available worldwide and includes chat, group chat, presence (seeing when your contacts are online), and receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn. Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls are only available in Rio de Janeiro, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden and the UK. An unlimited data plan is recommended—although the service works over standard mobile voice networks connections for the first and/or last legs of Skype, SkypeOut and SkypeIn calls—and over the internet for the rest. Presumably you'll be paying standard carrier rates for the voice calls, but it should be a local mobile call rather than an international one. (release)

Google has just released its mobile image ads. Take a look at the video below to see an interview with a mobile ads engineer and his demo.



Source: Google Mobile Blog

Labels: google, mobile ads

An internal memo reported by Engadget reads: "Due to the highly successful sales of the Apple 8GB I-Phone [sic], supply chain have today run out of stock & will not be replenishing stock of this product as it has now gone to end of life."

Labels: apple, iphone, o2, uk

The sales of Motorola's handset division has fall 39% (to $3.3 billion) comparing to same period last year. The unit had an operating loss of $418 million, compared to a loss of $233 billion a year ago.

The whole company had a loss of $194 million ($.09 per share) compared to a loss of $181 million ($.09 per share) in the year-ago period. The others company, such as networking equipment and enterprise mobility units performed better, but not that good.

Looking at different units, we can see why they decided to cut mobile division off.

Labels: motorola

Apple released its Q1 result numbers yesterday (Apr 23): earnings rose 36% on a 42.5% increase in sales. Part of this was credit to the good sales of Macintosh computers: company has sold 2.29 million Macs, just a little less than the 2.32 million it sold during the previous period.

These numbers are a surprise, since U.S. economy is currently in a downturn, especially in the consume of high-end products, such Macs.

source: BusinessWeek

Labels: apple

Over at the N-Gage blog they’ve got an announcement of a new sweepstakes from Gameloft and Nokia. Simply download and play a Gameloft game on your N-Gage device and a submit a high score. If you win the weekly drawing you’ll get… an N-Gage device? Yup, apparently you can win an 8GB N81 or N95, plus some other assorted goodies from Nokia and Gameloft. Check here for full prize list and rules.

source: quickly bored

Sprint has launched a voice-enabled local search service. Sprint users can download the FreeMobile411 application, which lets them hold down the talk key and speak what they are looking for—the results show up on the screen. The service has address listings, maps, driving directions and the ability to browse by category, with revenue coming from sponsored links. The service is by V-Enable and functions identically to the text-input Mobile411 service already on Alltel and MetroPCS, and the WAP site which was launched a week ago.

Source: MocoNews

Labels: Sprint

World's Most Innovative Companies 2008 on Technology / Telecom Industry

1) Apple
2) Google
3) AT&T
4) Verizon Communications
5) Microsoft
6) Nokia
7) Cisco Systems
8) IBM
9) Intel
10) Research In Motion

full list

PS: Apple was listed on four different industries: Technology / Telecom; Entertainment / Media; Consumer Products and Retail

Labels: innovation

Sony BMG is the second label to sign up to sign up to Nokia's "Comes With Music" offering, which will allow customers who purchase selected Nokia handsets unlimited music downloads. The first labels was Universal.

Tero Ojanperä, Nokia’s head of entertainment and communities business, said the aim of Comes With Music was to reduce consumer’s concerns over the cost of downloading music to their handsets. Ojanperä would not confirm which handsets will offer Comes With Music and would only say that the service would be released "later this year in selected markets".

The tracks will feature digital rights management (DRM) that will limit customers to keeping the tracks on one mobile device and one computer for the first twelve months that they own their Nokia device.

Nokia is currently in revenue share talks with networks over its services, with T-Mobile thought to be most concerned with the manufacturer encroaching into its territory. Orange was initially unwilling to range its N81 and N95 but has since softened its stance.

Some weeks ago, there were rumors that Nokia would pay up to US$35 for every phone that Nokia loads with access to Universal Music library. If it's paying this amount to each label, and it'll load the access on 1% of its handsets (and assuming it sells 500 million handsets next year), Nokia will have to spent US$175 millions for each label !

