Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

At least based on what the industry (rather than consumers) seem to consider a smartphone.

It should be noted that most of Nokia's Series 60 phones (and Series 60 is the clearly leading smartphone platform) are technically speaking smartphones, but most of them are used as basic phones.

There is a risk, however, that these devices will be seen by consumers as just very expensive feature phones.
That's a fact.

Digital Media Europe: News - Smartphone market to grow rapidly despite challenges

Just a rumour, and it could all be false, but this article hints that Apple might be partnering with Cingular for an MVNO setup.

Apple's Mobile Me to be an MVNO? - Engadget

So it's perfectly clear: corporate wireless e-mail is a potential killer-app. In reality it hasn't become that yet, due to technical issues (read: bad product and system designs) and legal issues.

This is about to change, and quickly, as there are several other companies on the market that want to get into this business. We are not talking rocket science here: Like with the iPod it's rather about making it simple to use and simple to understand.

The article mentions Good, Visto and Intellisync as competitors, but also Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft want a piece of this pie.

"RIM barely scratches the surface. We don't need any of their customers," said Brian Bogosian, chief executive of Visto Corp

RIM rivals cash in as BlackBerry hearing looms - Yahoo! News

Shipping 825M phones, up 17% since 2004, shows we are not at the peak yet.

Market shares at the end of 2005:
* Nokia: 32%
* Motorola: 18%
* Samsung: 13%
* LG: 7%
* Sony Ericsson: 6%

2005 mobile shipments top 825 million - Computing

The article is very long, so here's a shorter version based on quotes:

“In the world of patents, you're not going to get any traction unless you're willing to enforce them,” Mr. Stout explains.
This is true, and also means smaller companies with patents have a very hard time dealing with larger/richer companies.

True to form, RIM's entrepreneurial bosses stood their ground. They regarded NTP as a vile patent “troll” — a company with dormant patents that preys on successful technology companies to extort fees from a hot-selling product.

The company (NTP) was never about making things or selling things. It was about protecting potentially valuable ideas, some of which dealt with sending messages to wireless devices.
This I don't like, so even though RIM made the big blunder of not paying NTP, NTP is also quite questionable.

From the outset, RIM and its lawyers didn't seem to take NTP seriously. The company was convinced NTP's patents were junk because they codified technology that was already widely in use by RIM and countless others. In legal jargon, NTP's patents were “prior art,” and therefore invalid.

It took the jury barely four hours to reach a verdict. They found not only that RIM had infringed on NTP's patents, but that its conduct had been “willful.” The court assessed damages of $23-million (U.S.) and a royalty based on the number of BlackBerrys RIM sold in the United States.

Through arrogance, blunder and bad advice, RIM's potential bill had shot up from a few million dollars before the trial to roughly $20-million when its case headed south at trial, to now hundreds of millions of dollars.

Around the same time, RIM also mounted a major lobbying and public relations push in Washington. It was eager to convince policy makers that it was the victim of patent trolling gone wild and a dysfunctional patent system.

The endgame isn't over. Legal experts still expect RIM will have to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars to end its nightmare. Even with most of NTP's patents in technical disrepute, the U.S. justice system has made them legally valid.
This is odd, and an obvious flaw in the system.

“There are 16 million lines of code in BlackBerry. Sixteen million. It's hard to imagine 16 million lines of code.
Right, but only an extremely small portion of this is in any way dealing with the e-mail technologies that relate to the NTP patents.

I hope that this case will end soon so that a trivial thing like e-mail support in mobile phones can flourish without this kind of melodrama occuring again. Obviously RIM made a big mistake being so arrogant about the whole patenting issue, but this case is now so much more than just two companies fighting about patent licensing.

Globetechnology: Patently absurd

Might this be the trend for 2006, phones optimised for playing videos in wide-screen format?

It doesn't say how much memory it's got, but the phone has a connector for external T-Flash memory.

Very clean design, and a useful-looking keypad (focus on usability rather than arty design).

Akihabara News - Pantech&Curitel IM-U100, the PMP phone

Previous attempts have been very costly for the consumer, as the data transfer has been added to the cost of the music downloaded. It sounds like these operators have flat-rate data plans, but they are likely capped.

