Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

To a European this is unheard of, as the sender pays for the SMS transfer here, not the recipient. Hence, a good advice would be to have it the same way in USA.

"According to Wireless Services Corporation, 43 percent of all mobile phone text messages in the United States are now spam, compared to just 18 percent a year ago."

Survey: Mobile Phone Spam Hits 45 Percent - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

When does it stop to be a consumer request and start to be inter-provider competition only? If consumers are really mainly using the camera phone for low-resolution phone wallpapers I'd say that's already the case, but if you consider that you don't need any dedicated digital camera (not that camera phones are even close to them in terms of lens quality etc yet) it makes more sense.

"Korea’s second largest electronics maker had once planned to skip 5-megapixel and move onto 6- or 7-megapixel phone, but the better-than-expected market prospects made the company change the plan, Mr. Ahn explained."

Telecoms Korea

500k full songs, and so far 1M downloads.

Digital Media Europe: News - Vodafone extends mobile music catalogue to 500,000 music tracks

Also Samsung has earlier announced a 5 mp camera phone.

LG Electronics May Release 5-Megapixel Camera-Phone in Q2

There are seemingly a lot of ways to solve the same problem. In any case it indicates such a keyboard is the way to go as opposed to handwriting, that almost no featurephones have today, and that is increasingly shunned in PDA's, at least in Western countries. In China, Korea, Japan etc handwriting might rather be a benefit.

Phones With a Full Keyboard Gallery

"Eberhard Schöneburg, the chief executive of the software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, may have found the answer: a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne who goes wherever you go."

"If you marry her in a virtual ceremony, you even end up with a virtual mother-in-law who really does call you in the middle of the night on your cellphone to ask where you are and whether you have been treating her daughter right."
Too real? Too scary? You judge.

The New York Times > Technology > Sad, Lonely? For a Good Time, Call Vivienne*

Strategy Analytics instead recommends carriers to start with streaming video.

"Such services are being trialed in various parts of the world, most notably Korea, but service isn't expected in Europe and North American for as long as two years, the study notes. Still, the report warns that phone vendors and wireless operators who are bullish about mobile TV should proceed with caution."

Yahoo! News - Researcher Questions Demand For Mobile TV

There are still ways to differentiate on software, and many buy phones on distinct features, but as users anyway mostly voice-call or SMS, and most in developed countries already has a phone, there needs to be other means to attract a would-be phone swapper.

Gartner: "When the mobile phone technology starts to stabilize, you have to start thinking about other elements, such as design. Technology alone is not enough. At one point, the arms race of having a camera with 3, 5 or 15 megapixels becomes irrelevant," said mobile phone market analyst Ben Wood at Gartner research."

Motorola: "Not technology, but simplicity is one of Motorola's four design rules. "If I'd zoom up 10,000 feet, I see people lugging laptops who only need email, calendar and some Internet access. That about sums it up. Over the last decade we've become (computer) system administrators. It's unbelievable when the history about this period gets written," Zander said."

Samsung: "Even in the same clamshell, even in a slidephone you can see the difference. The quality of the display, the incredible surround sound. People recognize it and are willing to pay the premium. That's how we try to differentiate," Samsung's global handset marketing chief Chang Soo Choi told Reuters."

Yahoo! News - Cell Phone Makers Choose Between Style and Tech

Network access:
77% to mobile
50% to fixed

It's less expensive to establish mobile networks than fixed, so this is understandable. That so many have access is though surprising.

Digital Media Europe: News - 77% of world has access to mobile network - World Bank

I guess this requires a smartphone for the special software, but there are at least lots of ideas for new applications.

Examples mentioned:
- Application navigation, by using the camera as a mouse
- Faxing by taking snapshots of document pages and faxing via the phone
- 1D and 2D barcode scanning (see a previous note)

Yahoo! News - Cell Phones Morph into Imaging Devices

I definitely vote for branded games, as you have no way to try the games out before you buy (except by borrowing someone else's phone). At least not today, but DRM will hopefully be able to deal with demo versions later. Hence, trust and recognition are key factors.

