Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

Very interesting quote: "As consumers lose their fascination with embedded digital cameras, high-speed Internet connections, action-packed games and other entertainment features, operators are turning back to the basics of sound as a way to differentiate themselves."

and: "Kirk Boodry, an industry analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said this was a natural evolution for Japanese operators, who see 33 percent to 45 percent of all data usage from ring tones and screensavers."

Technology News Article | Reuters.com

Due to the popularity of camera phones CEA has stated a code of conduct for users of camera phones.

Yahoo! News - Say "cheese" - and watch out for cameraphones

Nokia might experience even more pressure than today. More likely Samsung, LG and SonyEricsson will (at least initially) lead this market.

"Thelander says it will be tough for Nokia to dominate this market as it does elsewhere. He says Nokia doesn't have the reputation for color screens, flip phones and multimedia that are likely to be favored among 3G phones users."
"There's likely continued slippage in market share for Nokia," Thelander said. "Some of that's just continuing issues with the market, and some is lack of a strong 3G position."

Yahoo! News - Mobile Phone Makers Hoping To Get Boost From 3G Rollout

Seems a bit early, but it might be a way to sway customers to upgrade the phones. That it would cut costs is a bit odd, as the cost of services is extremely small compared to infrastructure costs. Is it the old infrastructure they want to abandon ASAP? Maybe.

Quote: "some 85 percent or 40 million of NTT DoCoMo's current subscribers are on second-generation handsets"

Yahoo! News - Japan's top cellphone operator to abolish second generation by 2012

It's been a very long coming, and tons of hype, still not becoming the commercial success everyone had hoped for. Bluetooth was even considered a WLAN/802.11 killer for a while, but that was soon forgotten when the latter fairly suddenly became ubiquitous due to the low-priced yet very good offerings from D-Link, NetGear etc. WLAN is still to show up in corporations, but that's another story. Bluetooth's place is as a cable replacement and that's what this article highlights, primarily focusing on the use in mobile phones and wireless headsets.

Yahoo! News - Stepping out of shadows of WiFi

With a hard drive phones can rival dedicated music players (even though there are such with much more disk space, but they also _take_ more space physically), so it can come down to "I want to carry only one device around" factors instead.

Quote: "And makers are looking to move beyond the removable memory cards to actual hard-disk drives. Samsung Electronics has begun to sell a phone in Korea with a 1.5 gigabyte hard drive. That boosts storage capabilities, but at a cost. "

Yahoo! News - Cell Phone Makers Fast Getting In Tune With Emergence Of Digital Music

Even though most feature phones now have at least Java or BREW the focus in this longer note is smartphones.

Yahoo! News - More Cell Phone Software Applications Ringing Up Sales

Note that also WiFi/WLAN is considered within this scope, which currently is used mainly by more or less static devices.

Yahoo! News - Wireless to Drive Internet Growth, Tech Leaders Say

IPv6 has struggled to gain importance for many years. One of the reasons it's taken so long is that IPv4 combined with Network Address Translation (NAT) takes away most of the address limitations of IPv4 in fixed networks. Still, in applications where you need to directly address a device (and as we all know there are a lot of mobile devices out there) need for IPv6 increases. The article claims quality of VoIP will increase through IPv6, but the bigger range of addresses (that enables global peer-to-peer VoIP sessions without need for any "tap dancing") is really the key differentiator.

Yahoo! News - Nokia Demos Mobile Call Using IPv6

This is 3G = WCDMA, not cdma2000. The latter is already well established.

Of course the sales increase is from a very low level, but still indicates 2005 can be the year of 3G/WCDMA.

Yahoo! News - Motorola Sees 3G Phone Sales Quadrupling

Interestingly this is primarily for games (not music), and the phones also sport 3D graphics. They all have 3G for the Docomo FOMA network.

Yahoo! News - Japan's Docomo Unveils 3G Phones with 3D Sound

This is about the US market. Surprisingly low market penetration for mobile phones overall. Due to bad coverage/roaming? In Europe coverage and roaming in GSM networks are non-issues today (for the most part). On the service side it's less difference between US and Europe, as Europe has been slow on the service uptake due to very little experimenting/risking with services, and operators providing bad business models for content/service providers.

Quote "According to the report, music, games, photos, e-mail and Internet have all found their way onto cell phones, and as more consumers look for ways to integrate multimedia technology into their everyday lives, it is no surprise that nearly 74 percent of Americans now use a cell phone on a daily basis. However, lest manufacturers think handset usage is ubiquitous, 26 percent of Americans still do not use a handset today, indicating there is still a significant market for first-time buyers."

