Mike Slocombe

Mobile Music Phones Outsell MP3 Players
Mobile phones with built in MP3 music players are proving a massive hit with consumers, far outstripping sales of dedicated music players, say Nokia.
Speaking to Reuters, Nokia’s multimedia unit director, Tommi Mustonen, said the mobile giant aimed to shift 80 million music devices this year, getting on for double last year’s tally of 46.5 million.
“The technology is completely ready, and the change in consumers’ habits has started. The best evidence is our sales number. We are selling huge amounts,” he added.
Nokia’s sales figures certainly dwarf those of Apple, who sold 8.7 million iPods in the last quarter – a high enough figure to keep them at the top of the dedicated music player charts, but still way behind music phones.
Although two out of three consumers with suitable equipped phones are already using them to play music, Nokia insists that Apple is not a competitor (well, not until their highly anticipated iPhone hits the shops).
“The comparison with iPod is wrong; it is a single purpose device, and it is not connected,” Mustonen said, adding that he believes that Nokia’s current rivals are, “companies which make multimedia computers.”
One of their rivals is most certainly Sony Ericsson, currently the world’s fourth-largest handset maker and feeling chuffed with itself after flogging 15 million Walkman music-playing handsets in its first year.
The overall European mobile phone music download market is expanding faster than Mr Creosote at a dinner table too, with Forrester Research predicting that the market is to grow to 674 million euros ($857.5 million) in 2011.
Reuters
31 October, 2006
Full GNER Train Fleet Goes WiFi
UK rail operator GNER (Great North Eastern Railways) has now completed the installation of Wi-Fi on all is trains, with the company claiming that they now own the world’s largest Wi-Fi fleet.
Pushed forward from its original completion date of strong demand from passengers, the service uses a roof-mounted satellite connection and a 3G/GPRS uplink, supplied and fitted by Swedish company Icomera.
The Wi-Fi service was first trialled along the 580-mile Inverness to Kings Cross East Coast mainline service in July 2004, and a £3.2 million investment has seen its entire 41-strong fleet become wireless-enabled.
GNER reckons it will recoup the cost of installing its Wi-Fi service through increased passenger numbers, with the company confident that they’ll be able to tempt car users onto the trains from major metropolitan areas like Leeds, Newcastle and Darlington.
The service is priced at £2.95 for a 30-minute internet session, £4.95 for an hour or £7.95 for three hours for ~~second class~~ standard class ~~passengers~~ customers, with access free for first class travellers.
Wi-Fi has been proving a hit with passengers, with a host of train operators getting in on the act: passengers travelling from Brighton to London have been able to connect wirelessly for some time, while Virgin Trains is set to add Wi-Fi to their West Coast mainline fleet in 2007.
“Wireless Internet has immense potential for both business and leisure users, and we’re very encouraged by the usage levels and positive feedback from passengers,” said Jonathan Metcalfe, GNER’s chief executive officer.
One thing Metcalfe may not be so encouraged by is the rather parlous state of GNER’s parent company, the Caribbean-based Sea Containers.
The company filed for protection against bankruptcy in the USA a fortnight ago, although this shouldn’t – in theory – affect the UK company.
However, GNER warned the UK government last week that it needs to renegotiate its operating licence or it’ll throw all its toys out of the pram when it gets smacked down with a thumping great penalty clause for not meeting the year’s performance targets.
GNER Mobile Office
30 October, 2006
LG White Chocolate Phone Launches
After the success of LG’s Chocolate slider phone (aka the LG KG800), the company have released a new White Chocolate version.
The super-slick snowy white version offers the same feature set as the original, which means that users get a slidy-out phone with GSM 900/1800/1900 network coverage, backed by Bluetooth (with A2DP), Infrared and Wi-Fi connectivity.
There’s also a 1.3 MP camera with 2X zoom and a sizeable 176×220 262K-colour LCD screen and the same funky heat sensitive touch control keys for controlling the main functions.
These keys glow red in a suitably high tech manner when active, and fade into the background colour when they’re not being used.
The new white look is apparently designed to appeal to the laydees and it looks like LG are trying to sprinkle some of that iPod fairy dust on the thing.
Music playback support comes in the shape of WMA and MP3 support with micro-SD memory expansion up to 2GB.
Despite the hefty 128MB of memory onboard, function fans may be a little unchuffed to discover there’s no radio and speakerphone included – a curious omission if you ask us.
The phone also comes with a WAP 2.0 compliant browser, measures up at 95x48x15mm and weighs a pocket-untroubling 83 grams.
Battery life is listed as 3.5 hours talk / 8 days standby and is available on Amazon US for $375.
[From New Launches]
30 October, 2006
Nokia 330 Auto Navigation Announced
Nokia has announced its first dedicated personal navigation device covering all of Europe-land, the Nokia 330 Auto Navigation.
The Nokia 330 includes full Europe coverage, sports a large 3.5 inch colour touch screen, spoken directions and comes with a raft of multimedia widgets to keep le continental traveller ‘appy.
Featuring an integrated GPS receiver, the Nokia 330 device comes bundled with a 2GB memory card containing the preinstalled Europe-wide map data aling with detailed travel information.
