2005

WiFi Kit Revenues Hit Record Levels: Infonetics Research
Despite prices being pushed downwards by fierce price competition, worldwide wireless LAN equipment revenue rose 20% to US$767.6 million (~£420m ~€610m) between the fourth quarter of 2004 and the first quarter of 2005.
During that period, a grand total of 12.2 million units were shipped, the highest quarterly volume to date, according to a report from Infonetics Research.
With wireless LAN products continuing to grow in popularity across product categories and geographic regions, revenue is expected to rise another 2% to $779.6 million (£426m, €620m) by 1Q06, hitting $3.6 billion (~£173m~€251m) by 2008.
Wireless LAN switch ports have been shifting faster than a Ritalin-assisted rabbit, rising 44% to 112,000 as revenue grew 13% to $52.2 million (~£285m~€41.53m), with a leap to $699.2 million (~£381~€556) predicted for 2008.
As the world goes bonkers for broadband, the demand for wireless broadband routers has soared accordingly, registering a hefty 34% increase in revenue between 4Q04 and 1Q05 generating $328 million (~£173.8m~€253m).
That’s a thumping great 37% increase in unit shipments, representing not-to-be-scoffed-at sales of 6 million.
Naturally, the manufacturers want to keep the cash flowing in their direction, so have been busily slapping on new product features to generate replacement purchasing.
“The demand for wireless broadband routers continues unabated, driven by the possibilities of wireless home networking,” said Richard Webb, lead analyst of the Infonetics report.
“As more and more users explore the possibilities of media download and file sharing applications they are finding that this easy-to-use device uncovers the true potential of their broadband connection. And with 802.11n and even faster throughput speeds on the horizon, the wireless router segment will ride the crest of the global broadband wave.”
Cisco continues as the worldwide wireless LAN revenue leader, hogging 17% of the market share following four consecutive $100-million-plus (~£53.7m~€79.5m) quarters.
D-Link barged ahead of Cisco-Linksys to grab second place, with NETGEAR in fourth position.
Just in case you, dear reader, haven’t had quite enough facts yet, allow me to inform you that the report revealed that access points account for 71% of wireless LAN equipment revenue, NICs account for 13%, and infrastructure products, including wireless LAN switches, appliances, controllers, and mesh networking gear, account for 16%
SOHOs and consumers make up just over half of wireless LAN equipment revenue (51%), down from 53% in 4Q04 while service providers and enterprises make up the rest.
Finally, a little geographic fact flurry to end with: North America accounts for 45% of wireless LAN equipment revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa for 30%, Asia Pacific for 21%, and Central America / Latin America for 4%.
So now you know.
WiFi Hit Record Volume in 1Q05; Revenue Up 20%
24 May, 2005
Skype Affiliate Programme Becomes Official
Here at VON Europe in Stockholm, Sweden, Niklas Zennstrom, CEO of Skype, has just announced the official launch of the Skype affiliate scheme. The scheme has been running as a trial for a few weeks, gaining 1,800 members.
Working with affiliate site Commission Junction, they plan to reward Skype users who promote their pay for services. In return, affiliates will get a varying percentage of the value of the purchase, depending on the service and the number of people that they sign up each month.
They do this by simply by placing a link on their site or by sending the links through via an email.
Speaking to Niklas yesterday (audio interview with Niklas Zennstrom 20mins, 19Mb), he told Digital-Lifestyles, “We’re creating a structure where Skype users who promote us, can start to make a buck out of it,” while he acknowledged that they also benefit.
There will also be “super affiliates” that will have their own Skype account manager – a first for them. The first two announced are Luna Storm in Sweden and SuperAva in Italy. Luna Storm is a online phenomenon in Sweden, having over 2m members, which in a country of 9m in total is pretty impressive.
Looking at the percentages that are offered, they give guidance as to which Skype services are the most profitable, and it’s no surprise to see that they’re SkypeIn and voicemail. SkypeOut, which connects Skype VoIP user to the public phone network, enabling them to call land-lines. When connecting to the public phone network, Skype has to pay operators for the time the call is connected.
