Joia's blog

2010-07-19T17:47:00.004+01:00

(c) Joia Shillingford

Technology for art’s sake

What can technology contribute to art? The creators project, a partnership with chip-company Intel and style magazine Vice, sought to answer this question, or at least have fun exploring it.

The creators project is launching in five cities. First was New York, London was last weekend (Friday 16/Saturday 17) and Sao Paulo, Seoul and Beijing are to follow.

Among the exhibits was a chair that seeks to complement the colours of the sitter’s clothes (above) and bathe them in a halo of light.

Also popular were a forest with embedded music, a Triptych of light sculptures, which changed as people approached, and a modern take on old-fashioned computer games. Among the collaborators were London-born DJ and producer Mark Ronson (on the panel at Friday’s press conference) and fellow London musician Tinchy Stryder.

The project team began by selecting artists they wanted to work with in various cities but people are now contacting them and saying they want to be part of the global experiment.

Perhaps surprisingly, given its influence on popular culture, few of the exhibits had any connection with mobile communication. However, one of the projects under the creators umbrella - from Hojun Song of South Korea - is the Open Source Satellite Initiative, which “strives to give everyone the means to send his or her own little hunk of metal into orbit using a combination of everyday items like an iPod, a portable radio, and a modified directional antenna”.

More at thecreatorsproject.com

2009-10-08T19:27:00.005+01:00

Post-traumatic web loss

It was a tough week without the web for Nigel Hawthorn, European marketing manager at Blue Coat Systems, who took part in an FT Digital Business challenge to see if he could give it up.

Though back online, he has not forgotten the stress. He emailed me from Africa earlier this week, saying “I am in Nairobi in Kenya and keep on having flashbacks to not having access to the web. For example I was supposed to be picked up at the airport, but due to traffic the taxi driver didn’t make it. As I didn’t have the phone number of the hotel, I used the web to find it and call them.”

“If I’d still been on my week without the web, I might still be standing and waiting,” says Nigel, who also sent me the cartoon above. What can I say except: “There, there Nigel, it’s all over now.”

More on:
www.ft.com/dbpodcast
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4a9e3d1c-b80c-11de-8ca9-00144feab49a.html
www.ft.com/digitalbusiness
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXFStZ8exM

2009-09-16T19:06:00.007+01:00

A week without the web

Next week I am watching one man's struggle to live without the
internet for a week for the Financial Times.

You can read about Nigel Hawthorn, European Marketing manager of Blue Coat's experiences at http://www.ft.com/digitalbusiness.

I'm delighted that today Nigel promised to restrict his access to
the internet at home, but a bit worried to hear on his Youtube post - at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXFStZ8exM - that he has an Apple iTouch.

So I am posting a photo of him. If anyone sees this man on a train or in an airport using his iTouch in the week of September 21, please contact me urgently.

2009-08-27T18:56:00.004+01:00

(c) Joia Shillingford

One to watch

Once a staple of science fiction, watch phones are set to become more widespread. Mobile network operator Orange began selling the LG watch phone at its Bond Street store in central London today.

The phone has a cool retro 70s look and was one of the most interesting products at the big mobile shindig, the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona this February. The phone costs £500.

People queued to be first to own one when the store opened at 8am. The watch phone has a touch sensitive screen, and can take voice commands of the “Call Bob” variety. LG also makes a watch phone for high-fashion brand Prada.

2008-12-21T19:02:00.006Z

(c)Joia Shillingford

Making the news, not filtering it

SocialMedian, the news filtering and recommendation website founded by New York-based internet entrepreneur Jason Goldberg, has been acquired by German business networking site Xing.

Goldberg, founder of US jobs website Jobster, will move to Xing’s headquarters in Hamburg as a vice president of the business.

XING, which claims 6.5 million business users, plans to offer its members filtered news on topics that tie in with their interests or business needs.

“We want to offer our members the greatest value in their networks, and this includes having the relevant news at their fingertips,” said Lars Hinrichs, chief executive and founder of XING. “Now we have the technology necessary to do so.

“We're also excited to have someone like Jason working with us to develop the XING ecosystem of partnerships with leading companies around the world.”

SocialMedian sends out emails of the top stories on topics subscribers select. Recent topics have included the credit crunch and the US elections.

The emails can be received on mobile devices, such as the BlackBerry, or on PCs. Or users can interact directly with the site at www.socialmedian.com.

XING also has offices in Barcelona, Istanbul and Beijing. The deal was announced on December 19.

More on: http://blog.xing.com/category/english

2008-10-27T15:49:00.004Z

(c)Joia Shillingford 2008

Driving without due care and attention

A clever piece of concept art at the Frieze Art Fair in London this month showed a wall of text messages.

In front of them, stood a Witness Appeal board for a fatal traffic accident between a lorry and a cyclist. A reminder not to text while driving.

2008-08-08T00:49:00.001+01:00

Battery-free BlackBerry

A guest on CBS News on August 7 came up with the alarming (if true) suggestion that China’s intelligence service has the technology to switch on a BlackBerry when it is switched off, and to turn the microphone on. He advised visitors to remove the battery from their BlackBerry when it is not in use.

2008-05-26T04:19:00.003+01:00

Mobile's the Star

In the Hong Kong film The Detective (currently showing on Virgin Atlantic to the US), a Nokia N-series phone features so often it is almost one of the characters.

The phone is used by actor Aaron Kwok - who plays Detective Tam - to store and take pictures in a murder investigation. The film is edgy and well directed by Oxide Pang Chun. The action begins when Tam searches for an elusive woman, with just a photo to go on...

2008-05-26T04:14:00.006+01:00

(c) Joia Shillingford 2008

Mobiles good enough to eat

Almost anything can be the inspiration for a new mobile phone, it seems.

At the China Design Now exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Lenovo - which was sold to the Chinese - is showing a phone inspired by a traditional Chinese dish - the hotpot. It's the second on the left.

2008-03-12T14:09:00.006Z

Voicemail-to-SMS company broadens focus

Spinvox, the UK business best known for converting mobile voicemail to texts, has hired speech expert Tony Robinson to head up its Advanced Speech Group.
Robinson and Phil Woodland, a consultant to Spinvox, worked together at Cambridge University on the Hidden Markov Model Toolkit (HTK), a way of solving two fundamental problems with speech recognition systems:
1/That they find it hard to recognise continuous speech
2/That they are speaker dependent, working best when trained to recognise the speech characteristics of a particular user.

Daniel Doulton, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Spinvox, says having Tony Robinson working for the business full time will mean it can further speed up its voice to text/email product. “He brings with him further breakthroughs,” said Doulton. “We will improve the system’s ability to self-learn and to ‘ask’ for help with converting certain words to text.”

The company is positioning itself as a wider speech recognition business and is thought to be a possible acquisition target for a larger player. Doulton expects the company to move into new areas of speech recognition, such as replacing some of those automated phone systems by late 2009. You know the ones that tell you to “press 1, if you want to buy a ticket…press 17 (or that's how it feels) if you have lost your baggage”. He says “the technology could be available sooner; it’s a question of getting the distribution arrangements in place.”

The company has recently broadened out from its main product by developing related products, including, most recently, two systems for Vodafone Spain launched in February.

These allow callers to Vodafone customers to press 1 to dictate a text message verbally if the person they are calling is not available and they don’t want to leave a voicemail. Another product allows Vodafone Spain customers to press 115 to dictate a text message verbally – from choice, rather than because the recipient isn’t answering.

The products are not exclusive to Vodafone Spain and Doulton expects Spinvox to sign up several more customers for them later this year.

Spinvox has also added a product that enables people to blog using voice-to-text conversion from a mobile or fixed line, or to update social networking sites like facebook or text-message based Twitter.

2008-02-26T18:29:00.004Z

What´s new in mobiles?

Want a "life partner to hold"? To play the music you like and give you a "rousing climax"? To touch? This is what Samsung promised for its mobiles at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

But before you start wondering why your current mobile is underperforming in this area, the "life partner" is a phone that will help you blog or record the important aspects of your life in photos, thoughts, schedules and texts.

And that "rousing climax", that´s how music sounds when you listen to the Bang & Olufson improved sound quality on some of its mobiles, claims Samsung, the Taiwanese company.

"With 11 new phones, Samsung is also aiming to attack some of the lower tier markets, but the focus at the moment remains mid to high tier," says Richard Windsor, communications hardware analyst at brokers Nomura. "This makes sense as Motorola continues to languish, making it much easier for Samsung to reach its goal of 16% market share."

Samsung´s stainless steel flagship phone called Soul, has a 5 megapixel camera with stabiliser, fast data speeds, amplifier by B&O and is 12.9mm thin.
"It´s not only beautiful, it has the full range of functions," says Samsung´s Yong Ho Shin, who is clearly in love.

