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Report for app store GetJar forecasts number of downloads will rise from 7bn in 2009 to almost 50bn in 2012

Mobile app downloads are expected to increase from more than 7bn downloads in 2009 to almost 50bn in 2012, according to a report.

The independent study, carried out by Chetan Sharma Consulting for Getjar, the world’s second biggest app store, forecasts that the global mobile application economy will be worth $17.5bn in 2012, more than CD sales, which it predicts will be $13.83bn.

It says that market will continue to grow exponentially as mobile devices become as powerful as computers, and wireless networks deliver consistently higher bandwidths. “With the consumer appetite for mobile apps rocketing, the opportunities for developers are huge,” says the CEO and founder of GetJar, Ilja Laurs.

The study says that initially the focus of making revenue from apps was based entirely on paid downloads or subscription-based models, but this is going to change. Today, advertising-based revenue accounts for about 12% of app revenue, but by 2012 this figure is expected to rise to 28%. For some platforms such as Google’s Android, advertising revenue is predicted to be even bigger than revenues from paid downloads.

The price of mobile applications ranges from $0.99 to $999 but the average selling price in 2009 was about $1.90, the study says. Over the next three years this is predicted to decrease by 29% and apps will get cheaper; however, advertising revenue derived from apps is likely to stay relatively flat.

By 2012, so-called “offdeck” apps that are offered independently from a carrier will be the biggest revenue generator, accounting for almost 50% of all app revenue. By comparison, in 2009, apps available from mobile operators still accounted for more than 60% of all app revenue, but this will fall to just under 23% by 2012.

As the WSJ Digits blogger Jennifer Valentino-DeVries points out, the study will by no means be the last word on the subject, but it provides at least a look at why so many companies are excited about mobile.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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• It’s been a while since we talked about Spotify, which has been putting a lot of energy into gearing up to launch in America. With co-founder Daniel Ek talking at South by South West yesterday, people thought the company might launch itself in the states – but no such luck. Ek
said the service was doing well, but that relationships with US music publishers were tricky. He also said Spotify now had more than 320,000 paying subscribers.

• Has Google’s Nexus One phone been a flop or not? Flurry, a mobile analytics company, estimates that sales are at around 135,000 since launch – just a smidgen of the numbers shifted by other handsets like the iPhone and Droid over the same period. Ryan Block, formerly of Engadget and now with GDGT, says that’s not failure – after all, Google is only selling it online and not giving it the huge push other handsets get. Still seems like the company wouldn’t want to put in so much effort for so little payoff. One thing we do know for certain, though: Google has had its attempt to trademark the Nexus One name rejected, though it’s got nothing to do with Philip K Dick.

• And… it’s almost a year since Microsoft took the great leap forward and introduced Internet Explorer 8. Now the company is forging ahead with IE9. You can see some demos and read more about what it can do in these guides. Some stuff in there about HTML5 support, CSS3 and SVG. One note – perhaps unsurprising – is that it will not support Windows XP.

You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, @gdngames or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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When Apple decided to sue Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC, it was hard to see it as anything other than a broadside at Google. After all, HTC makes Nexus One handset, and Steve Jobs has previously told staff that he’s angry because “We did not enter the search business… they entered the phone business”.

The ever-growing conflict between the two is something I mentioned on Monday, and plenty of people have weighed in on the subject, including former Sun Microsystems boss Jonathan Schwartz, who said that any company launching a software patent lawsuit was basically undertaking an “act of desperation”.

But most of the action so far has been from Apple’s side – the accusations about its rivals (including Nokia, which has in turn accused the iPhone maker of “legal alchemy”); the offended and aggrieved statements by Jobs and so on.

So where’s Google in this fight? Is it just staying quiet? Step forward Tim Bray, the Canadian technologist best known for his work on XML. Bray – who has written eloquently on software patents before and who left Sun himself last month – announced over the weekend that he was joining Google’s Android team.

Oh yeah, then he immediately poured fuel onto the fire with an extremely strong broadside about why he dislikes Apple’s approach:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.
I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.

Strong words, and proof that Googlers are prepared to fire back from time to time. It will be interesting to see how long Bray is allowed to speak his mind like this (staff commenting, even obliquely, on lawsuits is something most corporate lawyers dislike intensely) but it’s refreshing to see somebody on either side speaking openly and on the record.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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• Despite the squillions of iPhone apps out there, Apple has worked very hard to keep details of its contract with developers under wraps. No longer: the Electronic Frontier Foundation used Nasa’s iPhone app as an avenue to file a Freedom of Information request to get a public copy of the contract (PDF). And the organisation isn’t happy with what it sees: including a ban on public statements, certain reverse-engeineering restrictions and Apple’s lack of liability in case of something going wrong.

• Google is testing a TV search service, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. It suggests that there’s a pilot scheme for an embedded set-top search service linked to a US satellite TV provider – not the first time that Google has shown television ambitions (here are two examples in the UK). But still worth watching.

• Also in Google, meanwhile, ZDNet brings news of this Goldman Sachs note reducing expectations of sales of the Nexus One – drastically. It now thinks the company will sell 1m handsets in 2010, down from a previous estimation of 3.5m. Why? “Possibly due to limited marketing and customer service challenges” – or, in other words, the decision to sell it online-only.

You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, @gdngames or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Nokia will be online this week to discuss its environmental track record – post your questions in the comments below

Want to know how green the average Nokia phone is? For this week’s You ask, they answer, the Finnish mobile phone giant joins us to discuss its environmental track record and efforts, so start posting your questions below.

