Posts Tagged “compared”
Apple yet to provide details on UK or international release dates, selling prices or associated mobile network companies
Apple’s touchscreen iPad tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US, but no specific date – beyond “late April” – has been given for its release in the UK and other international locations.
The company declined to set either the selling price for its models abroad, or to name any of the mobile network companies that will be providing connectivity for the more expensive iPad systems, which have 3G data sims built in.
US customers will be able to pre-order the iPad, which Steve Jobs described as a “magical and revolutionary product”, from Friday 12 March, either online or in Apple’s retail stores.
The devices come in two basic forms – with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and with both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile connectivity. However, only the Wi-Fi versions will go on sale on 3 April; Apple said only that the 3G versions will be on sale in “late April”.
All the versions of the iPad will go on sale in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland at the same time.
The iPad has excited huge interest because it expands the interface of the iPhone, Apple’s hugely successful mobile phone, into a usable “slate” computer with a 9-inch screen. A number of content publishers have thought that it could be a completely new medium for sales of various products – including electronic versions of books, magazines, newspapers, music and films – that they will be able to charge for by selling them through Apple’s iTunes store, which has been a source of revenue for music, film, TV, audiobook and notably “app” creators.
In the US, the basic iPad model with Wi-Fi and 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $499. Apple says that it “lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more”. The device is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds – “thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook” and Apple says it can run for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge. (Tests on other products suggest the figure may typically be only half that.)
In the past few weeks there had been mounting speculation that there were production problems at Apple’s factories in China. Apple had no comment on that, but the staged release to the international market compared to the US – which makes half of Apple’s sales – suggests it is husbanding its resources.
The announcement notably does not offer any pricing for the UK, nor any details about which mobile carriers Apple might sign up with. O2, Orange and Vodafone already offer its iPhone, but none of them are mentioned in Apple’s announcement.
Nor is pricing – which could be key to how well it sells. Since the announcement of the iPad in January, the pound has slipped against the dollar in international exchange markets, which has led to speculation that Apple is waiting until the last minute to announce the price in order to minimise any losses on exchange-rate volatility. Macworld magazine, which calculated in February that the low-end iPad selling for $499 in the US might have a starting price of £388 in the UK, recalculated on Friday that the downturn in sterling would now mean a minimum starting price of £400.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, email, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, sim, sol, test, Touch, uk, vodafone, world
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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)
Tags: 10, 3, all, blog, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, drive, launches, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, palm, phone, phones, sol, station, three, uk
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Orange relied on iPhone to persuade new customers, while T-Mobile dived back into the pre-pay market
Orange and T-Mobile, who are preparing to merge their UK businesses this year, both had a bumper Christmas, but for wildly different reasons. While Orange relied on the iPhone to persuade people to sign-up to long-term contracts, T-Mobile threw caution to the wind and jumped back into the pre-pay market.
But as both companies had to slash prices and offer customers ever more favourable tariffs in order to remain competitive in the cut-throat UK market, they saw margins decline and average revenue per user – a crucial metric for analysts – take a tumble.
In the last three months of 2009, third-placed Orange added 404,000 new customers, while fourth-placed T-Mobile gained 571,000.
Orange’s figures included 266,000 new contract customers, its best ever fourth quarter performance, and four out of every five of those customers signed up to a 24-month deal, suggesting they were either getting an iPhone or another high-end smartphone, such as one running Google’s Android operating system or a Blackberry.
Orange ended O2’s two year exclusive hold on the iPhone in November and sold about 90,000 in the first month.
Orange’s revenues in the fourth quarter were €1.29bn (£1.13bn), down from €1.3bn, including its struggling residential broadband business, which lost 50,000 customers in the quarter and now has just 840,000 users. There has been intense discussion within Orange about closing down the broadband business, selling the customers to a rival ISP, such as BSkyB, but management have decided to hold onto the operation and it is now offering a free 32GB iPhone to customers who sign up for its high-end home broadband package.
Margins at Orange, meanwhile, declined to 18.4%, down 2 points compared with a year ago, while its average revenue per user – across both contract and pre-pay customers – was £21.41 a month in the fourth quarter, down from £24.25 a year ago.
As it does not have the iPhone, T-Mobile, in contrast, put all its focus on attracting new pre-pay users, putting a lot of marketing spend behind its “free texts for life” for any customer topping up by at least £10 a month. In the second half of the year, T-Mobile added 629,000 new pre-pay users, 570,000 in the run-up to Christmas alone.