Judging by the amount of footfall on its stand, Nokia, the Finnish handset giant, also has a major hit on its hands with the N96, essentially a tiny computer that is the next step on from its existing N95. Its stand was the busiest of the handset makers on the first day of the show.

All four of Nokia´s new phones running the Symbian operating system "incorporate assisted-GPS powered navigation, imaging and music functions but only the N96 is optimised to do them all at an optimum level of performance," says Windsor.

But the overriding trend in new handsets was touch, touch and more touch. Or in mobile jargon: touchscreens. This trend shows just how much Apple´s touch-operated iPhone has influenced mobile phone design.

LG really emphasised ease of use at its press conference and in its products. Its top-of-the-range LG-KF700 has a choice of three different types of control: pictures you press or browse through with a finger; a dial at the side of the phone you can scroll with a thumb; or a keypad.

This gives the user real choice about how to operate the phone and in its shiny chrome-look casing, is right on trend. LG also demonstrated a prototype of a watch phone but was reluctant to give details on a release date.

And of course, its marketing features the word ´touch´ again as in "Smartly touchable, more usable." But despite the hype, life partners in the traditional sense do not yet come packaged into a phone.

2008-02-15T18:00:00.004Z

Juan Manuel Soriano of OpenBox New Media (c)Joia Shillingford

Quotes of the Mobile World Congress

We see touchscreens as a growing trend in the mobile industry..”
Dr Skott Ahn, president and chief executive, Mobile Communications, LG Electronics, 1:30pm Monday 11 February, first day of the show.

“One of the next big things is the move to mobile broadband”
Pat Russo, chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, 12 noon, Tuesday 12 February, announcing an R&D joint venture with NEC of Japan on Long Term Evolution/4G technology.

“When it comes to market competition, we will cut each others’ throats nicely”
Hamid Akhavan, chief executive of T-Mobile, 6:30pm on Wednesday 13 February, stating that the the Next Generation Mobile Networks alliance on LTE standards won't remove competition.

“How was last night’s party?”
Unknown MWC visitor on his mobile, 11:25am, Thursday 14 February.

“I’m too tired for sex”
Juan Manuel Soriano, product manager of mobile games company OpenBox New Media, 6:30pm on Thursday 14 February, the last day of the show.

2008-02-14T15:58:00.003Z

Mobile fest sees touch screens, faster broadband dominate

More than 55,000 visitors (including delegates and exhibitors) attended the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, according to its organisers the GSM Association. The three-day conference featured more than 230 chief executives and other high-level speakers.

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, filmmaker Robert Redford, Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia, Black-Eyed-Peas´ singer will.i.am and actress Isabella Rossellini were among the speakers at the Congress.

Surprisingly, since it was three years since the Congress was last in Cannes, many visitors were still wistful about attending the show there, where it was on a smaller scale, with more ad hoc networking.

Sadly the Catalonian crime wave continued unabated, with many reports of thefts in downtown Barcelona. This was despite the police asking visitors to take off their show passes as they got on to the metro.

One O2 employee described the police as very well organised with an English to Spanish translator on hand to help victims of crime – he had his wallet stolen – to report the thefts. And a consultant trying to get on to the metro found that as he tried to board the train two girls already on it, blocked his path.

Meanwhile a thief on the platform reached for his wallet. He managed to fend him off but another delegate reported a colleague´s wallet being stolen on the metro from his front trouser pocket while he was with two co-workers. Not one of the three saw it happen.

Observing, analysing and reporting on the Congress were 2,700 international print, Web and broadcast media. This year the press office was sponsored by Huawei and it was well equipped for about the first time ever.

The Congress also hosted 1,300 exhibitors across 1,500 stands with approximately 29,000 square metres of exhibition space and 30,000 of square metres of hospitality space, reflecting the fact that people come to the show to schmooze as well as do deals and announce them.

This year, the mobile entertainment hall (Hall 7) was busy and buzzy, unlike last year when it was a lot quieter reflecting the fact that as more of the world´s mobile users get 3G (or 3G plus HSPA) for higher data speeds, content is really starting to take off.

Next Generation Mobile Networks
Key themes of the Congress were that touch screens have gained real momentum as established handset makers seek to keep up with Apple´s iPhone and that lots of companies are investing in LTE (Long Term Evolution) based technologies to provide the high-speed mobile broadband successor to 3G, though some will introduce Mobile Wi-Max (like faster Wi-Fi for cities) beforehand.

Alcatel-Lucent boss Patricia Russo co-announced an agreement to combine its LTE R&D efforts with those of NEC of Japan to come up with a common platform. The motive: to increase speed to market by pooling resources.

Further evidence that the pace of change is speeding up in the industry was evident at a meeting of industry alliance Next Generation Mobile Networks. Its members are major industry players determined to get LTE - essentially really fast mobile broadband of up to 100 megabits a second off the ground faster than the usual standards body process could.

T-Mobile´s pavilion at the show saw a top table including: Dr Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm; Hamid Akhavan, chief executive of T-Mobile and chair of the NGMN; Dr Horst Lennertz of E-Plus´ supervisory board; and the CTOs of Telstra and Ericsson among others all in one room for an hour.

“The record attendance figures at this year’s Congress reflect both the extraordinary and compelling conference programme, which covered a broad range of topics from Long-Term Evolution to made-for-mobile short films to the environment, and the high quality of the exhibition,” said John Hoffman, CEO of the GSMA’s conference division.

“We are also delighted by the seniority of the people that have traveled from all over the world to Barcelona for the Congress - more than 43% of conference attendees hold C-level (Chief Executive Office, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operations Officer or Chief Financial Officer) positions within their organisations.”

The event was sponsored by a number of companies, including LG and Telefonica. The EC´s Viviane Reding also caused a bit of a stir as she highlighted the need for lower data roaming charges, with a number of operators, including O2 and 3, announcing lower roaming charges ahead of any EC decision: 3 UK in the week before the show and 02 in January.

2007-11-30T11:17:00.000Z

Mobiles: less portable than you think

Telecoms and broadcasting regulator Ofcom said on Thursday, it is cutting the time it takes to switch existing UK mobile numbers to a new network from five days to two hours.

This will boost competition between different mobile network operators. Ofcom has previously said the five-day delay in the UK lagged behind “best practice” in other countries.

In Ireland a mobile number can often be transferred to another network in as little as 20 minutes, according to a mobile company executive.

Kevin Russell, chief executive of mobile network 3 UK said: "Ofcom have clearly looked at other international markets and have listened to consumers. The move to a customer-led two-hour porting system should have been made much earlier, but to have a clear decision today is important.

“What we now need is confidence that the move…will be implemented in the timeframe laid out and that the deadlines set will be effectively enforced."

Not that the deadline is all that fast. Two hour transfers for mobile numbers must be implemented by 1 September 2009. Before that the five-day delay must be reduced to 2 days by 1 April 2008.

2007-11-21T19:44:00.000Z

©Joia Shillingford 2007

Mobile speakers

A bluetooth speaker from Sony Ericsson's press launch at Scala in London's Kings Cross earlier this month. The speaker can play music stored on a Sony Ericsson phone without wires having to be attached.

It can't be that far away, though. Bluetooth devices linked to mobile phones usually need to be within a range of 10 metres. The Portable Bluetooth Speaker MBS-100 can play for five hours on a rechargeable battery and is available this quarter (Q4 2007).

2007-11-12T20:11:00.001Z

©Joia Shillingford 2007

Bluetooth watch tells more than the time

Want to avoid playing with your mobile in meetings? Or feel it is too far down your bag to fish it out. Sony Ericsson customers can discreetly look at a Bluetooth watch to see who has called or if they have a new text message.

The watches look cool and slightly retro and cost around £500. But they don't deal with the fact that looking at your watch in company can also seem a bit rude. Executives will be perfecting those surreptitious glances.

Another feature it would be good to see in the future would be the caller ID of the text message sender as opposed to just notification of the fact that a new message has arrived.

2007-08-26T11:40:00.000+01:00

Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got a mobile?

The mobile handset feature most likely to displace a stand-alone device for British users (after the phone) is the alarm clock, according to UK telecoms regulator Ofcom’s annual survey.

This is followed by the camera. A significant minority of people also say their mobile is substituting for their stand-alone portable music player or games console.

The survey found that household spending on mobile phones has fallen by two per cent in the UK to £31.72 a month, largely due to increased competition leading to price cuts.

More on http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/cmr07/

2007-06-26T11:13:00.000+01:00

Always-on mobiles

Motorola has filed a US patent for a solar-powered mobile that will be charged by light filtering through its display screen, according to the CIO website.

The sun will keep the mobile constantly powered up, without the need for a charger.

The same article mentions that Nokia has applied for a US patent to cover technology “to warn cell phone users of impending lightning strikes”.