From humble beginnings as a wood pulp mill back in 1865, Nokia is now the world’s number one mobile phone company, with 37% of the global market share. Yet despite its size, the firm enjoys a good record with Greenpeace, holding the top-spot in the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics. However, Nokia lost points this year for failing to do “proactive lobbying” for the revised RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in electronics) directive.

Nokia has also highlighted the potential for mobile phones to collect real-time information about pollution and other local environmental data. Henry Tirri, head of Nokia’s research centre, has cited pollution as an area for which “killer” eco-apps might be created. “The things people don’t usually think about with location-based systems are aggregate things like traffic information, and collective information about air pollution and other environmental data,” he said.

Nokia is online from Monday to Friday this week to answer your environment questions – please post yours below.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Why the collapse in online advertising might be leading you to read pretty much anything about Apple’s new gizmo

Hey, have you heard? Apple’s iPad is having production problems! And it’s not having production problems! Also, it’s going to cost £389! Or possibly less, or more. And in the UK the 3G version is going to be exclusively on Vodafone. As well as being on Orange and O2. Also, it’s going to be released in the UK two weeks after the US, where it’s being released on March 26, or actually 29th, except it’s being released at the same time. And it’s going to cost..

OK, enough breathless murmery. Let’s clear the air. There is an astonishing amount of speculation going on about Apple’s iPad. Very little of it seems well-founded – or even grounded in logic.

The facts about the iPad: Apple hasn’t given a precise launch date; “60 days” was the best Steve Jobs had on 27 January. It’s not given one for the UK either. It hasn’t said how much the various models will cost in the UK. It hasn’t said whether the 3G mobile-connected models will be available in the UK (though it’s expected) and it hasn’t said which network(s) it will be going with.

Which is about par for the course for some Apple products. And of course is enough for ever so many “news” stories.

Let’s start with some of the things where people are prepared to put their names to the claims. The Register reports that Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at ThinkEquity analyst, told investors in an advisory note on Thursday that checks with manufacturers suggested “some minor delays” in ramping up production for the tablet. They can only make 200,000 to 250,000 iPads per month at present; production may not hit 800,000 to 1m units per month until at least April.

“We believe this is just a minor hiccup in a longer-term entirely new revenue stream and product road map for [Apple],” Rakesh wrote.

Earlier this week another US analyst, Peter Misek at Canaccord claimed that “unspecified production problems” will hold initial availability to about 300,000 units – and said Apple may keep the iPad to the US only or delay the launch into April.

This was then contradicted by DigiTimes – usually the fount of unspecified vague insights into the Taiwanese and Chinese computer manufacturing insights which turn out to be bang on 50% of the time, and completely off the other 50% – which was told by Foxconn Electronics that everything’s on schedule and that it should be able to ship between 600,000 and 700,000 iPads this month.

Apple said.. nothing. Conclusion: they all could be right. The iPad was announced in January, and if Foxconn has been making 200,000 for a couple of months, it’s got a nice stockpile sitting waiting for a container ship. Meanwhile Foxconn could be ramping up production towards that 800K figure. So we conclude: forecasts of a US-only launch unlikely to come true. And “delays into April”? Remember that at the launch (scroll to 7.22pm) Steve Jobs announced that they Wi-Fi only models would go on sale in 60 days, the 3G models in 90 days because they “require approval from carriers”. 90 days from the iPad launch takes you… into April.

OK. Assume that it is going to launch in the UK at about the same time as in the US. Two questions: how much will it cost? And which networks will the 3G version be available on?

The cost question is interesting. Apple has told us it won’t announce the UK price until it launches at the “end of March”. We’ve done our own calculation (helped by Macworld) which gives us a starting price guess of £424 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only (Macworld suggests £388), ranging up to £705 for the Wi-Fi/3G 64GB model (Macworld: £693).

And which operators? No clues. Obviously, we speak to our contacts there; but so far they’ve had little to offer.

So what then are we to make of the sudden flurry of emails recently from really small sites (and I do mean really small) which claim to know the launch date and/or chosen carrier?

Here’s an example I received recently: “We just got word on Vodafone being the official launch partner of the iPad in the UK, direct from Vodafone. Details in the below blog post. This is from the same guy who provided details that O2 would be the Palm Pre’s UK carrier well before announcement.”

And a link to the site. But we’re not going to link it here. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Then there was the email from another site which said it had the price for the low-end iPad: “We are pretty confident regarding the pricing, the tip came from a source who works closely with Apple UK, obviously we can’t say much more about this.

“We are 99% sure that the base model will be £389, regarding the other prices of the 32GB and 64GB models, our source said that these are likely to be the prices, although he did mention that the prices on the last two aren’t set in stone as yet.”

(I should point out that the other site didn’t approach me; I contacted it to ask how sure they were of their sources.)

Hmm, so have we missed a trick? Are we getting blown out of the water by dedicated bloggers running niche sites who have contacts in just the right places? Perhaps. But consider another possibility. I spoke to someone who has very good contacts in the mobile phone industry.

The reply: “My source at Voda says nothing signed yet but is checking, also it’s kinda weird but [the person quoted in the Vodafone story] left a year ago.”

So why the certainty in that story? My contact noted: “There are going to be more and more stories like this as the collapse in online advertising has pushed sites into e-commerce and they need the links from [the Guardian] to push them up the [search] rankings. There are quite a few mobile phone so-called bloggers already in the UK who are actually little more than affiliate channels for the mobile phone operators. That’s often how they get their stories. Watch the links when you click through, it’s often quite instructive. There is, for instance, a very well respected UK mobile phone blogger who gets a lot of very good Orange scoops. Of course he does, my mates at Orange point out, the other half of his business is a retailer for Orange so he finds out about new phones at the same time as the rest of the channel. Is that journalism? Who knows these days.”

