UK

3 Rolls Out Its Festive UK Phone Collection
UK 3G network 3 have announced four new video mobiles to be released in time for the traditional Christmas trading bonanza.
The top-of-the-range handsets will be supplied by LG, Motorola and Nokia with a pretty pink handset for the laydees and sexuality-unchallenged geezers.
Here’s the full listing:
LG U880
The super-thin triband LG U880 will be offered in black, silver and pink with its clamshell design incorporating a 1.3 megapixel camera and expandable internal memory of 80 MB.
The main display supports 262k colours (65k for sub display) with the large 2.0″ colour screen offering a simple user interface.
There’s a built in speaker phone, Bluetooth support and Windows Media (audio and video) playback.
Nokia 6280
The first mass-market 3G Nokia handset to go on sale in the UK, the 6280 has a sliding keyboard and built-in 2 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom and integrated flash.
There’s a QVGA 262,144 colour display, video messaging, download video clips and Quickplay video streaming in widescreen
The quadband phone supports 3’s full range of communications and entertainment content and services.
Motorola RAZR V3x
A poseur’s delight, the Motorola RAZR V3x is the high-fashion phone for the “Look at me!” crowd, with its slinky, slim-line form supporting a full range of 3G services.
The 2.2″ main display supports 262k colours, and there’s a 1.0″ colour sub display for video calls.
The phone comes with a two megapixel camera on board, with the handset being available in cosmic blue and liquorice black.
Nokia N70
Destined to be 3’s first two megapixel phone when it becomes available at the end of October, the Nokia N70 is based on the hugely successful Nokia 6680 and offers video calling, integrated flash, a built-in FM tuner, Bluetooth and support for Visual Radio.
The 2 megapixel camera phone provides up to 20x digital ‘smooth’ zoom, viewable on a large 2.1″ 262k colour screen with the handset supporting video messaging, video clips downloads and Quickplay video streaming in widescreen.
The Quadband phone works in the USA, Europe and Asia and comes with Bluetooth.
Jones the Santa
Gareth Jones, COO, 3 UK put on his Santa hat and started the “Ho Ho Ho” stuff:
“3 understands the important part handsets play in the customer experience and with our Christmas range we’re offering the best video mobiles in the UK.
All of these handsets support 3’s full range of video mobile content and services. If you’re on 3 you can enjoy music, video, games, the internet and every kind of messaging, as well as great value voice tariffs, all on state of the art devices that look good and are easy to use. If you want the widest choice of high-quality video mobiles this Christmas, then 3 is the network to choose.”
3 UK
18 October, 2005
Splashpower: Chuck Out Your Chargers: Ceatec
There is a dilemma with the pursuit of mobile living that we’re all familiar with. The constant need for recharging.
Battery technology hasn’t kept pace with the frantic dash of processor development and generally more processing power needs more electricity. This leads to the need to packing a considerable number of different power chargers.
Standards in this area are hard to find.
By the sheer number of mobile phones that they have sold, Nokia have, by default, become a form of (power adaptor) standard. While other mobile phone companies took the introduction of each model as an opportunity for extra profit, by altering the power connector of each device, Nokia standardised.
This sensible approch has lead to the point of knowing that most houses that you visit will have at least one Nokia charger knocking around somewhere. Slowly, and I suspect, rather begrudgingly, other companies are starting to take advantage of this too.
A Thomson bluetooth headset, the Liberty, that I recently acquired came with a small interconnect between mains charger and the headset that was designed to be used with a Nokia charger.
As I covered in The Guardian today, what’s needed is a universal standard and UK company Splashpower hopes they’re the company that could help empty your suitcase of power leads, taking you to recharging nirvana.
Theirs is a contact-less charger, so there’s no worry about different connectors. It uses electromagnetic induction to pass electricity from a charging plate to any suitably equipped device that’s placed on it. Think cordless kettle or electric toothbrush.
How do you use it? It couldn’t be easier, just place your device with a SplashModule on a splash pad and it starts charging.
A very neat idea – if not a little magical.
This is all fine and dandy, but I see it’s a pretty hard business to succeed in. Not only do they have to persuade the makers of the devices that they need Splashpower charging – taking away possible profits from them in additional charge sales as people need one for the office and another for home – but the Splashpower unit has to be incorporated into the mobile device too.
The barriers – additional costs. A concern where price pressure on mobile companies is constant in countries like the UK where the consumer expect their next handset to be free or at least very cheap
– While Spashpower have managed to incorporate all of the required gubbins into a Nokia 6630 without it protruding beyond the original case. The space required is a challenge in the era of ever decreasing size and ever increasing function.
– The design of any Splashpowered handset need to be designed with this in mind from the outset to ensure no interference with the phones reception.
