3G

Nokia 6680 Camera Smartphone Starts Shipping
Incorporating not one, but two digital cameras (VGA on the front 1.3 megapixels to the rear), the handset was showcased a month ago at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes.
The stylish new smartphone features two-way video-calling and sharing, push email, a crisp 262,144-color display (176 x 208 pixels), MMC card slot, plus a 1.3-megapixel snapper with flash and 2x digital zoom.
Whereas many 3G handsets prompt the question, “Is that a 3G phone in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”, the 6680 is a bit of a miniature marvel, measuring up at a Y-front unruffling 10.8 x 5.5 x 2.1cm – one of the smallest 3G handsets around (although not quite as teensy-tiny as Sony Ericsson’s upcoming K600i).
Running on the Symbian Series 60 OS, the smartphone comes with a personal organiser, video streaming and Internet browser, with a range of funky 3G-enabled features such as two-way video calls, video sharing and push email.
Using XpressPrint or PictBridge, Nokia phone snappers can print pictures, emails or contacts directly from the 6680 using a range of compatible printers or photo kiosks via USB and Bluetooth – or by simply whipping out the MMC card and slapping it in a card reader.
Joe Coles, director of imaging product marketing at Nokia, was at hand to get suitably enthused: “The Nokia 6680 enables the full benefit of high-speed 3G networks to be enjoyed with a wide range of multimedia services, including video, email, music downloads and internet browsing.”
“We are very pleased with the fantastic demand for the Nokia 6680, and expect it to be widely available in all the major 3G markets around the world.”
Mindful of the fact that trying to write long emails on a handset’s tiny buttons is as much fun as counting ants, Nokia have also announced their new SU-8W Wireless Keyboard.
This small, lightweight add-on folds out to provide a near full-size keyboard, which connects to the phone via Bluetooth.
It must be said that while these fold out keyboards are really handy things to have, they look about as cool as a comb-over in a gale. So use yours discretely!
Nokia
21 March, 2005
Tango.TV: TELE2 Launches Free 3G TV For Phones
European telco AB has announced that it’s launched the first worldwide free TV station available on 3G mobile phones, via its own TV channel Tango.TV (TTV).
Describing themselves as the “leading alternative pan-European telecommunications company” (have they got, like, cray-zee hairstyles and listen to The White Stripes all day?), the TV station is a product of their development centre located in Luxembourg.
The centre is in charge of applying the company’s convergence strategy and has also created an Internet radio, the painfully cheesy-sounding Sunshine Radio, also available on 3G phones.
The streams are available to any customer looking for some full-on AOR action from the new wap portal T.TVMobile.
We gave the channel a listen via the Web and weren’t impressed. The Dad-friendly soft rock was bad enough, but the dire tunes were rendered even more unlistenable by the stream jumping around like a hyperactive flea on amyl nitrate.
We couldn’t work out if this was supposed to be the 3G TV station or not, but after five minutes of looking at a blank screen on our desktop media player, we gave up waiting.
Lars-Johan Jarnheimer, CEO of Tele2 said; “With the launch of this TV over 3G service, Tele2 is showing that it is at the leading edge of mobile technological developments. We look forward to monitoring the development of this service in Luxembourg to learn about customer behaviour, which we can apply later to our other mobile markets”.
There’s no doubt that mobile TV and radio has a strong future, but this venture strikes me as being more of a publicity stunt than anything. And seeing as I’m writing about it, I guess it’s worked too. Doh! Outwitted again!
Tele2
Sunshine Radio
TTV Online
21 March, 2005
Is 3G Content Delivering? – Pt 2
Unlike the creative whirlwind that accompanied the dot.com explosion, innovation seems to be a lot slower in the 3G content market.
Limited by strict marketing and corporate product strategies, 3G owners haven’t exactly had a lot to shout about when it comes to mobile content.
Although watching tiny video clips of goalmouth action has a certain appeal (particularly when it’s Cardiff City doing the scoring), all of the networks seem to be offering much the same collection of services.
Predictably, there’s already been many lucrative tie-ins with popular TV shows.
Fans of the teen soap Hollyoaks were offered daily MMS picture slide exclusive stories and Celebrity Big Brother fans could download “behind the scenes” shots, updates and summaries of the show.
ITN news got in on the act too, supplementing their mobile news updates with “today in history” style clips trawled from their vast video archives.
Perhaps Vodaphone’s 60-second “mobisodes”, based on the hugely successful ’24’ series was one of the more successful TV offerings on 3G, with scenes written and shot exclusively for 3G.
All twenty-four instalments of ’24: Conspiracy’ ran for sixty seconds with a cliff-hanger ending leading directly into the next instalment, thus keeping consumer’s fingers hovering over the ‘download video’ key.
