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PDA Shipments Notch Up Record High in Q2, 2006
Like the Black Knights in Monty Python’s ‘Holy Grail,’ PDAs are refusing to be beaten, despite almost monthly declarations of their impending obsolescence.
Far from shuffling off into that big technology dustbin in the sky (or, more likely, some landfill site somewhere), Personal Digital Assistants managed to register the highest PDA shipment total of any second quarter on record.
The new research from Gartner saw PDA shipments totalling 3.7 million units in the second quarter of 2006, up 2.7 percent from the second quarter of 2005.
Much of the growth is coming from GPS-enabled new kids on the PDA block like Mio Technology, Motorola and Danger Research, while old boys like Research In Motion (RIM), Palm, Hewlett-Packard and Dell all saw steadily declining shipments.
When it comes to PDA operating systems, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile kept pushing ahead with 54.2 percent of PDA OS shipments, followed by RIM OS with 22.5 percent of the market and Palm OS with 13.4 percent.
“The ongoing integration of WAN technology into PDAs, and the marketing push of these devices by wireless operators has produced most of the growth compared to one year ago,” said Todd Kort, principal analyst in Gartner’s Computing Platforms Worldwide group.
Although shipments are up, revenues are down, as Kort explained: “The average selling price of PDAs fell by 6 percent from one year ago to $373, mostly due to aging product lines, the increasing impact of wireless operator subsidies and relatively few new PDAs being launched thus far in 2006.”
This explains how worldwide PDA end-user revenue fell by 4.1 percent last year to $1.38 billion in the second quarter of 2006.
The report breaks down PDA shipments by manufacturer, Q2 2006 shipment estimates, market share and 2Q05- 1Q06 growth.
Research In Motion 830,720 shipments, 22.5% market share, -1.1% growth
Palm 470,458 , 12.7%, -26.7%
Hewlett-Packard 382,653, 10.4% -15.1%
Mio Technology 303,377, 8.2% 65.4%
Nokia 163,600, 4.4%, -40.5%
Others 1,545,596, 41.8%, 27.8%
It’s worth noting that these totals don’t include smartphones, such as the hugely popular Palm Treo phones (which shifted 656,000 units over the same quarter) and BlackBerry 71xx (467,000 units excluded), but include cellular PDAs, such as the iPAQ 69xx and Nokia E61.
Which rather makes the results a bit confusing to our eyes.
Gartner
7 August, 2006
Why I love the Palm: Conclusion
For a self confessed, gimme-gimme-shiny-new gadgets nutcase like me to be using a phone several years old speaks volumes of the strengths of the Treo 650.
It’s not a perfect phone by any means, but after trying out various Nokias, Pocket PCs, Motos, Sony Ericssons and other wannbe contenders, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Treo remains the best smartphone on the market.
It’s not for everyone of course, but after a recent weekend in Wales, I realised that I had in my possession the first smartphone that was actually clever enough for me to leave my laptop at home.
Despite being out in the wilds of lovely Cymraeg (with ne’er a wisp of Wi-Fi in the air), I was able to download images for approval from a client; download, edit and send off a Word doc; surf the web; chat with some friends on IRC; send and receive a ton of email; download weather forecasts; read RSS feeds; play some games; update my blog; send text messages; take pics and a few silly videos and, of course make and receive calls – and the Treo performed faultlessly throughout.
If I’d have taken my Windows Mobile phone I dare say I would have been very well acquainted with stylus (and the reset button) by this time, but the Treo’s fabulous one-handed operation and rock solid performance made it a practical laptop replacement.
The future
After Palm decided that it wasn’t worth the outlay to re-jig the Treo to fit incoming European regulations, there sadly won’t be any more 650s shipping to the UK, although there still should be plenty about – especially on ebay.
In the US, Palm has already released the 650’s successor, the Treo 700p, but it looks like us here in Euro-land are going to have to wait till around Christmas for an updated, antennae-less Treo to appear. Possibly.
Palm has remained tight-lipped about their European product roadmap, with the web rife with rumours of both Windows and Palm new models going under ggroovy codenames like Hollywood, Lowrider, Nitro and Lennon.
Vodafone UK, however, have recently confirmed that they will be launching a Windows Mobile 5-powered 3G UMTS Treo at an unspecified date, but we’re not interested in that.
We want a much needed fix of new Palm gadgetry, running a Palm OS!
4 August, 2006
Cricket Mobisodes On The Ashes To Launch
The mobile division of TV production company Twofour and Player One Sports are working together to create a weekly short form TV show covering the Australian portion of the Ashes tour for portable devices.
The six minute shows will be formatted for mobile phones, iPods, or PSP’s. They’ll be chunked into one to two minute blocks, “for ease of use on different delivery mediums.”