All but 1,000 of its new customers in the fourth quarter were on pre-pay.
Revenues, however, were down in the quarter to £737m, from £820m a year ago, with margins of 20.1%, down dramatically from 24.8% a year ago.
Average revenue per user (ARPU) was £18 a month, down from £21 a year ago.
In the same period, second-placed Vodafone added 410,000 new customers with ARPU of £20.40, down from £21.5 a year ago, and margins of 23.2%, down from 25.9%. The UK’s largest mobile phone company O2 will report on Friday.
The fact that three of the four largest players in the UK added almost 1.4 million brand new customers means that either O2 and 3 saw subscriber numbers fall off a cliff, or the first quarter of this year will contain a nasty surprise for at least one operator.
It is unlikely that O2 has seen its winning streak come to a complete halt, given O2 boss Matthew Key’s upbeat statements about life since it was forced to give up its exclusive hold on the iPhone first to Orange then Tesco Mobile before Christmas; and then to Vodafone last month.
As a private company, rival 3 does not provide regular figures, but its owner Hutchison Whampoa, which keeps a very close eye on its mobile phone business, would react fast if UK chief executive Kevin Russell had lost hundreds of thousands of customers in the last three months.
For the past few years, 3 has had between 3 and 4 million users and will report financial figures at the end of March.
It is more likely that because of the way in which the mobile phone companies count pre-pay customers as active or inactive that the first quarter of this year will see a balancing of the books. More than half the new customers added in the fourth quarter so far, are pre-pay users and are likely to have switched between pre-pay providers. But while their new network will count them as a new customer from day one – ie in the fourth quarter – the network they are leaving will not count them as inactive until they fail to make a call or send a text within a 90 day period. As a result, they are not likely to have been identified as customers who have defected until sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, contract, deal, free, google, iphone, largest, line, marketing, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, sol, t-mobile, tariff, tariffs, three, uk, vodafone
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Flat-fee deals for mobile broadband will be a thing of the past if global
networks are to meet their full potential, according to Ericsson chief executive
Hans Vestberg, who compared the mobile market today with that for electrical
power in its early days.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, global, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, networks, new, sol, uk
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Network equipment provider Cisco Systems has reported a 23% increase in net income to $1.9bn for the second quarter 2010, compared to $1.5bn in the same quarter last year. Revenue was up 8% at $9.8bn.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sam, sol, uk
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Radio listening figures for London are a good example of how misleading a snapshot can be
In the court of Rajar, no one radio station reigns forever, and the nature of the data means that a service demonstrably failing can also be heralded a success. More important than a snapshot is a consideration for trends displayed over time.
The radio listening figures released last week are a good example. In London’s commercial marketplace, Global Radio’s Heart 106.2 and 95.8 Capital FM claimed first and second prize in terms of reach – the number of listeners aged 15+ tuning in every week. The same figures, however, showed that while Magic 105.4 had fewer listeners, they listened to the station for longer – an average of 6.8 hours a week, compared to Heart’s 5.7 hours and just 5.5 hours for Capital. Consequently, Magic recorded a market share of 6.1%, ahead of Heart’s 5.3% and well in front of Capital on 4.9%.
Furthermore, neither Heart nor Capital was Global Radio’s top dog in London – the all-speech service LBC 97.3 recorded a modest weekly reach of 841,000 listeners but impressive average hours of 13.6, resulting in a market share of 5.7%.
Speech radio outside the BBC is rarely celebrated, but the new listening figures proved that commercial radio is providing a popular alternative. TalkSport posted a formidable set of results – a weekly reach of 2.5 million listeners and total hours of 20.44m – the station’s highest in five years.
The headlines on Absolute Radio have concentrated on its continued loss of audience, which has been significant – from 2.4 million in September 2008, to 1.5 million – although losing a brand such as Virgin from the Rajar diaries was always going to have a big impact. However, Absolute has already posted noticeably higher average hours than Virgin managed in recent years, and the latest figure of 7.6 hours is the highest in the service’s 16-year history.
