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...

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!