Labels: come with music, nokia, sony bmg, universal

BusinessWeek published today a great article about Mobile Virtualization

Yesterday, we heard that Motorola Ventures has made an equity investment on VirtualLogix. Before that, VirtualLogix has raised $28 million in two rounds of funding from Atlas Venture, Cisco Systems, DFJ Esprit, Index Ventures, Intel Capital and Texas Instruments.

I don't believe companies that have stables operational system, such as Nokia or Sony Ericsson, will invest in this kind of technology in short period of time. But this could be a great solution for the OS-madness on Motorola and others mobile companies (Samsung is already testing VirtualLogix technology).

Labels: cisco, intel, motorola, texas instruments, virtualization

Zyb, a mobile phonebook service founded in Denmark was bought by Imity, a Danish bluetooth-based mobile social networking company. The value of the operations was not reveled.

Imity is less than a year old, and uses bluetooth to connect online and offline users. The service is now closed for new registrations, but is still working for old users.

Zyb itself had added elements of social networking over the last year, and says a quarter of a million users have stored nearly 16 million contacts online using its service.

Labels: imity, zyb

It contains data on a whopping 17,211 unique device/operator combinations from more than 1,257 handset models offered by 54 manufacturers. Tira six years to accumulate the data, during which time it ported over 500 applications to create more than 30,000 unique builds.

Tira modd is available in three versions:

• Standard Edition: A downloadable client for Windows PCs, with advanced query and data export capabilities
• Enterprise Edition: An open API offered as a web service for developers looking to integrate the database into applications; it also includes an OEM option for customers that want to re-sell the data
• Go Mobile Edition: A web-based version, freely available to members of the Tira Go Mobile Community

Tira modd is also open, combining tools and processes to acquire, characterise and share mobile device data from around the world. Members of the developer community can therefore contribute data to Tira modd on an ongoing basis.

source: http://www.mobile-ent.biz

Labels: porting

Check it out! http://elinux.org/Android_on_OMAP

Labels: android

Labels: docomo

Fring has just pre-released a version of its instant messenger for the iPhone (release).

I've just downloaded it into my iPhone, but I couldn't get it to work... It keeps trying to connect, with no success... :-(

Anyway, according to the site, the app integrates others services, such as Skype, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo! & AIM, with a single contacts list.

Take a look in the video bellow

Labels: iphone, VoIP

Finnish handset vendor Nokia has taken the wraps off a 3G device featuring integrated Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

The 6212 classic allows consumers to share content, access services and information as well as conduct payments and ticketing with one tap of the device.

The NFC unit is expected to start shipping in the third quarter in select markets in Europe and Asia with an estimated retail price of Eur200 before taxes and subsidies.

By tapping an NFC-enabled tag, users can receive new content, activate a profile on their handset or open applications.

The sales pack of the 6212 comes with three sticker tags, which can be personalised and edited by users. As an example, you could stick one on your bedside table which sets your alarm clock when you put your phone down at night.

Last year, telecoms.com got to see how Transport for London (Tfl) was using a Nokia NFC handset to incorporate the Oyster 'swipe card' used by millions of Londoners every day, allowing users to touch their phone to the card reader on the way into or out of the station. The device could also be used for bus journeys around the capital as well as some overland train routes.

source: http://www.telecoms.com/

Labels: NFC, nokia

TIM Brazil started it's 3G network and it is now the second carrier on Brazil to offer the service. The 3G network is working first on six cities: Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Recife and Salvador at 850 Mhz frequency. The carrier is waiting for Anatel (Brazil's FCC) approval for start the operation on Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Labels: Brazil, tim

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/now-available-orkut-on-your-mobile.html

Labels: orkut

Omnifone’s music download service, MusicStation, is making more money for operators then traditional full-track download services.

A spokesman for the company said that, in its first nine weeks since the launch, MusicStation generated more annual revenue for one of its network partners than the operator’s own established pay-per-track service.

MusicStation is only available on Vodafone in the UK and on a number of other international networks. The service is available for £1.99 per week, giving users unlimited access to over one million tracks from all the major labels, as well as a number of independent labels.

Omnifone recently signed a deal with LG to preload MusicStation onto some of the manufacturer’s handsets. Users will be able to access unlimited music for free, and only pay for the data used in downloading the tracks.