Absolute has built on Virgin’s innovative approach with the extensive use of podcasts, mobile applications and new radio services such as Dabbl. This allows sampling but also builds loyalty, which is critical as data streaming to smartphones becomes prevalent. Perhaps this trend suggests Absolute is getting it right after all, despite the headlines.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, bbc, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, global, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, released, sam, service, sol, station, talks, test, uk, virgin
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Internet search giant looks for phone market foothold
Google is expected to launch its hotly-anticipated new mobile phone today in its most direct challenge yet to Apple’s hugely popular iPhone.
The Nexus One, which boasts a highly-developed touch screen and other enhancements, is due to be unveiled at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Precise details of the launch – including final prices and information on when it will go on sale in Britain – are still unconfirmed, though speculation is rife that it will be priced at $530 (£328).
The phone is based on Google’s Android software, which it first launched two years ago as a way of moving sideways into the mobile market. Experts said that the phone was an improvement over other recent Google-based phones, particularly the Motorola Droid, which launched in the US before Christmas. “The design and feel of the phone is better – much better, in fact – and it’s definitely noticeably faster than Motorola’s offering,” said Joshua Topolsky, editor of technology blog Engadget, which posted video of the Nexus One in action over the weekend. “But it’s not so much faster that we felt like the doors were being blown off … don’t get us wrong, the phone cooks – but it’s not some paradigmatic shift for Android.”
While the handset may not be a radical departure from its predecessors, Google has worked closely with Taiwanese manufacturer HTC to make significant improvements that it hopes will help it break into the mainstream. The Nexus One boasts a 5 megapixel camera compared with the iPhone’s 3 megapixels and has a 3.7in screen.
The decision by Google to push forward on its own, rather than take a back seat to a more established mobile phone company, is perhaps one of the most significant steps. Despite a glut of Android handsets in the last year, developed by companies including Samsung and Motorola, Google decided to oversee the launch of the Nexus One itself. The project had been running behind closed doors for several months, but attempts to keep the launch secret fell by the wayside before Christmas, after thousands of Google employees were given the phones as gifts from the company.
Early sightings of a mysterious new device led the company to issue a statement saying that staff were working to “test out a new technology and help improve it” .
While the iPhone remains the acknowledged market leader in the mobile world – more profitable and trend-setting than anything else in the mobile phone market for years – a rabble of challengers is closing in fast.
The Nexus One is just the latest in a long line of challengers to Apple’s dominance, including handsets from Nokia, Palm and Microsoft as well as new BlackBerry models.
Google hopes that it can get a foothold in the lucrative mobile phone market – and by doing so build links to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and use the information they can provide it. As a result of these plans, the company has invested heavily in its Android mobile software, which it has been offering for free to phone manufacturers in an attempt to get them to use it.
The timing of the event is clearly intended as a snub to the company’s rivals. Apple is expected to announce its own new device – rumoured to be a touchscreen computer – later this month, while Google’s chief rival, Microsoft, is due to open the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, Blackberry, blog, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, free, gadget, google, HTC, iphone, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, moto, motorola, new, new mobile, nokia, palm, phone, phones, prices, sam, samsung, sol, test, Touch, uk, world
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• Basic iPhone 3G offered at £35 a month on a two-year contract
• Vodafone hoping to attract consumers with network reliability
Vodafone will start selling the iPhone in Britain next month, offering customers a free handset for £35 a month on a two-year contract, disappointing consumers hoping for a high-street price war over the device.
The pricing plan comes as a surprise because it does not give Britain’s biggest mobile phone company a competitive advantage, especially on an 18-month deal, where it is more expensive than its rivals.
“I don’t think this is about a price war – I think this is a network quality war,” said Vodafone UK’s chief executive, Guy Laurence. “At the end of the day, customers will seek out the best deal and I believe we are competitive, but it is about the quality of the network it runs on. We have spent a year optimising the network for the iPhone.
“It’s very simple: now you can get the iPhone on a network you can rely on.”
The arrival of the iPhone on Vodafone brings the number of mobile phone companies supplying the device in Britain to four. Vodafone customers who register interest before it goes on sale on 14 January will get a small thank you for not defecting to rivals that already have the handset, in the form of free calls to other Vodafone users for the life of their initial contract.
Orange started selling the iPhone last month, ending O2’s two-year exclusive grip on the handset, then Tesco arrived this month, complicating matters by opting for 12-month contracts and demanding consumers shell out several hundred pounds for the device itself.
Vodafone’s “entry-level” prices for the iPhone over 18 months are almost £100 more expensive than Orange and O2, while Tesco does not offer an 18-month contract. Vodafone’s entry-level prices over two years are about £40 cheaper than O2 but almost £75 more expensive than Orange.