More on:
http://www.cio.com/article/119108/Solar_Power_to_Fuel
_Cell_Phones

2007-06-20T10:41:00.001+01:00

Sharing ideas on mobile use

Nokia, the mobile handset maker, and Vodafone, the mobile operator, have set up a website to help people and organisations share ideas on using mobile communications for social and environmental benefit.

The site is in the Wiki format so anyone can add information, such as advice, comment and case studies.

The site, www.shareideas.org, was created in response to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) calls for better tools and information to help them use mobile services more effectively in their work.

2007-06-14T23:49:00.001+01:00

New uses for fish oil

Ericsson, the Swedish mobile equipment company, is hoping to win more business in India and China, partly by helping operators use biofuels to power base stations in remote areas. So says The Wall Street Journal Europe in a long article which mentions some unusual fuels.

In one area of India, cotton and fish oil are being used to power mobile transmission equipment, according to the article. Ericsson is also said to be providing easier finance terms to these developing countries. More on: www.wsj.com.

2007-06-11T18:15:00.001+01:00

Intimacy of strangers takes off

A delightful 20-minute film showing real people on their mobiles
is getting an airing as one of Virgin Atlantic's June in-flight
entertainment choices.

If you like it, you can vote for it while airborne as it forms part
of the Virgin/NFTS short-film scheme.

2007-06-11T18:05:00.001+01:00

Google eyes mobile YouTube

A very interesting post on the blog of Jason Goldberg (of online career networking site Jobster) shows where Google's video sharing site YouTube may be going next. See June 7 story headed You are who you hire.

More on: http://jobster.blogs.com/

2007-05-29T15:58:00.001+01:00

Language learning on the go

Nokia has launched a service in China that delivers English lessons to mobile phone users.

Called Mobiledu, the service could be launched in other countries.

Downloads consist of text and audio and cost 26 cents. They are aimed at people who are working.

More on: www.wsj.com (subscription needed)

2007-05-23T19:06:00.000+01:00

They would say that, wouldn't they?

The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association for mobile operators, believes that the proposed EU regulation of roaming services, which was approved by a vote in the European Parliament yesterday, is unnecessary, will curb competition and risks long-term harm to consumers.

It says: "The proposed price cap of 49 Euro cents per minute for outgoing calls, excluding VAT, and 24 Euro cents per minute for receiving calls will force many European mobile operators to offer roaming services at a level that leaves them no scope to compete with each other on price and on new services.

"Moreover, the proposed annual decreases in these price caps appear to be arbitrary and bear no relation to the expected evolution of roaming costs."

It's not surprising that the industry body representing GSM mobile operators and others feels that way. Roaming has been very profitable for its members. But lower mobile call costs between EC countries could help increase the productivity of European business people.

Maybe the US model of business being conducted on mobiles round the hotel pool will start to take hold. Quelle horreur!

2007-05-23T18:37:00.000+01:00

Call global, pay local says eqo

Eqo, a cheap way of making international calls from mobile phones, launched on Wednesday.

It works a bit like Skype, the system for making voice calls over the internet. But it is, if anything, easier and voice quality in the demonstration was good.

To get the eqo service, the user needs to log on to www.eqo.com, and enter their mobile number. They will receive a link. Clicking on the link automatically downloads the eqo software.

Once downloaded, the mobile phone user can call anyone else with the eqo service for cost of a local mobile call. If the recipient does not have eqo or is on a landline, the caller pays the cost of a local mobile call plus 1p or 2p a minute for calls to the US or Western Europe.

The local call charge goes to their existing mobile operator and the 1p or 2p goes to eqo and its service providers. Other call destinations, such as to India, are likely to cost a bit more (see eqo website).

The mobile user will need to be on a data tariff. Calls are cheap because they are transmitted over a nearby node on the internet and travel over the Net for most of their journey.

2007-05-22T12:45:00.000+01:00

Off grid in Africa

Here's a picture of Motorola's wind and solar-powered base station in Namibia (see previous story).

2007-05-17T13:34:00.000+01:00

Motorola’s green base station ©Joia Shillingford 2007

Motorola goes off grid

Motorola said yesterday it has installed a wind and solar-energy base station in Namibia. The base station is located at African mobile operator MTC’s site at Dordabis village in the Khomas region.

“With the implementation of cell sites into more remote areas this Motorola solution provides us with an efficient and reliable alternative to the often costly roll-out of mains grid electricity,” said Albertus Aochamub, corporate services general manager, MTC Namibia.

"The wind and solar cell site trial is proof of our commitment to our customers to provide the essential communication services needed in the region."

In some parts of Africa, there can be long delays in getting connected to the electricity grid. However, as the Dordabis site is a trial, there is a possibility of re-connecting it to the mains if there are problems.

According to Motorola: "The main grid physical line has been left in place however on the 30th April the power source for driving the cellsite was switched over to the Motorola wind and solar solution. The wind and solar solution is the primary power source for the site for the period of the trial."

Motorola's wind and solar base station was displayed at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February (see picture above) and has the support of the GSM Association’s Development Fund. The stand next door at 3GSM was an Ericsson demo of how biofuels could be used to power base stations.

www.motorola.com/reach/windandsolartrial

2007-05-14T14:14:00.000+01:00

Improving the mobile user experience

The Mobile User Experience (MEX) event held in London earlier this month saw mobile experts from rival companies coming together in seminars and lectures to discuss improvements to handsets. It was a bit like being back at university.

Delegates suggested there was a lot to learn from other industries, such as the car and airline businesses. “Car makers have whole teams working on getting the right door-thud sound,” said Hampus Jakobssen, vice president business development at The Astonishing Tribe, one of the co-sponsors of the PMN publications event.

Another delegate pointed out that airlines were very good at surveying customers regularly.

By contrast, some mobile phone features suggest that insufficient time has been spent on creating a good user experience. Ken Blakeslee of Web Mobility Ventures, who was moderating one of the seminars, said: “I couldn’t get MMS (multimedia messaging) to work but now I have software from Shozu.com on my phone and it is easy to send a photo.”

Delegates at the event also looked at whether mobiles could use some of the information they already have built-in or available via the mobile network to respond more intelligently to a changing environment – such as day moving into night.

2007-05-09T09:46:00.000+01:00

Mobile TV

Vodafone's billboard for its mobile TV product - captured earlier this month in London's Victoria station - should appeal to exhausted commuters. Though in today's crowded trains they may end up having to watch TV standing up, rather than sprawled on a seat.

2007-03-16T15:52:00.001Z

Retro mobiles get fashionable

Brick-sized mobiles are making a comeback – at least on clothing.
Swedish fashion retailer H&M is selling hoodies covered in a
pattern composed of retro mobiles and videotapes. Is old
technology suddenly cool?

A forerunner of this trend was perhaps Samsung, which last year
introduced a mobile that looks like a retro calculator.

Technorati tags: mobile, clothing, fashion, calculator, H&M

2007-03-16T03:39:00.000Z

Driving while texting

In America’s Washington State, there’s an attempt to put a law on the statute books that outlaws Driving While Texting (DWT), according to Fox 5 News.

The acronym DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) is better known in the US, but if DWT is banned it could become just as common a term.

Certainly the number of Americans talking or texting into handheld handsets while driving is surprisingly high.

2006-11-02T19:02:00.000Z

Nokia succumbs to the charms of Silicon Valley

Nokia, the Finnish mobile maker, has set up a research centre in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley. The centre will work closely with Stanford University, under a three-year agreement.

The areas it will focus on, according to Nokia, are:

“Context-aware content and communities...in the areas of search, advertising and recommendation engines;

Wireless grids, that enable a large number of diverse devices to work together;

Advanced user interfaces and visual media, for Nokia multimedia computers;

Innovation radio and sensor networks, offering novel applications of emerging short-range radio technologies."

Nokia Research Center Palo Alto will employ 35 staff to begin with, rising to 100, and will incorporate research into project-oriented mobile computing courses. Some of the novel ideas it hopes to come up with, will be used and tested by staff and students at Stanford University.

The centre is the second Nokia has set up in the US this year. In April it opened a research centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which works closely with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, another leading US university.

More on:
www.nokia.com

2006-09-19T10:35:00.000+01:00

Fuel-cell camera

Millennium Cell and Gecko Energy Technologies have developed a fuel-cell powered wireless camera prototype system with infrared sensing and audio capability.

The prototype was yesterday set to be demonstraed at the US-based Homeland Defense Conference sponsored by InSitech, but the idea of a quick to recharge camera could appeal to consumers.

The camera integrates Millennium Cell's Hydrogen on Demand sodium borohydride fuel cells and Gecko's PowerSkin technology into a hydrogen battery.

The battery can also power remote surveillance equipment and portable-device recharging applications.

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193002311

2006-09-15T13:35:00.000+01:00

Microsoft sings a new Zune

Microsoft on Thursday revealed new details about Zune, its answer to Apple’s iPod digital music player. It says users of Zune will be able to download and share music wirelessly when it becomes available in the run up to Christmas.