Other limitations noted:
* Phones don't have much of text input capabilities, so hard to enter info about songs etc
* There are not many phones provided by the mentioned operators that can be called music phones
* The Verizon phones support only the Microsoft WMA format
* Music bought from iTunes doesn't work here
* Crappy earphones provided with the phones

There are still many reasons to either buy CDs (so you can generate any audio format you want), or buy and download via a PC (for the convenience etc).

A New Tune for Cell Phones - Yahoo! News

Even though mobile technology has been broadly adopted in China, the government enforces filtering of information, to avoid counter-political messages to flow freely.

China rings in new year after billions of short messages - Yahoo! News

Update: The patent hasn't been approved, it's only registered. My previous comment about prior knowledge still applies.


Sounds impossible, considering this is obvious prior knowledge, but according to this note it's a fact. Is this yet another sign that the US patent system doesn't work?

they also managed to patent the delivery of text based emoticon - so presumably sending :) via an SMS - if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.

Cingular Patents the Emoticon :(

it's becoming clear that WiMAX will have a major advantage based on the very low cost of its spectrum
Operators already on the 3G train will of course fight WiMAX anyway, so that their huge investment in 3G doesn't look like the mistake of the century.

The situation is particularly acute in Europe where average 3G spectrum cost per Hz is 1,000 times higher than WiMAX spectrum
This is excellent for new operators (read: existing broadband providers), yet we need phones and other WiMAX devices as well, not just infrastructure.

Report: Low Cost Will Spur WiMAX Assault On 3G - Yahoo! News

It's not just about WiMAX, even though that's been most discussed lately.

Mentioned competing technologies are FLASH-OFDM (QUALCOMM) and UMTS TDD (IPWireless).

WiMAX seems to be the most independent choice, which is a benefit in itself.

WiMAX Faces Renewed Competition: Study - Yahoo! News

The note rightly concludes that nobody really cares, as only the features matter. The difference between featurephones and smartphones has always been blurry, and increasingly so.

I tend to use the following definitions, but they can also be debated:
* PDA: information device based on an "open" OS and without mobile radio, with touch screen and/or alphanumeric keypad
* Smartphone: PDA with integrated mobile radio
* Featurephone: voice-centric mainstream phone, with some level of multimedia and PIM features, and that only supports Java for user-installed applications
But then, why is Java not considered an open OS, when Windows Mobile is?

It's probably best to simply call the Treo a mobile/cell phone.

Cingular Denies Treo Is a Smartphone - Yahoo! News

This is crucial to securing interoperability and broad adoption. It also puts pressure on the industry to standardise on DVB-H and nothing else (like e.g. DBMS).

Digital Media Europe: News - Mobile DTV Alliance formed to promote DVB-H

Opera Mini is a Java/J2ME-based web browser for mobile phones, that relies on a transcoding server that converts the often very complex web pages into something more digestable for the low performance of mobile bearers and the memory and CPU capabilities of mobile phones.

It works quite well based on my previous testing, yet web pages are always shown in "narrow" mode rather than as they are shown on a PC screen. It's also very dependent of the load of the gateway, as most work is done there. Downloading the processed info is on the other hand fast even over GPRS.

As I've wondered before, how will phone manufacturers think of Opera Mini, considering it lessens the need for upgrading to new phones? Opera also wants to sell other products to them.

Opera Mini

Opera Officially Launches Mini Browser - Yahoo! News

Opera Mini Officially Brings Web to Mobiles - Mobile News - Designtechnica

Beceem Communications introduces a chipset for WiMax in mobile phones. That means WiMax becomes more of a competitor to 3G, but the question is if any major operator will stand behind WiMax, and hence whether phone manufacturers will risk their business on making phones with WiMax support.

Using 10MHz of available spectrum, mobile WiMax is expected to have a 30Mbps peak rate with one kilometer range in densely populated areas and up to five kilometers in rural areas.

Although the carriers have a great deal of money invested in buying spectrum for deployment of their 3G networks, the WiMax chips would offer a competitive alternative. They also consume the same amount of power as cellular radios.

Johnsson said once one carrier breaks ranks and uses WiMax instead of cellular, the others will quickly follow.
We'll see. I think WiMax could be very interesting for instance in Africa and India.