Coming this Winter, sports presenter, Mark Durden-Smith (no we haven’t heard of him either, but when it comes to sport, that’s doesn’t mean anything) will be fronting the show where they plan to cover analysis of the action and try to give an understanding of life on tour in Australia.
It appears that they’re hoping to pull in the interest of posh types who like cricket, and more than likely don’t care how much it’s going to cost them to keep up to date. It may be of course turn out that these are the sort of people who don’t currently have the kit to play the content.
Twofour are clearly planning to flog the maximum amount of ‘media’ to lighten with heavy-wallets of their punters. Alongside the mobisode (and we suspect, cross-promoted during it), there will be a range of associated content including Freddie Flintoff’s Allround Cricket, a Web and mobile fantasy cricket game and a range of other downloadable content such as wallpapers, ring tones and video blog.
A rather over-excited Mr Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, Director of Twofour Mobile gushed, “We are in the midst of a media revolution and I’m excited that Twofour is leading the way.”
Twofour mobile
4 August, 2006
Vodafone Admits That Video Calling Has Flopped
Vodafone is hotly denying that its enthusiasm for 3G has waned, after rumours began circulating that the operator was cutting handset subsidies and abandoned all hope of the technology ever becoming a lucrative commercial success.
What are your thoughts/actions about Video calling on your mobile? Take 10 second survey
Reports that the rumours began to circulate after Enders Analysis revealed that sales of 3G phones had crashed from 20 per cent of all handsets bought to a mere 12 per cent, in just one quarter, CNet tells us.
Vodafone insisted that the figures were “definitely an overestimate,” before the spokesperson engaged industry-speak overload:
“The share has dipped as we’ve rebalanced investment across our customer base. We’re now perhaps seeing lower ARPU (average revenue per user) from lower ARPU customers, so the kind of commercial investment we were making into customers is no longer justified.”
What this means in a language approaching English is that Vodafone is no longer keen to plough its own cash into subsidising 3G handset sales, because punters aren’t shelling out for enough of their extra services to make it worth their while.
Video calling
Vodafone hoped that its 3G-equipped customers would be making use of what was supposed to be one of the great selling points of 3G, video calls, but yesterday the company admitted defeat, sighing, “Video calling is not a service that is used by a lot of people.”
Mobile TV
Mobile TV has, however, proved popular, with Vodafone claiming that, “more than 50 per cent of people who buy a 3G phone in our UK stores are taking a mobile TV package, and most are adopting the [premium] £10 package.”
This claim is rather at odds with the Enders report, which found that 76 per cent of all phone users surveyed said they had no interest whatsoever in mobile TV.
Alice Enders, the big cheese of the analyst firm, explained that this disparity may be down to the very small number of people using 3G services being the ones interested in mobile TV.
3G obsessed
Enders suggested that Vodafone’s “obsessive over-engagement in 3G” – reflected in the less popular 3G handsets sharing the same amount of store-space with non-3G devices – had led to the company suffering financially because most punters simply weren’t interested in anything other than voice and text services.
Not surprisingly, the UK’s only 3G-only network, 3, were quick to quibble about the claims, insisting that the wild popularity of their downloadable music and mobile TV services is proof positive that the demand is there – if the technology is marketed correctly.
Frothing like a cappuccino machine on overdrive, 3’s spokesperson insisted that, “Uptake is phenomenal and growing day by day…..We’re even rivalling traditional music suppliers. We’re second only to iTunes in terms of downloads… and the World Cup really put mobile TV on the map.”
The spokesperson went on to blame a “lack of maturity” from the other 3G operators, claiming that “some incumbent operators” had found it could “suit their commercial model to keep some of their users on old technology.”
With Vodafone rapidly cooling on 3G, it begs the question whether any of the operators who invested vast amounts of moolah on 3G licences and infrastructure will ever get to see their flthy lucre again.
What are your thoughts/actions about Video calling on your mobile? Take 10 second survey
Vodafone
3 August, 2006
Rural WiFi Boost From Ofcom?
UK regulator Ofcom is looking at plans to introduce high speed Internet access to broadband-starved remote areas by boosting the power of Wi-Fi signals.
Talking to the BBC, James Saunders, chief marketing honcho of Wi-Fi suppliers, The Cloud, welcomed consultation from Ofcom, adding that the turbo-charged Wi-Fi could, “provide great opportunities in rural areas that are currently without broadband. It makes it much more possible to put up a wireless network.”
Current limitations on the strength of Wi-Fi signals in the UK makes it prohibitively expensive to provide coverage to sparsely populated rural areas, but cranking up the power would make it possible to reach far more users without breaking the bank.
The bigwigs and boffins at Ofcom are currently mulling over the pros and cons of three proposals.