We conclude: the maths suggests that the iPad will very likely come in around the £389-£399 mark (we like the Macworld number better than ours, which by being above £400 isn’t a marketing-friendly price sticker). Networks? Whichever ones can handle the micro-sims that the iPad uses. Given that Apple is still with only one network in the US, but in the UK has signed up three (O2, Orange and Vodafone; Tesco is a virtual MNO), it’s hard to know whether it will try to be a kingmaker again or prefer to spread the love like butter among them all. Rationally, being on all three (while making them think it’s exclusive until it’s announced) would be better for sales – people could just add an iPad plan to their existing contracts.

OK? We hope that puts your minds at rest about prices and operators. As for launch dates… well, Apple traditionally goes with Tuesdays or Fridays. Strictly, 60 days from the iPad announcement puts you on Sunday 28 March, so take your pick: Monday 29th, or Friday 26th? Or might it get pushed further along? As for the 3G version, if there’s a 90-day delay, then you’re not going to see it until April 27 (on the 90-days-from-iPad-ground-zero principle). So even that US analyst could be right.

And remind us what you’d be buying an iPad for? We’re interested to hear.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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People are buying increasing numbers of smartphones, but are they living up to the media hype? Fanfare thinks not….

Smartphone sales are growing fast, but “57% of smartphone users are disappointed with handset and application performance,” claims a report from Fanfare (PDF: registration required). However, the results reflect a very small sample: “155 members of the public” and “the survey was conducted online and filled in anonymously,” so don’t bet your lunch on its applicability to the Great British Public.

Most of the issues appear to be internet related, with streaming media, web browsers and social networking applications causing the most problems. And then there’s the part that could be important to Fanfare, which offers automated testing services:

“55% of respondents cannot tell whether individual problems stem from the handset or the mobile network and, as a result, 53% instinctively blame the smartphone manufacturer whenever an issue arises.”

Dissatisfied smartphone users typically tell their friends and family (57%) and social networking sites (58%), which could have a negative effect on sales. Indeed, it makes social networks much more of an influence on purchasing than “traditional media” (by 64% to 40%).

Fanfare marketing man David Gehringer says: “The Apple App Store and Android Market have served up billions of app downloads, giving smartphone owners the ability to use their phones in new and exciting ways. But now that the novelty is wearing off, users want their applications to be more reliable.”

The report says:

“Looking ahead, three quarters of respondents (74%) believed that handsets will become less reliable and that this is unacceptable. The vast majority (88%) said that they are happy to wait until handsets have proven reliability before purchasing – suggesting consumers are becoming more cautious as a result of negative experiences.”

I’d like this to be true, but I can’t really see much evidence. It seems to me there’s a big fashion element to smartphone sales and (based on a much smaller sample than 155) people like being one of the first to own a sexy new gadget. How well they can make it work it is another matter.

Nor is this a criticism of media darlings such as Apple’s iPhone, HTC and Google Android phones, various BlackBerry handsets and the odd Palm. All of these seem more reliable and usable than what I remember of the Nokia 7110 or 8110 (The Matrixphone), while disappointed iPhone owners seem to be a very rare breed indeed.

So, are you happy with your smartphone, and if not, is the backlash about to start?

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, Blackberry, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, gadget, google, HTC, iphone, line, marketing, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, nokia, palm, phone, phones, sam, service, sol, survey, test, three, uk

If I Can Dream to use live streaming, video uploads, myspace auditions, Twitter and blogging

It seems all too familiar: five young people move into a house together in a series that follows them as they shoot for stardom in Hollywood. But while If I Can Dream, the new show from the pop and TV impresario Simon Fuller, may sound like a cross between Big Brother, The Real World and Pop Idol, it’s altogether more ambitious.

For a start, the five aspiring stars have agreed to allow the cameras to track them 24/7. And in addition to the weekly episodes, which will be shown on Hulu.com from tomorrow, there will be a live streaming feed at ificandream.com and, in the show’s most audacious move, a chance for new hopefuls to win a place in it via a public vote and an open worldwide audition.

That global audition is all part of If I Can Dream’s push to be the first reality TV hit of the social networking era. The hope is that it will become a blogging mainstay, disseminated through Twitter and uploaded on mobile phones.

“I am determined to continue pushing the boundaries of mainstream entertainment,” Fuller has said. “The next frontier is the video world of authentic real-time interaction. It is time the public got to see the truth behind what it takes to launch the careers of young artists.”

The man behind Pop Idol, So You Think You Can Dance? and the Spice Girls is rarely wrong about trends and if this latest idea takes off it will change the way in which we watch television, paving the way for other producers to cut TV networks out of the loop altogether.

But how likely is Fuller’s vision of a real-life Truman Show in which the curtain concealing the factory that makes stars is torn down Wizard of Oz-style?

Cynics will question whether in an age of scripted reality shows such as The Hills or MTV’s latest hit, Jersey Shore, it is possible to show “the truth”; and it’s hard not to wonder if the soon-to-be-famous five realise what they’re getting into. “We don’t want to be reality stars, we want to be star stars,” one of them, Amanda Phillips, said. “Our show’s not about sticking a bunch of short-fused people in a small space with a lot of alcohol and seeing what happens. If it was, none of us would be here.”

But is that the reality? Only the show’s God, Fuller, really knows.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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It’s been a tough year for Palm. The company is betting everything on its new handsets, the Pre and the Pixi – but with sales not doing as well as expected, the company issued a profit warning yesterday.

