Mobile

Things that aren’t static

Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grow 21% in 2006
Mobile phone sales to end users fell just short of one billion units in 2006, with last quarter sales apparently boosted by preparations for the Chinese New Year.
The figures from Gartner reveal worldwide mobile phone sales cruising to 990.8 million units in 2006, up a hefty 21.3% from 2005’s 816.6 million units, but still a tad short of the one billion predicted.
The market seems to be consolidating around the big name manufacturers, with other vendors now only accounting for 14% of worldwide mobile phone sales in 2006 – down 5% from 2005.
Nokia
Cellular kings Nokia continue to be the big cheese, the head honcho, the main squeeze and the top of the mountain, hogging a lardy 36.2% market share with 103 million units shifted in the fourth quarter of 2006. This represents a rise of 1.2 percentage points over the same period in 2005.
For the whole of 2006, Nokia shifted nigh-on 345 million mobile phones, grabbing a market share of 34.8%.
“Despite attracting criticism for lack of ‘slim’ products and a weak mid- range offering, Nokia was not only able to hold its No.1 position, but grow market share. Strong low-cost product offerings in the emerging markets, as well as feature rich products in the mature market, proved to be the right combination for Nokia in 2006,” commented Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst for mobile terminals research at Gartner UK.
Motorola
Puffing some way behind up the cellular hill is Motorola, who flogged a ferret’s finger over 61 million mobile phones in the fourth quarter to scoop up a market share of 21.5%.
Motorola’s total sales for 2006 hit 209 million units, which translates into a 21.1 percent market share.
Samsung
Slipping quietly into third place is Samsung, boasting fourth quarter sales of 32 million mobile phones to snaffle an 11.3% market share.
Overall sales in 2006 were slightly more than 116 million units, a 12% increase from 2005.
Sony Ericsson
Close enough to let Samsung feel the lick of their competitive tongues is Sony Ericsson, who produced a strong last quarter of 2006, notching up 25.7 million mobile phones across the world, earning them a market share of 9%.
Sony Ericsson’s overall sales for 2006 hit 73.6 million units, with their market share growing by 1.1 percentage points to 7.4%.
LG
In fifth place is the flagging LG, whose 17.8 million last quarter mobile phone sales saw their market share slump to 6.3 percent, down from 7.2% in the same period in 2005.
Sagem
Elbowing BenQ out from the leading six pack, Sagem registered 4.36 million units and a 1.5% market share
Worldwide sales
Fourth quarter sales in Asia-Pacific continued to soar, reaching 87.7 million units, a 56% rise from the same time in 2005.
Total unit sales for 2006 sales totalled 301 million units, up 47% from 2005’s total, with slim phones being the big sellers.
The Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa sector saw 52.4 million new mobile phones shifted during the fourth quarter of 2006, 13% higher than 2005.
In Japan, 13 million units zipped across the sales counters, adding up to an increase of 10.9% from the fourth quarter of 2005
Latin America saw year-over-year sales up 13.5%, while North America scored a record 44.8 million units sold to end users in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Even more phones were sold in Western Europe, with sales in the fourth quarter of 2006 hitting 51.8 million phones.
“We look forward to another exciting year in the mobile phone industry with more technologies becoming available and new players from other industries entering and adding some spice to an already very highly competitive market. We expect growth to slow down and overall mobile phone sales to be up to 1.2 billion worldwide,” concluded Milanesi.
Via
5 March, 2007
SPV M700 Launches on Orange UK: Also In Black
The latest model in the SPV range has arrived on the UK Orange mobile phone network.
There’s been shots of the SPV M700 floating around for a while, but as of today it’s been confirmed that there will be a black version in the UK to partner the White.
As well as all of the goodies detailed below, the SPV M700 has Sat Nav built-in – one of the early phone to have this. The handset will be able to take advantage of Sat-Nav from Orange.
The Sat-Nav is powered by Webraska with all maps and live traffic updates are held on a central server and are downloadable from the Internet via WiFi, 3G, GPRS or the Orange EDGE network onto the mobile device. Initially only available to business users, it’s now open to all.
The M700 has a 2.8in, 240 x 320, 65,53-colour display, a 2.1 megapixel camera and secondary, VGA camera for video calls and runs Windows Mobile 5.0, so offers Microsoft Office applications including Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
With all of this on board Orange is billing it as helping “you work faster and more efficiently when you’re away from your desk.”