The first would see wireless signals (which are restricted to a tenth of the power permitted in the US) in all parts of the UK; the second would see the power increase limited to rural areas only; while the third option would include a balance of the first two plans, backed by a code of collaboration to minimise signal interference.
City networks
Although most UK towns and cities offer outside Wi-Fi access through hotspots in cafes, pubs and libraries, city-wide seamless networks are yet to be established.
Known as mesh networks, these let Wi-Fi’d folks roam freely from hotspot to hotspot without any interruption to their Internet access.
Although such networks are already starting to roll out in the US, the restricted Wi-Fi transmission levels in the UK mean that mesh networks would currently be prohibitively expensive in the UK.
Selina Lo, chief executive of home Wi-Fi antenna firm Ruckus explained, “With lower power you have to use a lot more access points to form the network.”
“A typical network will have hundreds or low thousands of access points. If you have power limits, these nodes have to be closer together and you need a lot more nodes,” she added
Ruckus, who are currently working with Google to test a free mesh network in Mountain View, California, have developed a new Wi-Fi antenna to help home users connect to city networks.
“People running city networks know that the Wi-Fi in customers’ home equipment is not powerful enough to do an outdoor long range connection….our device is designed to bridge that connection,” said Ms Lo.
Interference
Although boosting Wi-Fi signals looks to be a top notch idea, it’s not without its drawbacks in urban areas, where US hotspot operators are already experiencing “significant” interference between suppliers.
Despite this, Saunders said The Cloud was committed to making mesh networks happen in the UK in the future, but warned that, “a number of factors are needed to make mesh networks economical”.
The company is, however, already working with the Corporation of London to deploy a mesh network in the City.
The Cloud
Ruckus
Offcom
1 August, 2006
Vodafone 3G On Apple MacBook Via USB
Well they got there finally, Vodafone UK have announced that they’re releasing the less than catchy named Vodafone Mobile Connect USB Modem in the Autumn. It will support their 3G data service and, surprise, surprise, connect to computers using a USB lead. Rather neatly the software disks aren’t needed, as they’re installed directly from the modem.
This advance will broaden out the service to any machine that doesn’t have a full sized PCMCIA/PC Card slot because it’s too old, or it’s too modern, like the some of the new laptops which only support the smaller ExpressCard, or their Apple Macintosh’s that might not support either.
Connection to the HSDPA network, in optimum conditions, will be a healthy 1.4Mbps receive and 384Kbps transmit. Currently Vodafone high-speed 3G network covers the major conurbations in the UK, but not the whole of the UK. Their stated plans are 75% of the population by summer 2007.
There will be a suggested limit of 1Gb of data transfered a month. Those who do not comply “may be asked to moderate their usage,” and persistent usage in excess of the limit “may also result in suspension or termination of the customer’s service.”
1 August, 2006
One Laptop Per Child Programme Claims 4 Million Orders
Yesterday, a spokesperson for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme revealed that Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have all tendered commitments to purchase one million Linux laptops through the ambitious US-based programme.
As we reported back in November last year, OLPC aims to distribute millions of Linux-based laptop computers to needy children in developing countries around the world, all for free.
The Linux-based laptops come with their own power sources (including wind-up) and offer a dual-mode display, which gives users a full-colour, transmissive DVD mode and a secondary black and white reflective and sunlight-readable display at 3× the resolution.
The hard-disk free machines – still in the ‘concept’ stage – will be powered by a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, and come with 500MB of Flash memory.
Sporting four USB ports, the laptops will be fitted with wireless broadband that allows them to work as a mesh network.
This means that each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbour and create ad hoc, local area networks for sharing data and connections.
The OLPC has stated that it will begin production when it has paid-for orders for between five million and 10m laptops, and plans to have units ready for shipment by the end of 2006 or early 2007.
Nicholas Negroponte, head of the OLPC project and former director of MIT Media Labs also sees the project as a means to promote the mass adoption of Linux.
So far, AMD, eBay, Google, Nortel, Red Hat, and a number of other technology companies have all signed up to help support the project
Not everyone is so enthusiastic about the project though, with India’s Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee describing it as “pedagogically suspect,” adding that the country needed to put teachers in classrooms before worrying about buying laptops for students.
(To be honest, we had to look up what ‘pedagogically’ meant, and can tell you that it means “In a didactic manner”)
One Laptop Per Child
1 August, 2006
Annual Global Mobile Shipments To Reach 1.5 billion By 2011
Global sales of handsets are set to reach 1.5 billion in five years, according to a new report by IT research firm Analysys.
The “Evolution of Mobile Handsets to 2011 and Beyond” study forecasts that mobiles will evolve into three broad categories, comprising voice-centric, converged-function and specialist handsets.