The US software company’s announcement follows news from Apple that users of its new video download service will be able to stream films (downloaded using a PC) to a TV set.

The service will require an iTV device at the TV end, which the BBC business website, says is the size of four CDs.

On Thursday analysts at Piper Jaffrey were speculating that Apple could be planning to launch a mobile phone with Ipod music and video features within months.

NBC, the US TV network company, has also launched a clearing house for digital video.

More on:
http://www.FT.com
http://www.BBC.co.uk/news/business
http//blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/

2006-08-30T17:17:00.000+01:00

Press finds its mojo

Gannett, the world’s biggest newspaper group, has invested in “mojos” - mobile journalists, according to a special report on the newspaper industry in The Economist (August 26-September 1 edition). The idea is to make its journalism more local.

Instead of being based in an office, the mojos will use laptops and stay “permanently encamped in community hubs”.

More on: www.economist.com

Technorati tags: mojos, mobile journalists

2006-08-07T10:37:00.000+01:00

ITV to broadcast on 3

From this autumn, ITV1 - a UK terrestrial TV channel - and ITV Play, ITV’s participation channel, will be streamed live to mobiles on 3’s UK network. Broadcaster ITV has signed an exclusive third generation (3G) mobile licence with 3 for six months.

Charles Allen, chief executive of ITV, said: “We are delighted that we are teaming up with 3 to be the first terrestrial broadcaster in the UK to launch this kind of service. This is a bold new service from ITV and 3 which makes the ambition of fully streamed mobile TV a reality.”

The 3 network has been an early adopter of TV over mobile in the UK. The deal also makes sense for ITV, which has seen its advertising revenues plummet and audience share drop as viewers and advertisers are lured away by the internet and new digital channels. The 3 network has 3.5 million customers in the UK, so the deal could boost ITV's audience reach.

ITV has already partnered with 3 and rivals Orange and O2 to enable subscribers to access some ITV content direct from their operator portals.

More on: www.itv.com

Technorati tags: mobile services, 3G, mobile TV

2006-08-02T21:07:00.000+01:00

Mobishows gain ground

Covers: mobile phones, mobisodes, mobishows, TV

Sports intellectual property company Player One and the mobile TV arm of UK production company TwoFour are getting together to make sports content for mobiles, they announced last week.

They are looking at two areas:

*Mobisodes - mobile video clips linked to existing TV shows or that involve repurposing existing TV content, for example to produce boxing highlights.

*Mobishows – made for mobile shows, including specially-shot footage as well as some archive TV footage.

Pete Russell, managing director of Player One, took the realistic view that subscriptions for mobile content are hard to sell, except around relatively short events, such as The Ashes cricket series. His company and TwoFour Mobile will produce a cricket mobishow before and during the series.

Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, head of TwoFour Mobile, said: “All the big three UK production companies - RDF, Endemol and TwoFour - have set up convergence TV divisions looking at content specifically for mobile and broadband.

“Ad revenue is going away from TV [and towards the internet] and, at the same time, viewers don’t want to watch so much advertising and are using Tivo [hard-disk recorders] to avoid it."

But he believes, mobile users will accept an advert at the beginning of a mobishow they want to watch.

“It’s all about capturing the camera phone demographic,” pointed out Russell.

2006-07-21T14:26:00.000+01:00

Mobile movies

Will people watch films on their mobiles? This was one of the questions debated at the Nokia Shorts launch on Thursday July 20. At the launch, Nokia aired 15-second short films shot on mobiles or other cameras for its last Shorts competition.

They were surprisingly good, ranging from clever filmic tricks - like shooting a couple’s Anniversary celebration backwards - to funny to touching.

The amusing Eggscape, showed an Egg escaping being turned into an omelette. Isn't he Precious was filmed from the perspective of a child on a swing being pushed by his father; so when the child swings up close all you see is dad’s mouth. Another Short shows life from the inside of a crisp packet.

In an audience debate, Kevin Macdonald, director of Touching the Void, said: “The initiative is breathing new life into short films, which had been previously been dead commercially. Short films were a kind of ‘calling card’ [for people wanting to make longer films]. What’s encouraging is that mobile phones create a new market for them.”

However he added: “No-one really wants to watch a [longer] movie on their mobile phone. Mobiles are great for things that require immediacy and I’m not sure movies are like that.”

But Elliot Grove, director of the Raindance film festival, took a more optimistic view. “People were expressing doubts about how useful the Ipod would be before it took off,” he said.

The deadline for submissions for the next Nokia Shorts competition is September 11. The competition is judged by a panel of experts, including Grove, with prizes including a trip to the Cannes film festival.

More on:
www.nokiashorts.com
www.Raindance.co.uk

2006-07-19T12:40:00.000+01:00

Early growth of 3.5G limited by lack of handsets

The number of 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers is set to grow more than ten fold from 2.5 million in 2006 to more than 300 million in 2011, according to Future Mobile Broadband: HSDPA, EV-DO, WiMAX & LTE, a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media. It defines 3.5G mobile broadband subscribers as those using HSDPA, HSUPA or EV-DO Revision A (or B), which offer faster data than plain old third-generation mobile (3G).

However, Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and co-author of the report, says that growth in 2006-07 will be restrained by a lack of compelling devices and content. He notes that most HSDPA services are launching with only PC cards and notebooks, although a number of early handsets are also arriving. "It is striking that as of June no major vendor has unveiled plans for EV-DO Rev. A handsets, although data cards are on the way," he says.

Saadi expects handsets to start to mature in 2008, leading to a sharp increase in 3.5G handset sales and subscribers in 2008-09. By 2011, 85% of 3.5G devices sold will be handsets, and the remaining 15% will be notebooks and PC cards, says the report.

It predicts that: "Mobile WiMAX will play a relatively minor role in the mobile broadband market through 2011, largely because Mobile WiMAX notebooks and tablets will not arrive in volume until 2008-09, and compelling Mobile WiMAX handsets won't arrive until 2010.

More on:
http://telecoms.msgfocus.com/c/12rhoWmIBRmb5DsqH

2006-04-27T19:31:00.000+01:00

Sony Ericsson launches mobile magazine

Sony Ericsson, the mobile handset maker, is using a Mobizine, a mobile magazine, as part of a brand awareness campaign for its latest Sony Walkman phone.

In its adverts, mobile users will be encouraged to text: mobi styl 1 to the number 63333. If they do, they will receive a link, which when clicked on, will deliver The Soundtrack to your Life magazine. This will include music and entertainment info daily, and gig info on Thursdays.

The Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone will hold up to 15 music CDs on a 512 Mb memory stick.

Mobizines were developed by UK-based Refresh Mobile. They cost between 3p and 10p to download and there are 17 Mobizines currently available, including a snack-sized Time Out.

www.mobizines.com

2006-04-11T16:03:00.000+01:00

Nokia’s average selling price above expectations

The average selling price of a Nokia handset globally was 103 euros in the first quarter of 2006, the Finnish handset maker pre-announced on Tuesday.

This was above its previous forecast that the average selling price (ASP) “in the first quarter would be flat to slightly down sequentially”. In the fourth quarter of 2005, the ASP was 99 euros. The company did not make any forecast for the second quarter of 2006.

Earlier this month, the company announced that it was going into the mobile applications hosting market with Nokia Mobility Hosting.

Research group Ovum forecasts that the size of the hosting market will double to 1.35 billion euros by 2009, from around 670m in 2005.

"We feel operating service platforms is one area that some operators will offload to outside parties in the coming years," said Jean-Charles Doineau, Service infrastructure practice leader, Ovum.

“Only a handful of vendors have started to look at the potential in this market, and Nokia is one of them.”

http://www.nokia.com

2006-04-04T13:12:00.000+01:00

Generation M keenest on mobile data

In its February Benchmark Survey, the measurement firm M:Metrics found that Generation M, 13 to 24-year-olds, are the most predisposed to use mobile data services. It believes that: “Content companies should not overstate the importance of this group, however, as subscribers 25 and older comprise in excess of 70% of mobile content consumers.”

In fact, 13 to 24-year-olds make up less than 20% of the mobile audience in the UK and Germany. In the UK, 62% of the Generation M group use one or more mobile application; in Germany the figure is 47%.

Games, video clips and handset personalisation, such as ringtones and “wallpaper” are all popular with this age group.

M:Metrics February survey of UK consumption of different types of mobile content across all age groups shows that after text messaging (83.6%), the most popular content application is photo messaging (26.6%), followed by browsed news and information (10.7%), with ringtones in fourth place.

2006-04-03T10:10:00.000+01:00

Study shows tumour risk from heavy mobile use

A Swedish study has found an increased risk of getting a brain tumour among heavy mobile users. Kjell Mild, who led the Swedish study, said the figures meant that heavy users of mobile phones had a 240% increased risk of a malignant tumour on the side of the head the phone is used.