At the same time I must say that the mobile content that is currently best priced is games. I bought Chessmaster from Gameloft for $3 (that is supposed to use the same chess engine as the PC version; I can't beat it in any case), and they also have Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Might & Magic and other Ubisoft-branded titles (they are part owned by Ubisoft, so it's not surprising). Of course these games are much simpler than the PC versions, but you still get a lot of bang for the buck.

Comment from EA: "Trip Hawkins, who founded Electronic Arts and 3DO, now runs cell phone game maker Digital Chocolate. He believes the right way to snare gamers is with novel games that use the cell phone's interactive features, tapping its e-mail, camera and messaging capabilities."

"Cell phone games are expected to grow from $345 million in revenues in 2004 to $1.5 billion in 2008 in the United States alone, according to market research firm IDC."

"In the cell phone market, video game publishers will have to justify their existence, Hawkins said. Since phone games cost so little to make -- often three months of work by a half-dozen programmers and artists -- he believes it will be easier for cell phone carriers to bypass game publishers."
The error in this thinking is that carriers will not make any games, so who will?

"He said a game publisher that doesn't focus on creating unique games that exploit the social nature of cell phones may be nothing more than a middleman waiting to be cut out of the action."
Read: network-enabled games... What about a mobile version of Sims?

Finally (strengthening my theory): "It's hard to get someone to start playing a new kind of entertainment without a hook like a brand,'' said P.J. McNealy, an analyst at American Technology Research. "In the long run, it may be unique content that wins. In the near term, it's about branding.''

Yahoo! News - Two visions for cell phone games

"Felica is the main technology in the Suica card, which allows Japan Railway commuters to pay their fare and buy at outside shops and restaurants without any physical contact. More than 10 million Suica cards have been issued."

A newsletter provided some more info (this time between KDDI and Felica):
* 'FeliCa' is the contactless IC card system developed by Sony, and a registered trademark of Sony Corp.
* FeliCa technology complies with International Standard ISO/IEC 18092 telecommunications standards.
* 'Mobile FeliCa' is the platform uniting 'FeliCa' with mobile devices enabling electronic money and identification, ticketing and ticketless train fares, etc..
* 'Ezweb' is the registered trademark of KDDI.

And at IEC's site: "ISO/IEC 18092:2004 defines communication modes for Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol (NFCIP-1) using inductive coupled devices operating at the centre frequency of 13,56 MHz for interconnection of computer peripherals."

Hence, it's a fully standardized solution, and could therefor be used worldwide.

Yahoo! News - Vodafone to install contactless swipe cards in Japanese mobile phones

It's already Nokia's second biggest market (after US).

Yahoo! News - Nokia Corp. CEO says China poised to become its largest market

At that time accounting for 9.3% of the total phone sales.

"The report found that 62 per cent of consumers prefer to carry a single device that adds additional features beyond telephony even if those features compromise advanced functions, size or battery life. But 74 per cent of consumers said that telephony remains the most important feature on a mobile device, clearly indicating that any combination of advanced features must not compromise telephony."

Digital Media Europe: News - Smart-phone sales projected to grow at 28% through 2009 report

Nokia seems to have turned the tide, and is now increasing market share again.

"The firm that produces one in every three phones sold around the world said it aimed to further increase market share by ramping up production of more sophisticated phones."

Yahoo! News - Nokia Plans No New Price Cuts This Year

Another sign that the PDA business is declining.

Yahoo! News - Sony to Withdraw from Personal Digital Assistants

Nokia is normally not early with new technologies (at least not hardware-ditto, adding cost), but Nokia is one of the first manufacturers to use the phone as an RFID device (radio frequency identification; reading of ID "labels" via short distance radio). Data from the RFID tag is sent via SMS or GPRS to a central server. Seems a good fit for security and homecare personnel, that no longer have to carry around special terminals.

Digital Media Europe: News - Nokia adds mobile RFID kit to Field Force Solution

Expensive, but Flash memories are more robust than a hard disk. 2 GB is approx 30 hours worth of 128 kbps MP3 or AAC files, or probably all Seinfeld shows in MPEG-4. Not too bad.