Source: Mobile Today

Labels: Mobile music, MusicStation

Yahoo! oneSearch is going live with T-Mobile, enabling Web’n’Walk subscribers to use the service across Europe. In the near future, T-Mobile will customise Yahoo! oneSearch specially for it's customers and integrate Yahoo! services such as Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance into its web’n’walk portal

The search service has mobile-specific features, for example, remembering the user’s location and adapting results to the smaller screen.

The partnership was announcement at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Labels: T-Mobile, Yahoo

Andrew Baron, joined Twitter a year ago and, as the co-founder of the pioneering online video series Rocketboom, he quickly had 1,400 people sign up to get his postings, one of the biggest crowds of followers on the service.

He put his Twitter account up for sale (on eBay) mostly because he was feeling bored with it and ambivalent about the technology. Most "twitterings" are deadly dull. And Baron readily admits he struggled to find worthy items to share with his many followers. "Every time I would go to Twitter, I would think really hard and try to come up with something important to say. I'd also try to talk about things I was doing, like going out to have a drink, or I would try to be poetic," says Baron. "It wasn't working for me."

After all wide-ranging debate that was created on his move, I think he gave up selling. At least, his eBay auction was over due "The seller ended this listing early because the item is no longer available for sale".

Source: BusinessWeek

Labels: twitter

CNN International and Samsung have done a deal to have the new CNN mobile Java application to consumers, exclusively pre-loaded into Samsung handsets from June 2008.

The news application gives users access to CNN reports, images and video. Users can also submit their own images and videos to CNN’s citizen journalism website through the java tool

The roll-out will begin with the Samsung G810 5-megapixel cameraphone available in Europe from May and will subsequently be rolled out to other handset models.

This seems to me another step from removing power from carrier's deck.

Source: Mobile Today

Labels: cnn, samsung

The iPhone is set to be cut to £169 as part of a limited offer from O2.

The £100 reduction, which will apply to the 8GB device on any O2 tariff, will take place tomorrow (Wednesday) and will run until 1 June.

It follows T-Mobile's decision to reduce the price of the handset from €399 to €99 in Germany.

With price cuts and iPhone stock reportedly running low and not being replenished in the US, France and UK, speculation is mounting about the release date of the 3G version of the device.

The price reduction follows O2's decision to increase the minutes and texts included in its £35 a month tariffs to 600 minutes and 500 texts in, up from 200 minutes and 200 texts.

The 16GB iPhone will not be included in the offer, and will remain £329.

Source: Mobile Today

Labels: iphone, o2

Microsoft Corp. has completed today its acquisition of Danger, Inc.

Danger will become a part of the new Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) team, a group within the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. Danger co-founders Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt will join the new organization, reporting directly to Roz Ho, corporate vice president of Premium Mobile Experiences.

Danger is specialized in platforms, software, design, and services for mobile computing devices. Their most notable product is the T-Mobile Sidekick (aka Danger Hiptop).

Labels: danger, microsoft

Telecom Italia's management rejected a call to merge with Spanish peer Telefonica even as a prominent investor that advocates the tie-up gained two board seats at Europe's fifth-biggest telecoms company.

The Fossati family, owner of a 4.45 percent stake in Italy's largest phone group, called last week for a merger with the Spanish giant, which has an indirect stake of 10 percent in Telecom Italia.

The family obtained two spots out of 15 on Telecom Italia's board, while funds association Assogestioni won one. Telco, the holding company that controls Telecom Italia, named the other 12 on Monday.

The Fossatis have said they do not have "hostile" intentions and aim to work with the management and controlling shareholders and not against them.

Several shareholders said they hoped the new management would revive the operator and reverse its falling profits, but most were very critical of the management's plans and proposed stock options for them.

Source: Reuters

Labels: telefonica, tim

LocaModa and TouchTunes have teamed up to offer mobile phone access to jukeboxes. Jukeboxes that use TouchTunes’ software will allow users to interact with them, seeing who else is a fan of the club as well as social networking bits like user-generated content and photos. Users can see what’s playing and even gift songs to their friends that are actually, you know, at the club instead of sitting at home on their phone. It’s a pretty cool technology.

Mowser,a mobile browser transcoder of sorts, enabling sites to display properly on mobile phones, is dead: http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/the-end-of-mowser

Another one from the "i had no idea" series:

Cubans weren't allowed to have mobile phones! That's why Cuba has the lowest rate of cellular telephone use in Latin America.