To explain what was happening, chairman and chief executive Jon Rubinstein sent out a memo to the company’s staff.

As is typical with these things, it was largely stuffed with corporate speak and coded messages – so I’ve come up with this handy paragraph-by-paragraph translation that might help explain what Palm thinks is going on.

Team,

Hey guys! Whatever I say, don’t forget we’re in this together.

This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million.

We’re not selling as many phones as we thought we would: sales were flat despite the fact that we started selling handsets with Verizon – America’s second-biggest phone network (with 91m users) – in January.

We were expecting sales to go up. They didn’t. This could be awkward.

We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion.

Given how sales have gone over so far, we’d probably need to double our sales in the next three months to satisfy our original targets. Let’s be honest, that’s not happening, is it?

As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being.

People aren’t buying enough of our phones. And networks don’t want to order phones that people aren’t buying.

On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We’re scheduled to announce our full financial results in March.

(Before we go on, I’m going to sugar the pill. Over the past year or two we’ve been burning through our cash reserves like crazy – having some money in the bank buys us some more time. That’s awesome news!)

I realize this news is difficult to swallow. We made this announcement today to prevent a surprise for Wall Street when we announce quarterly earnings in March.

Yes, it sucks – but the pain you feel today is nothing compared to the pain you would have felt if we’d suddenly announced in a few weeks that we’d missed our targets by 30%.

In the meantime, the entire executive team has been working extremely hard to improve product performance, and have implemented a number of initiatives to increase awareness and drive sales.

We’ve been trying to work out what’s gone wrong…

Dave Whalen and I just returned from a very successful meeting with Verizon Wireless, where they acknowledged that their execution of our launch was below expectations and recommitted to working with us to improve sales.

…and we’ve decided it was Verizon’s fault.

To accelerate sales, we initiated Project JumpStart nearly three weeks ago. Since then, nearly two hundred Palm Brand Ambassadors, supplemented by Palm employees from Sunnyvale, have been training Verizon sales reps across the U.S. on our products.

In fact, we think they’ve done such a bad job that we’re trying to school them so that they actually know what our products do. Plus, we gave it a cool name that implies we’re taking action!

Early results from the stores have already shown improvement on product knowledge and sales week over week. You may have also seen a growing number of Palm ads on billboards, bus shelters, buses, and subway stations—all getting the word out about Palm.

Not many people know we exist – but when they know we exist, we sell a few more handsets. That’s got to be positive, right?

All of these efforts are examples of how we are working to accelerate adoption and grow distribution of webOS. In the next few weeks, your management will work with you to make sure your priorities are laser-focused, primarily on helping to increase sales, improve product quality and differentiate the Palm product experience.

We need to get better at a few things – largely the “making things” part, and then the “selling things” part. Perhaps some of you haven’t been as focused as you need to be (yeah, I’m talking to you).

Our goals are taking longer than expected to achieve, but I am still confident that our talented team has what it takes to get the job done.

I’m not firing anyone… yet.

We’ll schedule an all-hands meeting after our earnings announcement in March, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

Give me a few weeks to prepare before asking me anything.

Go team!!!

jon

I secretly watch lots of cheerleader movies.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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The most damning indictment of phone hacking is that it was almost always used to get gossip rather than expose wrong

The fact investigators working for the News of the World hacked into my mobile phone to cut me out of a potential £30,000 celebrity scoop is not surprising. If you swim with sharks you expect the odd puncture wound. The fact this process is so simple, swift and apparently routine is shocking.

I called the Sunday tabloid one bright afternoon with the name of a celebrity chef and tales of famous London nightclubs, glamorous hotels and sexual impropriety. The reporter I spoke to was Clive Goodman. He promised me the Screws would pay the most – but something about his conspiratorial tones turned me towards a more gregarious Sunday Mirror news editor.

The News of the World was not going to let this apparent front page get away. A rapid succession of calls to my mobile followed. These allowed the caller to access my voicemail – I had not set a password. My personal greeting gave them my real name and my place of work while the messages revealed the identity of my then girlfriend, who was the source of the story.

Goodman called me on my work mobile and aggressively demanded the name of the chef’s female acquaintance. I refused.

It was after that that my mobile phone records were hacked. T-Mobile confirmed a bizarre call where someone pretending to be me failed the most basic security question – my date of birth. Despite this, the caller was able to try again just 15 minutes later and, this time being successful, he was given a full rundown of my recent calls. He then tried to hack my partner’s phone records.

Phone hacking in this way was astonishingly easy. A few years ago, it seemed to be the default method of some News of the World reporters to use information gained in this way. While other hacks were busy knocking on neighbours’ doors or visiting relatives found through birth and marriage records, journalists from the Screws instantly had a direct line to make their offers of “a life-changing amount of money”.

The true scandal here is not just the use of such illegal methods. The most damning indictment of this chequebook journalism is the fact it was only very rarely used to find real wrongdoing by the rich and powerful. Blagging your way into someone’s phone records would be morally defendable if there was a genuine and compelling public interest. Journalists rightly enjoy more latitude under the data protection act and human rights laws – if there is a real reason for subterfuge.

The Press Complaints Commission code states: “Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest.”

Muckraking has served the public good: by rummaging through the bins of solicitors Benjamin Pell discovered documents showing the then Tory minister Jonathan Aitken had been involved in Saudi arms deals. But how many of the 100 people targeted by the News of the World’s phone hacking will turn out to be rogue arms dealers, corrupt politicians and corporate killers? And how many will be minor celebrities?

