Mobile

Things that aren’t static

Apple To Become Mobile Phone Operator?
The Apple rumour mill has been cranking into overdrive over the weekend after Forbes reported that the company may be considering becoming a mobile phone operator.
With Apple already rumoured to be developing a hybrid iPod/cell phone with Motorola, the article claims that “the pieces are in place for it to happen later this summer”, adding that companies like Virgin and Walt Disney have already proved that a new network model can allow all kinds of businesses to easily enter the mobile market.”
Disney will be launching its family-centric ‘Disney Mobile’ wireless phone network sometime next year, aiming to serve up a family-friendly mobile service with custom handsets and premium phone content (i.e. irritating ringtones and Disney-based games).
Since all the calls will be routed through Sprint’s national cellular network, Disney won’t have any infrastructure investment costs, but will gain access to a dedicated, direct marketing channel to da KidZ, scooping up network revenue and gaining a new content outlet.
Forbes predicts that Apple’s reputation for creating cool, user-friendly handheld gadgets could ease their transition into the mobile business.
In July last year, Apple announced its partnership with handset maker Motorola to create an iTunes-capable phone, but the product failed miserably to materialise at its scheduled CeBIT March 2005 launch.
However, a report in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday claimed that Motorola will finally “unveil the first fruits of its partnership with Apple next month with the launch of its iTunes mobile phone at the V Festival.” The festival runs from 20th to 21st August 2005.
So far Apple is keeping Mum on the rumours about it entering the mobile market, although Steve Jobs has frothed enthusiastically about the cellular marketplace in the past:
“The mobile phone market…is a phenomenal opportunity to get iTunes in the hands of even more music lovers around the world.”
Forbes.com concludes that Apple is not the only big company that might roll out a cellular service this year with analysts suggesting that uber-brands like Nike and Wal-Mart could be planning their own networks.
Forbes
11 July, 2005
Yahoo WAP Mobile Price Check Service Launched
Yahoo! UK and Ireland have launched a handy new mobile search service which allows consumers to check the prices of goods via Yahoo! WAP services when they’re out and about.
The service, accessible on all WAP enabled phones at standard browsing rates, serves up instant price and product information from the Yahoo-owned comparison service Kelkoo.
Yahoo! said it will not charge for the service which promises to cover 3 million product offers and more than 5000 UK retailers.
Mobile users accessing the WAP site at http://wap.yahoo.co.uk, can type in their desired product into the search box and click on the “Products” button.
A result screen then displays images, pricing and product information, providing users with the low down about the cheapest prices around.
Dorothea Arndt, director of search and distribution at Kelkoo enthused: “Mobile price comparison is a major step towards aligning the on and offline shopping experience and brings us significantly closer to achieving our mission of making shopping simple for everyone.”
It all sounds great, but we found the service a little flaky.
At the first two attempts, we got a screen of results serving up nothing more than the price and the name of the shop with no location, address, phone number or Weblink. A fat lot of good, then.
However, if you persevere and click through to the next results page, a ‘compare’ link should magically appear under some products and this will let you access its full details.
Once the service is fully ironed out, shopkeepers around the UK can prepare to brace themselves for a stream of tech-savvy bargain hunters waving their WAP phones around the counter and demanding price matching.
Yahoo!
8 July, 2005
London Explosions Lead To Jammed Mobile Phone Networks
Mobile phone networks in London were overwhelmed for several hours following a series of terrorist blasts across central London.
As news of the attack spread, networks were running at near capacity as concerned Londoners reached for their phones to check up on friends and family.
The huge surge in the number of calls caused problems over mobile networks with many people unable to connect the first time, if at all.
Vodafone said it had reserved some network capacity for the emergency service workers dealing with the disaster, with a spokesperson adding, “because all our switches are at capacity, we need to ensure police and emergency services can communicate.
It would be a section of the network across London, so people can still make calls but it will be more difficult to make a call.”
SMS text messages were, however, still getting through due to its simple store-and-forward mechanism.
