Figures from a new study by ABI Research reveal that annual global sales of “dual-mode” mobile phones – clever-clogs handsets that can connect to either a conventional cellular service or a Wi-Fi network – are likely to exceed 100 million during the final year of this decade.
Currently, such dual mode devices are as familiar to the public as the five headed Dongo Worm, with most of the enterprise sector equally clueless.
But according to ABI Research senior analyst Philip Solis, some of the King Dongs of global telecommunications – notably British Telecom and Korea Telecom – plan to roll out dual-mode services as soon as the end of 2005.
“The advantages of dual mode handsets and services, when they arrive, can be summed up in two words: seamless and economical,” he said.
In the wonderful future world of dual mode phones, seamless network switching between networks is promised, although all the groovy stuff is unlikely to appear in the first generation of products.
When the technology is mature, users should be able to ring up a chum and start rabbiting at home, with the phone connecting via the residential Wi-Fi network, in turn connected to a broadband VoIP phone service.
The nattering can continue uninterrupted in the car to work, with the phone automatically switching to a cellular network, and there’d be no need for the marathon chinwag to come to an end upon arrival at work, as the phone could switch to the company’s 802.11 LAN, and VoIP.
Despite all the travelling through different locations, the smartypants handset would sense the available signals and switch automatically from one network mode to another, keeping the user connected at the lowest cost.
With the Digital Lifestyle office currently sporting a desk-hogging, charger-needing collection of mobile phones, DECT phones and Skype phones, we can’t wait for the telecoms convergence revolution to happen.
Elsewhere, Infonetics Research has predicted that VoIP service revenues will jump from 2004’s US$1.3 billion (~€1.01bn~£690m) to US$19.9 billion (~€15.5bn~£10.5bn) in 2009 – a 1,431% jump.
Infonetics directing analyst Kevin Mitchell commented that part of this growth can be attributed to the technology’s newness, noting that with VoIP services representing less than 1% of wireline carrier revenue in North America last year, the market can’t really go anywhere but up.
“Growth is driven by carrier footprint and solution expansion, marketing, and service bundling, leading to more adoption by new business/government/education and residential/SOHO customers and increased usage at more sites,” Mitchell said in a statement. “Our forecast also assumes that revenue growth is due to incremental revenue from add-on VoIP applications, such as conferencing, remote office integration, presence/location-based services, and collaboration.”
Infonetics also expects the number of residential and small office/home office VoIP subscribers to rocket from 1.1 million in the last year to 20.8 million in 2008.
After months of rumours on the Web, details of palmOne’s new LifeDrive PDA have finally shown up on Amazon. 
NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes is able to play MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV files and the unit will also support full screen video and photo playback. 
The LifeDrive comes with USB 2.0, so transferring files onto the microdrive should be a fairly nifty business. 
It’s that time again, a new version of OS X has been released! For those that aren’t aware of OS X, it’s Apple’s operating system. As usual, OS 10.4 is named after a cat: 10.2 was named Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and the new 10.4 has been titled Tiger.
Cell phone penetration in Western Europe will hit 100% by 2007 as mobile-loving customers continue to scoop up multiple phones and phone cards. 
Although some people might think that the rise is fuelled by drug dealers toting multiple phones for ‘business’, the increase is actually explained by customers buying multiple phones and/or SIM cards. 
Purring like a cat recumbing in cream, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that Apple’s iPod shuffle has snaffled a 58 per cent share of the flash-based digital media market in the US. 
Positively glowing with confidence, Oppenheimer claimed that MP3 capability in handsets will be more complementary than a replacement, with handsets suffering from “a worse user interface and limited battery life,” 
Nokia continues to be the Big Cheese of the worldwide mobile handset market, shipping nearly twice as many phones as its nearest competitor, Motorola. 
Like a hungry, hyperactive terrier, Firefox continues to take great chunks out of Microsoft’s market share as the Mozilla Foundation announces its 50 millionth download.
Fully released last November, Firefox has delivered a turbo-charged size nine up the backside of the Web browser market which seemed to be heading for stagnant domination by Microsoft’s ubiquitous Internet Explorer. 
Sony have produced a portable games console which on its own merit is going to sell a lot of units. However it has the possibility of becoming a portable media hub that will give even Microsoft a jolt by driving into their Portable Media Center market. 
The system uses Sony’s 1.8″ UMD optical disk which comes in a protective sheath (like a minidisc). They’re small enough so you could easily carry a few around with you (though don’t eject them unless there’s something solid and accessible beneath you as they have a tendency to fly out and disappear somewhere awkward). There’s also a Memory Stick due (32MB supplied) to allow game saves and other features. 
The system looks like a USB memory device when attached to a PC (which basically gives access to the Memory Stick) and you can store audio and video on it. Sensibly, Sony support MP3 directly on the PSP, though it will also support ATRACplus encoded music. Interestingly, if someone decides to produce UMD music disks, they only support ATRACplus and linear PCM). Video is H.264/MPEG-4 AVC on the UMD and MPEG-4 SP, AAC on the memory stick. 
Once the PSP has real Internet capability it will be a media powerhouse, the screen size is about right for watching movies on the go. You could do this now by converting a current MPEG-2 (DVD) to MPEG-4 and storing it on the memory stick (ignoring all legal ramifications), but in future it’s more than likely you’ll be able to stream movies (or audio) directly to the unit. Sony as a music publisher and movie house, is likely to want to sell its content to a market of portable viewers – it owns both ends of the stick. 
As the number of digital TV-enabled households continues to rise and the 
The unit’s onscreen interface is simplicity itself, with the eight-day electronic programme guide (EPG) banishing those video timer nightmares forever – this puppy is so simple, even a granny overdosed on Christmas sherry would have no problem setting up a recording of Des and Mel. 
A range of recording quality modes let you increase recording time at the expense of image quality. 
Highly recommended 
PalmOne has formally launched its Treo 650 in the UK – more than six months after jammy Americans got their mitts on the keenly anticipated smartphone. 
The handset includes useful quad-band GSM/GPRS connectivity for voice and data, with the bundled VersaMail email application supporting a single Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ActiveSync account and multiple IMAP and POP accounts. 
Even with WiFi, Treo users will still be missing out on the killer VoIP application, Skype, so I asked if there were any plans to introduce a version for the Palm platform. 
Despite attending an official product launch, I left none the wiser as to when the Treo will actually be available or what other network carriers (apart from Orange) will be offering the phone. Naturally, there wasn’t a peep about pricing plans either.