Their new president, Raul Castro allowed selling mobile phone service to the general public for the first time (before that, only foreigners or government officials and employees were allowed to have mobiles).

The service will be provided by Cuban telecommunications monopoly ETECSA, a joint venture with Telecom Italia. Customers will pay for their calls with prepaid cards bought in hard currency, and can receive and make international calls.

I wonder in which other countries mobile phones are forbidden ?

Labels: cuba

Ringback tones just accomplish a new level: The single "No One" by Alicia Keys, has just surpassed 500,000 in sales in United States only.

Ringback tones have the only significant growth for mobile content from 2007 to 2008: according to M:Metrics, it increased 69%. In the same period, ringtones increased only 4.3% and wallpaper images only 6.2%

According to BMI, U.S. ringback sales are expected to increase 50%, or $70 million, to reach $210 million this year. And while total ringtone revenue is almost twice as large as that from ringbacks, research group IDC says global ringback revenue will outpace that of ringtones by 2010.

Source: Reuters

I don't know how long this was released, but I just got to know that now thanks to Ewan from SMS Text News.

T-Mobile UK has a business plan called Business 1-Plan, where any international calls to US or Europe are included in user's plan minutes. This means that if you have 1,000 minutes for month, you could spend them calling to US !

If you mix this kind of stuff with American carrier's US$ 99 all-included plan, we'll got carriers struggling for providing great innovating services, instead of worrying at creating different prices for each place where users make calls/send sms/browser the net

Labels: T-Mobile, uk

Google has just launched a mobile version of Orkut at m.orkut.com - this new mobile site lets you read scraps, receive updates from existing friends plus you can approve or decline new friend requests.

You can also navigate the Orkut mobile using keypad shortcuts on your mobile phone like 3 for (F)riends, 7 for (S)crapbook, etc.

If you have no mobile phone, I still recommend checking out the mobile version of Orkut on your desktop as it sports a minimalist theme so the scrapbook looks very cleans, no like another MySpace page.

And don’t let your boss know about this - if the main website of Orkut is blocked in your office, there are chances that m.orkut.com could still be accessible.

Orkut mobile edition is slightly buggy but that shouldn’t be a problem considering that Google has not officially announced the site yet. Credits for discovering this secret Orkut mobile website go to the eagle-eyed Rahul, InsideOrkut and Haochi.

United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has just approved a plan for creating a nationwide emergency alert system that would send out text messages in a crisis, such as severe weather, a terrorist threat or child abduction.
The Government will send the alert to the carriers, but they will not be forced to send the message to the users. The top four carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile — are interested in participating.

Source: MocoNews

Labels: sms, US

I always knew that Russians love Vodka, and today I learn two shocking facts related to Russia and Vodka:

- A state-owned company, Rosspirtprom, holds the monopoly of 60% of strong alcohol in Russia
- There are 40,000 deaths each year caused by counterfeit drinks (filled with cologne water, antifreeze liquids or just pure alcohol) on Russia !!

The second fact shows that sale of counterfeit vodka is not only a problem for the major brands, but also to the population in general.
Thinking on this, Rosspirtprom created a service where the consumers will be able to send bottle's serial number to a given short code and receive a SMS that authenticates or not the bottle.

Another great SMS service!! And good way to avoid next day's hangovers ;-)

Source: MOBIZ

Labels: russia, sms, vodka

According to Computerworld, the brand new 3G iPhone will be released with a new chipset (Infineon's S-Gold 3) that will allow it to support 5 megapixels cameras and supports HSDPA up to 72.Mbps.

In the other hand, folks at TG Daily are reporting that are not going to be any major differences, except speedier network and a 2.5 mm thinner body. They also reports that is going to be an 8 GB version for $399, a 16 GB version for $499, and (possibly) a 32 GB version for $599

I was expecting to find a front side camera for video conferences...

Labels: iphone

According to the new Jupiter research report just five percent of US mobile subscribers sideload tunes from their computer while less than half of that, two percent, download tracks over the air, despite the steady emergence of this model with online stores from Nokia, Jamba and MusicStation.