This 3G handset can offer data rates of up to 1.8Mbps (network allowing) There’s quite a few wireless networks supported including EDGE networks as well as UMTS, GPRS and WiFi.
You can get the SPV M700 from Orange shops and online at orange.co.uk. It’s free on contracts over £35.
Sat-Nav from Orange
28 February, 2007
Mobile Use In UK Cars: Penalty Points And Fines Await
As of today, drivers using their mobile phone while driving in the UK will be hit with increased fines.
The previous fixed-penalty fine of £30 is increased to £60 with the courts having a possible maximum fine of £1,000.
The real disincentive to drivers will, however, be the three penalty points that will be added to their driving license. If UK license holders have over 12 points on their license they are banned from driving for three years.
If those caught are driving anything bigger than a car, say a bus, coach or goods vehicle, the maximum fine is considerably higher, rising to £2,500.
Peter Rodger, the Institute of Advanced Motorists’ chief examiner, said: ‘Inevitably some drivers will think that they should buy a hands-free kit and the problem will go away.
“That would certainly suit the manufacturers. But drivers should be aware that they are potentially buying trouble – even when you are hands-free, research has shown that you are four times more likely to crash because your concentration is split.
“The best advice is to switch off before you drive off – and if you really can’t do that, be prepared to stop and find somewhere legal and convenient to return that missed call or check your messages.”
Some of the rules that do confuse are that the rules still apply, even when people are sitting in traffic jams.
27 February, 2007
Freeloader Solar Technology Portable Charger
Having a ton of the latest technological gadgets bulging in your pants may give you a Noughties swagger, but you’ll be looking like a prize chump if the batteries go flat, so Solar Technology’s new Freeloader charger might help you keep your cool.
Billed as an ‘advanced portable charging system’, the portable device sports twin fold-out solar panels for that mini-Space Station look, with the makers claiming that the panels can charge up the internal battery in as little as 5 hours.

They may not sound much, but seeing as some Brit summers seem to contain less than five hours sunlight in total, it’s a good job that the Freeloader has a trick up its sleeve, offering the option to charge up the internal battery via a (supplied) USB cable.
This gives you the chance to store up on battery power before you leave the house and then top it up whenever there’s a bit of sun in the sky.
The 1000mAh environmentally friendly Li-ion battery seems to have a reasonable bit of oomph to it too, and is quoted as being able to power an iPod for 18hours, a mobile phone for 44 hours, PSP for 2.5 hours a PDA for 22 hours.
The Freeloader can hang on to its battery charge for up to 3 months and can conveniently charge a device while its internal battery is being topped up via the solar cells or by USB cable.
The charger comes with a power master cable and eleven adaptors to fit a ton of devices listed on their website:
- LG Chocolate series phones
- Motorola V66 series and current V3 series phones
- All Nokia current and N series phones
- Samsung A288 and current D800 series phones
- Sony Ericsson T28 and current K750 series phones
- 4mm straight jack for Sony PSP, Tom Tom sat nav, digital camera’s, PDA’s and two-way radio’s
- Mini USB for Blackberry Smart phones, Nintendo DS, Bluetooth headsets etc
- USB 2.0 female socket for iPod, iPod Shuffle, MP3 players, smart phones, PDA’s, GPS “plus much more”
Sized up at a portable 123mm x 62mm x 17mm and weighing 185g, the stylish Freeloader comes in a tough aluminium case and could prove a handy purchase for travellers, road warriors and folks looking forward to this year’s festival season (Glastonbury mudstorms notwithstanding).
The Freeloader solar charger is available now from Solar Technology’s website at £29.99.
Freeloader
27 February, 2007
USB Rules Mobile Phone Interfacing
USB rules the roost for people loading and unloading content on and off their mobiles phones. It was employed in more handsets than all other interface standards combined in 2006, according to iSuppli Corp.
While the wireless alternatives of WiFi and Bluetooth might grab the news headlines, good old-fashioned USB keeps doing the doo, primarily because some sort of USB is on pretty much any computer since it’s introduction ten years ago.
iSupply think this dominance will continue to the point where, by the end of 2010, USB will still be the leading local interface, being included 764 million of all handsets shipped that year. They also think that Bluetooth will be fitted to all handsets, while NFC and WiFi will become stronger that their currently weak position.
Alongside getting content on and off the phone using the varied interfaces, there will be a corresponding increase in flash memory add-in cards. iSupply are predicting significant increases, with the 186m units shipped in 2005 increasing to 640m units in 2010.
