An Apple a Day … more operators to sell iPhone

September 29, 2009 — Damien

Following on yesterday’s news that Orange Uk will start selling iPhone … ending O2 / Telefonica’s virtual monopoly in the UK. Today, Vodafone in UK and Ireland  announced their plans to sell Apple iPhones.

Good news for the operators? well ending the monopoly of iPhone was a good move. An operator with a data usage strategy will want to be selling iPhones along side other data hungry phones like RIM, Android, Symbian devices.

Many first mover customers coming out of their 24 month agreements on the iPhone 2G will be happy to wait a few months, but 3G and 3GS users probably will be waiting another 12 – 24 months.

For Christmas does this mean an Apple under the tree??? I don’t think so.

Posted in 3G, Apple, Mobile, Networks, UK, operators, strategy. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Nokia and Universal to offer ‘free’ music on your mobile

December 6, 2007 — Damien

Nokia Corp. said it joined forces with Universal Music to offer unlimited music downloads for a year on phones bundled with its Ovi Web services platform.

Universal Music Group expects its deal to offer free music for 12 months on new Nokia phones to have a wider, “stimulating” effect on the digital music business next year, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The world’s largest music group Universal and the world’s top cellphone vendor Nokia said on Tuesday they would offer a free 12-month access to Universal’s music for buyers of Nokia music phones starting from the second half of 2008.

“I believe the announcement will act as a catalyst for a whole number of business partners to step forward. It’s definitely going to stimulate the business next year,” Rob Wells, Senior Vice President for digital operations at Universal, told Reuters. Universal is owned by French media group Vivendi.

The “Comes With Music” offering would differ from any other package on the market as users can keep all the music they have downloaded for free during the 12 months, the firms said.

sources: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119676374309413001.html?mod=googlenews_wsj  and Reuters

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Music, handsets, mobile internet. Leave a Comment »

Turkey delays 3G licence auction for lack of interest

May 24, 2007 — Damien

Turkey’s telecommunications regulator has postponed the tender for four third-generation phone licenses. The tender, which was supposed to be held May 25, will now be held September 7, an official from the Communications Ministry said on Tuesday.

There was limited interest in the contract conditions, said Ertuğrul Karaçuha, Head of the Telecommunications Board, reported business daily Referans. Fearing the necessary tender demand would not form, the tender has been postponed to September, he said. The Telecommunications Board made the decision on Monday.

 source: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=73976

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Networks, operators. Leave a Comment »

Turkey launches tender for 4 3G licences

April 19, 2007 — Damien

Turkey has announced plans to offers for third-generation (3G) mobile phone licenses — Short-listed bidders then enter a second-round bid. The minimum bid prices range from 140 million euros ($189 million) to 252 million euros ($340 million). The Turkish mobile market is currently home to three operators, Turkcell, Vodafone-Telsim and Avea.

Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım was speaking at the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association’s (MÜSİAD) traditional Thursday talks. Yıldırım said he was expecting interest from the existing three GSM operators in Turkey — Turkcell, Vodafone (formerly Telsim) and Avea — in the investigation of feasible price studies for 3G licenses.

European countries had made mistakes by requesting high license fees in tenders, noted Yıldırım, while Japan gave the licenses for free – and Turkey plans to do something in the middle. Yıldırım also mentioned possible future financial incentives to boost research and development in the telecommunications sector.

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Networks, operators. Leave a Comment »

Location Specific Mobile Solutions

October 24, 2006 — Damien

Summary: Location Based Services (LBS) were thought to be a killer app for 3G, next is the GPS chip in your phone. What mobile and location services are there right now?

Some of us still remember the early days when 3G business cases were built on the success of LBS’s – everyone was going to make a killing. By far the best ‘LBS’ service on any portal are:

  1. live train timetables (is my train on time)
  2. traffic cameras (where is that jam)
  3. mobile operator concierge service (for those unusal location requests)

So does throwing a GPS chip in a phone help you? If I’m lost will I ask someone? want a map? or fiddle my way around on a small screen? Customers will always do what seems most natural – the path of least resistance.

Having tried Google Maps on the mobile (I knew I was on the right street but not which intersection) a small map can help you … the same can’t be said when you’re driving your car. W2Forum addict Graham Brown, comments that a specific solution for navigation in this case is the way to go.

There are several crossover location-based mobile products out in beta or publicly available:

1. Semacode or QR Codes – these are 2D barcodes geotagging on landmarks / points of historic interest which can link back to a wiki or website. Good idea for tourists wanting more information while out and about.

2. NFC / radio tags not only for micropayments like the London Tube Oyster Card or FOMA in Japan. Radio tags are being used to track luggage in Hong Kong Airport, food shipments in the UK and parcels. So why not use your mobile to check if that parcel got delivered?

3. Public WIFI networks – there has been talk for sometime about public free wifi. More a utopian’s dream than a possible reality allowing you to move around a city and use ’spare’ wifi capacity on peoples routers. Some examples are projects setup to provide streaming music over wifi to anyone who knows where to listen in to.