The full armoury of investigative reporting – GPS tracking systems and hidden cameras, “lilly-whites” and “honey traps” – was unleashed against footballers, Big Brother contestants and It girls. And now public figures of means can turn to Max Clifford as a form of defence and use “pay as you go” mobiles. So the tabloid hacks turn on less wealthy, less protected victims.

This is an abuse of power by newspapers owned by one of the most powerful media tycoons in the world, Rupert Murdoch. Moreover, the man in charge of the News of the World when this abuse of power was taking place was Andy Coulson. Coulson, we know, jumped ship as the Screws hit the Goodman phone-hacking iceberg and is now captain of spin for the Conservative party as it sails towards power.

This has serious implications. If the Tories win the general election, as predicted, Coulson will be at the very heart of government with an army of civil servants working for him. Yet, by his own admission, when managing a small team of reporters, he was incapable of detecting flagrant criminality on a huge scale.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Adam Elgar hopes a mobile broadband dongle will do for his daughter, who is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access.

My daughter is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access, and she’s sceptical about going down the dongle route with her laptop. Her mobile phone signal will be adequate, but not great. How could she best achieve the bandwith needed for (for example) watching TV online? Your 8 October 2009 answer — Can 3G replace a landline? — suggests that only a landline will do. But are there now other solutions that you’d recommend?
Adam Elgar

I would love to be able to recommend WiMax (IEEE 802.16), which is much like a long-range version of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), but it’s very unlikely that your daughter is living in an area where it’s available. Given the UK government’s/Ofcom’s lack of interest in WiMax, I don’t see that changing. I would also love to be able to recommend LTE (Long Term Evolution), which is the 4G service of choice among phone network suppliers, but it is probably still a couple of years from common use.

Since I can’t do either, I’d suggest your daughter either looks into the cost of a landline or tries to find a friendly neighbour who will share an existing Wi-Fi network. Or, particularly in a rural area, considers two-way satellite services like Astra2Connect.

While I wasn’t very keen on mobile 3G dongles last October, I’m even less keen on them today. I had been using my 3 dongle inside the M25 for email and Twitter but I’ve stopped because it’s often not worth the effort — and 3’s HSPDA seemed to me to be the best service!

Even with a dongle, you’re not connected the whole time, so it’s not really “mobile broadband”: it’s more like “mobile dial-up”. And because of line drops/tunnels/tall buildings/whatever, you can spend more time connecting and disconnecting (and downloading 3’s pointless home page) than you do tweeting. I wouldn’t usually try to watch a YouTube video or iPlayer programme via 3G, though it might be possible.

The actual throughput your daughter will get will depend on exactly where she lives: results can vary on the same street, or even inside the same house. However, I’d be a touch surprised if she got much more than 2.2 Mbps, regardless of the “headline speed”. I wouldn’t be shocked if she got 1 Mbps, or even less. By contrast, a fixed phone line or cable connection should normally be able to deliver 3 Mbps to 7 Mbps for a lower cost. (You would also have to include the cost of installing and renting the phone line, but sometimes this can be shared between four or five people.)

You can perhaps get some idea of the likely performance and the deals on offer by entering your daughter’s post code in the “Speed in my area” page at Broadband Speedchecker. This takes users’ speed test results from the past six months and plots them on a Google map. There are a few pins for mobile broadband services, though it could do with more.

In the end, I’d guess that mobile broadband is now worse than it used to be because many more people are using it. The market has grown with the arrival of better smartphones (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android etc) and the cheaper deals for dongles and bandwidth taken up by mobile netbook and notebook users, me included.

Are the network providers going to expand capacity (which costs money) faster than required by the number of new users? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

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(Source The Guardian)

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Mobile phone sales fell by almost 1% last year, according to Gartner researchers. However, sales of smartphones grew, thanks to the success of the BlackBerry, iPhone and Google Android phones

Mobile phone sales declined by 0.9% to 1.211 billion units in 2009, but grew by 8.3% in the final quarter, according to Gartner. “The mobile devices market finished on a very positive note, driven by growth in smartphones and low-end devices,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

Over the full year, Nokia remained the market leader, shipping 441m phones. However, it lost 2.2 percentage points of market share, falling to 36.4%. Nokia was followed by Samsung (19.5%) and LG (10.1%) from South Korea. In fourth and fifth places, both Motorola (4.8%) and Sony Ericsson (4.5%) saw big declines in market share.

In the smartphone market, Nokia’s high-volume sales kept Symbian in first place with 81m units shipped for a market share of 46.9%, down from 52.4%. Research In Motion — known for its BlackBerry smartphones — came second with 19.9%, an increase of 3 percentage points on 2008. Apple’s iPhone more than doubled its unit sales to take the third spot with 14.4%, an increase of 6.2 percentage points,

iPhone overtook Microsoft Windows Mobile, which dropped 3.2% percentage points to take 8.7% of the market, with only 15m units shipped.

Google’s Linux-based Android software did well, shipping 6.8m units for a market share of 3.9%. However, sales of other Linux smartphones fell. Adding Linux and Android together, Linux only gained half a percentage point (from 8.1% to 8.6%).

Gartner principal research analyst Roberta Cozza said Android’s fourth-quarter growth should continue, but some suppliers had “expressed growing concern about Google’s intentions in the mobile market”. If this led them to change their product strategies, “this might hinder Android’s growth in 2010.”

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(Source The Guardian)

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As the battle between Apple and Google hots up at the Mobile World Congress, the smartphone boom signals good times for media firms

Richard Wray

Announcing the BBC’s move into the mobile phone market with its own news, sport and video applications for the iPhone last week, Erik Huggers, the director of future media and technology, said the new generation of so-called smartphones are a “great conduit to our audience”.