Different handsets, however, have been pitched by different networks at different price points and with different bundles of texts and minutes.
The basic iPhone 3G is cheapest with Orange over 18 months, at £624.98, and with Tesco over two years – provided consumers renew their 12-month contract – at £702.
But most consumers are likely to want the 16GB version of the faster iPhone 3GS. That is cheapest with Tesco, where it costs £800 over two years for consumers who renew their 12-month contract. The 16GB iPhone works out at £829.64 for Orange customers, £869 on Vodafone and £909.35 on O2.
Variety of packages
But the packages on offer are very different. For that price, Tesco offers £60 of calls and texts a month – which works out at about 600 minutes or 1,200 texts – while Vodafone offers 300 minutes and unlimited texts per month and O2 gives customers 600 minutes and 500 texts. In stark contrast, Orange offers just 150 minutes and 250 texts.
On the face of it, Tesco and Vodafone offer better “value” than Orange or O2 on the iPhone 3GS 16GB over two years. Some people have been put off Tesco Mobile, however, by the fact that it uses O2’s network to run its service and the company has been suffering network capacity issues in recent months, especially in London.
With Britain’s newest network, 3, unlikely to get it for several months and with T-Mobile having counted itself out of the race for the foreseeable future, the arrival of Vodafone completes the range of choices for UK consumers.
Vodafone is offering all three versions of the iPhone on 18-month and 24-month contracts, the same as Orange and O2. The 18-month tariff starts at £40, for which customers will get the basic iPhone 3G – which has 8GB of memory and a 2 megapixel camera – free, but have to pay £89 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS – which has a 3 megapixel camera and a faster processor – and £179 for the top-of-the-range 32GB iPhone 3GS, which has more memory capacity. Over the length of that 18-month contract, therefore, Vodafone consumers will pay £720 for the iPhone 3G, £809 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £899 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent 18-month entry-level prices on O2 are £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07. For Orange the equivalent prices are £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48.
Vodafone is also offering all three devices on 24-month contracts. At the basic £30-a-month contract the iPhone 3G will cost consumers £59, the iPhone 3GS 16GB £149 and the iPhone 3GS 32GB £239. Over the two-year period, therefore, consumers will pay a total of £779 for the iPhone 3G, £869 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £959 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43 and for Orange they are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Tesco started selling the device last week and while it grabbed headlines by being the first operator to make the phone available on a contract at £20 a month and lasting just a year, consumers have to pay £222 to buy the basic 3G handset or £320 for the 16GB version of the faster 3GS handset and £407 for the 32GB version of the device.
Over the life of an annual contract, therefore, the 3G phone on Tesco costs £462, the 16GB 3GS £560 and the 32GB version 3GS £647.
Expanding the price over 18 months in order to compare the Tesco deals with O2 and Orange, the iPhone 3G on Tesco costs at total of £582 over a year and a half, the 16GB 3GS costs £680 and the 32GB 3GS costs £767. All these prices are lower than the equivalent prices from O2 and Orange, but only by £35 to £40 over 18 months. Compared with Vodafone’s 18 month prices, Tesco is about £130 cheaper.
It is not possible, however, to get an 18-month contract with Tesco so either customers would have to renew their 12-month contract or opt for Tesco’s more expensive 24-month contract from the outset.
Doubling-up the 12-month contract leaves the 3G costing £702, the 16GB 3GS £800 and the 32GB £887 over two years.
Anyone signing up to Tesco’s 24-month contract, at £60 a month, in contrast, will get the iPhone 3G and the 16GB 3GS for free – rather begging the question why anyone would want the basic 3G phone – while the 32GB version costs £50. Over 24 months, therefore the cost to a consumer of the 3G and 3GS 16GB devices would be £1440 and the 32GB £1490.
O2 sells the basic iPhone 3G for £96.89 on an 18-month contract at £29.38. The 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS is £184.98 on the same contract and the largest 32GB version £274.23. Over the year-and-a-half of the contract, therefore, the devices cost £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07.
O2 gives the iPhone 3G away for free on a 24-month contract at £34.26 a month while the 16GB iPhone costs £87.11 and the 32GB version £175.19. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43.