The most common practice, rather prosaicly, is assigning ringtones to phone book contacts (16 percent), even ahead of over-the-air ringtone downloads (12 percent). The sticking points? In this order - price, discovery, UI, DRM, storage and the fact many mobile users already use other portable music players.

There’s no great compulsion from users either. Two thirds said nothing would motivate them to listen to music on a mobile. The top motivator - guaranteeing tracks are $0.99 or less. Just 14 percent of users want over-the-air tunes. All the numbers jump for the 18-to-24 bracket but the outlook is still glum. Jupiter: “Absent some exciting new business models, music labels and carriers will continue to cede most of the digital-music turf to Apple.” The survey polled 1,815 US adults.

Source: MocoNews

Labels: Mobile music

The Opera Mini mobile web browser is now available for Google's mobile OS.

A preview version of the software is available for Android developers to download at labs.opera.com, with Opera encouraging its community to build and share feedback for an upcoming beta release.

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO at Opera Software, said: "Opera Mini will be able to empower users of Android-based handsets with access to all of their favorite web sites with popular features for smooth effects and scalable, tailored viewing."

Labels: android, Opera mini

Nokia's VP of Forum Nokia, Tom Libretto, said that the company has been working on a touch-centric device to compete with the iPhone, and that the device has the code name of "Tube." Nokia has not formally announced the device, which was featured today in a slide shown at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in California. Nokia also declined to give a time frame as to when the product might be launched.

Symbian-Freak.com has posted images available at the Symbian-Freak.com website.

Awsome!

Oi president, Luiz Eduardo Falco, said today that conversations about Brasil Telecom acquisition by Oi continue. "All negotiations proceed, everybody is working in order to it happen. We have no news", said Falco after being questioned if there are any impediments from companies partners, as Opportunity group.

The conversations about companies merger started on Jan 2008 and the new company will be the largest telco company on Brazil, under control of Brazilian's capital groups La Fonte and Andrade Gutierrez.

According to Brazilian newspaper Estado de São Paulo, companies merger will be announced by friday (Apr 11).

Source: Estadão

Labels: Brazil, BrT, Oi

At a press luncheon during last week's CTIA Wireless 2008 event in Las Vegas, AT&T Mobility president Ralph de la Vega said that most of the carrier's high-end devices will be 3G-enabled "within months." When asked to clarify that statement to see it included the iPhone, he essentially said yes.
Also, Walt Mossberg, the legendary technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, made the prediction during an executive summit held by Beet.tv last week. At about 6:30 into the clip, he starts talking about wireless broadband, and the iPhone. Mossberg notes that the iPhone already offers a pretty good video experience with its iPod capabilities, and then shoots: "It will be 3G in 60 days."
By the way, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference will be hosted on San Francisco in June 9. Almost 60 days from now ;-)

Sources: CNET, FierceDeveloper

Labels: iphone

After a decade as the dominant provider, NTT DoCoMo Inc can no longer say it provides most Japanese with their mobile phones, March figures show, with smaller rivals grabbing share in a fierce fight ahead of the start of the academic and business year. DoCoMo held a 49.7 percent share of Japan's total mobile phone and personal handyphone market at the end of March, down from 50.2 percent in February, the Telecommunications Carriers Association said on Monday.

DoCoMo said it was the first time in about a decade that its market share had fallen below half.

"Softbank is winning in this changing market because it has a retailer's eye for pricing, design and services, while the others are still thinking like telecom firms", said Shinji Moriyuki, a senior analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.

The race for new signings was won this year by No.3 carrier Softbank Corp, just ahead of second-largest carrier KDDI Corp. Despite a marketing blitz to try to keep pace with its price-cutting rivals, DoCoMo signed on 173,700 net new users in March -- only around a third of Softbank's 543,900 new subscribers or KDDI's 500,500 users.

The figures measure new users signed up minus those that leave each company, and that is where DoCoMo is feeling the pain, after a rule change in 2006 allowed customers to switch companies while keeping the same phone number.

DoCoCom shed 137,000 users who kept their numbers while switching to KDDI or Softbank, bringing total defections to 916,400 users in the year to March.

KDDI, which in March launched a new discount scheme allowing KDDI-using family members to call each other free, snagged a net 75,700 users from rivals in March to Softbank's 60,800 on a net basis.