It is a conduit that until recently has been, if not closed, then certainly constricted for media companies. But the explosion of downloadable applications, rapid rise in mobile broadband take-up and, crucially, the weakening of network operators’ stranglehold on the market have opened up a massive opportunity.

The attraction is easy to see: there are already four times as many mobile phones in the world as there are PCs, and those phones are getting cleverer. In the run-up to Christmas, one in four of the phones sold by Vodafone across the world was a smartphone – that is, a phone with the same computing power as a laptop you could buy a few years ago. Within a couple of years there will be more smartphones than PCs on the planet.

Even the mobile phone operators’ reaction to the weakening of their position, banding together in order to mount a fightback in the apps world, should benefit media companies. Then there is Google, which has not only provided the industry with a serious, and more importantly open, competitor to the iPhone, but looks increasingly likely to usher in a new era of mobile advertising.

Huggers made his announcement in Barcelona at the mobile phone industry’s biggest annual get-together, Mobile World Congress, which showed that while the iPhone began the boom in the smartphone market, the rest of the industry is catching up and a range of devices are set to hit the shops that will help media players get to a mobile audience.

The iPhone drove a wedge between customers and the mobile phone networks. Other players had tried it, such as Nokia, but Apple succeeded. For years the mobile phone companies acted as gatekeepers to their customers. Content companies had to strike deals with each operator, jostling for position on the “portals” created by the networks. Consumers, however, did not want their phone company picking what content they could view on their phones and portal usage was minimal.

So the networks knocked down their walled gardens. As consumers ventured into the mobile web, many media companies – including the BBC – created mobile versions of their websites that could be easily viewed on a phone’s small screen. But usage remained low because even the mobile web, on many devices, was a pale imitation of the “real” internet.

The iPhone was different and when it switched to 3G technology a year and a half ago the mobile web came of age. It has weakened the networks and given media companies the chance to bypass them. The relationship an iPhone customer has is with Apple first and their network provider second. The network is merely paid for providing access – Apple gets paid for content. It is an aggregator for media companies worldwide, and what started with music has become a wide variety of content, thanks to its App store.

But Apple does not have the market to itself. Already more than 20 phones with Google’s rival Android operating system have been produced, which have a crucial advantage over the Apple device: Android supports Flash, which should help advertisers realise the potential of the mobile web. “Crucially, Apple does not and will not support Adobe Flash on its iPhone or iPad products,” explains Brad Rees, chief executive of Mediacells Limited, the mobile market experts. “From an advertising creative perspective, this has meant iPhone application specialists win most of the pitches for mobile microsites. In the online world, the language of big-budget agency creatives is Adobe Flash, and this is precisely where Android hits the sweet spot. Even though Nokia has been offering full internet phones for a while, it’s the Google proposition which resonates.”

In his keynote speech in Barcelona, Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, promised the search engine giant is “not trying to run roughshod” over the mobile phone companies or turn them into “dumb pipes” in the air. The companies, however, are not so sure. Two dozen of the world’s biggest announced during the congress that they are getting together to produce a completely open apps platform – allowing consumers to take their applications with them when they change handsets.

In return for this portability, the networks would start to get a slice of revenues – although exactly how is still unclear. This is potentially big news for media companies as it raises the possibility that they will be able eventually to develop their apps just once, and put them on a massive array of handsets straight away. And it’s another indication that at long last the mobile floodgates are open.

Full coverage of Mobile World Congress including galleries and analysis at guardian.co.uk/business/ mobileworld congress

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, bbc, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, deal, Deals, google, HTC, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, nokia, phone, phones, sam, sol, twitter, uk, venture, vodafone, world

This VAT fraud saga is to turn a new page when the Court of Appeal releases its verdict on a new conjoined VAT fraud case. But will it be the finale?

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(Source Mobile News CWP)

Tags: 10, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sol, uk

• It may be “full steam ahead” for Yahoo and Microsoft now that their tie-up has been given the green light by European regulators, but don’t expect anything revolutionary soon – the two companies say it’s unlikely that a Bing-powered, Yahoo-designed engine will roll out any time before 2012.

• Here’s an interesting one picked up by Engadget – apparently Sony Ericsson boss Bert Nordberg said that Google had asked SE to build the Nexus One before it turned to HTC. Nordberg said he turned down the opportunity, though the company is building its own Android handset anyway. Strange.

• I’ve mentioned Pictory before – a new online photo magazine that pulls together elements of the Big Picture and JPG into short narratives. The latest instalment, entitled The One Who Got Away, is beautiful. I’m just waiting for a good opportunity to contribute myself. On that bittersweet note, have a good weekend.

You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, android, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, gadget, google, HTC, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, sol, sony, sony ericsson, test, twitter, uk

Despite Google’s protests, its entry into the mobile phone market will change the game – and makes operators ‘dumb pipes’

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, tried to reassure operators this week that the search engine’s direct entry into mobile phones through its Android platform was designed to make telcos money, not to turn them into “dumb pipes”.

He told anxious operators at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that Google had no intention of building broad infrastructure to compete with the operators. Google’s protests that it is helping others to make money will be taken with a pinch of salt by other businesses such as newspapers and sat-nav operators (who have been undermined by Google’s free alternative) but welcomed by consumers.

Of course Google isn’t going to build a rival infrastructure. It is going to bypass it altogether by using Wi-Fi as it becomes increasingly available and letting users choose which operator they might use in conjunction. A week ago I bought Google’s new Nexus mobile device from its US website as my main phone.