Not surprisingly if people sign up for the normal free Skype service, the affiliate receives no financial reward.
Skype are in a position where they have grown very fast, recently hitting 3m concurrent users, but they are still vulnerable to an alternative service coming along and usupring them.
The larger their installed base of users, the larger the barrier is to competitors. They know that the more people in a Skype users social/family circle that download and sign up for Skype, the more difficult it becomes for a competitor to unseat them. The process of talking you mum, granny and sister-in-law isn’t something you want to repeat.
Skype Affiliate scheme
24 May, 2005
Vodafone 7100v Blackberry Review – In Everyday use
Part syncing a 7100 with a Mac.
I’m writing this review over a few days, using the 7100v instead of my usual phone. Today, I switched the 7100v on in the morning, received and replied to a few emails and set off for the day.
On the bus, I read the PDA edition of the BBC Web site using the built-in Web browser (more fully covered later). After lunch, I pulled it out of my pocket to check over the mail that had arrived. Imagine my horror when I spotted two huge, yellow lines covering the screen. On scrolling, these lines became more pronounced and seemed to spawn more of themselves, until they covered the whole screen. My first thought was that pixels in the screen were damaged, possibly as a result of me sitting on it, as it had been in my back pocket shortly during my lunch break. I tried switching the handset off and back on again, but the lines didn’t disappear. I was already thinking “Oh no, I’ve broken it” when I had the presence of mind to take the battery out. Miraculously, this solved the problem with the screen, suggesting this problem was possibly a software related one, as opposed to a hardware one. I never did track down what caused it but having bugs like this in released software is not a way to reassure customers that a product is beyond the early-adopter stage and while not a major problem. Occurrences like this one do make you slightly wary of purchasing such a device with your own hard-earned money.
Battery life
My initial experience of the battery life was very poor, with the battery dropping from full to empty within about 8 hours. After a few charging cycles, however, this improved dramatically, and the battery now lasts a good two days under relatively heavy use. This discovery came as a very pleasant surprise to me, as with my usage pattern the only other handset that I had managed to keep alive on a single charge for over a day was an ancient Nokia 6210. The one thing that is bad about the battery on this handset, however, is the time it takes to charge up: It takes around 6 hours (!), an unheard of amount of time in my experience of other handsets. This makes my customary “plug it in for an hour before I go out” habit worthless, as the battery doesn’t even come close to full in that time.
Screen
The screen on the 7100 is very impressive in its clarity and brightness – the contrast isn’t bad either. Images viewed on it look very solid, almost as if they are actually colour-printed backlit acetate as opposed to being displayed on an LCD.
The main downfall of the screen is when it is placed in sun-light: The screen is about 5mm below the plastic covering over the screen, and this covering isn’t of particularly high-grade plastic, leading to a badly obscured screen in bright conditions. The cover is also quite reflective, so often you can’t see anything on the screen at all. Indoors however, the screen looks great and everyone I’ve asked about it has been very impressed by it.
Web browsing/access
I have grown accustomed to doing a lot of my Web surfing on the move, or at least not while sitting in front of my computer, as I find it more comfortable that way. To me, it means that the Internet can truly take over from books and newspapers, because you can browse the Net on the sofa, while eating dinner, or anywhere else for that matter and aren’t tied to sitting in a rigid office chair staring at a screen.
As a result of this, the Web browser on the Blackberry was of particular interest to me. RIM seem to have paid particular attention to complying with standards in the design of the Blackberry’s software and this shows in the browser: It supports style sheets and javascript, both features very uncommon for a mobile device. Style sheet support means that, in theory, a Web designer can write one page that will look different when viewed with a small-screen device than when viewed with a full-size computer. This means that it is possible to, for instance, make a small-screen device employ a larger font when rendering a Web page than a computer, to take account of the small screen size. Sadly, sometimes sticking to standards isn’t enough, and this is the case with the Blackberry.