After imbibing deeply on a large bowl of buzzwords, report author Dr Yanli Suo-Saunders exploded into a frenzy of tech-speak, “The handset market is transforming as traditional voice-centric devices diversify with the incorporation of a range of multimedia functions.”
“Future handsets will develop into voice-centric, converged-function and specialist categories, driven by increasingly segmented consumer demand,” he continued, as we grappled to sync up with his mindshare paradigm shift.
The good doctor reckoned that voice-centric handsets will remain the largest single product category in emerging markets; while developed economies will see converged-function and specialist handsets taking the lead in 2011.
Ball rubbing
After giving their crystal ball a good rub, the report authors predicted that annual global handset shipments will reach 1.5 billion in 2011 – up from just over 800 million in 2005 – while voice-centric handsets will still make up more than half of shipments in emerging markets in 2011.
Converged-function handsets look set to become a mainstream product in developed markets by 2011, hogging over 30% of the market, with a range of specialist handsets looking to be the biggest sellers in the majority of developed economies by the same time period.
Analysys
26 July, 2006
Live Traffic Updates Added To Google Maps For Mobile
The ever-expanding selection of Google features just grew by one as they announce that they’re providing Live Traffic updates to mobile phones in 30 US cities and partial information in many others.
The traffic-concious will be able to fire their mobile phones up, look at Google Maps For Mobile (or GMM as those in the trade call it) and see the masses of traffic jams appear before their very eyes.
The most up-to-date traffic information will be sent directly to the users’ call phone, showing the severity of the delays on commuter routes using red, yellow, and green overlays. The amount of time the travelers are likely to be delayed is also shown on the mobile.
Google are slightly playing catchup with Yahoo on this one, as they been plotting live traffic on Yahoo Maps since March 2005.
Back in November 2005 we broke the story about the existence of GPS-using code in Google Local For Mobile, but this has yet to be officially enabled.
On the back of the Mobile Maps news, Google also announced that users now have the ability to customize the content that appears on the mobile version of their Personalized Homepage, making it even easier for mobile phone users to quickly get the information they need when away from their computers.
Google Maps For Mobile
25 July, 2006
Brits Love Affair With Mobiles Continues
In the largest UK study of its kind, the Mobile Life Report has revealed our attitudes towards mobile phones and how they have impacted on our lives, with more than 90% of UK mobile users saying they can’t get through the day without using their phone.
More than 16,500 people were surveyed for the report, which was published by The Carphone Warehouse in collaboration with the London School of Economics.
Text-tastic
The report revealed that the British love affair with texting is still in full flow, with people sending an average 3.6 mobile text messages a day compared with 2.8 voice calls a day.
Not surprisingly, it’s amongst da yoot that texting is the most popular with 51% of 18-24 year-olds sending/receiving at least six text messages a day, but with only 15% troubling themselves to have six or more mobile phone conversations a day.
Better than the tele
In the same 18-24 years old age bracket, mobile phones were declared to be more important than television (26% to 11%), with the figure jumping to 32% for women in the same age group.
Thievery
Mobiles continue to be hugely popular with muggers/thieves, with nearly one in ten people (9%) reporting that they’ve had a mobile phone stolen.
Not unexpectedly, 18 to 24 year olds were found to be at the most at risk, with 17% of women in that age group having had their phone purloined compared with 10% of men.
Citizen journalism
People were also found to be ready and willing to use their camera phones to record evidence of a crime (50%), or to snap a crime in progress (47%), with more than a third (36%) saying that they’d use their mobiles to grab a mugshot of a passing celebrity or newsworthy event.
Sex and mobiles
With a keen eye to garnering some press in the tabloids, the research bothered to ask about ‘relationships and mobiles’.
Lord knows why people bothered to answer these questions, but the survey found that a quarter of people bothered to disconnect their mobiles before indulging in a bit of hanky panky, with 11% switching them to silent (writer resists cheap joke about vibra-alerts) and 14% turning their phones off altogether.
The study also found that phones could be used to ward off unwelcome suitors, with over half of women under 25 admitting to getting out their mobiles in public situations to deter people from approaching them.
Tribes
For reasons best know to itself, the study also identified six tribes or groups of mobile phone users.
These are:
Generation Mobile – single, style conscious, 18-24 year olds who are students or working in their first jobs
Phonatics – single, employed folks aged 18-34 who elevate their mobile into being their most important electronic possession.
Practical Parents – young, cost-conscious families aged 18-34 who choose their mobiles for practical rather than style or function.
Smart Connecteds – affluent families and professionals aged 25-44 who use their mobile to organise their hectic work and social lives.
Fingers & Thumbs – married, middle-aged or retired folks with children or grandchildren.
Silver Cynics – affluent, married with children rapidly heading for retirement.
Mobile Life Report
25 July, 2006