As with 9/11, many people turned to the Web for news and updates, resulting in major news sites struggling with the enormous surge in traffic.
News sites like the BBC and Sky both suffered slowdowns or brief periods of unavailability.
Bloggers were also quick to report the news, with the blog tracking service Technorati stating that there were more than 1,300 posts about the explosions by 1015 GMT.
When we looked for updates, we found that Technorati’s Web site had also gone down at 1300GMT.
BBC News report
Technorati
NewsNow
7 July, 2005
Mobile Content Market To Triple to €7.6Bn: LogicaCMG
Consumer demand for mobile downloads is going bonkers, according to research by LogicaCMG.
Downloads are predicted to triple in the next 12 months, creating a €7.6 billion (£5.23bn, $9.12bn) global market for mobile content by this time next year.
Twenty per cent of mobile phone owners worldwide have already busied themselves downloading content to their handsets and this figure is expected to soar to 60 per cent in the next 12 months.
The international survey – covering Europe, Asia Pacific, North and South America – revealed subscribers are currently shelling out €6.32 (£4.35, $7.60) per month on downloads, with more than 40 per cent of respondents expecting their spending to rise.
With over 1.5 billion mobile users worldwide (predicted to rise to 2 billion by the end of 2005) the global market for downloading content looks sure to become a multi-billion euro money-spinner within a year.
Globally, subscribers just lurve downloading ring tones, games and music, with news and sports also gaining a growing audience in Europe.
Video and movie clips also showed promise, with more than 10 per cent of mobile phone users worldwide expecting to download such content within 12 months.
New multimedia phones are fuelling a growth in video and movie downloads, with more than 10 per cent of mobile phone users worldwide expecting to download video content within 12 months (this figure rises to 25 per cent in Asia Pacific, with 10 per cent expecting to be downloading full feature films to their mobiles within 12 months).
With consumers demanding ease of payment and the ability to share content with friends, there’s pressure on the industry to invest in digital rights management and intelligent payments systems.
Paul Gleeson, chief operating officer at LogicaCMG commented: “This survey proves that a substantial market for mobile content exists, with great opportunities for mobile operators worldwide.
Mobile phone users are starting to experiment with their phones’ capabilities but, drawing a parallel with the popular SMS experience, it is clear that the service needs to be simple, safe and intuitive from initial browsing through to payment and download.
To secure a share in this booming industry, mobile operators need to look at the bigger picture, building strong relationships with customers and content partners alike to deliver high-quality services that meet the markets’ needs.”
It’s also worth noting that there’s now nothing to stop individual countries legislating software patents on their own.
LogicaCMG
LogicaCMG report
7 July, 2005
Cell Phone Shopping Launched By Yahoo In Japan
Buying goods with your PC may soon be as hip as dancing to a Chris De Burgh remix if the latest innovation from Yahoo Japan takes off.
Yesterday, the company opened a version of its shopping portal for cell phone Internet users, called Mobile Yahoo Shopping, allowing perambulating phone users to purchase products as they promenade around the place.
The service can be accessed from all three of Japan’s major wireless Internet services and brings together about 2,000 merchants, collectively offering up an estimated 2 million consumer-tempting items for sale.
Trying to squeeze all that info onto a teensy weensy screen might be a problem, so the portal uses a mobile optimised version of its PC shopping site, with cell phone users able to search for individual items or browse for goods and retailers by category.
Online shopping from PCs is already huge in Japan, but shopping from mobile devices is yet to really take off – a recent Japanese government survey revealed that 89 percent of respondents shopped online with their PCs, but only a miserly 18 per cent used their cell phones for shopping online.
Not surprisingly, the respondents complained of lower satisfaction levels with mobile shopping, citing ease of use and security amongst the biggest complaints.
6 July, 2005
Germany: In-flight Mobiles Ban To Be Lifted
A report in German news magazine Focus states that the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing will be lifting its ban on the use of mobile phones on commercial flights.