First Mobile WiMax chip sets ready to ship - Yahoo! News

Meaning they wil never time out. This is used as a way to sway consumers to sign up for mobile telephony.

"We'll see about 6 million new additions a month in 2006. The mobile base should double in 2006 to 130 to 140 million."

India is widely seen as the last big market for mobile phone growth. Less than 40 percent of the country's total area is covered by mobile networks, and fewer than eight in every 100 Indians use mobiles, compared with China's 30 percent.

India's mobile giants battle it out in the villages - Yahoo! News

Profits higher but sales lower than expected. Imaging and music/Walkman phones pointed out as driving factors.

"Sales are a little lower than expected, and as Sony Ericssson is a small player with 6.5 percent market share, a bad performance can be costly," Redeye analyst Greg Johansson told AFP.

Sony Ericsson beats expectations in fourth quarter - Yahoo! News

After EA acquired Jamdat, the push for branded mobile games is given to increase substantially, and most likely also make it tougher for non-branded games to stand out. Mforma has a partnership with Marvel Comics, further strenghtning this hypothesis.

The top players in this market: EA/Jamdat (31%), Namco (9%), Mforma (4%). Gameloft and Glu Mobile are also mentioned.

Next Generation - Analysis: History of Cell-Phone Gaming

According to Forrester Research 60% of phones used will be 3G phones.

As always, the industry looks to compelling services as the explanation/motivator of the growth, but broad growth like this is easier caused by simply selling only 3G phones, with some neat features that consumers require, like a better display or camera, or a nicer form factor (see Motorola RAZR as an example). I don't doubt that this growth could happen though.

Digital Media Europe: News - 60% of Europeans to have 3G handsets by end of 2010

18% growth and a few "millimeters" from analysts' expectations still made the share drop by 5%.

This is of course a concrete risk factor:
Analysts questioned whether Motorola could sustain its momentum without a successor to the Razr -- the ultra-slim mobile phone that is one of the most popular models among upscale buyers -- as its competitors start selling similar thin phones.

Motorola now controls 19 percent of the worldwide handset market, the company said, keeping it in the No. 2 position after Finnish company Nokia.

Motorola shares drop despite rise in profit - Yahoo! News

Motorola profits nearly double; stock falls as sales lag estimates - Yahoo! News

As reported earlier mBlox was fined for charging consumers for advertising via Premium SMS that they hadn't asked for, and if they knew never would have wanted to pay for.

As before: It's Jamba (not mBlox) that set up the promotion and the business model, so even though mBlox has obviously benefited from this revenue-wise, it's Jamba that's to blame and should consequently be fined.

What's peculiar is that this has been apparent to me since the start of the Jamba business, and I've commented on it several times. Clearly ICSTIS doesn't understand the business they are to control considering they are fining mBlox and not Jamba.

Victims of Crazy Frog ringtones may get refunds

Just out, and with one comment so far.

Abiro (www.abiro.com, wap.abiro.com) has added Bingo to its already broad and
well-rounded range of casino games in its Mobile Casino service. Bingo has draws
every 5 minutes with Jackpots six times a day!

Abiro adds Bingo to its Mobile Casino

Abiro Adds Bingo to its Mobile Casino - PR.com

Wireless Developer Network

Bingo News - Mobile Content Provider Abiro Allows People to Bingo on the Go

It's clear from this article that RIM has knowingly refrained to pay for patent licenses they have known for a long time they've been in violation of.

I'm starting to feel sympathy for NTP, even though I in general very much dislike companies consisting only of lawyers whose revenue comes solely from licensing out patents (the inventor is not among the living). The anti-creative mindset such people must have is hard to comprehend. Anyway...

RIM says it has designed and tested a replacement version of its BlackBerry wireless system that would let it work around NTP's patent claims, but so far the company has refused to provide any details.
Considering how general NTP's patents are, I'm wondering how they've achieved this.

The Globe and Mail: RIM allegedly caused 'substantial harm'

Just got a newsletter from Nokia stating that the first batch of the 9300i (the new model with WLAN and corporate e-mail software) has been shipped to resellers. Unfortunately and oddly it hasn't got 3G, but apart from that it seems really nice.