SanDisk Debuts 2GB Memory Card - Computing News - Designtechnica News

There are a lot of brands and sites using the color orange (including Abiro, yet not in the logo), but I guess in a competitive situation any means to keep the brand value intact is critical.

Digital Media Europe: News - Orange sues Easymobile for use of orange colour in branding

Supports MP3 and AAC, but ships with only 16 MB miniSD memory, so without a memory upgrade it falls flat as a mobile jukebox.

High screen resolution: 240 by 320 (same as a Windows Mobile PDA). Seems like overkill, but it's still reasonably priced (due to the meager miniSD?).

Sanyo MM-5600 Phone Available From Sprint - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

The smartest thing with this phone is in my opinion the lens protection that when opened reveals the lens and the flash, as well as triggers the camera application, so photos can be taken immediately.

The email client supports push notifications, but the question is what is required on the server side.

Some oddities: It's aimed for the US market (according to DesignTechnica), but it's actually a GPRS/EDGE phone. Nokia's site doesn't mention HTML support, yet DesignTechnica does.

Nokia's New 6682 Smartphone - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

"Thus it was no surprise that the vast majority of the new phones launched at this year's show were designed with music as a key integrated feature."

"The GSM Association's best handset of the year award went to Samsung for its extremely successful D500 slide-up, slide-down fronted phone launched in November 2004."
I like the slide-up/down form factor, so I applaud Samsung for this.

"Both Nokia and Samsung showed handsets for TV viewing that are currently in the trial phase. Perhaps 2006 will be the year the TV truly goes tiny."

Yahoo! News - Pebbles, clams and razors; the hottest phones around

As indicated before music seems to be the focal point for mobile phone providers during 2005 (and maybe to a lesser degree Digital TV), and all manufacturers are racing to get there first.

Mentioned here are Sendo, SonyEricsson and Nokia.

SonyEricsson will market some of its phones under the Walkman brand. Technically there's of course no real difference, but this creates a stronger marketing message. Apart from this brand connection, there's otherwise very little Sony in SonyEricsson.

There will be a lot of confusion regarding what DRM scheme to follow, and just supporting OMA DRM is not enough. Note e.g. Motorola's iTunes phones.

Yahoo! News - Companies Race for Music Phone First

There's no doubt anymore that Linux is a strong competitor to Symbian and Microsoft on the highend, with the major benefits that it's not proprietary and the licensing cost is much lower. It will also be used in lower-end phones as it's more memory- and CPU-friendly than the other mentioned systems.

Yahoo! News - At Least 20 Vendors Building Linux Mobile Phones, Vendor Claims

It's gone very fast. Mainland China is actually already the world's largest provider of mobile phones, and is expected to reach 500M in 2005 a year. There are concerns about price-drops and over-production, and of course there's a big risk that Nokia, Motorola etc will be hit hard due to this, unless they move all their production to China.

Yahoo! News - China mobile phone production capacity to hit 500 million in 2005

3GSM highlights - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

Surely for watching pictures and videos.

Samsung�s SGH-Z130 - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

Interesting findings:
- They prioritze price, design and camera in that order.
- 65% use mainly SMS, 30% mainly voice. This was surprising.
- Nokia and SonyEricsson are almost equally preferred.
- 35% said they had more than one phone, and 6% more than 5?!?

Note that no other functions like browsing, calendar, MMS etc were mentioned, but maybe they were not in the questionnaire.

Digital Media Europe: News - Swedish youth look for price, design when choosing mobiles � survey

With a slight US spin on things, yet mostly worldwide generic.

Yahoo! News - The Future of Your Mobile Phone

Nokia's spin on music:
""Music is the next big thing in mobile multimedia," Vanjoki said. "We see 2005 as the year when music really goes mobile. Already in 2004, we sold 10 million phones with integrated music players. This year, more than half of our new Nokia phone models are expected to have music functionality," he said."

As there is no real cost of adding music support (except need for more memory, which of course should be upgradable via a memory slot) I figure only the cheapest models will not have music capability.