Beyond that they have to persuade the device manufacturers to include their SplashModule in devices, but without the charging SplashPads out there, why would they? The same is true to the venues installing SplashPads, without a pool of equipped mobile devices.
I suspect that in the four years they’ve been in existence, they’ve realised this. While perfecting the product and applying for patents, they’ve also been putting deals together.
Putting this to Lily Cheng, the co-founding CEO, revealed that they’re in discussion with two posh hotel chains mentioned in the article, Penninsular and Radisson Mayfair, who are planning to build the SplashPad’s into the bedside units, so the execs can sleep soundly knowing their mobiles will be fully charged in the morning.
The surprising one for me was the up-market office furniture makers, who are seeing it not only as a way of recharging mobile technology, but for placing other wire-free electrical items on the desks, such as lamps and fans. Cue minimalist interior designers and architects fainting at the prospect of wire-free desks.
With all of this up-market talk, I wonder if the unnamed mobile phone company they’re also in talks with is Vertu, Nokia’s uber-expensive mobile brand.
So what was new at Ceatec for them?
They’ve expanded their range of pads to include one that charges two devices and a single unit too, which is a smaller, travel-friendly version. In the current trend for personalisation, decorated/pattered covers can be fitted to the front.
Rather than wait around for the makers of portable devices to catch up with their thinking, they designed and made adaptors for a number of devices – iPod Mini and DoCoMo FOMA phones – that consumers can buy and attach themselves. Other adaptors are on their way for other devices including the ever-expanding range of iPods.
I really hope Splashpower succeed. They got a strong idea and when you see it, you’ll wonder why we’re not all using this already – another step in the freedom from wires.
Photos shot on a DSC-T7
Splashpower
13 October, 2005
Xara Xtreme Goes Open Source/Cross Platform
UK-based software developers Xara, have announced an update to their sophisticated vector graphics program Xara X, adding new functions and renaming it Xara Xtreme.
Although not as well known as rival programs Adobe Illustrator CS and Macromedia Freehand, Xara has long been our vector program of choice, offering a simple interface, powerful editing tools, a comparatively tiny download (just 21 meg) and the ability to render pages at scorchio speeds that leaves the competition for dead.
Capable of handling photos, business graphics, drawing and illustration needs, Xara keeps the feature set streamlined and focused, offering unrivalled speed at a bargain price.
In this latest version, the Xara Picture Editor has been updated and a new Live Effects tool allows Photoshop and Xara plug-in effects to be applied to photos and vector graphics.
The rendering engine has been tweaked for even faster performance, with improved Illustrator compatibility and import/export tools.
CEO Charles Moir is extremely enthusiastic about the product, “It absolutely knocks the stuffing out of Adobe and the new Microsoft product. In terms of ease of use, shear flexibility and performance. Adobe has tried for 10 years to get close to our performance levels and cannot. Microsoft are not going to be able to either. I guarantee it.”
Linux, Mac and Open Source versions planned
Xara have also announced that they intend to create Xara XTreme for Linux and Mac users in response to customer demand, with an Open Source version in the pipeline.
Moir table-thumped “We’re going to a place that Microsoft and Adobe cannot go. The Open Source world is the acknowledged largest threat to established giants such as Microsoft. We felt it was necessary for us to shake up the graphics world a bit, and making one of the most powerful, easiest to use graphics applications Open Source should do the trick.”
Xara Xtreme is available for Windows now, at just $79 (~£45~€66).
Xara XTreme
12 October, 2005
Digital Music Grabs 60% Of Single Market
BPI, the UK record label industry association has released its third-quarter report revealing that it’s boom time for the Brit digital music industry.
There’s a veritably frenzy of digital downloading going on, with UK single track download sales totalling 25 million since the format launched, with 5.7 million sales in 2004 and a thumping great 16.9 million sales already notched up this year.
According to the BPI, weekly sales regularly top half a million, with digital downloads accounting for over 60 percent of the entire singles market – compare that to the 3.6 percent market share at the beginning of 2004.
Digital is also claiming a bigger share of the Top 75 singles chart, growing from 15.9 percent when the combined chart launched in mid-April to 25.5 percent at the end of August.
But with the Yin of the increased digital music sales comes the Yan of declining retail sales, with the BPI reporting a 21.8 percent decline in physical single sales.
This decline has, however, been more than offset by the hefty growth of digital song purchases – up 288 percent – helping the overall singles market grow by a massive 49 percent. Significantly, these figures do not include subscription sales or paid-for streams.
Once again, the death of vinyl has been exaggerated with the 7-inch physical singles market registering 80 per cent growth with 800,000 sales.
A clearly chuffed BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said: “This year digital made the transition from mere potential to becoming a significant revenue stream. But this is just the beginning.”
“While the record label model of investing in the best new music talent remains the same, the emergence of innovative new digital services means that the record companies can offer consumers even greater choice as to how to access their music.”