He said his study was the biggest yet to look at long-term users of mobile phones. The phones have been available in Sweden longer than in many other countries – since 1984 in a portable form.

The Swedish National Institute for Working Life looked at the mobile phone use of 2,200 cancer patients and an equal number of healthy control cases.

Published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, its study defines heavy use as 2,000 plus hours, which "corresponds to 10 years' use in the work place for one hour per day." Early use - starting to use a mobile phone before the age of 20 – may also be a risk factor.

"The way to get the risk down is to use handsfree," Mr Mild told Reuters.

www.arbetslivsinstitutet.se/pdf/060331MildHardell_Article.pdf

2006-03-30T17:53:00.000+01:00

Nokia raises forecast for total handset market

Nokia has raised its forecast of growth in the total mobile handset market by five percentage points. At the company’s annual general meeting on March 30, Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive of Nokia, said: "Due to strong subscriber growth, we have now updated our global mobile device market volume estimate for this year.

"Nokia estimates that in the year 2006, the mobile device market volume will increase globally 15% or more from our estimate of 795 million units in 2005. Previously, we estimated that the global mobile device market volume would grow 10% or more this year from last year's estimate."

He also repeated the company's earlier statements that Nokia expects approximately 80% of the next billion subscribers to come from the emerging markets, and that it expects the global mobile subscriber base to reach three billion during 2008.

In concluding, Ollila said: "I believe that Nokia is well placed for some new innovative leaps,” describing what we have seen so far as "the first era” of the mobile industry.

2006-03-28T18:31:00.000+01:00

Hotxt lowers SMS costs

US software entrepreneur Doug Richard, best known for the Dragons Den TV programme, on Monday launched Hotxt, a service offering unlimited text messages for £1 a week.

The texts are sent as packets of data, avoiding text message charges which are high relative to their cost to mobile operators. Users of Hotxt will also incur data charges from their mobile operator, estimated by Richard to be about about 1 pence a message.

The software for the service can be requested by registering on Hotxt’s website. Byt access is not available to all UK mobile subscribers. For example, O2 pre-pay customers can’t use it.
http://www.hoxt.com/

2006-03-28T17:52:00.000+01:00

Mobile music gets a boost

Several music labels and Monstermob, the mobile ringtone and content company, are launching new music downloading services this week, following a decision by Vodafone to waive the data charge for full track music downloads.

Previously, operators have not imposed a data charge for downloading songs from their own “walled garden” portals, but users who wanted to download from third parties could pay as much as £7.50 in data charges to download a single, one megabyte song.

Vodafone’s move means its customers won’t pay data charges when they download songs from Ministry of Sound, V2 or Monstermob – they will just pay for the music.

A typical track downloaded to a mobile costs around £1.50. Vodafone’s move is expected to be closely watched – and probably followed - by other operators. It is a wise one as data charges are nonsensical to the user and entirely unrelated to the value of the content they are getting.

Vodafone is expected to charge mobile music sellers a wholesale data rate – thought to be around 30p a megabyte – for tracks downloaded by their customers. So if many more tracks are downloaded, Vodafone could still benefit.

2006-03-21T18:23:00.000Z

Mobile robbery

Half of all London’s 38,000 street robberies between April last year and the end of February involved mobile phones, according to Tuesday’s Evening Standard.

People are walking about with “fifty quid held to their ears,” it quoted
Assistant Commissioner Tim Godwin of Scotland Yard as saying.

“The key thing I want to see is for these [mobile industry] companies to block stolen phones across all networks," he added. "Security must improve or we will be seeking legislation to enforce it.”

Many handsets are stolen for overseas export. Stolen phones are also used by criminals to co-ordinate other crimes anonymously.

2006-03-17T12:01:00.000Z

Motorola to lead in low-cost handsets

Motorola is likely to dominate the ultra low-cost handset (ULCH) segment of the mobile market, according to Gavin Byrne, author of a new Informa report.

He says: “Due to its experience, relationships and market knowledge gained
with the [GSM Association’s] Emerging Market Handset Programme, Motorola is likely to dominate the ULCH segment until 2007.

“While this may not encourage significant innovation, [Motorola CEO] Ed Zander's 1,000 day target for Motorola to become the number one vendor in terms of handset shipments may drive the company to own the segment, obliging it to produce the most compelling ULCH.”

The GSM Association’s low-cost handset progamme has extended its endorsement of Motorola as Emerging Market Handset Programme vendor for another six months from July 1 2006.

Competition is likely to increase, however. At 3GSM in Barcelona last month, Nokia also said it would be investing in low-cost handsets.

Informa’s Ultra Low-cost Handsets report points out that reductions will also be needed in distribution, retail and operator costs – perhaps through greater consolidation among handset vendors - for the ULCH segment to take off.

Assuming low-cost handset prices fall from about $40 now to $28 in 2010, Informa predicts that sales of new ULCHs will pass 36 million in 2007 and reach almost 48 million devices in 2010, representing 5.3% of total new device sales by 2010.

http://www.motorola.com
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4270681.stm
http://telecoms.msgfocus.com/c/1yckJM2pr7q4CjS
http://www.nokia.com

2006-03-10T11:51:00.000Z

Women in mobile (not)

There are still too few women at senior levels in the mobile industry if the statistics from last month’s 3GSM mobile show are anything to go by.

This year about one in six (15.65%) of those attending were female. According to the organisers, 7,825 women went to the show out of a total of 50,000.

2006-03-09T10:10:00.000Z

The buzz on Barcelona

Deutsche Bank has produced a lively 56-page report on 3GSM, Europe’s largest mobile show, in its DBuzz (Vol. 40) - Barca special. Its conclusion: “pricing pressure and confusion reigns.”

“Having been to 3GSM over the last 10 years,” it says “there is typically a theme or technology which takes the focus. This year, the industry appears to be unsure of how to monetise data development and in some instances is pulling in different directions (mobile TV, DRM [Digital Rights Management] etc).

“In the interim, perhaps the most unanimous theme from Barcelona was the caution on the mobile voice market following recent tariff changes and the fear that roaming revenues [under pressure from the EC] will add increased pressure on top line growth.”

2006-03-08T17:34:00.000Z

Mobile TV for stay at homes

A Nokia analysis of mobile TV trials in France, Spain, the UK and Finland found that many users watched mobile TV at home. Almost half of those in the French and Spanish pilots claimed to mainly watch it at home.

In the UK, some people may have chosen to watch TV on their mobiles rather than on their home TV set because it gave them additional channels to terrestrial broadcasting. Almost a third of participants in the UK pilot said mobile TV represented their first real taste of multi-channel TV.

www.nokia.com
www.nokia.com/mobiletv

2006-03-08T17:07:00.000Z

Nokia photo diary

Nokia has brought out a new version of its Lifeblog. This enables users of its Nseries mobiles, such as the N70, to add audio notes to a kind of photo and text message diary of events.

The company says “if you used the calendar on your Nokia Nseries device to input an entry for CeBIT [the IT exhibition], photos taken during that time will be tagged with this information..., making them easier to find in the future.”

Video clips can also be included in the blog, and the information can be transferred to a PC to free up space on the mobile.

The PC version of the software can be downloaded for free now. The version of the new software for mobiles will be available from the end of April 2006.

www.nokia.com/lifeblog

2006-03-07T19:10:00.000Z

Photo fit

Sony Ericsson has launched two Cyber-shot camera phones with 3.2 megapixels and some extra software to make taking photos easier. Its BestPic software takes images just before and just after the shot is taken, so that users can pick the best one, or the one where their subject did not move.

The phones, the K800 and K790, are available in the second quarter. Some innovations in mobile photography were also evident at 3GSM 2006. US-based Vizrea’s software can be set up to automatically transmit all photos taken to Vizrea’s server and/or the user’s PC – complete with caption if the user adds one.

The software looks simple to use and saves labelling/organising photos later. It also means that – if you want – your whole photo collection can be stored on the web (privately unless you choose to share) and accessed from a mobile. This means if you bump into an old friend while travelling you can show off your kid, ski lodge or whatever.

However, because the photos are stored as small files, the server store only provides a limited backup if your photo collection is lost or stolen. Mike Toutonghi, chief executive, started the company because he noticed how difficult people were finding it to send picture messages.

A Swedish company, Scalado, has developed software that enables you to crop, brighten or in other ways edit your pics before you send them. Normally, this is quite a challenge because you need more spare memory on your phone to edit a picture and to save an edited picture, than you need to store one.

It has got round the problem by using a kind of streaming so the picture is effectively edited a bit at a time, though it does not look that way to the user.

http://www.SonyEricsson.com
http://www.vizrea.com
http://www.scalado.com
http://www.3gsmworldcongress.com

For examples of pictures taken with a camera phone for a Nokia competition
http://www.seenew.com

2006-03-03T19:41:00.000Z

Aguilera goes mobile

Sony Ericsson and Orange announced a partnership on Friday in which they will both sponsor raunchy music star Christina Aguilera.