The Nokia 330 uses the ROUTE 66 Navigate 7 application and views can be flipped between 2D/3D and day or night views, with options to change the language or volume of the spoken guide.
To help stave off boredom in Brussels and ennui in Eindhoven, the Auto Navigation also includes a music player, photo viewer and video player (but don’t go watching Rocky V when you’re driving folks! Well, we wouldn’t recommend you watch it any time, but that’s a different story).
And now some corporate guff
“Consumers are increasingly eager to use personal navigation devices while driving and we are delighted to introduce the Nokia 330 Auto Navigation device to meet this demand,” purred Razvan Olosu, vice president, Multimedia Enhancements at Nokia.
“Nokia 330 Auto Navigation complements the recently announced GPS and navigation solutions from Nokia.”
“Finding your way across Europe is simple with this comprehensive navigation package, including an integrated GPS receiver and European maps,” he added.
The Nokia 330 Auto Navigation is expected to turn up in “select channels” in Europe during the fourth quarter 2006 for around EUR 360 – £240 (sans le taxes).
Nokia
30 October, 2006
BT’s Digital Vault Opens
BT has launched a ‘virtual vault’ offering a secure online location for broadband users to safely stash personal files.
The service comes in two flavours, with the free BT Digital Vault Basic service letting users manually upload photos, emails, music, video files and contact information up to a storage capacity of 2GB.
The free service is open to anyone, not just BT Broadband customers.
For users requiring more storage space and automated back-ups, the full BT Digital Vault service costs £4.99 a month and includes a generous 20GB online storage capacity.
Automatic back ups
Billed as a quick and easy way for home users to securely back up their data, the package includes the BT Digital Vault Backup Manager which automatically detects when users have updated the content of files flagged for backing up.
The manager then synchronises the data with the copy stored in the Digital Vault, with no user intervention needed.
Data uploaded from the user’s PC is encrypted as it is transmitted with the password-protected files being stored in BT’s secure data hosting centre, which is accessible from any Web connection.
“People are often unsure about how to keep their online data safe… if you want to share your holiday snaps with a friend, retrieve important files, or backup files on your laptop when you’re away from home, it’s all possible with BT Digital Vault,” said Gavin Patterson, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer division.
Currently, only the service is only available to PC users, running Windows 2000 and XP.
BT Digital Vault
25 October, 2006
Mobile Phone Sales Set To Hit One Billion For 2006
Global mobile shipments are set to hit one billion this year for the first time.
According to researchers IDC, a total of 254.9 million units were shipped in the third quarter of 2006, up 7.9 per cent from the previous quarter and a hefty leap of 21 per cent from the same quarter in 2005.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker saw record performances from all top five top industry vendors during the first three quarters of 2006.
“Shipping nearly a billion units in a single year is a significant milestone, but just as important is the journey it takes to get there,” mused Ramon Llamas, research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker.
“Emerging markets have presented tremendous opportunity for vendors to provide users with their first handsets, and some users may already be looking to upgrade to another phone. Similarly, replacement handsets are a popular option for those in mature markets, especially as new features such as music have gained momentum,” he added.
Ryan Reith, research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker noted that, “the strong growth in the third quarter was very comparable to the growth we saw in 3Q05, as the trend of vendors and carriers working to prep for the holiday season begins.”
“Handsets that provide music functionality are now very visible in the industry. Mature markets are at a point where it is worthwhile for the carriers to launch these devices with strong marketing campaigns behind them, knowing that consumers are willing and ready to use their device as a music player as well as a phone,” Reith added.
The big boys break records
Nokia turned in another superlative performance, exceeding expectations and setting a new industry record by shipping 88.5 million units in the third quarter, cruising past its previous record by 4.8 million units, with the telecoms giant reporting double digit growth in the Far East, Europe, US and Chinese markets.
Records were also broken at second-placed Motorola, who enjoyed their sixth straight quarter notching up growth of around 40 per cent or better, helped on by the success of their RAZR phone.
Samsung managed to shift thirty million units in a quarter for the first time, while the number four vendor, Sony Ericsson notched up a healthy twenty million units.
IDC
25 October, 2006
Samsung Launches Upgraded Q1 Ultramobile PCs
With ne’er a parp on their usual raucous PR trumpet, Samsung have quietly shuffled out two updates to its Q1 ultra mobile Origami PC range.
Samsung’s Origami machines run a tablet version of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system and look to fill a niche in the market for between laptop PCs and PDAs.
Sporting a 7in LCD monitor with touchscreen functionality, the Origami measures up at around half the size of a regular laptop PC, but still offers full-fat functionality, with users able to surf the web, play games, watch movies, listen to music and make notes
Weighing 1.7 pounds, it’s light enough to carry around for a few hours which is a good thing because that’s when the battery will conk out (battery life is measured at a rather disappointing three hours.)
The updated Q1-Pentium comes with a 60 GB hard disk and 1 GB RAM, and substitutes a nippier Intel Pentium M 723 1GHz processor for the original Celeron M 900MHz processor.
The other new model – the Q1b – uses a cheaper Via Technologies’ C7 1GHz processor, and is fitted with a 40 GB hard disk and 512 MB RAM.