Make no mistake, it is game-changing in two important ways. First, it turns the operators from arbiters of how you can use your phone into the equivalent of finance companies. I paid $529 (£338) for a SIM-free phone. I could have left it at that and just used it at the increasing number of Wi-Fi hotspots around town – but that would deprive me of incoming calls and the ability to use services such as mapping in places where there is no Wi-Fi. So I signed up with O2 for a pay-as-you go Sim plus an “unlimited” data package for a very reasonable £7.50 a month. If that isn’t turning the operator into a “dumb pipe” then I don’t know what is.

Others have offered Sim-free phones in the past. What makes this different is that it comes with Google’s integrated suite of services, giving an easy user experience. One click and my Gmail comes up, another one and the day’s calendar, or Twitter or whatever – appears to fill the ample 3.7in screen.

The game-changing part is the way Google is bringing voice back to the telephone in a way that hasn’t happened before. A few months ago I tried the company’s voice search out by speaking an inquiry instead of typing it in and was amazed that it got it right the first three times. Now, on a more extensive test, while well under 100%, it is highly impressive and I intend to use it as my default method of searching for standard queries. It beats the otherwise impressive Vlingo (on my BlackBerry) for speed and accuracy.

Google could have another killer app in the rollout – starting in the US – of its own internet telephone system for mobiles. When that is seamlessly integrated into all the other features that 150m Gmail users enjoy then Google could become a major international telephone operator in its own right. And if Wi-Fi ever becomes ubiquitous, then the sky’s the limit. All this will provide competition for Skype and the up-and-coming UK based Truphone, which I use for all my long-distance calls via a downloaded web app from my iPod Touch. Truphone has its own killer app that neither Skype nor Google has – you can get through to a real human being when things go wrong. Miracles can happen.

If the existing operators come under siege in a few year’s time as a result of web telephony, then they have only themselves to blame for the often contemptuous way they have treated consumers. Sure, they have, commendably, invested billions in much-needed infrastructure, but that is no excuse for what they have done.

They have made three major errors of business strategy and are about to make a fourth. First, they built walled gardens around their phones – depriving users of the universality of the web. One early Vodafone smartphone didn’t even have Google on it. When I inquired why, I was told there was no demand for it. As a consequence of their walled gardens of selected products they paid pathetic revenue shares to content providers thereby strangling an embryonic industry at birth until Apple resuscitated it. Had they opened their walls and given developers a fair return they could have created an app revolution long before Apple.

Second, by milking their customers for exorbitant amounts every time they used their phones to access websites, they delayed the mobile data revolution by several years. It was only when Apple insisted on adopting a fixed tariff – though it wasn’t the first – that web access from phones soared.

Third, by treating promiscuous customers more favourably than loyal ones they abandoned the basis of trust that all good brands need. And the next mistake? They are pushing for abandonment of “net neutrality” whereby all customers are treated more or less equally. They hope to make more money by giving bandwidth preference to content they get money from. You can imagine how popular that will be if some customers get slow broadband or none at all to make way for other people to watch Sky or Virgin videos.

As a phone, Google’s Nexus is the usual mixture of pluses and minuses. It has got a great 5 megapixel camera as can be seen here and a much better screen resolution than the iPhone, but the touchscreen itself is less reliable. Although it has over 20,000 apps in its store – and growing – they are not yet near the quality of the iPhone’s archive. Surprisingly, I have been very disappointed so far with Google’s mapping which ought to be its biggest strength. On a cloudy country walk it failed to make any connection with a satellite for a longitude/latitude fix and as mobile reception was flaky it didn’t download complete maps.

Unlike Nokia’s maps, which can be embedded in your phone Google has to rely on a web connection to download them each time. The other thing about it – and most other similar – phones which doesn’t get reported much is that it is actually difficult to read the screen when you most need to – walking in daylight. But one has to admit for all these occasional quibbles the new generation of smartphones offers awesome yet affordable technology. I would not have dreamed it possible 20 years ago.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, free, google, iphone, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, o sim, o2, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, tariff, test, three, Touch, twitter, uk, virgin, vodafone, world

Corporation to roll out official applications, beginning with BBC News in April and BBC Sport in May

The BBC has announced a new range of free applications that will deliver its online services to mobile devices, starting with BBC News in April. The BBC is also considering an iPlayer application for release later in the year.

BBC Sport will follow News, lauching its application in May. Both apps will be launched in a UK and a global version.

Announcing the new mobile services today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, said: “It’s been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, but as media converges and technology accelerates, licence fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.”

A range of unauthorised BBC applications are already available and fairly popular. The new official applications now give licence payers an authorised alternative as mobile phones become more powerful and connectivity more accessible.

According to the second largest app store GetJar, an unauthorised version of BBC Mobile was downloaded 110,032 times by January. In December, the mobile BBC site attracted by 1,851,000 visitors.

BBC News

BBC News for mobile will not only provide users with updated breaking news including video and audio, it will also allow them to send comments and pictures directly to the newsroom. However, the demo of the new app reveals that the user integration isn’t as prominent as with the BBC’s international rival CNN.

The simple and intuitive navigation of thn ews app can already be tested online. “The main screen uses a carousel structure so you can quickly catch up on the news by sliding each row sideways to skim through the latest stories. You can also personalise the experience by reordering the rows to put your favourite news section at the top,” says David Madden of the future media and technology mobile team in a blogpost.

BBC News will first be available on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, followed by the BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android later in the year.

BBC Sport

Starting with the football World Cup in South Africa, the sport app will focus on the live match experience. Content that is broadcast on TV by the BBC will be available for football fans as well as on-demand clips of every goal scored in the tournament. Users will also be able to access content from BBC Radio 5 Live, and live text commentaries from BBC presenters and blogs.

