We put out a NIB (News in Brief) earlier today about Skype offering half price SMS’s.
It struck us that dear old Blighty (UK) _wasn’t_ included in the list of countries that people could half price SMS to.
Jeepers, Creepers, what’s going on, went the cry!
We got in touch with those who know (Skype-types) and after a short pause came the confirmation that, yes, the UK wasn’t included.
The reason?
“We’re looking at all markets and have started with those that we think will take advantage of the promotion the fastest. Everything is evolutionary at Skype – we rely on early adopter/usage feedback to make sure we get it right for other countries yet to benefit from the promotion.”
Doesn’t make a great deal of sense given the UK’s global reputation of madly texting at every opportunity.
Clearly Skype had to say something and while this might be the official reason, we wondered if it was something to do with the famously-inflexible UK mobile companies, and their unwillingness to show love (or enough of a discount) to dear Skype?
Those clever-types at Skype are trying to hook you into the habit of using Skype, not just for your spoken comms and IM, but for SMS to mobiles too.
Connecting the N95 to your computer
Okay, time to try out the device’s killer app – GPS and Nokia Maps. Having previously owned a Garmin Trek and an ill-fated Ipaq 6915, I’m familiar with the sluggishness of finding an initial navigating signal, so I’m giving the Nokia plenty of leeway to be a bit slow at first.
Claimed to offer downloads “up to 10 times faster than over usual WCDMA networks,” the Nokia 6120 bigs up its multimedia credentials sporting two cameras. The first is a basic, low res affair slapped on the front for video calls, while the main camera serves up 2-megapixels worth of picture-grabbing, 4-times digital zoom, a built in flash and a panorama mode.
There’s Bluetooth on board for wireless streaming of stereo sounds, a built-in FM radio, support for MP3/AAC/MPEG4 tuneage and a micro SD card slot for slapping in some more memory capacity.
Here’s Peter Ropke, Senior Vice President, Mobile Phones, Nokia to whip us into a frenzy of expectation for the phone, “With the HSDPA technology, S60 operating system and the wide range of features of the Nokia 6120 classic, consumers will be able to make their daily lives more manageable.”
LG have committed to release at least ten new mobile phone and will jointly market them as LG-Google handsets.
Try as we might, we can’t think of the last time we said to ourselves, “You know what? We could really use a Bluetooth enabled cushion,” but the good news is that if ever such a thought should cross our minds, urbantool.com has the answer.
Powered by a rechargeable lithium ionic battery, call status is displayed via a series of LEDs, which indicate if the, err, pillow is in active standby mode or taking an incoming call.
Although we couldn’t argue with anyone claiming that it’s the most comfortable phone on the planet, the idea of someone actually sitting at home talking into a cushion would suggest the presence of magic mushrooms to us.
On display at the CeBit hi-tech fair last week was a new mobile phone offering a built-in emergency button.
The phone comes with extra loud volume options for speaker and ring tones and has a powerful vibration alert to ensure the owner knows that someone’s calling.
There seems to be some debate about just how old the target market actually is: the 
Major news agencies made great use of public camera phone footage after the London 7/7 bombings, with several images 
With Getty’s well established media network, amateur snappers should expect increased prospects of shifting their work, although Getty hasn’t commented if the payment share is to remain the same.
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.
Motorola’s total sales for 2006 hit 209 million units, which translates into a 21.1 percent market share.