The report also highlighted figures from The Official UK Charts Company which suggested that digital punters are taking advantage of increasing consumer choice, with 81% of all download sales being non-chart titles.
Out of the 1.5 million different songs available legally online, around 80,000 different tracks are being sold each week – up from 55,000 last August.
BPI
11 October, 2005
Top UK Cop: iPods Fuelling Crime
Like a big flashing sign above the listener’s head saying “Mug Me!” the distinctive white headphones of iPods continue to attract the unwanted attentions of ne’er-do-wells in the street.
With the latest Home Office crime statistics expected to reveal that muggings rose by almost 40% in some parts of the country last year, police are blaming the sharp rise in the street robberies on the increasing popularity of iPods, MP3 players and expensive mobile phones.
Chief superintendent Paul Forrester of Merseyside police said students and teenagers strutting around with expensive gear were virtually asking for it, commenting: “Some children carry phones and iPods worth over £600 and they are making themselves walking targets.”
Metropolitan police chief Sir Ian Blair was equally quick to point the finger of blame at all things Apple Mac: “It is very obvious when someone is wearing an iPod. That is what is fuelling this.”
Figures from the Metropolitan police revealed that the practice of purloining iPods increased more than fivefold since last November 2004, with incidents rising from ten a month to 52 in May this year.
Similarly, the number of iPods pinched from motors went in an equally upward direction, leaping from 178 cases in November 2004 to 395 in May this year.
Insurance company Norwich Union have found themselves shelling out for pilfered iPods by the bucketful, replacing 1,721 lost or stolen iPods between January and September this year, compared to just 36 during the same period last year.
Our advice to iPod users: forget about making a style statement, dump those daft white headphones in double quick time and get yourself something more discrete!
11 October, 2005
32 Billion (est.) SMS Messages For 2005 (News Release)
Continuing last month’s groundbreaking trend, a total of 87 million textmessages were sent on average per day throughout August. The handsetclearly proved to be a must have during the holiday season as figures onceagain topped 2.7 billion messages according to figures released today by theMobile Data Association (MDA). The continued increase in text messaging hasallowed the MDA to revise the annual forecast to 32 billion for 2005.
August saw two bumper days for text messaging as youngsters shared GCSE andA-level results, success and commiserations with friends and family. Atotal of 99 million text messages were sent on August 18th, the day thatGCSE results were issued. This figure is 25% higher than the 79 million textmessages recorded on the same day last year and continues the upward trendof communicating by text at this nail biting time. The figure for August25th, the day A-level results were released, was even higher with a total of99.5 million messages sent across the UK networks.
Mobile Data Association
27 September, 2005
Oxford Mobile TV (DVB-H) Pilot Starts
UK operator O2 has announced a mobile TV pilot letting 400 customers in Oxford to choose from 16 channels, featuring popular shows such as Lost, EastEnders, Coronation Street
Having originally trailed this story over a year ago when it was announced that O2 were to trial DVB-H video to mobile phones, then again four months ago when the DVB-H trial content partners were announced, we were pleased to see that it’s scheduled to commence next week.
The pilot is a collaboration between Nokia and Arqiva (formerly NTL Broadcast) and is expected to last for six months, tasked with measuring user reactions to the new technology.
Participants in the trial will be dished out Nokia 7710 smartphones, which are compatible with the Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds (DVB-H) technology used for the TV transmissions.
Arqiva will be providing a DVB-H transmitter network that will cover an area of 120 sq km centered around the dreaming spires of Oxford, and will also be responsible for aggregating the content and operating the trial service.
During the trial, users will receive free BBC and BskyB TV streams to their mobile phones, but voice and data calls will be charged under their existing tariff plan.
Favourite programmes can be selected from an on-screen service guide, which also lets users search for specific items and set alarms on their handset to remind them a specific show is starting.
O2’s chief technology officer, Dave Williams, feels that the trial will help in establishing a model for more projects in the future, commenting. “By establishing relationships through activities such as this, we hope that potential challenges will be minimised and mobile TV becomes a commercial reality sooner than is currently possible.”
Although some video content has previously been made available to mobile phone customers, so far they’ve taken the form of short clips and previews, rather than true television broadcasts.
With time-rich punters spending an estimated £250,000 on downloading clips of this summer’s season of Big Brother, there’s clearly a growing demand for video content on mobiles.
o2
Arqiva
23 September, 2005
UK Is Top Of The Bots
Once again, the UK has grabbed the number one slot on Top Of The Bots, possessing the world’s highest proportion of known bot-infected computers.
The figures from Symantec’s Global Internet Threat Report covers the first half of 2005 and reveals that almost a third (32 per cent) of virus-infected, zombie PCs- were located in the UK – substantially up on last year’s 26 per cent ranking.