The 2010/11 English football season, Formula One and coverage of other sports will be added later in the year. While the UK version of the spoart app will be free, the global version will be released separately by BBC Worldwide and, in line with other international BBC Worldwide services, will feature advertising.

How will news organisations react?

The BBC iPlayer is already optimised for mobile browsers, and available for Nokia’s Ovi app store, but there are plans to make further versions available for other smartphones available to UK audiences only.

While news organisations have pinned their hopes on smartphone applications as a way to make revenue, the BBC will offer its applications for free. Recently, News Corporation’s James Murdoch said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

Should the BBC charge for its mobile applications or does its licence fee already include them? What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

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(Source The Guardian)

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BBC says project aimed at delivering English lessons through mobile phones in Bangladesh has got off to a good start

In mobile technology, it is often the developing world that leads the way – by using mobile phones to teach people a foreign language, for example.

In Bangladesh, more than 1m English lessons have been downloaded to mobile phones as part of the BBC’s Janala sercvice, the corporation announced today at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona.

Offering hundreds of three-minute audio lessons and SMS quizzes for less than 4p, Janala – meaning “window” – provides low-cost education through handsets – in a country where English is not as widely spoken as elsewhere in Asia.

The service is very simple: by dialling “3000″, mobile users access classes ranging from “Essential English” to the more advanced “How to tell a story”. The BBC has also set up a website giving learners free access to content.

According to Sara Chamberlain, the head of interactive for the BBC World Service Trust, the broadcaster’s aim was to make English – the international language of business – within the reach of millions of non-Anglophones. It is aimed at young people living on less than £2 a day.

This news report shows students learning English with Janala.

Since it was launched in November 2009, 1,030,583 Janala lessons have been accessed, with Bangladesh’s 50 million mobile users eager to learn English to improve their access to the global economy.

More than two-thirds of people who use the beginners’ service return, which is impressive considering the 5% “return rate” for mobile products in Bangladesh. The BBC said overall 39% of callers returned to Janala.

An impressive majority of Bangladeshis – 84% – consider English essential to securing a good job and educating their children, according to a BBC survey.

“We knew demand for English was strong in Bangladesh, but the response to BBC Janala has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Chamberlain.

“The growth of mobile is clearly creating an opportunity to provide access to education in a way simply not possible before.”

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, bbc, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, global, growth, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, survey, three, uk, world

Lord Robert Winston discusses his book Bad Ideas? on the dangers humans may face from our inventiveness, Richard Wray gives us the highlights from Mobile World Congress, and social search with Damon Horowitz of Aardvark – a service bought last week by Google.

Don’t forget to …

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(Source The Guardian)

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• HTC’s Legend smartphone will come to UK in April
• Analysts hail design classic in same league as Apple
• Vodafone snaps up handset for Europe

HTC has come of age. The Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer, once known only as the maker of Windows phones under the SPV brand, today unveiled a new phone sporting Google’s Android software which analysts are predicting could steal a march on Apple in the smartphone design wars.

The HTC Legend, which runs the latest Android software called Eclair, is made from a single block of aluminium and has a very bright and clear 3.2 inch AMOLED (ultra-bright LED) display. Vodafone has grabbed the handset in Europe, wary of losing out after missing the iPhone in some of the company’s key European markets.

The Legend will come to the UK in April and already analysts are predicting that it will be a design classic following its launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

“Legend’s clever use of milled aluminium casing could scoop Apple’s direction for the next iPhone design,” said CCS Insight.

Despite its body being engineered from a single piece of aluminium, the HTC Legend has a removable battery – something which the iPhone conspicuously lacks – which slides out from a compartment at the bottom of the phone. The back of the battery casing also contains the phone’s antenna so that its metal body does not hinder signal strength.

HTC has updated the user face – called HTC Sense – that sits atop Android on the device. Alongside refinements to the phone’s address book, so that contacts can be organised into groups such as business contacts and friends, it pulls information from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter into a single Friend Stream of updates.

The Android platform has been the making of HTC. It created the first phone, the G1, using the software, while the Legend is the new version of another successful Android phone, the Hero. The Legend, however, has a rather less intrusive “chin” at the bottom of the device than the Hero.

Alongside it, HTC also unveiled the HTC Desire, which also uses HTC Sense. It had previously been codenamed the HTC Bravo and several UK operators have been vying to get hold of it as it is essentially the same as Google’s own Nexus One device, which HTC also produced. However, it has an optical trackpad rather than a roller ball, and is understood to be cheaper than the Google device.

Orange said it will be stocking the HTC Desire from April and it will be free on selected monthly tariffs. It is likely to be priced the same as the iPhone, a policy Vodafone is expected to follow with the Nexus One in the UK when it launches next month.

The HTC Desire will also be available in the UK on T-Mobile from 26 March.

The Desire has a large 3.7 inch AMOLED screen, like the Nexus One, and contains the 1GHz Snapdragon processor which is also found on the Nexus One. It includes such iPhone staples as pinching to zoom on web pages while it also automatically recalibrates text so that when you zoom into a page, you do not have to scroll left and right to get to the end of a line.

Crucially, it also supports Flash, which Apple still resolutely refuses to back.

HTC also announced the HTC HD mini, which uses the 6.5 version of Windows Phone rather than the series 7 platform launched by Steve Ballmer yesterday.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, blog, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, google, HD, HTC, iphone, latest, launches, line, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, orange, phone, phones, sam, sol, t-mobile, tariff, tariffs, test, twitter, uk, update, vodafone, world