Vodafone Netherlands got in touch with us to tell us how wildly popular the World Cup has been on mobile phones on their service – breaking previous records of simultaneous viewers.
They have two ways to access the football. Total World Cup, a bargain 5 Euro service that allows subscribers to access four minute packages for each of the matches as often as they like during the World Cup up to 9 July; and the Goal Alerts service that delivers edited highlights, not surprisingly the goals, direct to subscribers handsets via MMS.
The on-demand Total World Cup service is the one that really lit up at 5pm on the evening of last weeks match between Holland and Serbia Montenegro.
When we first asked, Vodafone Netherlands followed the now-normal approach of mobile operators of shyness of exact figures. We probed a little deeper for the actual viewing figures and found out that there were tens of thousands of people view it simultaneously.
This would have been a big test for their mobile network, delivering something as bandwidth hungry as video all at the same time. Without any reports to us to the contrary, we can only assume it all went smoothly.
Previous viewing peaks were the friendly match against Mexico on 1 June, the day of the London bombings in July 2005 and some undoubtedly dull rubbish about Big Brother.
Flush with the success, and no doubt in a way of trying to get subscribers hooked on MMS delivery, Vodafone are, as of today, offering the Goal Alerts service ‘without extra charge.’ Those without the handsets to handle video MMS will get a still photo delivered.
Mobile TV is now the 3rd most popular service on Vodafone Netherlands – behind voice and SMS – for those with capable handsets.
Who’s in? Who’s out?
Much excitement is being generated by those companies already using Linux in their handsets. In a ‘don’t forget we’ve been doing this for ages’ way, Yoshiharu Tamura, Executive General Manager, Mobile Terminals Business Unit, NEC Corporation expounded , “As one of the leading pioneers with almost two years of experience shipping Linux-based mobile phones, we are delighted to participate in this initiative. We expect the foundation activities will accelerate further expansion of mobile Linux application developer participation, as well as global market growth of 3G mobile handsets.”
The second billionth GSM mobile phone is expected to be connected this weekend according to the GSM Association (GSMA).
“While it took just 12 years for the industry to reach the first billion connections. The second billion has been achieved in just two and a half years boosted by the phenomenal take up of mobile in emerging markets such as China, India, Africa and Latin America, which accounted for 82% of the second billion subscribers,” he added, breathlessly.
The GSM Association continues to develop initiatives to help folks in the developing world gain access to mobile communications, developing a sub$30 low cost mobile phone and putting pressure on governments to remove tax barriers on mobile products and services.
The dream of effortless – and easy to see – mobile Web surfing has taken a step forward with the release of Nokia’s N80 smartphone. The new device is rapidly garnering praise for its stunning screen which takes the stress out of Web browsing and picture viewing.
The increased density of the display makes the interface more crisp and easier to read and Nokia have taken advantage of this by utilizing vector graphics to sharpen up icons and fonts, reducing the blockiness associated with lower resolution devices.
The N80 is pretty sharp on taking pictures too. With a 3.2 megapixel camera built-in, the N80 can deliver stills at 2048 x 1536 pixels, substantial enough to challenge regular digi cameras. Video recording is good at 352 x 288, the same resolution as the N70 and N90, and a VGA camera is mounted on the front for video calls.
Mobile phone companies have been striving to develop high resolution displays to capitalise on the potential of multi-media content. This week, Samsung joined the growing list of manufacturers who have created a true VGA display suitable for mobile phones.
VGA has been available on handheld devices for a while now. Toshiba debuted the first PDA with VGA display (the e805) back in December 2003 and the first VGA mobile, Sharp’s 904SH, launched in Japan in April this year. The latter has four times the resolution of the average QVGA (Quarter VGA) display and face recognition functions that authenticates users by their facial features.
At the W3C conference in Edinburgh today, in a move to get the mobile industry (and possibly more) to standardise on a single Web browser, Nokia has released the source code for the mobile Web browser it developed last year.
“We want to reduce the fragmentation currently in place in mobile browsing,” said Lee Epting, VP of Forum Nokia, Nokia’s software development support program.
Months later than expected, Motorola’s new ‘Blackberry-killer’ smartphone, the Moto Q has finally been launched on the Verizon network in the US.
Shockley insisted that the Q is for people with a “life balance” (a what?) who want to use their phones to listen to music, take photos, record short videos and play games.
Sony Ericsson has announced its first Walkman phone for Japan today and it looks like a beaut.
True to its Walkman heritage, the slide-out phone has a smorgasbord of built-in dedicated music controls, including a natty new mechanical navigation wotsit bolted on to the bottom of the phone.
There’s been no firm announcement of the retail price yet, although it’s hotly rumoured to be around the $180 mark, and no announcement of a UK release yet, natch.
Nordic mobile goliaths Nokia have unveiled an upgrade for their Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which gives the chunky device VoIP and instant messaging capabilities through Google Talk.
Sales weren’t too hot though, but Nokia reckon that by bolting on VoIP phone capabilities they can turbo charge unit-shifting, with Virtanen insisting that internet telephony is “the key for us to reach higher sales volumes.”
The updated OS also boasts enhanced text typing with full-screen finger keyboard, improved memory performance and a ‘refreshed’ look (did they throw a bucket of water at it, or something?).
Palm have announced the successor to their hugely successful Palm OS-powered Treo 650 smartphone, the Treo 700p.
Bundled with the phone is DataViz’ Documents To Go for reading and editing Microsoft Office files, a PDF viewer and an email client that works with Exchange Server 2003 via ActiveSync, plus POP and IMAP accounts.
So much so that we’re even prepared to forgive the omission of Wi-Fi in the latest Treo (Palm in the US insist that EV-DO should be enough.)