Orange sells the basic 3G iPhone for £96.50 on an 18-month contract costing £29.36 a month; the 16GB 3GS costs £184.50 and the 32GB version £274. Over the lifetime of the contract, therefore, the three versions on Orange cost £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48. Or a mere 75p, 84p and 59p cheaper than O2.
Orange gives the iPhone 3G away free on a 24-month contract at £29.36, while the 16GB version of the 3GS costs £125 and the 32GB costs £225. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for Orange are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, best, cheaper, cheapest, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, service, sim, sol, t-mobile, tariff, three, uk, vodafone
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• Basic iPhone 3G offered at £35 a month on a two-year contract
• Vodafone hoping to attract consumers with network reliability
Vodafone will start selling the iPhone in Britain next month, offering customers a free handset for £35 a month on a two-year contract, disappointing consumers hoping for a high-street price war over the device.
The pricing plan comes as a surprise because it does not give Britain’s biggest mobile phone company a competitive advantage, especially on an 18-month deal, where it is more expensive than its rivals.
“I don’t think this is about a price war – I think this is a network quality war,” said Vodafone UK’s chief executive, Guy Laurence. “At the end of the day, customers will seek out the best deal and I believe we are competitive, but it is about the quality of the network it runs on. We have spent a year optimising the network for the iPhone.
“It’s very simple: now you can get the iPhone on a network you can rely on.”
The arrival of the iPhone on Vodafone brings the number of mobile phone companies supplying the device in Britain to four. Vodafone customers who register interest before it goes on sale on 14 January will get a small thank you for not defecting to rivals that already have the handset, in the form of free calls to other Vodafone users for the life of their initial contract.
Orange started selling the iPhone last month, ending O2’s two-year exclusive grip on the handset, then Tesco arrived this month, complicating matters by opting for 12-month contracts and demanding consumers shell out several hundred pounds for the device itself.
Vodafone’s “entry-level” prices for the iPhone over 18 months are almost £100 more expensive than Orange and O2, while Tesco does not offer an 18-month contract. Vodafone’s entry-level prices over two years are about £40 cheaper than O2 but almost £75 more expensive than Orange.
Different handsets, however, have been pitched by different networks at different price points and with different bundles of texts and minutes.
The basic iPhone 3G is cheapest with Orange over 18 months, at £624.98, and with Tesco over two years – provided consumers renew their 12-month contract – at £702.
But most consumers are likely to want the 16GB version of the faster iPhone 3GS. That is cheapest with Tesco, where it costs £800 over two years for consumers who renew their 12-month contract. The 16GB iPhone works out at £829.64 for Orange customers, £869 on Vodafone and £909.35 on O2.
Variety of packages
But the packages on offer are very different. For that price, Tesco offers £60 of calls and texts a month – which works out at about 600 minutes or 1,200 texts – while Vodafone offers 300 minutes and unlimited texts per month and O2 gives customers 600 minutes and 500 texts. In stark contrast, Orange offers just 150 minutes and 250 texts.
On the face of it, Tesco and Vodafone offer better “value” than Orange or O2 on the iPhone 3GS 16GB over two years. Some people have been put off Tesco Mobile, however, by the fact that it uses O2’s network to run its service and the company has been suffering network capacity issues in recent months, especially in London.
With Britain’s newest network, 3, unlikely to get it for several months and with T-Mobile having counted itself out of the race for the foreseeable future, the arrival of Vodafone completes the range of choices for UK consumers.
Vodafone is offering all three versions of the iPhone on 18-month and 24-month contracts, the same as Orange and O2. The 18-month tariff starts at £40, for which customers will get the basic iPhone 3G – which has 8GB of memory and a 2 megapixel camera – free, but have to pay £89 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS – which has a 3 megapixel camera and a faster processor – and £179 for the top-of-the-range 32GB iPhone 3GS, which has more memory capacity. Over the length of that 18-month contract, therefore, Vodafone consumers will pay £720 for the iPhone 3G, £809 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £899 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent 18-month entry-level prices on O2 are £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07. For Orange the equivalent prices are £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48.
Vodafone is also offering all three devices on 24-month contracts. At the basic £30-a-month contract the iPhone 3G will cost consumers £59, the iPhone 3GS 16GB £149 and the iPhone 3GS 32GB £239. Over the two-year period, therefore, consumers will pay a total of £779 for the iPhone 3G, £869 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £959 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43 and for Orange they are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Tesco started selling the device last week and while it grabbed headlines by being the first operator to make the phone available on a contract at £20 a month and lasting just a year, consumers have to pay £222 to buy the basic 3G handset or £320 for the 16GB version of the faster 3GS handset and £407 for the 32GB version of the device.