“Joel Surnow, Bob Cochran, Howard Gordon, Kiefer Sutherland and their entire creative team have built ’24’ into one of the world’s leading television brands. It’s incumbent upon us at the studio to continually develop new initiatives to service, enhance and extend that brand,” commented Twentieth Century Fox Television President Gary Newman.
“The ’24’ mobile series and the licensing and marketing partnership with world wireless leader Vodafone are truly unprecedented in our business, as they capitalize on the absolute latest in technological innovation and represent a whole new way to reach our fans and promote the original television series.”
So far, almost all the 3G content has been linked to a TV show or brand and mobile consumers seem to value the exclusivity of such content.
While this kind of cross-platform repurposing of content appeals to opportunistic TV stations looking for additional revenues, for the mobile platform to flourish as a medium in its own right, it needs content that exists in its own right.
We’ll take a look at what kind of ideas are bubbling up in part 3.
Hollyoaks Interactive
Fox 24
11 March, 2005
3G Networks Still Missing Compelling Content – Pt 1
After a shaky start, the 3G bandwagon is finally starting to roll with 20 million 3G phones sold last year and shedloads of new funky, feature-packed phones on the way.
As more people buy into the 3G lifestyle, the demand for quality content rises, with network owners scrambling to produce competition-crushing downloads. Broadcast magazine has a thorough report by Peter Keighron into this subject (reg.req.), which finds that there still something missing in the content area.
“Content is not as compelling as it ought to be,” says BBC Broadcast head of business development Tanya Price, “it doesn’t seem to be translating with the splash it ought to be.”
What the business is crying out for is new ideas. Fun ideas. Fab ideas. In fact, any idea will do, just so long as it keeps people reaching for the ‘download now’ key.
“We’re very much at the foothills regarding content on mobiles,” says Price. “Now we’re going to have to be a bit more experimental and different. The network owners are looking for something that pushes the boundaries a bit more and gives them more of a reason to develop content off the back of existing [brands] or to think about commissioning new content.”
In a land noted for its creative industries, it may seem unusual that 3G phones aren’t buzzing with creative ideas and cutting edge content, but it seems that the problem lies with the industry itself.
The mobile industry is run by the phone manufacturers and, most importantly, the big five UK network owners – 3, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
These are the fellas who commission mobile content and they’ve got two aims in mind: drive up sales of their phones and get more subscriptions to their network.
Right now, they’re not interested in arty-farty experimental stuff, out-there comedy or ‘genre-challenging’ downloads: they want straight down-the-line popular content that will shift phones and entice new subscribers by the bucketload.
And if that wasn’t limiting enough for Hoxton-fin toting ‘creatives’ (Nathan Barley anyone?), the network controllers all want content exclusive to their own network.
As a result, commissioning editors have to come up with stuff that not only pleases the marketing department, but, fits in with the company’s rigid marketing and product strategy.
The end result is a predictable but unit-shifting fare of footie, ringtones, horoscopes, weather and the like.
But amongst all the corporate drudge, there are signs that some innovation is coming to the 3G platform, with the network owners showing an interest in something that utilizes the potential of the platform.
We’ll be exploring the developments in the next part of this feature.
4 March, 2005
Xpress Audio Messaging – Podcasting Tool from Nokia
If you’ve ever wished that your answerphone message mumblings could have a bit more pizzazz, Nokia’s new 7710 handset. Xpress audio messaging could become another tool in the podcasters arsenal, enabling podcasting on the move, without a PC. It will all be down to the power of the audio editing software. We’re keen to get our hands on it to see if our hunch is confirmed.
For the straight messaging, Nokia clearly hopes that this will give them some leverage in the highly competitive – and lucrative – youth mobile phone market:
“Nokia Xpress audio messaging enables operators to differentiate their service offering from competitors, by utilizing existing infrastructure,” explains Juha Pinomaa, Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia.
“For consumers, Nokia Xpress audio messaging combines ease of use, affordability, and adds a personal touch to greetings, congratulations, or allows to share a special moment like a grandchild’s first words.”
Recorded audio messages can be sent to all MMS-enabled GSM handsets and stored and replayed as easily as any other multimedia file, and Nokia will be introducing support for legacy phones within its MMS solution.
The Nokia Multimedia Application Gateway will also enable sending audio messages to phones that do not support MMS, therefore letting even more people hear your pre-recorded masterpieces.
Nokia is so far, the only MMS infrastructure provider to offer legacy support specifically designed for audio messaging. The new audio messaging menu will be integrated in several Nokia handsets introduced in 2005.
Nokia
10 February, 2005
i-mode UK Bound Via mmO2?
There has been some press speculation over the last day or so about mmO2 partnering with DoCoMo to bring their phone and content platform, i-mode, to the UK. Reuters reported that mmO2’s Chief Executive, Peter Erskine, had said last week that the company would decide by year-end on whether to introduce i-mode.