Samsung said in a statement that these new PCs are available in some European and Asian countries and in the U.S – we spotted one site advertising the Q1-Pentium for $1,250 and the Q1b $900.
Samsung Q1
24 October, 2006
Firefox 2.0 Launches Today
The final version of the Firefox 2.0 browser is expected to be released into the wild today.
Our browser of choice for some time now, the update to the open source browser includes onboard anti-phishing controls, built-in RSS and XML feed-viewing capabilities, and a new inline spell checker.
Firefox is developed by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, and a spokeswoman commented that the final version was substantially the same as the final beta, with the program scheduled for free download sometime this afternoon.
The release comes days after Microsoft launched their catch-up Internet Explorer 7 upgrade, which saw the program finally introduce tabbed browsing – something that Firefox users have been enjoying for years.
Firefox 2.0 also features a new “close” button on its tabs – with links opening in tabs by default – and a handy Session Restore feature restoring windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session, with the ability to restore previous sessions after a system crash.
“If your browser needs a restart or the OS asks you to reboot, losing all of those web pages and content is pretty disruptive,” commented Mozilla VP of products Christopher Beard. Ain’t that the truth, Chris!
An enhanced search feature will offer search term suggestions for punters using the integrated text box to search Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com, with a new search engine manager making it easier to add, remove and re-order your fave engines.
Although Firefox has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity and made a real impact on Microsoft’s near-monopoly of the browser market, recent figures from OneStat.com reveal that global usage of the browser slumped 1.44 per cent from July, and now stands at 11.49 per cent.
Internet Explorer still rules the global roost with 85.85 per cent of the market, increasing 2.8 per cent since July while, global usage of the Mac-only Safari browser is just 1.61 per cent, down 0.23 per cent from July.
Firefox 2.0 release notes
24 October, 2006
Scrybe Online Organiser: A Google Calendar Buster?
Set for a beta launch this month, Scrybe looks to be a ground-breaking online organiser if it lives up to the claims made in the promotional video posted on YouTube.
Calendar app
The slick Web 2.0 interface lets users drill down through calendar dates, with the context sensitive display intelligently expanding and contracting to display the required information.
Boasting sharing and collaborative tools, the program handles multiple time-zones beautifully with a polished interface and a neat feature which ran alternate time zones alongside diary pages.
According to the video demonstration, users will be able to seamlessly import popular document formats like Word, Excel and Acrobat, with lists cut and pasted from Excel automatically being converted into a ‘To Do’ list. Very neat.
Web snippets – complete with bookmarks, graphics and text formatting – can be copied into a categorised Thought Pad interface and integrated with calendar events and To Dos, with multi page documents browsed via a sleek, pop up graphic navigation pane.
Offline, Online…
What’s unique about Scrybe is its ability to let you work on your organiser while you’re offline, with any changes synching to your online account once you’re connected again – great for getting work done on a plane journey.
When it comes to syncing all this information with portable devices, Scrybe has gone for the oldest format of them all: paper.
It a rather daring (some may reckless) move, the program appears to forgo all thoughts of trying to sync to Palms, PDAs and smartphones and offers PaperSync – a series of clever, foldable templates that can be printed out, folded and tucked into your back pocket.
What we think so far
So far, we’re very impressed with the interface, the offline functionality and the ambitious re-jigging of the calendar app, although the seeming lack of proper phone/PDA integration looks to be a potential Achilles’ heel.
It may be great having your week’s agenda folded up in your back pocket, but any notes you make are going to have to be manually added back into your PC at the end of the day. And where’s the email integration?
Although the online demo looks amazing, we’ve seen far too many slick presentations be followed up by a hideous kludge of a program, so we’ve signed up to the beta trial and will hopefully be able to give you our hands-on verdict soon.
Mind you, if it looks and runs as well in the real world as it does in their promo video, Google’s usability and interface team may be sent back into the lab for some hasty overtime.
Scrybe
24 October, 2006
UK Consumers Spend More For Internet Goods
UK Internet shoppers are spending up to 50 per cent more on electrical goods than they would on the High Street, according to new research.
A new study by market research firm GFK found that the average price spent on like-for-like products was higher on the Internet because tech-savvy surfers were shelling out for higher specified products.
For example, the research firm found that average price of an LCD TV bought on the Internet was a hefty £867 – 32 per cent higher than the average High Street spend of £657.
In the massively lucrative consumer durables market – worth an eye-watering $42bn – the Internet has doubled its share from four to eight per cent of overall sales, giving online shops a whopping £3.36bn share.
Not surprisingly, popular consumer products like hard drives and mp3 players have been big movers, but GFK also noted that consumers are increasingly shelling out for more diverse products online, such as bread makers and dishwashers.
James Randall, commercial director at GFK, said: “Over the last 12 months the internet fulfilled its hype for retailing. What is particularly interesting is how consumers’ buying behaviour differs on the internet. It is not surprising that internet shoppers are more technically savvy than the norm.”
“However, what is interesting is that, as they are early adopters, when they buy products they usually spend more money on the internet as they buy the latest, higher specification items,” he added.
GFK
24 October, 2006