It was interesting to note that the whole range of new Sony Ericsson phones were fitted with Memory Stick Micro (M2), and not the now-standard Memory Sticks. When we queried it with company people, they said that was the trend, allowing the size of the handsets to shrink.
iSupply
23 February, 2007
Beardy Big Cheese At Google Predicts Internet Growth Driven By Mobiles
One of the big cheeses at Google, vice president and chief ‘Internet evangelist’ (say wah’?!) Vinton G. Cerf has been shining up his crystal ball and coming up with his predictions for the future.
Looking deeper, deeper, deeper into his shiny orb (oo-er), the beardy Cerf revealed that it won’t be personal computers fuelling the growth of the internet. Instead he reckons that the expansion of the worldwide web will be powered by mobile phones, with countries like India snapping up zillions of the fellas and getting online en masse.
Talking to Yahoo, Cerf whipped out his Big Book of Internet Facts (BBOIF) and observed that the amount of people accessing the web has expanded quicker than Fatty Arbuckle’s waistband at a pie eating contest, with the numbers soaring from just 50 million in 1997 to nearly 1.1 billion today.
Despite this, the web still only reaches a miserly sixth of the world’s population, prompting Cerf to comment, “You will get those other 5.5 billion people only when affordability increases and the cost of communication goes down.”
“The mobile phone has become an important factor in the Internet revolution,” he added.
Flicking further through his BBOIF, Cerf said that there are 2.5 billion mobile-phone users worldwide with numbers rocketing in developing countries led by China and India.
India is already adding seven million mobile-phone users a month – enough to tempt British telecom giant Vodafone to shell out over $11 billion dollars for a controlling stake in local mobile outfit Hutch-Essar – with new Internet-enabled features and services likely to reel in more online users.
Naturally, Google wants a slab o’the action, and has been expanding its research and service offices in India, hoping to increase the current meagre total of just 40 million people online – just 3.5 percent of India’s enormous population.
Via
20 February, 2007
Toshiba G900 WVGA Smartphone Guns For The iPhone
A cavalcade of new phones are continuing to spew forth from the 3GSM World Congress bash in Barcelona, and one that has especially warmed our toilet seats of desire is the ‘G900’ smartphone from Toshiba.
When it comes to the world of mobiles, Toshiba traditionally makes less noise than a mute mouse in a cotton wool box wearing marshmallow shoes, but their new G900 certainly looks like it might make a bit of a splash.
Sporting a horizontally sliding out QWERTY keyboard, the silver handset comes with a thumping great 3-inch WVGA screen serving up a huge 800 x 480 (WVGA) resolution – big enough to make web surfing a really practical proposition.
To ensure that the vast display is topped up with fast and fresh web pages there’s ultra-nippy HSDPA connectivity onboard (take that, iPhone!), with 64MB of internal memory and a miniSD card taking care of storage duties.
The main camera isn’t going to get mobile Muybridges salivating into their viewfinders at just 2 megapixels, but it should be good enough for general snapping duties, while the G900 also comes with a bog standard front mounted camera for video calls.
Extra security comes in the form of a rear biometric scanner, and there’s also Bluetooth with A2DP support, Wi-Fi, USB On-The-Go and Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6 OS.
We’re liking the cut of Toshiba’s jig here and reckon that the G900 may even be tough enough to take the iPhone around the back of the bike sheds for a bit of a duffing up, but we’ll be holding back the love until we know how big it is and how much it’s going to cost.
Toshiba UK
13 February, 2007
Samsung’s Ultra Edition II Range Is The Thinnest Yet
There may be controversy on the catwalks, but thin remains in with the design bods at Samsung, who have just unleashed a trio of anorexic handsets in their Ultra range, the U300, U600, U700 and ultra-thin U100.
Samsung Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100)
Making the phone in your pocket look like a pie-scoffing lardarse is the Samsung Ultra Edition 5.9 (U100), which claims to be the slimmest phone in the world.
Getting just a tad carried away with the hyperbole, Samsung reckon that the U100 employs some sort of Romulan cloaking device, insisting that it is, “thin enough to disappear if turned on its side.”
Back to the real world, there’s no denying that the U100 is an impressive piece of engineering – and purdy as a picture too – packing in a 3 mega-pixel camera, a 1.93″ color TFT screen and 11 hours of music play time into its 5.9mm wide frame.