Things appear to have moved on, and this morning the Financial Times is more firm on the story, reporting that O2 will announce the deal next week. They say the service would start next year.
We spoke to mmO2 and their official comment was “the process is ongoing and we are still on schedule to announce before the end of the year”, so no big scoop for us there then. In conversation they did mentioned that the i-mode service has become more attractive over the years, since they last looked at it. Over that time the available range of handsets has increased significantly, it has driven up usage in the markets it has been deployed and the range of content available now for the platform has increased substantially.
[A brief interlude. Why is the company sometimes called mmO2 and other times O2? Let us clear up the confusion. mmO2 is the parent company that operates in a number of countries (UK, Ireland, etc). Its operating units in these countries are called O2. So, parent co=mmO2, local instance=O2.]
i-mode is a huge in Japan, where it has 42m users. Some even credit it with bringing the Internet to the youth of Japan. As home computer ownership previously wasn’t that large, the youth used their phone to get online.
It is already running in four European countries; Germany, France, Italy and Spain, although the take up figures haven’t been what you would call stunning, running at around 4m over the continent. The UK is a big gap in DoCoMo’s European coverage.
For content producers, the most interesting thing about i-mode is its content publishing model. Compared with other mobile platforms in the UK who can take as much as 50-60% of payments made by consumers, i-mode takes significantly less – in the low double digits.
It’s deals like this that are highly likely to draw content to mmO2 – it’s not wholly surprising that content producers will be inclined to get the most income from their wares as possible.
Given the current fashion among 3G watchers is to think that the winners in 3G will be those with the strongest content, a generous share of the income to draw in content owners could be a very smart move by mmO2.
DoCoMo
mm02
26 November, 2004
Entertainment Now: UK 3’s Deal with APTN
3, the first 3G network in the UK, are further enhancing their content offering by announcing a deal with Associated Press Television News (APTN). APTN will provide the video show, “Entertainment Now” that will be released twice a week and cover ‘celebrity entertainment’. In their words, it will be “quirky and irreverent, poking fun at the rich and famous, and of course, the infamous.”
3 customers have two ways to pay for the content. At 50p per clip or they can watch as much video as they like by paying £5 per month for the “video value” add-on.
We spoke to Deanna Gullery, APTN’s New Product Marketing Manager about the deal. They currently sell a 24 minute version of Entertainment NOW (is it just us or is the capitalisation unnecessary?) that goes to air with a number of broadcasters in various countries on a weekly basis.
The 3 version will be a cut down version, primarily featuring celebrity interviews, calling on AP’s strong access to the stars. It will be edited in-house down to between 2 and 4 minutes, voiced over and releases on Tuesday and Thursday.
We think the 3 deal is an interesting example of a content creation company making the most of their assets – “Sweating your assets” as we believe the 80’s phrase for was. AP are all over the world (80 bureaux in 67 countries) shooting this type of material for ‘traditional’ media outlets anyway. Why not make the most of it and edit it together in to custom pieces? We’re strong believers in this type of approach.
We don’t think this is the kind of content that will drive people to join the 3 services, it’s more about maximising Average Revenue Per User (ARPU, in trade terms). Their current ARPU taking the first 7 months of this year is £43.22 per customer, per month.
Three
Associated Press Television News
25 November, 2004
Vodafone 3G Services Go Live!
Following on from Monday’s story, Vodafone’s betting heavily on 3G this Christmas, read on for further details of Vodafone’s new offering.
Timed to attract consumers in the lucrative pre-Christmas market, Vodafone’s third-generation (3G) service offers quicker music, video and e-mail downloads compared to GPRS. With 3G you can access all of Vodafone’s current services, as well as new video calling, video messaging and video clips specifically for the 3G network. Vodafone is supporting the new service with an enhanced Web portal designed to offer easier access to the 3G services.
The mobile operator is aiming at the youth market, which has been influential in the growth of services such as text messaging. It hopes the key attraction will be music downloads, as mobile operators look to compete with Internet music download services such as Napster and Apple’s iTunes.
The roll-out will be concentrated in densely populated urban areas, covering about 30 per cent of the population, according to Vodafone. Although the new 3G technology promises to provide data transfers at near-broadband speeds, it has taken ages for firms to launch their 3G services due to technical glitches. Although streaming audio and video will the prime marketing driver, it’s likely that data on the move, not video calls, will drive the market.
Vodafone’s ‘enhanced’ 3G content includes a downloadable music catalogue, a made-for-mobile drama inspired by the TV series 24, together with exclusive videos, pictures, animated greetings and wallpaper including the launch of Movie of the Month, starting with Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Sports fans are promised access to UEFA Champions League and Barclays Premiership video clips, together with exclusive Manchester United and Ferrari mobile video content.