Yahoo! News - 3G and phones with music players to be market drivers in 2005: Nokia

Some interesting quotes:

"3G adoption is now growing faster than the well-established 2 and 2.5G networks did at the same point of evolution..."

"However, it was clear at this week's 3GSM Congress, that the world's leading handset makers are seriously taking up the challenge to produce compelling mobile phones. Two leading phone makers also unveiled the first-ever phones of the future that promise to offer TV viewing opportunities on the move."

"The fight is also on to reduce the weight and size of the first rather 'clunky' 3G phones that came to market. Samsung is pushing some of the smallest, lightest phones around including what it claims to be the world's smallest 3G handset, the SGH-Z500."

""There is tremendous growth in 3G," Nokia's Tuuti emphasised. Nokia estimates the number of 3G users will hit the 70 million mark by the end of 2005 compared with 16 million at the end of last year."

Yahoo! News - 2005 to see all-singing, all-dancing 3G phones hit the big time: experts

This sounds good, except for the following:
"Kodak has created a handset application for the service, which is downloadable on selected Symbian based camera phones from the Kodak/T-Mobile local sites."
This means it's not a Java application, but a native Symbian application, and even worse it only runs on _some_ Symbian phones. Ouch! All phones have at least a WAP browser and many have Java. Why not use that instead?

Digital Media Europe: News - Kodak, T-Mobile to launch online picture sharing service

A combination of mobile world technology (OMA DRM and AAC) for mobile phones and Microsoft technology (WMA, MS DRM etc) for PCs, in the same solution. I won't comment on the absurdity of having different technical solutions for the same content. You be the judge.

Digital Media Europe: News - Microsoft, Nokia, Loudeye collaborate on mobile music downloads

Another manufacturer fighting for the European 3G market. It's been going well for LG the last year, and it looks like it's continuing to.

Digital Media Europe: News - LG targets European market with range of mobile phones: "The company is trying to establish it as a major player in the European market. LG Electronics has supplied WCDMA (UMTS) handsets to mobile operators including Hutchison, Orange, Telefonica Moviles and O2. "

That sounds like enough speed for high quality video streaming applications, music streaming etc. Of course 9 Mbps would be shared by many handsets, so it's not really LAN performance just yet.

Doesn't say when phones could be available with this functionality.

Digital Media Europe: News - Ericsson demonstrates 9 Mbps with WCDMA, HSDPA

Which includes the world's smallest 3G phone, one with 3D stereo sound and one with rotatable display for better video recording and viewing.

Samsung Unveils Latest Handsets - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

We are certainly moving in that direction. After all the CD is just a bearer of music, videos, data files etc, it's not content itself. A few years ago the industry tried to take the digital route with books. The problem there is that you still need something portable to read the book on, and the technology is simply not there yet. With music that's not a problem, whether you listen via a dedicated music player or a mobile phone, as long as the device provider thinks quality in the audio parts, including the headphone.

A concern the audophile in me raises is that the quality of files in MP3 format is way below CD, and CD is arguably below the analog record. Not until DVD Audio and similar can we talk about an improvement in quality. For casual listening MP3 is good enough, but for more demanding music like classical, jazz, art rock and similar it simply doesn't cut it, and if the consumer is to pay the same price as for a CD I hope consumers will also demand equal or higher quality.

One thing the article forgets, in its concern about moving to new formats all the time, is that it's very simple to convert ones own CDs to formats suitable for data file based music players. Hence, there's no need to buy ones own CDs once again.

An interesting and long article, but one you can think many things about, including in cases disagreement.

Yahoo! News - 10 Million iPods, Previewing the CD's End

They've been late in introducing 3G products, but the market isn't big, so I doubt that's a major factor in Nokia losing market share.

The first 3G/UMTS phone from Nokia was the 6630, which certainly was a decent phone except it was way too buggy.

I believe Nokia's focus on video conferencing in the coming phone is a major mistake, adding cost of two cameras for no commercial reason. Focusing on music would have been much smarter (just add a lot of Flash memory and good stereo phones).

"Nokia's been late in offering 3G phones compared with rivals. But analysts say 3G is too small to produce much profit anyway."