Despite years of scare stories that a call to Aunt Mabel could send airliners crashing to the earth, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has concluded mobile phone signals do not interfere with onboard electronics.
Elsewhere, several European airlines have announced that they are also considering the removal of the in-flight ban on GSM phones, something that many passengers have been demanding for years.
Stateside, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed lifting the ban on the use of GPRS, EDGE and 3G phones onboard last year, with the caveat that only the 1800 MHz variants could be used.
Clearly, in-flight mobile phone access would be of tremendous use to travellers – particularly business users – and could provide a welcome boost to revenue for airline operators.
Of course, being allowed to keep your phone switched on doesn’t mean it will still work. With full GSM access at 35,000 feet unlikely, passengers will have to rely on in-plane systems provided by airlines – who will, no doubt, charge accordingly.
The technology for providing in-flight GSM coverage is already in place, with Swedish vendor Ericsson recently announcing a newly developed ‘GSM on Aircraft’ system.
This uses a version of the RBS 2708, which is based around the RBS 2000 family, the world’s most popular radio base stations.
The company claims that its functionality matches terrestrial systems.
Airbus has announced that it intends to equip its short and medium-range aircraft in the A320 series with this mobile phone technology in the near future.
Hello? I’M ON THE PLANE!!!!
Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing
5 July, 2005
African Farmers Boost Profits With Mobile Phones
Around a hundred rural African farmers around Makuleke are testing cell phone technology that gives them access to national markets via the Internet, allowing them to compete with the big boys and boost profits by at least 30 percent.
Previously, farmers would travel huge distances to the market in Johannesburg in the hope of selling their goods, often losing half their harvest along the way, but a new virtual trading facility installed on mobile phones lets them sell their produce direct from their small farms.
Farmers can check prices on the phone and choose to sell when prices are high or raise the selling price if demand is high – and by dealing directly with sellers, farmer can raise profits by cutting out the middle man.
“Mainstream farmers have access to market information so they can negotiate better prices. This cell phone enables poor rural farmers to get that same information,” said Mthobi Tyamzashe, head of communications at South African cell phone operator Vodacom, project sponsors.
It’s an example of how technology can bring real benefits to the world’s poorest continent, and cell phone use has already rocketed 100 percent in Africa since 2000.
It’s believed that wireless technology is the best way to bring the Internet to the poor, as Africa’s sparsely-populated and often inhospitable landscapes make a landline infrastructure commercially unviable.
Senegalese company Manobi has already signed up 40,000 customers to their trading platform for farmers and fishermen, allowing customers to access information on a Web-based trading platform via Internet-enabled phones. Users can also request prices and make trades via SMS, or text message.
“It’s a trading platform and a business space,” said Manobi Chief Executive Daniel Annerose. “Small Senegalese farmers even linked up with the French army (on the platform) last year and agreed to supply one of their ships when it docked in Dakar.”
Manobi plans to expand the project into South Africa, followed by the rest of the continent and the Middle East, in partnership with French cell phone manufacturer Alcatel and Vodacom.
Of course, Vodacom and Alcatel aren’t investing all this cash because – like a Miss World contestant – they want to make the world a better place.
There’s a hard business ethic at work here, with the companies keen to expand the cell phone market into rural areas and grab new customers before the competition steps in.
“The idea is that if people start off with your product they will stay with it once they become more profitable clients,” said Vodacom’s Tyamzashe.
The company dished out 360 starter packs and airtime vouchers worth 300 rand each, while Alcatel has handed out 200 handsets, although there are questions as to the long term viability of the scheme – farmers often living on less than a dollar a day may not be able to afford the luxury or surfing the Web on their phones once free airtime runs out.
“Individual projects like this may not be sustainable, but in a wider context it is an important part of getting telecoms out to the rural areas,” said telecommunications expert Arthur Goldstuck, from research group World Wide Worx.
“It is a case of throwing all kinds of things at the wall and hoping that some of it works.”