Orange will sell Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, including the white, clamshell W300i, which becomes available in the second quarter. It will also release exclusive Aguilera song remixes, ringtones and wallpaper linked to her new album and concert tour.

Ms Aguilera came across as quite switched on, not only about technology but also about men at the press conference in London’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. The two French executives, Herve Fontaine of Sony Ericsson and Frank Boulben of Orange, looked as pleased as punch to get a kiss on each cheek from her and one of them blushed.

Paparazzi were standing on chairs to get a better shot.

Other mobile operators will also be able to sell the Walkman-branded music mobiles, but Orange will provide some software customisation for its users.

The recently-married Ms Aguilera said mobile music “is great for artists” but added that she hoped people would still buy CDs. Asked if she would be toning down her stage act since marrying, she said: “There’s always a little naughty in me.”

The Orange/Sony Ericsson European sponsorship deal with the Sony BMG artist lasts for nine months.

2006-02-20T10:24:00.000Z

Barcelona mobile show hit by crime wave

Peter Gardner, sector partner for communications at venture capital firm 3i, had his wallet stolen in between getting out of his taxi and walking up the steps to register at the 3GSM World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile show. He was one of many victims of crime during the four-day show, which transferred from Cannes to Barcelona last week, drawing a record 50,000 visitors.

But Mr Gardner consoled himself with the thought that his loss must surely be some sort of record. The distance from taxi drop off to registration desk is less than 10 yards.

However, two visitors getting out of a cab outside the exhibition hall on the first morning of the show warned me against carrying my handbag around as they had already been mugged.

Mr Gardner later learned that a fellow delegate and his wife had beaten his record by “losing” one of their passports between getting off the plane and going through passport control. Another delegate said he had been set up by a friendly passenger who had travelled on the same plane as him and then offered to look after his bags at the taxi rank.

Two female staff from Sonim, a company in 3i’s portfolio that specialises in software to give mobiles walkie talkie like functions, known as push-to-talk, had money stolen. One of them was having dinner with three colleagues and had her handbag wound round her ankle, but still a thief managed to prise her wallet out without anyone noticing.

The other had the strap of her handbag cut. So when she reached down to get it, it was no longer there. Margaret Rice-Jones, a corporate vice president at US mobile company Motorola, said she’d heard that companies were losing laptop computers from meeting rooms.

Thieves also stole mobiles from Finnish mobile-phone company Nokia’s stand by cutting through the wires that bound them to the display stands, according to Mr Gardner. Other mobiles disappeared from the front pockets of people’s bags.

Some locals said the show had been targeted by east European gangs – but expatriates living in Barcelona said thefts of mobiles and wallets are rife in the city.

In fact, a second attempt was made to fleece Mr Gardner. This time he was prepared. “I think the flower seller who tried to pick my pocket was a bit surprised by the ferocity with which I responded,” he said.

Nevertheless 3i feels the show was good for business. It had hired a boat, the Mystic W, to entertain the wireless companies in its portfolio and key industry players, and got a very good turn out for its drinks parties.

“It was a bit of a risk for us as we knew the boat would be away from the show,” said Mr Gardner. “But taking an exhibition stand is just not 3i’s style.”

One of 3i’s companies, SpinVox, which converts mobile voicemails into text messages, won the Mobile Innovation Forum award at the GSM Association Awards dinner. Traffic jams in Barcelona held up her arrival as delegates’ heavy taxi use slowed traffic – but that’s another story.

2006-02-16T15:18:00.000Z

Numbers up, networking down

Fifty thousand people attended Europe’s annual mobilefest, 3GSM 2006, which ended on 16 February.

So says the GSM Association (GSMA), which organises the event, with its partner Informa.

As a result, the GSMA is viewing the event’s move to Barcelona as a success. It is billing the show the biggest mobile show on earth.

The event had been held in Cannes, France, for the last 12 years. In February 2005 it drew 34,000 visitors to the south of France. This year’s day one attendance at the show on 13 February was larger than last year’s figure for the whole show.

Exhibitor numbers were also up, with 962 companies exhibiting.

Cannes did not work hard enough to expand the exhibition facilities available or to improve service from hotels and taxis.

But in many ways the show has lost something. It used to be very democratic, in that wherever you went in Cannes day or night, you would meet people at the show and get to know them in an informal setting.

Now many of the events are off site, which means they tend to be by invitation only. This must make it much harder for the smaller companies to accidentally meet important high-level contacts, just because they are in the same bar.

The logistics have also been a bit of a nightmare with little information on where off-site hotels and other venues are.

Taxis can be hard to find and taxi queues outside the exhibition centre were often 100 yards long – or longer.

There were also queues for the ladies loos and journey times were unpredictable because of heavy traffic.

This meant much of the time that could have been spent networking was spent in cabs. For press, the facilities were appalling. PCs - or Ethernet connections for people prepared to lug laptops around a large show - were enough for about 10% of the 1,400 journalists expected to attend.

In the end 1,900 turned up. Many found that when trying to connect to their internet email to check a venue address or meeting time, they could not even get on to a PC. Because they were all taken.

A surprisingly high number of delegates also reported thefts of bags, mobile devices or laptops from meeting rooms.

As last year – the press office closed at the unfashionably early time of 4pm. No wonder the GSM Association is taking more control of the event from UK-listed Informa.

In a new three year contract between the GSM Association and Informa, the GSMA will handle more of the sales and marketing of exhibition stands and increase its role in organising the keynote and other speeches.

Highlights

For me the highlights of the show, were the Motorola press conference and a Women in telecoms breakfast organized by Margaret Rice-Jones, a senior manager at the same company.

Nokia was also upbeat about the future and Jorma Ollila, the company’s CEO, seemed in high spirits at the company’s press conference and genuinely touched to receive the chairman’s award at the Hollywood-style GSM Awards.

This contrasted with a rather brusque acceptance speech from Vodafone when winning one of the awards.

2006-02-06T17:41:00.000Z

Magazines on your mobile

New technology from London-based Refresh Mobile makes it easy for magazine publishers - or other businesses wishing to promote their brands - to publish mini magazines on mobile phones.

Called Mobizines, each mobile mag can have four sections with up to five stories in each.

People wanting to subscribe to a mobizine send a text message requesting it. For example, to get the Time Out one, text 63333 and follow the instructions to download.

The mini mags are free, apart from whatever the customer's mobile operator charges for downloading data. The idea is that they will be supported by advertising.

Because the mags are quite compact, the data charge is just a few pence, according to Elaine Devereux of Refresh.

New issues of each mobizine get downloaded automatically when the next edition is published.

Refresh Mobile was a management buy-out from Deutsche Telekom-owned mobile operator T-Mobile and was founded by two members of its global management team. It hopes to make money from a one-off charge for its technology plus a share of advertising/transaction revenues.

Conde Nast (Glamour, GQ), OK!, ITV and others are offering the mobile mags.
http://www.mobizines.com

2006-02-03T18:33:00.000Z

Perkier photos

Five mega-pixel photos are coming to mobile phones, according to US-based processor maker Zoran.

The company will introduce its APPROACH 5C, with technology that allows camera phones to take 5 mega-pixel pictures, at 3GSM 2006 in Barcelona later this month. This provides "the same quality photographers find in Japanese branded 5 mega-pixel digital cameras," the company says.

Many of today's current camera phones take a 1.3 mega-pixel picture, though some offer higher resolution.
www.zoran.com

2006-01-24T11:01:00.000Z

Mobiles in starring role

The Intimacy of Strangers, a 20 minute film aired at media club The Hospital on Monday night, has real people chatting on their mobiles as the stars.

The filmmakers filmed them first using a microphone hidden under a skateboard, then asked their permission afterwards. This means the body language of the callers is deliciously true to life.

The biggest star of the film is a bloke phoning a friend in South Africa from a trip to the UK, and outlining mutual friends' tangled emotional lives. It's not ideal, he says of a friends new man, "he still works with his ex-wife, so he sees her every day".

The film is upbeat - most of the callers are happy - and mobile phone masts play a haunting role in close ups - sometimes depicted surrounded by the voices of callers.

With mobile operator 02 saying the average mobile TV viewer in their trial watches TV for 23 minutes, the film would be ideal to watch on a mobile phone. And I bet the viewers would pick up the phone and call someone afterwards.

The film was directed by German Eva Weber while she was at the National Film and Television School and produced by Samantha Zarzosa. They plan to raise funds to make a feature-length film, based on the same idea, but fictional.
http://www.theintimacyofstrangers.com/

2006-01-23T13:02:00.000Z

Penetration hits 100% in Europe

"At the end of last year, the western European mobile market hit a major milestone - it officially became 100% penetrated.

"That should mean that everyone in the region, including every pensioner and new-born baby, has signed up to a mobile phone package. But it doesn't," says Informa's Mobile Communications newsletter, which collects monthly data on mobile subscriber growth.