When Web pages are rendered, there are a lot of unnecessary images which would be represented instead by text. This text is usually shown in the ALT tags of the HTML from which the pages are rendered. On a lot of sites, there are a lot of navigation images, which are not good for render time on a low-powered device like the Blackberry: every time a page is opened containing images, these images are downloaded (this takes a long time with the Internet connection on a 7100v being at dial-up speeds). When downloaded these images are resized individually so as to fit on its screen.
Unless the sites that you wish to visit using your Blackberry are graphically very light with little images on them, you may despair of the slow speeds. Other handhelds get around the image problem by simply not displaying all images, only the ones that they think are vital to the site. While this can lead to problems like the right images not being loaded, these problems are uncommon, and the associated speed increase more than makes up for this.
There is a hotkey in between the answer and hang up buttons on the keypad of the Blackberry which opens the Web browser. This may suit some people more than others. Personally, I found it a bit annoying, and it would have been far better to use it as a selection softkey or at least make it configurable.
Part one of this review, looking at how to enter and retrieve information, was published yesterday. Part three will follow.
24 May, 2005
Music Fans To SMS Bands Onstage
Back in the old days when Glastonbury was a field of medieval mud occupied by confused hippies and LSD travellers, the customary way to show your appreciation of the band was to flash the occasional peace sign or waft a spliff skywards.
Come the punk revolution, and there was no better way to show your love for a band than by propelling copious amounts of phlegm in their direction.
By the 80s, over-excited fans felt the best way to express a heartfelt love for a band was to clamber onstage and then stage dive back into the audience, while the E’d up 90s rave generation couldn’t get it together to work out where the stage was so just swirled fluoro things around their person instead.
In America, it was a somewhat different story, with concert goers traditionally expressing a curious penchant for holding lighters aloft, a craze that never really caught on in Blighty because, frankly, it looks really daft.
For today’s hi-tech toy generation, new ways of bigging up a band have developed.
Mobile phones have ensured that lighters have been replaced by the blue glow of mobile phones, with forests of camera phones springing up and down at concerts like demented flamingos.
Not surprisingly, this swaying sea of interactive technology soon caught the attention of The Man, who quickly saw an opportunity to coin in it from the captive crowd.
Step forward Boomerang Mobile Media who, in partnership with Strategic Artists Management, have come up with the idea of allowing fans to send SMS messages to the band and then see their words appear on a big onstage screen. For a price, naturally.
Fans don’t even have to be at the gig, with sofa loafers stoned at home watching the gig on TV also able to ‘enjoy’ the thrill of seeing their texted mumblings appear onstage.
The concept’s already been tested out on a promotional tour for Anastacia in Europe, where around ten percent of the attendees were happy to hand over 1 euro each (~£0.68 ~US$1.26) for the privilege of blasting inane messages onstage for all to see.
We’re not sure what the remaining 90% of the crowd thought of this pointless onscreen nonsense, but we’d be reaching for our phone zappers in double quick time.
Call us old fashioned if you will, but when we go to gigs we want to see the band and not be distracted by an endless stream of “KT LUVS THE KLRZ 4EVER” and “WIL U MARRY ME THOM?” beaming in our faces.
Simon Renshaw, of Strategic Artists Management, soaked up every cash-till ringing minute of the show: “Fans loved the concept and were sending multiple text messages to our stage front screens in an effort to see their names, talk to their friends, tell Anastacia how much they love her and win prizes.”
“Fans were so excited about it that marriage proposals were proffered onscreen,” he gushed.
But the real profit may come from turning the band’s backdrop into a giant size virtual mall, with audiences able to call in and buy merchandise advertised throughout the gig.
Boomerang Mobile Media founder and CEO Glenn Field rubbed his hands and explained the scheme: “You see something you like, and we deliver it to your home.”