Nokia - Nokia 9300i

For many consumers, the camera phone will be their everyday camera. Camera phones will put immense competitive pressures on one-time use and other low-end cameras.

The rapid growth of camera phones will create growing opportunities for image printing and sharing.
No to image printing, yes to image sharing. The market for image printing is overexaggerated (read: wishful thinking from legacy businesses) as there's no point in printing the pictures if you can easier share them online or store locally on e.g. a PC.

Digital Media Europe: News - Camera phones to account for 87% of handsets by 2010

This is the first phones I've seen that parallel the capacity of iPod nano using Flash memory (up to 4 GB). AU also hosts a music download service. This is for Japan only.

Akihabara News - AU Listen Mobile Service and 4GB MP3 phones

Japan and South Korea are mentioned as the main growth areas for 3G.

Operators are still seeking the magic feature that users will not be able to live without, but for now they are finding that 3G services at least give them a new weapon with which to target customers in an increasingly saturated market.

Still, the biggest challenge facing mobile operators remains convincing the average customer, who tends to choose services based on phone design and price, to upgrade to a new service that can appear to be confusing and unnecessary.

Is it a cultural thing that Europe, despite being early on with adopting 3G, and with extreme costs for the operators, can't get appealing services out so that consumers start to use 3G? For instance, video telephony mentioned here (and that requires substantial bandwidth) doesn't seem to be interesting at all to Europeans.

Advanced 3G mobile phones gain momentum in Asia - Yahoo! News

Evidenced by 125M subscribers and 86% penetration. The number of subscribers grew by 70% during 2005.

Interestingly no global operator has had much success in Russia. Vodafone is not even mentioned here.

Digital Media Europe: News - Russia has over 125m mobile phone users

Futuremark's 3DMark test tool for PC 3D graphics cards is well known, but SPMarkJava is less so.

SPMarkJava is aimed for evaluating mobile devices supporting J2ME MIDP 2.0 and JSR 184 (3D Graphics API), yet other aspects than 3D performance are tested. The short-term user is likely a MIDP KVM provider, but this tool is also useful for phone reviewers and application developers.

A free version can be downloaded from the site.

Futuremark - Products - Benchmarks - SPMarkJava06

Sales have been vary good, but hurt by lowered margins. Emerging large-volume markets look most promising looking forward.

Oddly, Nokia still hasn't cloned Motorola RAZR (which seems very important for at least the US market), something Samsung introduced a while ago.

Nokia Q4 volumes seen up, but margins squeezed - Yahoo! News

This is done by Bytemobile's service compressing the web site data in different ways before sending it over to the mobile phone, causing the content to be smaller (which is good for slow and expensive mobile network transfer) and makes it easier for the mobile browser to render.

Digital Media Europe: News - Opera, Bytemobile develop mobile web browser

Opera Speeds Up Wireless Surfing - Yahoo! News

An analysis made by NPD Group indicates the reason is that ringtones are used differently from full music downloads, more as an outward expression than only for personal consumption.

NPD found that the current average ringtone price of $2.50 is under-valued for current buyers, yet still too high for those who might consider purchasing ringtones in the future.

The answer lies in the usage and needs fulfilled by each of these types of music downloads.

ringtones provide an added bonus of fulfilling consumers’ need for personal expression

NPD Press Release - December 14, 2005

The fingerprint scanner works both for the phone and as a security measure for one's PC.

A clear benefit of biometrics like fingerprint scanning (retina scanning is another) is that there's nothing to remember for the user and there's neither anything that can get lost. Not easily anyway.

Incredible Security With the WX310J!

Both articles indicate that consumers have gotten fed up with the subscription model and the hidden costs. Whether that will hurt all forms of ringtone business is yet to be seen.

There is even evidence that novelty ringtones will become more important than they are now, representing no revenue to the music publishers whatsoever.
This is interesting, as Jamba has been most successful with specifically that during 2005.

I believe the music industry (after a very long sleep) will take over more of the contemporary music ringtones, as they can launch such immediately after launching a new hit song or CD. As indicated earlier it would also be logical if iTunes started selling ringtones.