Ultra Edition 12.1 (U700)
The second phone in the Ultra Edition II range is the U700 slider, a comparative porker at 12.1mm, offering HSDPA internet connectivity up to 3.6Mbps, video telephony and a 3 mega pixel digital camera with auto focus.
The phone comes with Bluetooth, a “cool wheel” for zipping around the menus, a bundled MP3 player and a rather stingy 20MB onboard memory, expandable to 1GB via a MicroSD card.
Samsung’s Ultra Edition 10.9 (U600)
Once again, we suspect the Samsung PR may have been dabbling with funny dust when they were writing the press release for the U600, insisting that the phone was “inspired by the shine and shimmer of the crown jewels.”
Adjusting the BS output to ‘stun,’ the press announcement tells us that the handset apparently exudes “elegance and modern style… for the ultimate sophistication” and comes in a suitably daftly-named set of colours, including sapphire blue, garnet red, platinum metal and copper gold casing.
The slider phone comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, 2.22″ wide TFT LCD widescreen, 60MB internal storage, Bluetooth and Smart Messaging all packed in a slim 10.9mm case.
The Ultra Edition 9.6 (U300)
Wrapping up the new line-up is the U300, a 9.6-mm clamshell with a 3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, TV-out capability and 70MB of onboard storage (but no MicroSD slot).
The 2.2-inch LCD comes with a large 240×320 resolution backed by an external 96×16 OLED.
The Ultra Edition II range should be taking up shelf space in UK and European stores during March/April 2007.
13 February, 2007
i-mate Lets Rip With Its Five-Strong Ultimate Range
In an advanced Hedge-Betting exercise, i-mate has announced its new range of Windows Mobile devices, with a set of designs mirroring just about every handset currently available on the market.
Working on a “Oooh! Suits you sir”, philosophy, it looks like consumers will be hard-pressed to not find a form factor they feel comfortable with, although the gold metallic and black styling may not be to everyone’s taste (we have to say we’re not feeling the love).
Christened the “Ultimate” range, the WM6-powered devices – all five of ’em – are numbered 5150, 6150, 7150, 9150, and 8150 (clockwise from the upper left in the compilation photo) – if you’re bored, you can play “spot the inspiration” and see if you match i-mate’s new offerings to current designs by other manufacturers.
Back to the new phones, you can’t knock the i-mates for lacking in functionality, with the handsets sporting a minimum of 256MB of ROM, beefy 262k VGA displays (480×640 pixels), tri-band 3G radios, Bluetooth 2.0, FM radios and, we assume, Wi-Fi.
Full details of the whole range are still dribbling through, but we’ve learnt that the Ultimate 5150 slider comes with an Intel Bulverde 520MHz CPU, VGA screen, 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM, Wi-Fi, microSD memory card slot and a 2.0 megapixel camera.
[Via]
13 February, 2007
Nokia N77 And E90 Communicator Announced
Nordic big-knobs Nokia have knocked out another two handsets for your delectation today.
First up is Nokia’s shiny new 3G N77 handset, packing DVB-H mobile broadcast technology in its boxy black and silver frame.
Running on the tried and trusted S60 3rd Edition OS, the handset is dominated by a beefy 2.4-inch, 16 million colour display, with what looks like a bit of a fiddly keypad below.
Lurking on the back is a 2 megapixel camera, with the N77 delivering on the multimedia front, offering visual radio and support for MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA media.
For annoying bus passengers, there are integrated stereo speakers onboard as well as a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack for adding that extra “Tscch-tschh-tschh” sound to someone else’s journey on public transport.
The tri-band GSM / EDGE with UMTS 2100 MHz phone should start shipping to “countries were DVB-H services are available” in Q2 for around €370 ($481).
Nokia E90 Communicator
Nokia has also announced the official specs for their S60-series E90 Communicator.
As befits such a pocket bulging beast, there’s a ton of functionality onboard for sharp suit-clad corporate schmoozers, with this latest version of the Communicator range getting a mean, business-like, all-black retread.
Globe trotters will heart the quad-band GSM, WiFi, and HSDPA connectivity, and there’s a 3.2 megapixel camera (with flash) and a more basic camera upfront taking care of photo/video duties.
There’s also integrated GPS and Nokia Maps wedged into the chunky handset, but all those features are going to come at a wallet-whipping price, with the E90 expected to be priced at around a stratospheric €750.
Via
13 February, 2007