Source: Reuters

Labels: docomo, japan

On the heels of CTIA in Las Vegas, Mobile Point View hosts the first April Carnival of the Mobilists.

Labels: carnival of mobilists

AdMob has announced that it has served its 20 billionth mobile advertisement. In the last 12 months, the company’s impressions have grown from 500 million a month to 2.5 billion per month today.

The 20 billionth ad impression was from financial services conglomerate HDFC. The ad was served in India at 1:56am GMT on Tuesday, March 25, while a visitor was browsing Cricinfo’s mobile web site on a Nokia N70.

A couple of other interesting points:

• AdMob serves ads to mobile web users in over 160 countries daily
• It can reach 40% of US subscribers with a mobile internet capable phone. (36 million subs)
• The AdMob fill rate is around 95%.
• Over 3,900 mobile websites use the AdMob platform - I’m not sure I knew that 3,900 mobile sites even existed!
• Sample AdMob customers include Coca Cola, P&G, Adidas, MSN, Paramount Pictures, Reuters and MTV

Just before posting this, AdMob web site claims to have served 21,180,612,734 mobile ads!

Source: AdMob Press Release

Labels: mobile ads

Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot has been quoted by Mint expressing an interest in acquiring the mobile handset business seeing a fit with their pan-India 22 circle license acquisition for GSM mobile services under the brand Datacom. The valuation of Motorola’s handset division is worth $3.8 billion as per Merrill Lynch, more than double the market value of Videocon Industries, the group’s listed company.

Though Motorola is using its numero uno status in the States as a buyer proposition, our sister site Moconews reports that on LG, Sony Ericsson and Samsung (which recently took over Motorola for no. 2 position global handset sales) have said that they’re not interested in buying. No idea on the valuation of the bid currently, but if it does work out, it will be a massive coup for Videocon. All reports indicate the entire managerial structure within Motorola’s handset division is devoid of innovation and has decayed internally on the success of the Razr. However, resurrections are not uncommon in technology and a firm which invented the cellphone, made a decision to direct all their engineering resources and efforts on a concept the industry dubbed insane, can in the least reinvent itself.

Videocon’s recent acquisitions include PlanetM (an music retail store present 140-plus locations) from BCCL for Rs 200 crore (~US$ 50 million).

Source: ContentSutra

Labels: motorola

Some 20.1 percent (5.9 million) of Nokia owners played a mobile game in February - behind the 21.4 percent market average. Just 6.2 percent of Nokia owners played a game they had downloaded themselves, versus 8.9 percent across the market. And only 2.7 percent of Nokia owners downloaded a new game, against 3.4 percent more generally.

”Nokia is currently underperforming in the games market today primarily due to the fact that the US market is flooded with low-end, free Nokia phones that came with carrier contracts,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Today, N-Series devices are still quite expensive and are not widely distributed in carrier channels, resulting in low market adoption.”

It’s a different story for those Nokia handsets running the latest Symbian OS, though - 30.8 percent of them played a game, pointing to justification behind the N-Gage strategy.

M:Metrics said 48.4 million people played a mobile game in February (up from 45.2 million the previous year), 20.2 million downloaded a game they had downloaded (up from 18.5 million) and 7.6 million people downloaded a new game (up from 6.8 million)

Source: MocoNews

T-Mobile Germany has slashed the cost of an 8GB iPhone to a mere 99 euros ($156) from 399 euros ($628), in what analysts are saying is an attempt to clear the shelves before 3G iPhones hit the market, reports Reuters. The 99 euro phone is still tied to a contract though—one that costs 89 euros ($140) a month and runs for two years. Other analysts questioned whether the sale was just, well, a sale, indicating that the iPhone wasn’t doing as well as hoped for in the German market. Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) which owns T-Mobile said that the network sold 70,000 iPhones since its November launch in January. Since then, there’s been no word on new figures. Shortly after T-Mobile rolled out the iPhone, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) won an injunction to stop the sales of iPhones in Germany. The injunction was eventually lifted, but T-Mobile said in December that it would consider suing Vodafone if figures revealed the injunction had damaged sales.