Over the life of an annual contract, therefore, the 3G phone on Tesco costs £462, the 16GB 3GS £560 and the 32GB version 3GS £647.
Expanding the price over 18 months in order to compare the Tesco deals with O2 and Orange, the iPhone 3G on Tesco costs at total of £582 over a year and a half, the 16GB 3GS costs £680 and the 32GB 3GS costs £767. All these prices are lower than the equivalent prices from O2 and Orange, but only by £35 to £40 over 18 months. Compared with Vodafone’s 18 month prices, Tesco is about £130 cheaper.
It is not possible, however, to get an 18-month contract with Tesco so either customers would have to renew their 12-month contract or opt for Tesco’s more expensive 24-month contract from the outset.
Doubling-up the 12-month contract leaves the 3G costing £702, the 16GB 3GS £800 and the 32GB £887 over two years.
Anyone signing up to Tesco’s 24-month contract, at £60 a month, in contrast, will get the iPhone 3G and the 16GB 3GS for free – rather begging the question why anyone would want the basic 3G phone – while the 32GB version costs £50. Over 24 months, therefore the cost to a consumer of the 3G and 3GS 16GB devices would be £1440 and the 32GB £1490.
O2 sells the basic iPhone 3G for £96.89 on an 18-month contract at £29.38. The 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS is £184.98 on the same contract and the largest 32GB version £274.23. Over the year-and-a-half of the contract, therefore, the devices cost £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07.
O2 gives the iPhone 3G away for free on a 24-month contract at £34.26 a month while the 16GB iPhone costs £87.11 and the 32GB version £175.19. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43.
Orange sells the basic 3G iPhone for £96.50 on an 18-month contract costing £29.36 a month; the 16GB 3GS costs £184.50 and the 32GB version £274. Over the lifetime of the contract, therefore, the three versions on Orange cost £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48. Or a mere 75p, 84p and 59p cheaper than O2.
Orange gives the iPhone 3G away free on a 24-month contract at £29.36, while the 16GB version of the 3GS costs £125 and the 32GB costs £225. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for Orange are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
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(Source The Guardian)
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ComScore has highlighted Android’s success in the US market while ignoring the finding that more than half its prospective smartphone buyers actually want a BlackBerry
ComScore has released the results of a survey of the US market under the headline: Android: Crashing the Smartphone Party. It says:
Among the report’s key findings is that consumer awareness of Google’s Android is growing rapidly, due in large part to the Verizon Droid ad campaign. Further, of those American consumers in the market for a smartphone, 17% are considering the purchase of an android-supported device in next three months, compared to 20% indicating they plan to purchase an iPhone.
What ComScore’s press release fails to mention, strangely, is that three of the top four mobile phones in its table of “Intended Smartphone Purchasers” are all from Research in Motion (RIM). The BlackBerry Pearl (18%) is beating the Apple iPhone 3GS (14%) while the BlackBerry Storm (13%) and Curve (11%) are not far behind.
With the BlackBerry Bold (4%) and Tour (3%) also making the Top 10, RIM’s BlackBerry system is the choice of more than half (51%) of those planning a purchase in the next three months. This is more than iPhone (20%) and Android (17%) added together.
RIM’s improved performance is supported by its latest financial results. As my colleague Richard Wray reported earlier this afternoon, profits in the three months to the end of November were $628.4m compared with $396.3m in the same quarter last year, a 59% increase. Rick’s story says:
RIM shipped a record-breaking 10 million smartphones, better than investors had expected, and said it expected to shift even more in the last three months of its financial year as its push into the consumer market continues to pay off.
To be specific, it expects to ship between 10.6 and 11.2 million mobiles at an ASP (average selling price) of $320.
The BlackBerry has long been popular for business email and among celebrities but it’s now attracting consumers, including teens who use it for instant messaging.
There’s still plenty of room for all the companies in the smartphone market to grow, for two reasons. First, the major handsets are still not available across the globe. In RIM’s case, only 35% of its subscribers are overseas, but this could change rapidly now RIM has signed deals with China Mobile and Digital China Holdings Ltd. Second, there’s a shift from ordinary mobiles to smartphones, which means that smartphone sales can continue to grow as existing phone users upgrade.
