Mobile Handsets & Devices
BlackBerry ban in the UAE would hit the estimated 750,000 users of the devices in the country
Schedule for implementation leaves time for RIM and the UAE authorities to reach agreement and avert a ban
The proposed ban on BlackBerry services in the UAE could prove to be disruptive and costly for the many users of the devices in the country, as well as for local telecom operators and BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM). BlackBerry devices and services are strikingly popular among both business and consumer users in the UAE, and Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that there are about 750,000 BlackBerrys in use in the country at present. Read more »
A CDMA iPhone would be great for Verizon, but does it make sense for Apple?
If Apple decided to make a CDMA iPhone, the whoops of jubilation would be heard all the way from Verizon Wireless’headquarters in Basking Ridge, NJ, to AT&T’s HQ in Dallas, TX, where the news would no doubt be greeted with stunned silence. Latest reports cite unnamed sources as confirming that Verizon Wireless will offer the iPhone in January, when they say AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple ends.
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Nokia lowers 2010 guidance again
All is not well at Nokia. The world’s largest handset vendor, which shipped 107.8 million handsets in 1Q10, including 21.5 million converged devices (aka smartphones), announced Wednesday the second downgrade to its expected 2010 financial performance. Read more »
Google’s momentum is growing in the mobile handset market
Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and CEO, last week revealed that the company’s “partners are shipping about 65,000 Android handsets per day”. Assuming Google’s hard working partners keep going at weekends, and if that rate were to be extended over the next year, there would be nearly 24 million new Android-based handsets shipped. That’s an impressive number for an OS platform that only launched its first handset 19 months ago, in late October 2008. Read more »
Nokia wags its long tail in the mobile web market
Netbiscuits, the mobile Internet publishing platform which powers mobile websites for brands such as Ebay, MTV, ABC and Universal Music, has unveiled data that suggests that there is a valid business case for publishers to optimise their online content for access by a range of mobile devices and not just for the smartphone A-list. Not doing so may mean missing out on sizeable chunk of traffic. Read more »
Highlights from Day 3 of the MWC in Barcelona
RIM champions BlackBerry traffic efficiencies
In Asia-Pacific markets, operators are putting pressure on Apple to address some of the signalling issues made increasingly worse by continued growth of smartphone adoption, in order to reduce the iPhone’s impact on the network. We’re hearing from the operators we speak to that the device is proving more inefficient in the way it handles signalling versus other competing devices. Somewhat controversially citing BlackBerry devices as a solution to the capacity crunch, RIM CEO stated that ‘you could carry five BlackBerry devices for each iPhone on the network’. Whether true or not, this bears no relevance to consumer purchasing decisions – whether it convinces operators to push the BlackBerry more aggressively is unclear.
Highlights from Day 2 of the MWC in Barcelona
Voice takes centre stage
It’s the end of day two here in Barcelona and despite the wind, rain and the long queues at the entrance gates (not to mention the food halls), it’s been another overwhelmingly positive day. The hustle and bustle in and around the stands here at MWC is obvious and there’s clearly an upbeat mood generally, a marked contrast to last year’s event.
Perhaps one reason for the general positive feeling is that operators have remembered just how big this business is. There’s a lot of talk about the importance of data and whilst it will, of course, be the main revenue driver in the future, it’s worth taking stock of just how much the mobile industry has grown. Informa’s latest forecasts suggest that more than US$700 billion will be generated in operator service revenues from voice in 2010 alone.
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Highlights from Day 1 of the MWC in Barcelona
An agreement between 15 of the world’s largest mobile operators to combat the dominance of Apple in mobile applications dominated proceedings on Day 1 of the Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona.
Other highlights in Barcelona today included Microsoft’s latest attempt to build an attractive, user-friendly operating system for mobile phones and Ericsson’s entree into the already-crowded mobile applications space. Read more »
Keys to success are elusive for iPhone apps developers
IPhone application developers don’t need to offer an inexpensive iPhone app in order to make a dent in the marketplace, but, that said, it’s sometimes the simplest applications that derive the most high-profile attention.
Those were two of the lessons I learned at the 360iDev conference last week. The 225 or so attendees at this event, held in Denver, appeared to be acolytes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs (though that is exactly how one attendee said he did not want to be described). For the most part, they didn’t seem interested in developing apps for Google’s Android OS, Windows Mobile, Palm’s webOS or anything without the Apple brand on it. Read more »
Download the Executive Summary from our Financial Crisis report
No one is immune to the current economic downturn - even mobile operators are now starting to see an impact on their businesses and customer base. Read more »
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