I’m sure there are many more projects in the LBS space – even a few years ago the idea of a cheap GPS box that was affordable to everyone was a pipedream .. so what will be tomorrows reality?

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Networks, mobile internet, operators. Leave a Comment »

6 months in Turkey

October 20, 2006 — Damien

You might have begun to think I had dropped off the blogosphere. You might be right … a good blog has to be kept updated daily and have something new. I started this when I had a lot of spare time and was looking to go back to contracting. It’s proved very useful.

I’m actually off to Turkey for 6 months for work, but hope in between all of that to find the time to get this going again.  So keep in touch … Damien

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Networks, mobile internet, operators. Leave a Comment »

Soonr: Your mobile PC application

September 11, 2006 — Damien

Up until now getting access to documents, music files or photos or your calendar when you are away from your office or home PC has been limited to a mess of cables, WIFI or datacards. SoonR seems to have hit the nail on the head, with a smooth interface and more features than you can throw a dog at.

While not all the word is as mass mobile as I am, and it could be a long way before many want this service, which Soonr has solved already …

Want to transfer music to your phone from your home pc? Soonr can Transfer pictures? or any file you want … Soonr can do that too

Want to check your outlook calendar at work? or book that meeting with your boss … Soonr can … or read that email you missed before you shut down … yes Soonr can.

And want to check this from your Mobile or from any ol PC? Soonr can … and you have complete control of what files are shared and accessible by you … or you can setup a shared folder for this.

I guess there are many reasons I like this – from the web2.0 styling to the speed in which it was setup. I was up and running in 2 mins – after it asked for my proxy settings on the office firewall … and took no time at all to install on my home PC. Now the little server client is loaded all the time.

So what about the competition – having checked out whats out there, I tried using the client from http://www.orb.com … which according to the blurb lets you watch tv from your phone … groan … why would you want to do that?? when I have a great 3G phone already? Oh and you need a TV Card in your home PC. Put to the test, it failed – when I discovered that you can’t set the web proxy so the server app couldn’t get outside the office network. From my home PC with its tangle of wi-fi, routers with ’solid’ firewalls and NATing I didn’t even try to set it up. Scared off by the first experience.

What I’m convinced is a good feature on Orb is the integrated streaming app – so you can listen to music on your home PC without downloading the full thing to your phone – saves you data and starts playing quicker than a download. If Soonr doesn’t do this soon (sorry for the crap english) then it will do it some time because its users are already requesting this.

Soonr just seems downright friendly, in a Flickr or any web2.0 softwar without the letter ‘e’ seems right. Put to the test, I emailed orb support to find out what I had to do to amend the proxy settings – contact my IT helpdesk and get them to open a port on the firewall … now why would I want that??

Posted in 3G, Internet, Mobile, mobile internet, software. Leave a Comment »

SMS pricing initiatives

July 19, 2006 — Damien

Summary: Operators are competing with large bundles of ‘free’ text messages. This pricing prevents text over IP or other apps taking off, but there is still a long way to go to grow data usage.

There is still alot of work to be done to grow data usage across the business and consumer base. One of the challenges is working out pricing. In Ireland, they are trialling €49 per month unlimited plan. In T-mobile UK they have a £7.50 unlimited data plan but services like Skype are barred.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Networks, mobile internet, operators. Leave a Comment »

HSDPA rollout tops 100 Networks

June 7, 2006 — Damien

An article on http://3g.co.uk reports that the number of HSDPA networks (known as 3G Broadband) has now topped 100. That's either commercially available or in deployment. 

This new survey confirms that 30 HSDPA networks have commercially launched services in 23 countries/territories, delivering the full broadband experience to subscribers. We expect the number of commercial HSDPA networks will more than double to 63 by end 2006. All WCDMA networks are expected to activate the HSDPA upgrade."

HSDPA services are now commercially available in Austria, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Madeira, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.

The 49 countries where HSDPA networks are planned, in deployment or commercially launched are Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guernsey, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Madeira, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, UAE, UK, and USA.

Source: www.3g.co.uk/PR/June2006/3136.htm

Posted in 3G, Networks. Leave a Comment »

Nokia holds fire on mobile gaming

November 30, 2005 — Damien

Nokia holds fire on mobile gaming – vnunet.com: “Nokia is holding off on mobile gaming for a few years and will not be building new versions of the N-Gage gaming phone.”

Well that could be some good Christmas news for the rest of the gaming industry – one less platform to support and even the admission of it not being a success hasn’t come as a suprise for retailers.

What this means is Nokia refocusing its attention on areas it knows users and operators want developments – mobile music, tv and internet are all big contenders for 2006/07. Leave serious portable gaming right now to the bigger platforms players and develop better phones for us all.

Posted in 3G, Mobile, Networks, mobile internet, operators. Leave a Comment »
« Older posts