As Sid Vicious and the ghost of Rock’n’Roll reached maximum RPM in their graves, he continued, “These are exclusive items purchased through the security of your phone, and the day it should have arrived you’ll get a follow-up phone call to confirm you received it.”
Boomerang Mobile Media and Strategic Artists Management are already dreaming up additional e-commerce opportunities, including the ability to allow fans to send camera-phone pictures to the venue screens along with their text messages
No interactive stone is being left unturned in their attempts to fleece, sorry, offer maximum interactive retail opportunities, to the hapless punter.
The first time a consumer buys from Boomerang via a mobile, a live operator will jump into action and invite the user to register a personal PIN for future purchases and other products.
This can then be used to milk fans dry with subsequent mobile-only ‘exclusive’ offers, pre-orders and a myriad of other pocket-draining merchandising discounts.
Boomerang are applying the marketing experience they gained last year when working with Def Jam Recordings artist Ghostface on a festival bill.
“We allowed Ghostface to connect with fans who either were fans or who heard his music that day and became fans,” Field enthused.
“We projected a number inviting people to interact – to meet him, visit him on the tour bus, things like that – and when you called you heard a recorded message from Ghostface. People got to hear their favourite artist talk to them on their most personal device.”
Cash from chaos, anyone?
Boomerang Mobile Media
24 May, 2005
Time Warner Ponders AOL float
Time Warner is considering “spinning off” its AOL division to help finance acquisitions in the future, said chief executive Richard D. Parsons on Friday.
“If we get to the point where consolidation is happening in the Internet space…the possibility of an IPO is out there,” he commented, with the Wall Street Journal citing sources as saying that Time Warner would continue to hold a majority stake in the Internet company.
Parsons told investors at the company’s annual meeting in New York that Time Warner had discussed the possibility of selling AOL shares in an initial public offering but had decided not to go ahead with such a plan “at this point.”
Critical to the spin-off decision will be the success of AOL chief executive Jonathan Miller’s strategy which aims to attract more Internet users and advertisers to AOL’s site to compensate for the slump in dial-up subscribers.
Time Warner acquired AOL for US$112bn (~£61.2bn ~€89bn) in January 2001 just as the dotcom bubble began to wobble like a dancing jelly on three wheeled roller skates.
The acquisition led to a record US$98.7 billion (~£54bn~€78.6) loss in 2002, plunging shares into catastrophic freefall as the promised cash-fest and sales growth never emerged.
With Time Warner’s pockets already considerably lightened, transatlantic regulators then accused them of overstating advertising and subscriber numbers from mid-2000, with the company settling all charges with thumping great payments of US$510 million (~£279m ~€406.6m) in the States and US$300m (~£164~€239m) in the EU.
Time Warner has announced that it plans to start paying the company’s first dividend since the America Online merger four years ago, representing “the beginning of a commitment we hope will grow over time,” according to Parsons.
The upturn in the company’s profitability has been engineered by Parsons, who has slashed debt, driven sales growth, settled government investigations into the AOL unit and shelled out for cable-television assets from Adelphia Communications – the company’s biggest deal since the merger.
“The turnaround is complete. We are moving forward and picking up speed,” purred a pleased Parsons.
AOL is now trying to find new revenue sources to compensate for the loss of U.S. subscribers to its dial-up Web access service, which has declined by 5 million users in three years, to 21.7 million.
In response, Miller has unveiled a series of customer-attracting new Web products, including a local search engine, a travel site, a free e-mail service and the first upgrade to AOL’s Netscape browser for five years.
And he’s not finished yet, with a revamped version of the Aol.com site in the bag that that promises to look like a mix of the phenomenally successful Yahoo and Google sites.
Miller aims to attract more heavyweight advertisers and regain a bigger share of the US$9.6 billion U.S. online ad market, currently hogged by Google.
So far, things are looking rosy for Miller with ad sales zippily moving up 45 percent to US$311 million, although he’s still miles short of compensating for the loss in subscriber revenue, with AOL first-quarter revenue falling 3 percent to US$2.13 billion (~£1.16bn~€1.69bn).