Bots (short for ‘robots’) are software programs that sneakily install themselves on hapless users’ computers, allowing dastardly hackers to do beastly things remotely.
Infected computers can be used for malicious purposes such as phishing, spam, denial of service (DoS) attacks and other security risks such as spyware and adware.
Bot network activity is increasing faster than Wayne Rooney’s Yellow Card collection, with activity doubling from under 5,000 bots per day in December 2004 to an average of 10,352 in the report period.
Symantec puts this down to the huge rise in broadband subscriptions coupled with the delays in software patches for operating systems and software being made available.
Phishing continues to be a growth industry, with the daily average of phishing messages leaping from an average of 2.99 million messages a day to 5.70 million over the six month period covered by the report.
One out of every 125 e-mail messages scanned by Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam was a dodgy phishing attempt, up a thumping great 100 percent from the last half of 2004.
Dean Turner, senior manager of the Symantec Security Response team, commented: “Bot networks are valuable for a couple of reasons: One, because they allow for extremely rapid propagation, and two, because they provide a relatively high level of anonymity for providing attacks.”
Symantec’s biennial Internet Security Threat report revealed that London and Winsford (where?!), England, were the big cheeses of the bot-infected world, registering a shameful 8 percent and 5 percent of the world’s infected computers, respectively.
Seoul came in at third place with 4 percent, with the U.S. and China being the second and third largest providers of bot-infected systems, notching up 19 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
Symantec
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19 September, 2005
‘Lost’ clips to debut over mobile on 3 – News Release
3 is to bring the smash TV hit Lost to the small screen. Following a deal between the UK’s largest video mobile network, Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) and Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG), divisions of The Walt Disney Company Ltd, a mobile audience of over 3.2 million will be able to watch show recaps and previews of the action from Channel 4’s top-rated series. This is The Walt Disney Company’s first mobile video content agreement in Europe.
Lost is a gripping series which follows the survivors of a plane crash, stranded together on a remote, hostile island. As the group of strangers work together to create order in their makeshift community, and to stay alive, there appear to be darker forces at work around them. The show makes its debut over mobile this week.
3’s service includes 2-3 minute recaps of every episode, available for the length of the series, so fans can catch up on the plot at any stage, plus behind the scenes interview and previews of the next episode. Each clip will cost 50p.
Lost is the latest prime time series to be made available on 3, following Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity and the X factor.
Already, millions of viewers hooked on Lost are debating conspiracy theories, scrutinising the characters and speculating on the plot’s twists and turns.
Graeme Oxby. 3’s Marketing Director, said: It’s compulsive, addictive television that gets people talking – it’s exactly the sort of TV our customers will watch.
“Every one of our 3.2million customers has a TV in their pocket. This new service means our customers will never be behind the plot and can keep on top of the action, wherever they are.”
Tom Toumazis, executive vice president & managing director, BVITV EMEA said: “Lost is BVITV’s fastest-ever selling, most successful TV series, having been licensed by us to 183 territories worldwide on TV – now being licensed for the first time on to mobile.
“We are sure that its ever-growing UK fanbase will ensure its success on mobile – the addictive, action-packed nature of the show lends itself particularly well to this format, as fans need to watch carefully to unravel the many mysteries within the show.”
“Mobile is rapidly emerging as a new entertainment platform and already has tremendous reach,” said Attila Gazdag, vice president and managing director of Walt Disney Internet Group, Europe. “Our strong brands have translated extremely well to this new platform and we’re pleased to be offering video, especially of such a great show, to broaden our mobile offerings.”
3 UK
16 September, 2005
BSkyB Get Into Mobile TV and VOD later
The Times have covered Richard Freudenstein, COO of BSkyB, speech at the RTS Cambridge Convention
Sky will be delivering video to mobile phones, as we’d predicted when we reported that NDS had signed a deal with Frontier Silicon.
We understand that it will include Sky Movies, Sky News and Sky Sports (which is bound to get some excited).
They also plan to let their Sky+ subscribers programme their PVR using their mobile phones.
The other biggy in Freudenstein talk was him confirming that that Sky will be offering VOD (Video On Demand) which will run over Ethernet – ie delivered over broadband. They’re not confirming dates.
Sky has been muttering about this behind closed doors to those who would listen for at least 18 months, but it’s the first time they’ve said it publicly.
Expected Sky and BT to strengthen their current cuddling relation, to a full on snog, as BT’s 21CN comes more into reality. this will provide additional bandwidth and an Ethernet port into every home in the UK, as they’re trailing in Cardiff, Wales.
The poor things at The Times have got a little bit confused between memory and storage of Sky’s PVR, Sky+, ‘newest Sky+ boxes have extra memory that is currently not used.’ Ah, isn’t it sweet. You’d have thought that two companies within the News International group would be able to understand each other business.
BSkyB
16 September, 2005