Crazy Frog hits ringtones - Sunday Times - Times Online

Radioactive: Crazy Frog's legacy - it's boomtime for ringtones - Mobile & Wireless - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

It's a rather clever concept: Instead of relying on the multimedia capabilities of phones (that tend to differ a lot), a J2ME, BREW or .NET application is downloaded to the phone and a range of different content can then be viewed.

It's likely this will be provided by media companies, where the actual media is the product and Akira Publisher is downloaded to view that specific content, probably invisible to the consumer who only cares about the content.

Akira Publisher 2.0 - Bringing Java Unity to Mobile Devices @ SYS-CON ITALIA

GlobalEMail works initially on one specific phone (Samsung i830) and costs $65 a month (flat rate). You judge if it's attractive.

When will operators realize that they can't expect users to switch phone for just one new service, especially when there's only one to choose from. What's in it for the operator? It clearly only delays the deployment. We had the same situation when DoCoMo introduced i-mode in Europe, requiring specific phones, supporting the special dialect of HTML and e-mail that i-mode uses, but that no one had, while there were many that had WAP and Internet e-mail at that time.

samsung.com has no information about this phone yet, but I found some elsewhere.

Verizon Wireless Launches Global E-Mail Service - Yahoo! News

CES Unveiled: Samsung i830 - Treo 700w Killer? - Gizmodo

MobHappy provided such an extensive outlook for 2006 that I felt I had to contribute my own humble thoughts about what might become established during 2006. It will be interesting to go back to this at the end of the year.

* Downloading of applications (primarily J2ME, BREW and Series 60) to support branded online services. This has aleady started, and competition will be fierce between Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others. Unfortunate for Microsoft they are far behind in the service area, they are not into Java, BREW or Series 60, and .NET (MS' counter-weapon) is nowhere to be seen. Such client applications are typically developed by relatively small companies, and I expect many of the better companies will be acquired by the big brands. Especially those that are into vertical applications rather than games.

* Continued consolidation of the market. During 2005 there were a lot of acquisitions of operators, service providers etc and that will increase even further, as the price and consumer war continues. At the same time there will be more MVNOs launched by companies that have strong brands in other product/service areas than telecom. E.g. there are rumours about Apple getting into the MVNO game. I'm speculating that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo might too, etc.

* More and more mobile content providers will take the subscription route, as Jamba has been so incredibly successful with that business model. This is also very likely to lead to regulations as they address small children with this scheme and there are still hidden costs that are not expressed.

* Operators will launch real flat-rate 3G subscriptions. Without it 3G services will never fly, yet currently the operator networks can't take the load. For instance video is ridiculous to stream through a standard-rate 3G network, and so is music downloads.

* More WiFi networks and ditto phones (and in part due to flat-rate 3G) will lead to increased use of mobile low-cost or no-cost VoIP.

* There will be an increased amount of Skype competitors. More will realize that there's nothing in the Skype service that can't be copied, and probably also be made better and easier to get the corporate IT blessing (e.g.: Microsoft). IMS is a possible competitor and endorsed by operators, but Skype and other "rogue" services will be quicker enhanced than IMS. IMS is like a slow dinosaur in comparison, relying on integrated phone software instead of downloaded ditto, and rigorously specified protocols.

* 3G will be increasingly pressured by WiFi long-distance networks, but not by much this year.

These are not Skype phones, but rather shows that the market is growing for VoIP/WiFi phones in general. The key issue that I see is that WiFi hot spots are so scarce, but at least it's reasonable common nowadays at air ports, hotels etc.

Accton Readies Wi-Fi VoIP Phones - Yahoo! News

This time offered by i-text and via a J2ME application downloaded to your phone. The message is sent via GPRS and is then converted into a real SMS centrally. This is funded by you having to watch an ad per SMS sent. Sounds acceptable.

i-text warns you about the site: WARNING: Contents will revolutionise the way you use your mobile phone. May cause some users extreme jubilation and uncontrollable glee.
Doesn't sound good. You might strain yourself.

[ don't text it, i-text.it ]

I read an analyst report three years ago that said the ringtone (and overall mobile content) market would be dead by now. Instead it's become 10% of worldwide music sales.

Hip-hop is mentioned to be a key exploiter of ringtones for marketing and revenue, and I saw elsewhere 50 Cent is now #1 in the US ringtone chart.