Time Warner May Consider AOL Spinoff
Time Warner
23 May, 2005
Hop-on $39 WiFi Phone Announced
They’ve got a bit of a reputation for being a tad over-affirmative with their announcements, but Californian wireless solutions company Hop-on have revealed details of their new US$39 (~€31~£21.33) WiFi phone.
The device – which looks like a homage to a late 90s chunky Nokia phone – lets users make Voice over IP phone calls from available public or private Wi-Fi access points.
Measuring a pocket-challenging 126.2 x 46.3 x 27.5 mm, the HOP1502 Wi-Fi IP weighs 135g (with battery) and sports a Ye Olde Mono backlit LCD, offering a 102 x 650 pixels screen size.
The 1800mAh Standard Li-Ion battery is claimed to provide 3.5 hours of talk time or 30 hours of standby.
The WiFi handset supports a wide variety of VoIP features and functions, based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Depending on the service provider, users can enjoy call features such as three-way calling, call waiting and call forwarding etc.
The clunky chunky phone also enables voice processes, including the curiously monikered “comfort noise generation” as well as voice activity detection, and echo cancellation, and IP protocol features such as Real-Time Transfer Protocol (RTP), Session Description Protocol, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and Virtual SIM (VSIM).
Of course, the main attraction of this phone is the low, low price, with the company claiming that it “provides all the features and functionality of a VoIP terminal adapter but has the advantage of enabling users to talk from any available public or private WiFi access point. ”
VoIP handsets are set to become increasingly popular, with market research firm Instat claiming that the number of mobile/WLAN (VOIP) subscribers will reach over 256 million worldwide by 2009, with the numbers of subscribers using WLAN for voice expected to exceed those using WLAN for data only by that date.
“Hop-on believes that the features and price point of the HOP1502 WiFi IP handset will be challenging to the Industry,” insisted Samuel Demissie, President of Hop-on. “WiFi phones have not yet been deployed in quantity by carriers due to security challenges such as fraud, theft of call information, passwords and the lack of 911 Emergency Service.”
Hop-on worked with security partners to develop a “total solution package” (we like those) for carriers and hotspot owners, enabling “seamless authentication and billing enablement for the carrier.”
Hop on claims that their Virtual SIM (VSIM) patented software technology replicates the same benefits of GSM/CDMA security and authentication in WiFi phones and “substantially” reduces the security and billing challenges faced by carriers.
It’s an ugly looking beast all right, but we like the idea of cheap VoIP handsets, although hardened old cynics like us would suggest that you don’t hold your breath on this one, quite yet.
Hop-on
23 May, 2005
VON Europe 2005
Now in its 8th year, VON Europe is the leading VoIP event in Europe. Produced by pulver.com, the ‘voice’ of IP communications since 1996. VON Europe brings all the players in the converging communications landscape together, at the most senior level, to map out the future. With 250 speakers across 4 days, and 4 parallel streams of breakouts covering both strategic and technical issues, this is the place to get a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead. Stockholm, Sweden http://www.voneurope.com/
23 May, 2005
SGH-Z300: Samsung Announces Music Phone
The mobile world domination plans by the white cat-stroking mastermind at Samsung continues apace with the news of yet another new phone from the Korean giants.
Hell bent on filling every pocket on the planet with their products, the prolific phone producer has sent out swarms of smart phones, 3G phones, swivel phones, slider phones and MP3 phones.
With a strategy dictating that every possible consumer should find something for them in their colossal products range, Samsung’s scientists were quickly despatched to their laboratories after someone spotted a niche unfulfilled: the 3G music phone!
Immediately, great brains went to work and before long the new flip-tastic SGH-Z300 was born.
Seen at CeBIT 2005 earlier this year, Samsung have announced a June release date for their SGH-Z300 phone, described as a “classically designed, clamshell handset with a range of music, camera and video features.”