Multimedia Features Attract Mobile Buyers - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

Indicates the mobile ringtone/music business is big enough to attract the key players in both the music and mobile service industries.

Mobile Music Conference 2004, November 18-19, The Ritz-Carlton South Beach, Miami, Florida - Goin' Mobile: Who's Next?

The original Yahoo title is a bit misleading: We are talking only PDA's here. Symbian OS is much more established than any Microsoft OS in smart/feature phones, and that's the market Microsoft should go for, not PDA's. With the right strategy it could be different, but that's up to Microsoft.

Quote: "But Palm partisans said this battle is different, in that the overall size of the handheld market is declining as more consumers shift to cell phones, MP3 players and other gadgets that incorporate electronic organizer features."

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Takes Lead in Software For Handhelds

The outlook for sales of 3G handsets in Europe looks promising. Again, music (and possibly games) downloading sounds like a good "carrot" for user adoption. Video conferencing might be so initially, but who really cares about video conferencing (except the operators)? Of course just talking 3G performance will not sway the average consumer.

Quote: "On Wednesday British mobile telephone behemoth Vodafone became the first of Europe's major players to launch mass-market 3G services, hoping to steal a march on its rivals here ahead of the crucial Christmas period. Vodafone said it was targeting over 10 million customers by March 2006 across the group for 3G services, officially known as Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS)."

Yahoo! News - Crunch time for Europe's mobile operators as 3G hits mainstream

As Symbian OS is used more and more in mainstream phones, accordingly also Symbian OS volume increases substantially. Especially Nokia (via Series 60) has driven this trend.

FYI: Series 60 is Symbian OS, but with a specific form factor and a specific set of applications. System API's are the same (at least for the most part).

infoSync World : Symbian OS sales soar

Also 10 3G phones are introduced, where 7 are claimed to be Vodafone-specific.

Downloading of high-quality music is by many considered a key area for increased revenue. As most (all?) 3G phones have MP3 support and many have replaceable memory cards, the hardware for this is in place.

Quote: "Exciting new services including video calling, full track music downloads and 3D games"

Vodafone - Media Centre - Global launch of Vodafone live! with 3G

Nice slide-up design. Arguably quicker to open than clam-shell, and also takes away the need for two displays (which would add cost) and possible to operate without opening it (could be used for controlling the music player etc, not saying that the D500 supports that).

Quote: "The 80MB of storage supports and expands the business capabilities of the user. The dynamic shared memory allows people to store over 1,000 megapixel images, capture 60 minutes of video, save 15 to 20 MP3 or AAC songs, enter up to 60 minutes of voice recording or just use the space for receiving and sending attached files. "
No external memory? If so, too bad. Odd they mention "business capabilities", considering the memory will mainly be used for music.

Samsung Releases SGH-D500 Phone In Europe - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

Not that many users would complain if advertizing decreased, but the note also indicates a change in social behavior (at least in theory).

Quote: "Several of the young people deprived of their phones found they had to engage in a novel form of social interaction - talking to their friends' parents. It seems that previously they had arranged meetings at other locations, using mobile phones to keep in contact. What for previous generations had been a rite of passage calling on friends at their homes had become an anachronism."

Yahoo! News - Ad agencies sound alert over the mobile phone generation

Even though Enhanced Data Rate triples the speed the industry has already chosen the technology for Wireless LAN for the near and medium term: IEEE 802.11 and derivatives. The advantage of Bluetooth is still peripheral communication, as it's got very low power consumption and footprint and hence can be put in many kinds of small devices complementing a mobile phone or other mobile device.

Actually the article mentions that BT SIG more or less resigns on the use of Bluetooth for WLAN applications.

The volumes are certainly there (as Bluetooth will be in most phones): "Still, IDC predicts that about 158 million Bluetooth-enabled devices will ship this year. That number will grow to 922 million units by 2008, IDC says."

Yahoo! News - Bluetooth Grows Up

Interesting new watch-like devices (and ditto service) with on-line information capabilities via FM radio broadcasts.

Quote: "The MSN® Direct service is delivered across the United States and Canada over an extensive network that is based on FM radio broadcast signals. Your watch is updated with current, relevant information. If you travel often, you can subscribe to multiple locations and receive coverage."

I'll keep watching (no pun intended) this as it develops. Micosoft might be on to something really innovative here.

As we talk info broadcasting it doesn't seem possible to surf the net, read emails etc, but I might be wrong.

MSN Direct

Good information, if you can read Swedish.