Surprisingly iTunes doesn't provide MIDI ringtones. Considering the high cost of downloading AAC-coded music to a phone via the mobile network and because of the lack of Apple DRM support in phones, MIDI is a short term way to attract also those consumers that want to download the latest hits directly to their phones.

openPR.com - RINGTONES THE MULTIBILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS

I insinuated earlier that no one's using MMS yet, but apparently they are in the UK: 36% has used MMS to some degree. It doesn't say anything about the volume and revenue relative to SMS though.

Also use of WAP is increasing:
Not surprisingly, those infernal ringtone sites are the most popular with 48% of WAP surfers visiting one or more in the last three months, followed by news sites (41%), games sites (36%), sports sites (33%), entertainment sites (31%) and weather sites (28%) with just 6% seeking small screen titillation from adult sites.

Over A Third Of UK Mobile Users Send Picture Messages - Digital-Lifestyles.info

Another indication that the use of downloaded applications is maturing. Compared to BREW, J2ME has no official and/or strict certification programme, so operators need to do this themselves. Focus for the programme is corporate applications, where the need is even higher to secure that the quality is there before they get in the hands of customers.

Digital Media Europe: News - Vodafone UK creates mobile applications programme

Not just search, but also mapping and instant messaging.

As Blackberry supports Java/J2ME, I figure they download one or more Java applications to the phone as the client-side of these services. That's how the map service works for other phones, and doing instant messaging via J2ME would be simple. Also, RIM wouldn't have to change the phones at all to support this. This is clearly the future for mobile services.

See previous note about Reqwireless for the benefits of combining online services with downloaded client applications.

Blackberry gets Google Talk and Google Local - Yahoo! News

Edward Craig at Yahoo! has a longer note on the Treo 700w, that can be summed up with:
* Not as user-friendly as a Treo with Palm OS
* Expensive: $400 with a 2 year contract (surely because of the larger memory/CPU needs of Windows Mobile)
* Mechanical design more or less the same as Treo 650
* Low resolution display: 240 by 240

Still, he was cautiously positive, especially as a choice for people that are already into Windows Mobile / WindowsCE, and indicates IT departments might have easier to accept Windows Mobile than Palm OS.

No doubt the integration with Microsoft Exchange is good. It should be.

I wonder what will happen now when Access owns PalmSouce, and there's general grumbling about whether actually Palm OS will survive. Will the industry drop Palm OS and replace it with something worse?

Interestingly neither Palm OS or Windows Mobile are big on smartphones, but Symbian OS is. How come we don't see comparisons of the Treo 700w with e.g. Nokia 9300? Not used in US?

Also, the smartphone market as a whole is relatively small (yet growing steadily), so it's a bit strange Microsoft is so much into just smartphones and PDAs.

Edward C. Baig: Personal Tech - Palm Treo 700w, with Windows Mobile, is likable - Yahoo! News

I'm not quite sure what the business model is, as advertising can hardly compensate for the cost of SMS transfers. Obviously the operators want money for the transfer and the consumer doesn't pay anything in this case.

Anyway, I added a page so that this service can be easily accessed from Abiro: Send free SMS.

Let's see how this develops.

Text Message - Send a Free Text Message on the web! Send Text Message to anyone one via the internet! Works with all cellphone providers.

Doctors in Sweden warn that younger people get stressed out by constantly monitoring all incoming messages and calls, even during night.

I've noticed something similar on the PC side: chat is as immediate as a phone call, so if I'm busy with something I get as agitated when someone "calls" me via chat. Much less so when I get an e-mail, as that can wait.

Certainly SMS's can also wait, but there are obviously some social dynamics involved here.

The Local - Teens face mobile stress

Reqwireless develops Java/J2ME-based productivity applications for phones, which is an excellent match for Google's online services. Java applications can make services much more responsive than if accessed via a browser or messaging client.

Reqwireless seems to have adopted the "you don't need a good web site to succeed" mantra: Reqwireless
Google supposedly didn't pay so much though.

TechFinance.ca :: Reqwireless Acquired by Google

It's a given that downloading high-quality music files via GPRS or 3G will be very expensive if specifically music downloads are not made exempt from such charges. If consumers access music download sites outside of the operator's domain the operator sees that as any other data transfer and charges full price.