There are reasons for thinking that Android will do particularly well, because it can easily be adopted by local suppliers and networks: there’s no need to wait for Apple or RIM to design new handsets or set up operations in hundreds of different countries. Microsoft Windows enjoyed a similar advantage over the Mac. This time, however, it looks as though it will be Android that benefits, rather than Windows Mobile.
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(Source The Guardian)
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• RIM shipped record-breaking 10 million smartphones
• Sales of rival Palm Pre dipped by 5% to 783,000 units
Consumer demand for BlackBerry handsets has boosted profits for RIM, the Canadian manufacturer of the mobile email device, which was once the preserve of business executives.
But a rise in quarterly profits of almost a third for RIM is in stark contrast to the poor performance of rival North American mobile phone manufacturer Palm, which reported a worse than expected loss for the three month period.
Both companies are battling hard for a share of the lucrative market for so-called smartphones, against the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia and newest entrant Apple, which has taken the market by storm with the iPhone.
After a faltering start with the initial version of its first touchscreen device, the BlackBerry Storm, which was critically panned, RIM has scored successes with the Storm 2 and a consumer-focused version of its Curve smartphone and has been expanding its share of the smartphone market
Analysts had been hoping for similarly great things from Palm. After several years in the doldrums, Palm released what many critics believe is its make or break handset – the Palm Pre – in the US over the summer. It has since arrived in the UK under an exclusive deal with O2. But while the Palm Pre has been a critical success, with reviewers saying its runs the iPhone a close second in terms of functionality, the handset has been a poor seller.
In the three months to end November, Palm shipped a mere 783,000 smartphones, representing a 5% decrease from the three months to end August, although it does mark a year-over-year increase of 41%.
In stark contrast, in the same period RIM shipped a record-breaking 10 million smartphones, better than investors had expected, and said it expected to shift even more in the last three months of its financial year as its push into the consumer market continues to pay off.
Strong sales of BlackBerry devices helped RIM grow quarterly revenues by 11% to $3.92bn (£2.4bn) and the company expects that to rise to between $4.2bn and $4.4bn in the three months to end February – its fiscal fourth quarter. Profits in the three months to end November were $628.4m, up from $475.6m in the previous three months and $396.3m in the same quarter last year.
Palm, on the other hand, reported its tenth consecutive quarterly loss, which was worse than analysts had been expecting as the company invested heavily in marketing the Palm Pre, and the more recently launched Palm Pixi, to try and resuscitate sales.
Palm’s net loss narrowed to $85.4m over the three months to end November – the company’s fiscal second quarter – compared with a loss of $508.6m a year earlier, though that figure was distorted by a tax payment.
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(Source The Guardian)
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• The group has increased half-year profits to £75m, from £40m
• Demerger to create two separate stock exchange listed firms
Carphone Warehouse boss Charles Dunstone condemned as “crazy” government plans to combat online piracy by severing people’s broadband connections . The mobile phone retailer and owner of TalkTalk cheered investors by raising its profit forecast for the year.
TalkTalk, Britain’s second largest internet service provider behind BT, has threatened to take legal action if plans championed by Lord Mandelson to cut-off persistent unlawful online file sharers make it into law. An e-petition on the No 10 website against the law, which is part of the government’s Digital Economy Bill, has already garnered 26,000 signatories and the support of such technophiles as Stephen Fry.
“I do get the sense that the debate is moving in our direction,” Dunstone said yesterday. “People are coming to terms with the fact that what is being proposed subverts some of the basic principles of British justice. What’s being proposed is just crazy.”
His comments came as Carphone Warehouse said half year profits increased to £75m, from £40m last year as revenues rose 13% to £789m despite the gloomy economic climate. Accounting for the impact of writedowns, profits were £30m compared with a loss last year of £23m.
TalkTalk and the company’s retail business – named Best Buy Europe after its tie-up with American retailer Best Buy – did better than expected in the first half of the year and Dunstone predicted a strong Christmas quarter, meaning profits will exceed the City’s forecasts. Dunstone is hoping for strong sales of pre-pay mobile phones helped by cheap touchscreen handsets.
Carphone Warehouse, which bought Tiscali in May, is planning to demerge its retail business from its TalkTalk residential telephony and broadband operation by the end of the first quarter next year gave details about the demerger process today. There will be two separately listed businesses: TalkTalk Group PLC, which will have a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, and Carphone Warehouse Group PLC, which will have a secondary listing. The latter will comprise Best Buy Europe – its 50/50 partnership with Best Buy of the US – plus its 48.5% stake in Virgin Mobile France and Carphone’s property assets.