"Motorola (NYSE:MOT - News) and Korea's LG Electronics lead the 3G market in Europe. NEC (NasdaqNM:NIPNY - News) leads in Japan."
Interestingly SonyEricsson is not mentioned.

"Still, the small size of the 3G market makes it uneconomical for Nokia."

Yahoo! News - Nokia Getting Ready To Compete In 3G Market

Thas hasn't got anything to do with mobile phones (at least not at this time) but I found this so interesting that I had to write about it.

What about a computer chip with one general CPU core and 8 powerful and almost as generic co-processors ON THE SAME CHIP! That's what will be in the next Playstation. Each CPU runs at 4 GHz, and the performance is claimed to be 256 gigaflops in total! They say it's not quite supercomputer speed, but what about combining 100s of these babies in one computer...

This is a good sign the computer industry still has some creativity left, but on specifically the PC side the outlook is bleaker. Not even AMD dares to step outside of the old Intel-compatibility and one-chip-per-CPU paradigm. It's an actual fact that leading-edge 3D boards have a much higher floating point calculation performance than the main CPU of a PC.

PlayStation 3 chip has split personality - News at GameSpot

A natural trend as most or all phones introduced now can play music in MP3 and AAC format. The memory size is still an issue, as there are yet few phones with hard disks.

""The mobile phone will become the digital portable music player of tomorrow on which you can do everything," Jean-Paul Baudecroux, chairman of NRJ Group's (SONO.PA) supervisory board told Reuters in a interview."

Yahoo! News - Mobile Phones to Replace IPods, Says France's NRJ

More consumers prefer single song purchase than flat-rate "download all you can" subscriptions (40% vs 8%). There's though hope that subscription-subsidized hardware (with hard disk, I presume) can help promote the benefits of subscriptions.

Consumers Not Receptive to Music Services - Personal Audio/Video News - Designtechnica News

Not much info except a self-explanatory photo.

The latest dirt on the HP hw6500 - Handhelds - handhelds.engadget.com

Introduced in Germany, yet similar setups have been tried out for several years in other countries. One calls or sends an SMS at the start and end of the parking. The system will know beforehand what car the parking is for so the inspector can check whether the parking is valid. Nice and simple.

Pay For Parking With Your Phone - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

Indicates users are concerned that 3G will be too complicated to understand. If so, the industry has once again failed to prepare the market, which brings back memories about the introduction (and complete failure) of WAP. Will we ever learn?

Some useful phrases about 3G that makes sense to an end-user:
- It will be faster (find info faster, download files and emails faster etc)
- It will open up for new and more useful services, like video, music, gaming etc

Yahoo! News - User Fears Threaten 3G Adoption, Survey Finds

It's focusing on the emergency aspect. The 911 button seems like a "What's this button for?"-disaster waiting to happen.

Firefly emergency cellphone for kids - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

Interesting concept with a twist-out alphanumeric keypad, but the reviewer wasn't too happy about the phone as a whole.

"...the screen, interface, graphics, and keyboard are severely lacking"

"we humbly suggest you pass and plunk down for something a little more realistic, like a Treo 650 or maybe waiting for HP’s new hw6500 iPAQ Mobile Communicator."

Siemens SK65 review - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

364M in total.

"the highest number of mobile phone subscriptions per inhabitant were in Luxembourg, Sweden and Italy."

Digital Media Europe: News - Latest stats reveal 80 mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in Europe

In a new report from Telecom View they indicate an expected revenue of 157bn Euro in 2009.

"This report identifies that declining voice ARPUs will start eroding mobile revenues. Without a strong shift to data services the mobile carriers will experience a significant revenue decline."
Yes, we all knew that...

"Our projections show that 3G data revenue will more than overcome losses in voice revenue."
OK, so why? What will follow ringtones as a key opportunity?

Doesn't seem like a very serious report, unless they have good arguments for reaching this revenue level.

Digital Media Europe: News - 3G revenue to bring �157bn in 2009

"...on track to have 250 million users by 2007." (mobile and landline)

"Nearly 90 percent of the 16.4 million new customers recorded in the period were mobile phone subscribers."