Leading music labels have launched their own mobile music sites but few people are using them. Most people download from a CD or PC.
Understandable.

The Daily Record - NEWS - DOWNLOAD OF MONEY

At least the site has got a new color theme throughout. I hope it looks a bit more professional than the previous shock orange.

Abiro - Mobile News, Mobile Content, Mobile Casino and Mobile Blog

Thought at first this was a Pricerunner clone, but it's a bit different.

The service provided by Toshiba enables taking photos of a product's barcode and get a rating returned based on what's been written about the product in blogs.

For Toshiba it seems crucial to use barcode reading, but it would have been a simpler solution if you just entered the EAN/UPC code and sent an SMS to the service. That would also have worked with all phones, and it would be simple to charge for the service via SMS (if they now charge for it).

I wonder how the service determines whether a blog entry is positive or negative, as this must be fully automated.

Sony has a similar service also reading barcodes and sending an email with the request. Also here entering the code and sending an SMS would be simpler.

asahi.com:Dial-up bar codes let buyers beware�-�ENGLISH

Being a combination phone it can be used for WiFi/VoIP whenever such is available and that way cut costs.

An interesting obstacle mentioned is that some VoIP operators will not provide the settings needed to communicate with the service.

Interesting is also that Europe is considered to become an earlier adopter than US due to less operator control of phone purchases.

Cell Phone Includes Internet Telephony Capability - Yahoo! News

DoCoMo has since the introduction of i-mode had a dedicated i-mode button on its phones for launching the browser to the i-mode portal, and Sony Ericsson was very early with a dedicated button for WAP/Internet on some models. Nowadays this is commonplace but normally for accessing the operator's mobile portal rather than an external service like Google.

Accessing Google via a button is of course technically very simple as the phones already have a web browser. It's more like a URL shortcut button than anything else. Even so, it makes access a bit easier.

I'm wondering what operators will think of this if there's not also an operator portal button. After all, Motorola sells phones to (and via) operators, not Google.

Motorola Phones to Get A Google Button - Mobile News - Designtechnica

Don't sound much like phones do they, but I actually love "enhancing by simplifying" (the iPod is a good example of that). Benefits are: very small, very obvious how to make or receive a call, and hopefully also low cost.

The site mentions a number of possible users:
* Baby Bear: children
* S-series: elderly, handicapped, but also companies.
A reflection is that the one buying the product is most likely not the one intended to use it.

Both models are for the GSM network.

iCare Mobile

Engadget has collected a number of reviews of the Treo 700W. They are not all positive:
the 700W "is neither as easy to use nor as powerful as the Treo 650" and costs twice as much
Ouch!

The 700W is the first Treo that runs MS Windows Mobile. Previous models run Palm OS. Palm OS is considerably more lightweight than Windows Mobile (both in terms of CPU and memory) and Palm OS also has a slicker user interface. No doubt Microsoft needs to adapt.

Palm Treo 700W review roundup: Mossberg says it "doesn't beat 650" - Engadget

Update: Engadget has provided pictores of the reader.
Sony Reader details and pics - Engadget

I forgot to mention yesterday that also Sony has a new ebook reader on the way. This one is using E Ink, which provides very high contrast for text and doesn't use or need backlighting. The picture is also 100% stable. Information on the site indicates E Ink also can be used for showing pictures and even in color. This means it could also be used for mobile phones. Another benefit with E Ink is that displays can be bent statically to a certain degree, which would be nice for e.g. watches.

NEW SONY READER PUTS A LIBRARY'S WORTH OF READING MATERIAL IN YOUR POCKET

Live shot of The Reader, Sony's new e-ink e-book reader - Engadget

Sony Reader To Offer 6-Inch E-Paper Screen - Portable Media News - Designtechnica

Previous "phones" have just been handsets for the PC Skype client. NetGear's phone is independent of a PC and hooks up to the Skype network via WiFi.

I hope all mobile phones that have both mobile bearer and WiFi will support Skype (via e.g. J2ME), but it's not likely to happen overnight, as it's certainly not what most operators want.

Press Release Detail - NETGEAR

Netgear to offer first Wi-Fi phone for Skype calling - Yahoo! News