“Vodafone live! with 3G will dramatically change the way our customers experience their Vodafone services and we are confident that Vodafone live! with 3G will be a success”, said Arun Sarin, chief executive at Vodafone. “Customers want communication, organisation, entertainment and information on the move and they will increasingly turn to one device to deliver these needs: their mobile phone. Vodafone live! with 3G will become increasingly mass market next year and we expect over 10 million customers to be using Vodafone live! with 3G by March 2006 in our subsidiaries.”
As reported in September, Vodafone has ordered 10 varieties of 3G handset from Sharp, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung, with built-in features including MP3 music players and 2-Megapixel camera phones. They will be subsidised as aggressively as its existing 2G handset range, so high-end users who agree to a contract will be entitled to a free phone. The launch is also international, extending to Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
www.vodafone-i.co.uk/live/
10 November, 2004
Vodafone’s betting heavily on 3G this Christmas
Vodafone live! with 3G enhances Vodafone live! by providing customers with faster access to content and the ability to see more and share more with the use of video. The company’s 3G services will further add video calling, video messaging, a richer music experience, new games, as well as video clips.
A return on investment is critical for Vodafone, who has spent some £8 billion on top of the £14 billion it had to fork out for 3G licenses (Vodafone and its four UK rivals paid around £22.5 billion for the 3G licences). Of this investment, The Observer newspaper reckons that £8 billion has been spent on network infrastructure, with a little more going on R&D, and some £100 million earmarked for advertising. David Beckham will feature prominently as the mobile giant launches a pre-Christmas advertising blitz, promoting video downloads and other bandwidth-hungry services made possible by advanced colour-screen handsets and the higher connection speeds of 3G networks.
The new high-speed service uses a completely different network to the standard Vodafone live! service. The company has built it so that whenever you are outside a 3G service area, you will continue to access all the services, but the speed to access will be reduced. Video calling or streaming content will not be possible and the service will stop if moving off the 3G network. You should know when you’re in a 3G service area because a small 3G symbol will appear on the screen of your handset.
As well as content, 3G service providers will have to distinguish themselves with coverage. For instance, Vodafone claims about 60 per cent population coverage, but much of that will be in London and a few other metropolitan areas. Orange, which also plans to launch its 3G offering before Christmas, said its initial network deployment would be more extensive. Alexis Dormandy, Orange’s chief marketing officer, told The Sunday Times:: “We have a much larger, broader network because it’s supposed to be a mobile network rather than a ‘stay-in-one-place’ network.”
With such a big financial commitment to 3G, it’s vital that Vodafone has to get its 3G marketing right. Thankfully, it will be launching its service with no fewer than 10 mobile handsets (as we’ve covered), a problem Hutchison encountered when it launched its ‘3’ service a year or so ago.
Vodafone
8 November, 2004
Premier 3G Concert Broadcast
U2 special edition iPods, ‘phone cast’ Rooster concerts on 3G mobile phones, Robbie Williams new video premiered on 3 mobile phones – is rock becoming virtual?
Avoid the crowds, the heat, the general mayhem, (but sadly also the atmosphere) and virtually experience live gigs on your 3G mobile phone wherever you are, and make as many calls as you want during the intermission.
Yesterday in London, rock band, Rooster played the first ever concert broadcast by 3G mobile phone. Rooster was chosen because 3 is already in partnership with their record label, BMG. The 45-minute gig was really a trial run by 3 to discover more about how people use their video phones. 3, which already provides 1.2 million customers with 3G services in the UK, has already planned a series of gigs to happen throughout 2005, and is hoping that the move will lure more people into buying video phones.
The broadcast was trailed on Rooster’s Web site and on 3’s own phone-based news and entertainment channel, and about 10,000 people signed up for a free pre-gig reminder. Ten minutes before start-up, these 10,000 users were sent an SMS inviting them to visit a “virtual box office” where they could pay £5 to view the gig, and the first 1,000 were admitted.
Another world first was the release of Robbie Williams’ new video ‘Misunderstood’, exclusive for a week on 3 video mobiles before being premiered on the TV or the Web. The deal between EMI and 3 allows fans to either stream or download the video straight to their mobiles. This is a clever choice since the video for ‘Misunderstood’ – which features in the Bridget Jones sequel, ‘The Edge of Reason’ – includes clips from the forthcoming film.
Staying in the digital arena, Robbie Williams also recently announced the release of his greatest hits album on memory-card format for mobile phones, which will be released this month.
Some commentators might say these developments let fans get closer to artists, and if you were selling the equipment you would say that, wouldn’t you?
“It sounds exactly as you would expect a live band playing down a telephone line to sound”, says Alexis Petridis today in his Guardian review of the Rooster event – “a Library Of Congress field recording from the 1930s.”
http://www.roosterofficial.com http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1342211,00.html
3 November, 2004