Petite in size yet delivering a surprisingly hefty sonic whack, Samsung’s wee 3G phone incorporates dual stereo speakers for its MP3/AAC/AAC+ audio player, with a healthy 50MB of internal memory for song storage.
The 89 x 47 x 26 mm handset sports a sizeable 262K colour TFT Samsung screen with the whole caboodle weighing in at a handbag-untroubling 110g.
Because Da Kidz are, like, down with multimedia, Samsung have kitted the handset out with dual lenses – one 1.3 Megapixel and the other 0.3 Megapixel – offering video calls, still photography and video recording.
User reports say that the viewfinder isn’t exactly the fastest kid on the block, but it seems an acceptable compromise considering the wealth of functionality on offer.
The comfortably large keyboard glows with a de rigueur blue backlight, and there’s an intuitive circular navipad above the number keys.
Basic Web browsing is taken care of with a WAP 2.0-enabled micro-browser also present, and the handset offers support for J2ME MIDP 2.0.
Samsung earn a big gold star for using a mini USB connector (instead of the usual proprietary solution that comes with most handsets), but this is quickly ripped out of the book and replaced with a silver star for their decision to use the highly unpopular TransFlash memory card format.
The SGH-Z300 is due out this June in Europe, and will offer GSM tri-band 900/1800/1900 MHz and WCDMA 2100 MHz connectivity.
Pricing has yet to be announced.
Samsung
23 May, 2005
Vodafone 7100v Blackberry Review
Being a self-professed gadget lover, I tend to get new toys as they come out. One particular gadget, however, escaped my grasp: I’d heard about it – all about how it was the oh-so-great new fashion for business users, and about how it was transforming people’s lives (and phone bills too as it happens). You might already have guessed what it is that I’m talking about: The Blackberry.
Introduction
Blackberry is an invention of a company called Research In Motion (RIM), and its primary function is to provide email while you are on the go – as soon as someone sends you an email, it is received into your hand, and you can reply too.
It enables SMS-style communications, albeit with someone using e-mail. The cost advantages are obvious to this form of communication: In the UK, an SMS can cost up to 12p, whereas the bandwidth for sending a similar-length email costs around 1p, depending on the service provider used.
Having e-mail on the move is also the first step to a mobile office, freeing you from the confines of a desk, and allowing you to receive and reply to emails when and where you want. Of course, the Blackberry also integrates seamlessly with office extension numbers and text messaging to provide the full mobile office experience.
Previously, Blackberrys tended to be reserved for executives of large companies, as an expensive Blackberry Enterprise Server was required. This made Blackberrys something that the general public couldn’t afford to implement. To fill this gap, RIM started to offer a Web-based service, that collected emails from a number of ‘normal’ (POP3) email accounts.
Blackberry and Nokia 6630 side-by-side (Blackberry on the right)
While standard Blackberrys have been singularly focused on business user, the 7100 range has been designed for owners of small businesses and individuals to use the Web-based service.
The 7100 sold to a number of mobile phone companies around the world. In the UK it’s called the 7100v, the v signifying it’s been licensed by Vodafone UK. It’s has a different case and final letter in Germany – the 7100t,for Deutsche Telecom.
When I was first contacted about possibly reviewing the Blackberry 7100v, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect: I had never even played with one before. When, a few days later, a package arrived in the post, I unwrapped it in some haste to find a surprisingly small phone lying in front of me.
I’d assumed that Blackberrys were very large, chunky machines, and thus I was surprised to have a phone that was marginally smaller and lighter than the phone that I currently use (Sony Ericsson P910i)!
Keyboard
If anything had caused concern to me, it was the keyboard. Whereas the ‘nornal’ Blackberry has a full QWERTY keyboard, the 7100 has half the number of keys.
Arranged in 5 rows of buttons, it has two letters of the alphabet on each button in a layout similar to QWERTY.