An indication of the difference in strategy between Nokia and SonyEricsson:
"Nej, men Nokia har 30 lågprismodeller, som alla egentligen är samma produkt. Vi vill erbjuda produkter som är annorlunda, kontrar Rikko Sakaguchi, chef för produktplaneringen. Om Nokia har 20 modeller i varje segment, då har vi ambition att ha två - men unika modeller, fortsätter han."
I hope they are right.

Ny Teknik - Många fler modeller blir det
Ny Teknik - Kvartetten som styr Sony Ericsson

Quote: "In the past, amateur videos or photographs have provided the only footage or images of major news events but with more ordinary people carrying cell phones equipped with cameras there is far more likelihood of snatched images being published."

Interestingly news photographers have discussed for years whether digital cameras are good enough for news reporting. Progress tends to not care about what experts think, so even though camera phones still are inferior to dedicated digital cameras, the most important thing is to catch the moment, and be the first to show it.

There seems to be a business opportunity in this too:
"ANP receives camera phone pictures through a collaboration with Internet news Web site Nu.nl, which offers money and prizes to amateur photographers who send in pictures."
"In Japan, where many people own a camera-equipped cell phone, it has become common to sell pictures to television stations and other media outlets."

Yahoo! News - Cell Phones Increasingly Used to Snap the News

The 6630 is a UMTS phone tailored for the business worker, and therefor includes VPN for corporate access (e.g. for email and intranet browsing).

infoSync World : Nokia 6630 3G smartphone now shipping

- 52% have camera
- 15% have 3G/UMTS
- 23% total sales increase since Q3 last year
- 3.6M estimated sales 2004 (30% more than 2003)
- Sales of PDA's decreasing, but smartphones increasing

Mobil - Försäljning av mobiler i Sverige ökar rejält

Feature-wise like a Nokia Communicator without the alphanumeric keypad (yet with handwriting). Doesn't sound like a wise choice, but definitely less clumsy than the 9300 and 9500.

infoSync World : Nokia 7710 resurrects Series 90
Nokia Unveils Touch-Sensitive Mobile Phone

Seems Nokia wants to stay agnostic regarding corporate email solution by going for both RIM and Good. It's kind of odd though, as this duplication will probably add extra license costs to each phone (even when the functionality is not used), and neither RIM nor Good has any market penetration to talk about yet (compared to how many phones are sold and how many business workers (hypothetically speaking) would like to access corporate email from their phones in a simple always-on way).

Yahoo! News - Nokia and Good Technology Tie Up in Mobile E-Mail

Not quite, but there's still a considerable performance boost from EDGE and UMTS (despite the earlier note about latency issues).

Shows practical performance figures compared to theoretical ditto. Impressive real UMTS speed: 231 kbps.

Yahoo! News - Cell Phones Do Broadband

1.2 Mp camera, that by now seems to be standard in all new phones.

Series 60 based, which in itself indicates a good set of base features, including web browsing and email.

Quote: "Other software includes Wireless Village-based instant messaging and presence-enhanced contacts, as well as the usual compliment of Series 60 PIM applications, an XHTML compatible microbrowser and Push-To-Talk support. "

infoSync World : New Nokia 3230 smartens mid-range

Nothing mentioned about camera resolution.

Quote: "Nokia said the 7710 would be on sale in Asia in the fourth quarter and in Europe from the first quarter of 2005 for around 500 euros ($635). The 3230, which is expected to retail for 350 euros and the 6020, with a 200-euro price tag, will both be on sale from the first quarter of 2005. "

Yahoo! News - Nokia Unveils Three New Camera Phones

Despite the pessimistic beginning this note contains some interesting info about real applications for Bluetooth.

Yahoo! News - Bye Bye Bluetooth?

As indicated earlier, this is a Blackberry with almost normal phone keypad. Thereby smaller, but a bit trickier to enter text with, despite a T9-like but more advanced text entry method (SureType).

Quote: "While it may not be as full featured as the Symbian Series 60 phones it will likely be up against in the market, the 7100t (and its Vodafone fraternal twin) is a good showing for RIM's new design. In particular, the SureType typing system strikes a good balance between typing speed and compactness with very good accuracy and little learning curve. Time will tell if it catches on with users."

Note the very creative logo for Instant Messaging: "IM".

infoSync World : Preview: RIM BlackBerry 7100t

This is a Bluetooth headset that uses a normal earplug and a cord to a Bluetooth transceiver.

Quote: "This solution has both its advantages and disadvantages, the former including the level of comfort ranking among the very best of Bluetooth 'headsets' we've ever tried and a high level of functionality being harboured by the headset itself."

infoSync World : Review Centre : Sony Ericsson HBH-200