Source: MocoNews

Labels: iphone

If you’re on a Nokia N81, N82, or N95, you can finally get your hands on N-Gage. Their list of games has Asphalt 3: Street Rules, Brain Challenge, World Series of Poker Pro Challenge and Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep available in try-before-you-buy versions, plus a host of other games that are “coming soon.” The official announcement from Nokia won’t hit until Monday, but their blog has said that the service is live and posted a link to the app itself. Happy gaming!

Good news for messaging providers in particular and the ailing telecom industry in general: a perfect storm of subscriber adoption patterns is combining to drive revenues for mobile messaging to US$212 billion by 2013.

The source of such optimism is a new numbers study from ABI Research by principal analyst Dan Shey, entitled “Mobile Messaging Services,” which identifies five key messaging markets: SMS, MMS, voicemail, IM, and email/unified messaging, on the rise.

Shey attributes his findings to strong SMS adoption in the Americas, as well as the growing popularity of mobile e-mail in developed regions. In addition, subscriber growth is pushing messaging subscriber rates in Asia- Pacific, and the global social networking trend is raising the overall flow of messaging across most regions.

While messaging service growth is driven by different factors according to region, there is a common denominator that cuts across geography when explaining the success of SMS; mobile messaging services support a quick, low-cost, customer-variable communication capability.

As Dan Shey says, “You will not find many customers worldwide who don’t find messaging cost-effective and valuable for communications and delivery of information. The range of capabilities, services and pricing options can be fit to the economic and social differences of each region, and the result quite simply is steady growth over the next five years.”

But Shey sees a tipping point ahead that will lead to the next stage in mobile messaging development. The usual benefits of messaging—its economic, social and functional convenience compared to voice calling— will begin to give way, or at least be influenced by, new input and access capabilities, and integration across mobile and fixed-line platforms.

According to Shey, “Innovation in messaging input, including touch screens, voice-to-text, and advanced keyboard designs, makes initiating a mobile message very easy. By combining input options with greater ease of communicating across mobile and fixed platforms regardless of messaging service, messaging providers serve customers’ needs very well in both the consumer and business domains.”

In another look ahead at likely growth scenarios for SMS, Shey also pointed out a greater role for advertising in the heretofore commercial- free zone. “Some very creative companies are finding unique ways to incorporate advertising in mobile messaging. If done right, advertising will completely change the mobile messaging market."

Source: http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4063

Yahoo’s EVP of Connected Life Marco Boerries launched today on the Las Vegas' CTIA the new OneSearch 2.0

OneSearch is Yahoo’s mobile search application that it launched 13 months ago. Since then, it has signed deals with 29 carriers, and therefore it’s accessible to 600 million subscribers, who are now under contract. That includes recently winning the T-Mobile contact in Europe away from Google. “No one has never amassed that kind of distribution under that short period of time,” he said.

OneSearch 2.0’s new features:

-- OneSearch is being opened up to all publishers and content owners so they can write rich metadata that will be returned as part of results, rather than just a link, similarly to Yahoo’s Monkey service for the Internet.
-- Search Assist: The search box will predict what you are typing.
-- Voice input: Users can search by speaking into the device instead of typing.
-- The search box will be integrated into the home screen of the phones.

In demonstrations on stage, they searched for a person, getting results on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Wikipedia results, in addition to celebrity pages. When searching by voice, they asked for a flight to find out if it was on time; they searched an address to get a map and for “march madness” to get game results. One question was: “Where is the best place to play craps in Vegas?” The answer appeared, coming from Yahoo Answers service. All of the trials worked well, and provided answers, not links.OneSearch will start to roll out this summer through Yahoo’s partners. A trial can be downloaded here: m.yahoo.com/voice on BlackBerries.


Source: http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-ctia-keynote-day-two-yahoos-marco-boerries-launches-onesearch-20/

SMS rocks!

Check here!

Labels: symbian

Good news for iPhone gamers: Innaworks is developing a tool called alcheMo to ease the porting of Java or J2ME games onto the iPhone. The iPhone doesn’t natively support Java applications — although steps are being taken to change that — so the software instead automatically converts Java code into iPhone code. This kind of automated code conversion is somewhat hit-or-miss, but it does ease the process or porting considerably. This first release is a beta, and there’s no word on an exact release date, but hopefully they’ll finish it up before the release of the AppStore in June.

Labels: iphone, porting