Informa points out that many European consumers have two or more mobile subscriptions, while some have none. The fact that there are still people in the region without mobiles, helps to explain why "in every month of 2005, the region added more net subscribers than in the corresponding month of 2004".

It says 11 of the 16 major markets in western Europe now have penetration rates above the 100% mark. The highest penetration levels at the end of the year were Luxembourg (160%), Italy (119%), Portugal (114%) and Sweden (112%). Others above 100% included Greece, the UK, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark.
www.informatm.com

2006-01-20T11:54:00.000Z

Adult approach

At a seminar on Adult content for mobiles organised by the Network for Online Commerce and 160 Characters, Ashley Clark of CC Media, said his top billing mobile customer had spent $4,000 on chat services since June. He said CC Media has a turnover of $70,000 to $95,000 a day.

Julia Dimambro, managing director of Cherry Media, which sells softcore images and "wallpaper" for phones but is starting to offer more hardcore, recommended the direct-to-consumer approach. She believes advertising your services can often be a more profitable route to market than negotiating to be on operators' portals.

Mike Grenville of 160 Characters said that if mobile operators did not get their act together on issues like revenue sharing and the way in which downloading third-party data incur charges, he could see people downloading adult content on to Apple Ipods and other mobile music devices and paying to unlock it at a later date.

A speaker from Playboy, which is already getting involved in podcasting (voice broadcasts you download on to an Ipod or similar) cancelled his appearance due to family problems.

But the seminar drew a large and diverse audience. As well as a representative from Soho baron Paul Raymond's empire, there was content aggregator Mobile Streams, which includes adult content among its information, venture capital firm Interregnum, and top IT lawyer Ingrid Silver from DentonWildeSapte.

Mr Clark, who is business development manager of CC Media, said his typical customer spends $550 a year and, perhaps, $750 in his time as a customer, so the important thing is to keep offering new services to keep them interested.
www.noconline.org
www.160characters.org

2006-01-18T17:10:00.000Z

TV to go

O2, the UK-based mobile operator, and technology firm Arqiva, said on Tuesday that a trial of television over mobile in Oxford, was proving popular with the 375 users on it.

Average usage was three hours a week, with the length of connection lasting about 23 minutes, with one or two sessions per day. Mike Short of 02 said he believed a key factor in take up was the range of channels on offer. The choice included a selection of channels from the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Five, Sky, MTV and Eurosports.

For TV schedulers, mobile TV could present some challenges as viewing peaks tended to be different from the way people watch fixed televisions. The commute to work, lunchtimes and the commute home all seemed to be popular viewing times.

Mobile TV triallists were not paying to use the service, but 76% said they would subscribe if the service became available within 12 months. However, O2 wasn't saying when it would be able to launch a service because the best spectrum for the service is difficult to obtain.

The level of usage may also be distorted by the fact the trial was free. O2 said it thought, mobile customers would be willing to pay 8-10 pounds a month for the service.

The trial - which is continuing - makes use of Digital Video Broadcasting - handheld (DVB-H), a standard which is supported by Nokia, as well as Nokia mobiles.

Mr Short warned that the UK lagged many other countries in what could be a very important outlet for television.
www.o2.com
www.arqiva.com

2005-12-30T18:47:00.000Z

Fuel cells for mobiles get serious

Nasdaq-listed Medis Technologies said in a letter to shareholders on 28 December that its fuel-cell based Power Packs would be available for testing with mobile products in 2006 and be for sale in 2007. According to the company, its scientists have chosen “not to follow the traditional approach of fuel cells, including direct methanol fuel cells, which require the use of pumps or other moving parts.

“Instead, taking advantage of their specialisation in materials science, they developed an entirely different fuel cell technology which emphasizes the use of the materials, themselves, rather than complex support systems, to create the resulting power.”

The company says it “has developed a small, light weight, safe product, capable of charging a broad array of portable devices, multiple times (providing 20 to 30 hours of talk time for a cellphone and 60 to 80 hours of use time for certain iPods) at an attractive cost.”

Medis plans to manufacture 100,000 Power Packs in 2006, mostly for product testing. About 1,000 will go to opinion formers, including the media.

Mass production starts in 2007 – it has manufacturing capacity of up to 1.5 million units a month - and the company hopes to make $3 per unit (before sales, general and administration costs).
http://www.medistechnologies.com/

2005-12-16T18:08:00.000Z

Mobile Gmail

Gmail, Google’s web-based email service, is now available from US mobile phones. To look at emails on the move, type http://m.gmail.com/ into your handset’s browser. It is also possible to open Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat attachments to emails.

A couple of other recent improvements to Gmail include the ability to set up contact lists for a group of email contacts, such as your neighbours.

There’s also an Out-of-office auto reply service for when you’re on business trips or away on holiday. Google has given it the not-very-sexy title of “Vacation auto-responder”.

http://www.google.com/glm/gmail

2005-12-12T11:24:00.000Z

Seen in Sweden

Mobile start ups seen in Sweden recently included Neonode, which produces limited edition touch-screen handsets operated by gesture. Swipe your thumb to the right to start dialling, and to the left to end it.

Gesture is the next big thing in user interface design, according to Jonas Lofgren, marketing manager of the company. More obviously useful, is the fact that a phone number can be dialled by touching the number keys with a finger. A stylus is not needed.

Also of interest was a language-learning tool from Vocab that encourages the reader to repeat difficult words like exacerbate (long and abstract) more often than easy words like dog (short and easy to grasp).

It also lets the learner study words in a context that interests them. For example, they can look at a news story from CNN.com and the learning tool will pull out the words and phrases that they need to know.

The company plans to introduce a service in the UK in 2006 but at present the languages available are Swedish/English, Swedish/Russian, Swedish/German and Swedish/Spanish. The service is web-based or can be downloaded to a mobile phone.

Other mobile companies showing their wares were Ocean Observations, which has done soon good branding work for companies like Hutchison’s 3 3G network (it designed its appealing icons) and Samsung, the mobile handset maker. Mobilico showed a mobile poker game which lets you play against other players.
http://www.neonode.com/
http://www.oceanobservations.com/
http://www.vocab.se/company.html (in Swedish)
http://www.mobilico.net/

2005-12-07T19:21:00.000Z

Leaves on the (phone) line

A UK-based bulk deliverer of SMS text-messages, KAPOW!, is to harness people power by setting up a trial SMS railway-commuter club.

Commuters arriving at a station to find severe delays will notify other commuters of cancellations and delays as soon as they hear about them.

Kapow! has also published traditional British railway excuses – not all serious - in five different languages so that club members and others can tell foreign visitors why there is no train or about other inconveniences.

The first trial club will cover neighbouring stations Sidcup, inKent, and New Eltham, south London. The trial will test the viability of the service over a two-month period and will be provided free to a limited number of commuters. If successful, commuters will be able to register to receive warning messages for a small charge per SMS.

Steve Petty, who has commuted from Sidcup to London for 10 years said: "This.. could save significant inconvenience for commuters. It is so frustrating to rush down to the station just to wait on a crowded platform, when I could have made other arrangements if only I'd known earlier.

“It seems a shame that the railway operators themselves couldn't do this but in so many cases they don't even tell the staff on the stations what is happening, so in the end passengers are forced to help themselves.”
http://www.kapow.co.uk/rail

2005-12-06T20:02:00.000Z

The candour of Zander

Ed Zander, chief executive of Motorola, has won financial website MarketWatch’s CEO of the Year award. The Dow Jones' website credits him with encouraging more open discussion at mobile phone maker Motorola.

The approachable Zander has turned round Motorola’s mobile phone business, increasing sales by nearly 60% to around $37bn. Its super-slim RAZR phone has sold well and at the big 3GSM show in Cannes last year, Zander told how he took a prototype of the phone home.

The company was planning to make it in silver rather than black, but the black prototype went down so well with Zander’s family, Motorola made one in Black too – in time to be seen at the Oscars.

Two of Zander’s strengths are that he invites ideas - even from people he does not know that well - and that he surrounds himself with strong managers.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/

2005-12-02T19:18:00.000Z

Phone that helps you check your lipstick

Nokia demonstrated some future handsets at a press party in London on Thursday night. They included the 7380 "lipstick" phone. Long and thin, it has a mirror on one side (for checking your lipstick).

The phone – due out in the first quarter of 2006 - does not have a standard keypad. Instead, it has a kind of touch-sensitive circle, enabling the user to scroll through a choice of letters to compose a text message, or select other options.

A lower-end candy-bar-shaped phone in Gold, with a little macramé loop to hang on a belt, or leave to dangle, looked stylish and easy to use. There was also a 3 megapixel camera phone, the N80, and a black third-generation mobile (3G) phone with a Carl Zeiss lens that can take an hour of video footage. The 3250 video phone can swivel in new ways.