It was unclear if there was going to be any way to adjust to it. Clearly QWERTY is second nature, as is type messages on a mobile phone using T9, but getting used to a new keyboard?
Initially, typing on the 7100’s keyboard actually hurt my head, as your brain is screaming T9 key position to you, but you have to treat it as a QWERTY with half the number of keys.
It is however soon mastered after a few hours of practice, making it is possible to get about half of your normal typing rate on a standard QWERTY keyboard, something which I find impossible with a T9 keypad.
The upper characters on each key (numbers 0-9 and the ? and ! key etc.) are used by tapping them in conjunction with the ALT key, located at the bottom left hand corner of the keypad.
The only disadvantage to having this style of keypad as opposed to a standard T9 one was that it was almost impossible to use one-handed, something which T9 was very good at. This means that it is impossible to fire off a quick text (“Will be late”) while in the car or, in my case, riding a bike. I found this quite annoying, as it meant stopping just to write a quick message, something which isn’t always a viable option. This coupled with the Blackberry’s lack of voice-dialing features shows that it isn’t really intended to be used whilst doing other activities, and thus one must devote full attention to the device when using it for anything more than a simple voice call.
Scroll wheel
Considering that my review model arrived without a manual, you can likely understand my initial total confusion as to how to operate the phone. After about 5 minutes of stabbing buttons and eventually finding the right one to turn it on, I found the small scroll wheel on the side of the phone (see picture above).
This scroll wheel is how you navigate around almost the entire phone. The scroll wheel can be scrolled upwards, downwards and pushed in to select items. To go back a menu level, the escape key, just below it, is used (again, image above).
For those who are not used to a scroll wheel, it may initially feel a bit strange, but within a short while you’ll be wondering how you ever managed without one. Indeed using a handset without one feels clumsy.
It’s also worth mentioning that with the wheel in on the right side of the phone, you may not thing this phone if for the left-handed. I can confirm that left-handers should find no difficulty using this handset, with the only time it may be noticeable is when you need to scroll down long lists, where the dexterity of the thumb would come in useful.
The two further sections of this review; In Everyday use; and focus on its email; Calendar; & Phone are also available, as is a seperate piece focusing on syncing a 7100 with a Mac.
23 May, 2005
Mobile TV Launches on Orange UK 3G
Orange has become the first UK provider to offer live television channels to its customers’ handsets.
Available exclusively to UK-based Orange 3G customers, the service will give customers access to nine channels, including ITN News, CNN, Cartoon Network, Extreme Sports, as well as dedicated Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island channels.
Mobile TV is seen as the latest hot potato in the telecoms world, with the service enabled by the DVB-H broadcast transmission standard – a digital TV technology that offers low battery consumption and robust reception.
With their announcement of a UK service, Orange have jumped the gun on rivals o2, who are still experimenting with Mobile TV trials in the Oxford area.
Orange are already broadcasting 23 TV channels over mobile phones in France, along with other European networks selling selected live TV via 3G network streaming.
“This is truly a service where 3G comes into its own. We don’t expect people to watch for hours at a time but to dip in and out,” beamed Julian Diment, head of commercial and brand partnerships at Orange.
Not surprisingly, 3G operators – who collectively shelled out £22.5bn for the networks – are extremely hopeful that mobile TV will prove an alluring attraction for consumers to sign up for their flagging service.
Keen to milk the franchise for every last penny, there are a slew of interminable reality TV show tie-ins lurking around the corner.
For the terminally sad, Channel 4 will provide live 24-hour streaming from the Big Brother house during the next series, which is launched next month.
We can’t imagine any circumstances where we’d consider paying to watch barrel-scraping Celebrity Love Island program on a mobile, but someone clearly thinks that a dire mobile channel based on the show will be a hit.
Orange’s service launches next Monday and will initially only be available on the Nokia 6680 from Orange.
Subscriptions are charged at £10 (~US$18.3 ~€14.5) a month on top of regular bills. Orange
20 May, 2005