Hi-tech cell phones help Africans trade crops
5 July, 2005
Quake, Etch A Sketch And Da Yoot On Mobiles And Bluetooth Security – Newsround
Quake to be ported to 3D-enabled mobile phones
A mobile phone version of the famous 3D Blast ‘Em Up’ from id Software is in development by a company called Bare Naked Productions.
The game is being optimised for a new generation of mobile phones handsets that feature dedicated 3D graphics hardware.
The 3D-enabled mobile phones are expected to be coming out of Korea next month.
Mobilemag.com
Bluetooth group offers security tips to avoid attacks
After a paper published earlier this month revealed how security mechanisms in short-range wireless Bluetooth technology could be undermined, members of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) have produced a list of precautions for users.
These include always pairing devices privately, avoiding public places; using eight character alphanumeric PIN (personal identification number) codes and repairing connections in private, secure locations
Bluetooth.com
Etch A Sketch makes a comeback on mobile phones
For the technology-poor, time-rich kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Etch a Sketch was the equivalent of Photoshop.
Launched 45 years ago, the device shifted more than 100m units, allowing very patient users to while away the hours creating basic monochrome drawings by moving two dials to draw lines over a screen.
Originally called the DoodleMaster Magic Screen in the UK, a new mobile phone version of Etch A Sketch has been created by the Ohio Art Company and mobile game developers In Fusio.
Initially available in the UK to Orange customers, the mobile version replaces the plastic drawing dials with the phone keypad.
Sadly, shaking the phone doesn’t clear the screen as in the original, but pressing the ‘0’ key will activate the vibrate function of the phone. Nice touch!
In-Fusio
Da Yoot prefer mobiles to Internet. Innit.
A study from mobile media firm Enpocket, asked which medium consumers would give up last if they had to choose between TV, newspapers, mobile phone, the Internet, radio and magazines.
People were most reluctant to give up the goggle box, with 31% choosing to give it up last, followed by mobile (19%), radio (16%), the Internet (13%), newspapers (10%) and magazines (5%) in terms of popularity.
Young adults (18-24 years olds) loved their mobiles above all, with 30% choosing to give up their mobile last, above television (28%) and the Internet (15%).
The survey also revealed that 81% of 18-24 year olds can access the Internet on their mobiles, with 79% able to send and receive MMS picture messages.
The Mobile Media Monitor also revealed how mobile is growing as a marketing medium; 49% of the UK population and 71% of the loyal 18-24 year old age group had received marketing over their mobiles.
Peter Larsen, CEO of Enpocket, said: “The survey indicates how important the mobile medium is becoming for marketing communications, provided these are user-initiated and personally relevant.
Young adults prefer mobiles to Internet
30 June, 2005
Motorola Buy Ashes Of Sendo: Analysis
It’s not everyday a new mobile handset company comes along, so it was sad news to hear that Sendo, a relatively new entrant, had gone into administration. Motorola weren’t slow to see a good buy, and purchased it by the afternoon. Guy Kewney takes us through the reasons.
Sendo is dead; there is now nothing left of it, except a new set of features for Motorola, which has formally announced its purchase of Sendo from the administrator.
Effectively, Sendo went bust because its gamble failed; it should have been the world’s leading provider of smartphones, but had to quit the business when it fell out with Microsoft, and start all over with Nokia/Symbian.
The company was making money, but spending more. It was, say competitors, winning business by two ploys. The first was its breakthrough ploy, and that’s the one which Motorola has bought it for: the ability to produce a phone that does everything the operator wants.
“The difference between Motorola and Sendo,” said one source today, “was that if Vodafone said: “We need these features for Vodafone Live!” then Motorola would say: “Let’s get working, and we’ll have something for you in nine months!” while Sendo would say “OK, we’ll do it now.”
Another source said: “The ‘entire intellectual property portfolio – including 50 existing and 40 pending patents’ which Motorola referred to in its release is half of the reason. The software they want is the software which allowed Sendo to configure a phone for people like Orange for Orangeworld – but almost more important, is getting the people at Sendo who knew how to configure that software.”