Some of the handsets had a rather masculine, squared off shape, and one slide-open N-series phone in highly-finished metal gave my finger a nasty pinch.

But a pre-Christmas phone with metallic finish and rounded corners that fits neatly into the palm of the hand, looked set to be a winner with women. Only the screen shows till you slide it up, when the keypad appears. It is available in girly pink, or black - for a more metrosexual (metropolitan heterosexual) appeal.

A "Blackberry killer" – the E61 - phone with a very high resolution screen will offer a range of office applications (in addition to email). The office applications looked more attractive to use than on a Blackberry, partly because of the clarity of the screen and icons.

The keyboard seemed a bit harder to type on, but acceptable. The real test will be whether Nokia's mobile email device can equal the Blackberry's two main advantages - very long battery life and very easy-to-use email - when it comes on to the market around May 2006.
http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,18062,00.html
http://www.nokia.co.uk/nokia/0,,76565,00.html

2005-11-24T19:21:00.000Z

Blackberry pickings fewer?

RIM, the Canadian company that makes the Blackberry mobile email device, is expecting to sell about 3% fewer Blackberries in the fourth quarter than it previously predicted, reports Computer Business Review. Instead of 825,000 it is now expecting to sell 775,000.

This is partly due to product launch delays. But the company still expects to meet its revenue forecasts for the fourth quarter, and for the third quarter when unit sales are likely to be about 8% lower than previously forecast. Before the delays, third quarter sales were expected to come in at 680,000 to 710,000.
http://www.cbronline.com/

2005-11-24T11:11:00.000Z

Record quarter for mobile phone sales

Mobile phone sales reached record levels in the third quarter of 2005, totaling 205.4 million units worldwide, according to research firm Gartner. This is a 22% rise over the third quarter of 2004, and the biggest quarter on record since 2001, reports Digital Media Asia. Gartner is expecting a strong fourth quarter and predicts that worldwide mobile handset sales will reach 810 million units by the end of 2005.

It was a good quarter for both Nokia – which made inroads into the Code division multiple access (CDMA) market by offering five handsets – and Motorola. Up to the end of September, Motorola sold 12 million of its sleek, slim RAZR phones.
http://www.digitalmediaasia.com/

2005-11-18T12:58:00.000Z

Roaming from mobile to Wi-Fi

Irish wireless technology developer Cicero Networks says it has achieved seamless roaming between cellular and Wi-Fi wireless networks. This would enable a mobile phone call to turn into a cheaper voice-over Wi-Fi call once the user was near a Wi-Fi network.

The Dublin-based developer has released a Call Continuity server, which works in conjunction with its CiceroPhone software on handsets. It has begun demonstrating the technology on the Qtek 8310 and 8300 Windows Mobile smartphones from handset maker HTC.
http://www.cbronline.com/

2005-11-17T16:22:00.000Z

Wind-up laptop aims to narrow digital divide

A prototype of a $100 wind-up laptop was demonstrated at the UN's World Summit on the Information Society by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, reports the BBC.

The lime green laptops shown at the summit in Tunis are aimed at children in the developing world but have many innovative features that could appeal to adults. They have an AC adaptor that doubles as a carrying strap and flash memory - which is a more robust form of storage than a hard drive. They also have very low power consumption.

Governments in the developing world can offer the laptops to their schoolchildren if they commit to buying a million machines for around $100 each.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4445060.stm

2005-11-16T19:08:00.000Z

Mobile show line up

Keynote speakers at the next big European mobile bash, the 3GSM World Congress, will include the following company bosses:

Arun Sarin, Vodafone Group
Antonio Viana-Baptista, Telefónica Móviles
Sanjiv Ahuja of Orange
Peter Erskine, 02
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
Bill Roedy, MTV
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia (CEO elect)
Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson
Ed Zander, Motorola
Mun Hwa Park, LG Electronics Mobile Communications

The exhibition and seminar programme is expected to attract more than 40,000 telecoms executives, including over 6,000 CEOs, according to the organisers, Informa and the GSM Association.

The event, which sees mobile executives networking into the small hours, will be held in Barcelona for the first time from 13-16 February. The gossip this year is likely to be about whether the show retains its unique character after its transfer from Cannes.

Though overpriced, and with the world’s laziest taxi drivers, Cannes has a certain louche charm and some good late-night bars. But it simply did not have enough space for all the companies that wanted to exhibit there.
http://www.3gsmworldcongress.com/

2005-11-10T12:08:00.000Z

Alcatel to develop Mobile TV ecosystem
Alcatel has created a Mobile TV unit, Alcatel Mobile Broadcast. It will be headed by Olivier Coste, who was previously responsible for developing the company’s satellite activities. The French telecoms equipment company says that there is “significant consumer appetite for Mobile TV” over third-generation mobile.

But it adds that while current mobile networks enable the distribution of numerous TV channels, they have limitations in terms of global coverage and in the number of users that can receive these channels in the same cell. It intends to develop a mobile TV infrastructure or ecosystem and to sell it to mobile operators and broadcasters.

2005-11-10T11:38:00.000Z

Fueling longer mobile battery life
Motorola, the US mobile handset maker, has made an undisclosed investment in Tekion, a fuel cell company, according to the ExtremeTech website.

Tekion’s fuel cells are powered using formic acid (the same substance ants use to protect their nests), because it is not flammable like other alternatives such as methanol, and because it has a high energy density, enabling a lot of power to be packed into a small amount of fuel.

Fuel cells are carbon neutral and provide an instant recharge – just top up the cell with extra fuel and you get instant, new battery life. No plugging in a charger and having to wait. They produce electricity when oxygen enters the cell and they react to it.

Tekion has already demonstrated its technology on a Nokia phone. It is developing a hybrid product with both a lithium ion battery (as commonly found in mobile phones) and a fuel cell for the satellite phone market.

The company did not say exactly what it was doing for Motorola but said funding from the company would be used to commercialise the technology in time for a planned 2007 launch. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1884404,00.asp

2005-11-09T12:18:00.001Z

Sidekick that won’t be sidelined
Danger's Sidekick II, which looks like a funky little hand-held computer, “is being introduced into all [our] stores in time for the seasonally important Christmas period,” mobile operator T-Mobile said on Wednesday as it announced UK third-quarter results. Many of its stores are expected to have the Sidekick – which competes against the Blackberry email device – from next week.

California-based Danger’s product can be used to access T-Mobile's web’n’walk service. This service makes it easy to connect to the internet on the move without having to look at only those websites that have been optimised for mobile.

At its web’n’walk launch earlier this year, T-Mobile tried to introduce the Sidekick in a low-key way alongside other mobile devices for web’n’walk, including a personal-organiser based mobile and a Nokia phone. But the Sidekick still hogged much of the interest.

T-Mobile said it gained 259,000 UK customers in the third quarter, taking its total – including Virgin Mobile customers which use its mobile network – to 16.3 million. It said blended average revenue per user (Arpu) is stable at £20, with non-voice revenue accounting for 19% of Arpu.

The company said it would invest £1.5bn in the UK, spread over 2006 and 2007, to increase its market share. It will more than double its retail stores to 300, creating 1,100 news jobs, a spokesman said.
http://www.t-mobile.net/

2005-11-09T11:23:00.000Z

India mobile take up reaches new high
India added 2.11 million new mobile users in October, the biggest number in a single month, according to the Cellular Operators' Association.

Take up has been boosted by the slow spread of fixed-line telecoms and India now has nearly 53 million Global System for Mobile users. It added 1.96 million in September.
http://coai.in/archives_statistics_2005_q4.htm

2005-11-08T18:15:00.000Z

Adobe tips ebooks at World Business Forum
"It's a lot of fun to go round the world and see how technology is changing behaviour, but it is still hard to get a cellphone connection in the heart of Silicon Valley," according to Bruce Chizen, head of US software company Adobe, who was speaking at the World Business Forum in Frankfurt on November 3.

He is tipping ebooks as a technology to watch for the future and says he's seen mobile devices in Japan that store many books but are quite book-like. He reckons a price point of about $199 is about right and says the company has embarked on a new ebook experiment.

The WBF, a conference geared towards senior business leaders, also featured many other luminaries including Jack Welch, former boss of GE, and William Ury, a Harvard law professor who had a lot of useful tips for those involved in negotiations.

Ury said: "Even though we think of negotiating as talking, it is more about listening. You appoint a spokesman for the team, but how often do you appoint a listener?

"Often the other side offers a concession, or appears to, but you don't hear it because you are focusing on what you are trying to say."

He also quoted Henry Kissinger - another of the event's speakers - who once said: "The most important rule of diplomacy is to have talks when you don't need to have talks - so you're better prepared when you do."

But Professor Ury's biggest tip was to see the negotiation process as a co-operative search for mutual gain. "Sometimes when we engage, we make decisions entirely contrary to our interests," he said.