Yahoo! News - Number of Indian mobile phone users soar

Doesn't say much, but it's likely they will make announcements at 3GSM World Congress.

Sony Ericsson says last year was about cameraphones, this year is about music - Portable Audio - portableaudio.engadget.com

This is actually quite smart...

As the mobile technology itself is so tiny and inexpensive (at least when talking voice and SMS) I hope more companies will do "weird" stuff with the form factor of mobile phones.

Yahoo! News - Czechs Making Cell Phones for Elderly

Comments the massive US investments in new mobile networks, which is echoing the woes from Europe, where there's also a lot of concerns about whether 3G networks will ever generate any money. The article says 3G, but I believe they also mean cdma2000 (from 1X onward), which is well established in Korea.

"Video streaming creates a very large revenue opportunity. I believe it's quite possible that could offset yield declines should they continue on the voice side," said Sprint Chief Financial Officer Bob Dellinger.

"Japan's NTT DoCoMo (news - web sites) Inc (9437.T) has offered 3G services for more than three years, and still struggles with heavy marketing costs."

"Vodafone, the world's biggest mobile operator, began 3G services in 13 countries in November and expects 10 million customers by March 2006. No. 2 U.S. mobile service Verizon Wireless, says data is its fastest growing business, bringing 5.6 percent of fourth-quarter service revenue. But most of this was from text messages on its older voice network."

"... believes downloads of video and music to high speed phones could create gross profit margins of about 60 percent compared with average margins of about 40 percent for voice calls."

Yahoo! News - New Cellphone Networks Seen as Risky Bets

Freescale claims their new technology makes mobile communication so small that it could fit into any consumer device. Doesn't say what kind of radio technology is being used.

Yahoo! News - Freescale Chipset Adds Cell Service To Consumer Devices

NTT Docomo has so far aimed it's FOMA service to business users, but will now launch consumer phones as a step towards replacing i-mode with FOMA.

Yahoo! News - DoCoMo Aims At Consumers With 3G

Many are looking at VoIP via WLAN. Interestingly that is against the desires of the operators, so it seems the mobile phone industry has some guts left.

Siemens to demonstrate digital TV, VoIP WiFi handsets at CeBit - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

This is a nice, fairly large, new PDA/smartphone with EDGE.

HP�s hw6500: size, details, more pics! - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

Article about HP's digital pen technology that works like a normal ink pen but has a camera that photographs what is written and determines position by a special pattern printed on the paper. As far as I understand this must be based on Anoto's technology. The stored representation of the handwriting can be sent via Nokia phones.

Yahoo! News - HP, Nokia Mobilize the Digital Pen

Generally very positive reviews. The best PDA/smartphone at the moment?

Cingular Treo 650 review roundup - Cellphones - cellphones.engadget.com

75 % of the population is expected to have a phone by 2010. That's low.

"Market segments with the greatest opportunity for growth will continue to be the youth category, which TDG expects to double between 2004 and 2010 - from 25 million to 50 million subscribers."

US Phone Subscribers to Reach 236M By 2010 - Mobile Phones/PDAs News - Designtechnica News

Study shows clearly that when talking in the phone while driving the mind is elsewhere.

"The only silver lining to the new research is that elderly drivers using a cell phone aren't any more of a hazard to themselves and others than young drivers. Previous research suggested older drivers may face what Strayer described as a "triple whammy.""
Oh. That's good (?).

Yahoo! News - Study: Cell Phone Use Ages Young Drivers

I think you know which frog this is about...

Yahoo! News - Ringtone Frog's Genitals Deemed OK for British TV

This time the goal has been to make an OS more optimised for multimedia and smaller form factor phones. Nokia's Series 60 (a UI and application suite for Symbian OS) is already in phones that could be called mainstream, e.g. 7610 and 6630. With version 9 Symbian OS will probably be an even more obvious choice when compared to Microsoft's Windows Mobile, as Microsoft is still stuck in "smartphone no man's land".

InfoWorld: Symbian aims downmarket with smart phone software: February 02, 2005: By : NETWORKING : PLATFORMS
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