Motorola already has a Symbian licence, and the deal doesn’t give them Sendo’s Series 60 licence. Some sources insist that nonetheless, the move shows a significant move away from Windows Mobile, following the cancellation of its long-awaited WM Bluetooth phone recently – but that is almost certainly wishful partisan thinking, since Motorola has both Symbian and WM phones on its road-map.
Partisan thinking is also behind suggestions that Sendo’s collapse owes nothing to Microsoft’s actions in the split between the two corporations.
The most recent disaster, admittedly, was Ericsson’s doing, not Microsoft’s: but the crunch was inevitable, after Microsoft’s attempt to pull the plug on Sendo (analysis shows how easily this could have been deliberate).
At the time Microsoft and Sendo parted company, Sendo was the sole provider of the only Microsoft smartphone in the world; it was literally years ahead of all rivals, except perhaps for Nokia with its Communicator. Because of the collapse of the Microsoft-Sendo partnership, however, Sendo found itself as far behind the mass market as it had been in front.
Smartphones were crucial to founder Hugh Brogan’s strategy. They are deliciously high margin products, and also high profile. Without the smartphone, the only way Sendo could win contracts was:
- by offering to customise them for “added value” services like Vodafone Live!
- by cutting the margins below the bone.
The hope was that the company’s financiers would stand by it until it reached the point where it could start charging market rates, and making profits.
“Actually, they might have managed that,” said one source, who works for a company that contracts to Motorola, “but for the fact that they built some very poor phones. Poor build quality meant they were struggling to win repeat contracts from several networks.”
Guy Kewney’s NewsWireless
Sendo
Motorola
30 June, 2005
MSN IM To Vodafone Handsets
The ability to disconnect from the world has taken a further blow as Vodafone and Microsoft announce a global tied up to offer MSN Messenger IM to Vodafone’s mobile phone customers. People sitting at their MSN Instant Messaging (IM) client on their computers will be able to carry out chats with their Vodafone carrying chums.
The function goes beyond the simple exchange of messages, extending to showing the “presence” of their contacts and exchange instant messages between MSN Messenger on a PC and Vodafone Messenger on mobile phones and vice versa.
It’s the matching of equals – MSN Messenger has 165m customers against Vodafone’s global totally of 155m. Both of them are seeing it as a way to raise additional income – while IM PC-PC is free, this Vodafone/MSN offering will be paid for. Time will tell if the consumers that are the focus of this will be willing to pay for the privilege.
Putting on his best tech-savvy face, Peter Bamford, Chief Marketing Officer for Vodafone glowed, “IM is a growing part of the increasingly important mobile messaging market. By bringing our collective customers together, we’ll deliver more options for staying in touch when messaging. Our agreement will grow IM and SMS, meaning additional revenue for Vodafone.”
This type of PC-to-mobile messaging isn’t new. About nine months ago there was a rash of mobile phone companies announcing PC to SMS messaging, some with more success than others.
Digital-Lifestyles understand that this IM deal will not be unique or exclusive to either party. Vodafone will be working with other IM services and MS will hookup with other mobile phone companies.
The official Vodafone word on the new service didn’t give us any information on pricing of the service, so we went digging.
While we didn’t get to any exact figures, we were able to find out the service will be charged on the basis of each message sent. This will cause current IM users to radically change the way they use IM. No more will they be quickly replying with short witticisms, but will need to become more Bard-like in their compositions – if they don’t want to end up with huge bills at the end of the month.
A finger-in-the-air estimate to the per message cost? A Vodafoner told us it will be around, but under the cost of SMS, which should be made slightly more palatable by bundles being available.
Vodafone Messenger, a form of IM on their mobiles, currently run on Vodafone Live! This WAP-based service is embedded into the latest Vodafone handsets. The new offering will use this, and if it isn’t available, straight SMS will be used.
Trials for the new service will start in July, with the product being introduced in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands in the next two months. Other European countries will follow by the end of the year.
Vodafone Messenger MSN Messenger
30 June, 2005