TalkTalk has secured £650m banking facilities for the post-demerger period meaning TalkTalk and Carphone will be fully funded for their anticipated medium-term requirements. Carphone Warehouse Group will not pay dividends for at least two years after demerger, while TalkTalk is expected to pay dividends from the outset equivalent to that of the current group with a progressive policy thereafter.
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(Source The Guardian)
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• Orange discovered that was pretty heavy demand for the iPhone yesterday, selling an estimated 30,000 units in 24 hours as it started selling the handset for the first time. Interesting numbers compared to the much-vaunted launch of the Motorola Droid in the US, where the figure was 100,000 units over the weekend (for a country five times the size of Britain).
• Seems the technology industry job cuts aren’t over: Electronic Arts announced 1,500 layoffs, Adobe is cutting a further 680 jobs, while AOL is also slashing more positions.
• The latest episode of the Tech Weekly podcast is live, featuring an interview with highly-rated music startup SoundCloud and our Jack conducting the honours as we induct our first candidate into our Tech Weekly Hall of Fame. Susi Weaser’s in the host’s chair once again, with Charles Arthur and yours truly playing Waldorf and Statler. Listen here.
And with that, I’m off on holiday for a couple of weeks: I’ll be leaving the breakfast briefing in the capable hands of Jack and Charles while I’m gone. See you soon!
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)
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Orange appears to have decided not to get involved in an iPhone price war with O2
Orange has announced prices for the iPhone on its network – but shown little appetite for a price war with O2, which presently has the monopoly on iPhone sales in the UK.
The phone will go on sale from 10 November across Orange’s retail network, as well as Apple retail stores, Phones4U, Orange concessions in HMV stores and – as predicted in the Guardian last month – in Carphone Warehouse shops.
But the tariffs announced today offer little temptation for any O2 users to change, or for non-iPhone users to switch. Orange contract buyers can get a 16GB iPhone 3GS for £184.50 plus £29.36 per month on an 18-month contract; at O2, the same phone costs £184.98 plus £29.38 per month on an 18-month contract.
Both networks say that they offer “unlimited” data downloads over the phone network – though Orange adds a warning that its “fair usage” policy in fact limits it to 750MB per month. (The iPhone also has Wi-Fi, which can be used without limit.)
When Orange announced that it would sell the iPhone it put up a web page where people could register their interest. It says that more than 200,000 did so – though how many will maintain that interest now that they have seen the tariffs on offer is hard to determine.
The launch does threaten O2’s position as the UK’s largest mobile network. Reports of inconsistent data connections troubling iPhone users on its network may have put some people off switching; Orange, by contrast, has claimed to have the largest 3G network in the UK.
But it will come under sustained pressure once it launches the iPhone, which is famous among network operators for using comparatively large amounts of bandwidth for emails and web browsing, compared to most smartphones – and especially standard mobile phones – which use little data, and where users are given strict data rations. Apple’s ability to negotiate O2 and other mobile networks around the world into giving iPhone users “unlimited” data downloads over the phone networks has made the device enormously attractive to a new generation of mobile workers, but squeezed operators’ margins to the limits.
Orange will offer Apple’s hot-selling internet device on a business plan, where a 16GB iPhone 3GS costs £87 on a 24-month £30 per month contract – significantly cheaper than the personal contract.
In addition, Orange will offer the iPhone on pay-as-you-go contracts – £440 for a 16GB iPhone 3GS.
The announcement of the prices intensifies the competition for customers between the networks, though with Vodafone ready to start selling the iPhone early next year, there may be the chance of some price pressure.
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(Source The Guardian)
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The iPhone could be the fastest-growing consumer electronics product of all time but now it might have a rival in the Open Handset Alliance
IF YOU want to understand what’s going on in the mobile phone business just now, think of it as a hen coop into which two foxes have recently arrived.
The first intruder is Apple, which was once a computer company and then had the temerity to break into the mobile phone business, where it has been wreaking havoc ever since. The second predator is Google, which began life as a search engine hell-bent on world domination, and sees mobile phones as a logical stepping-stone on the way. It has only recently found its way into the coop, but last week demonstrated its formidable potential for creative destruction.
To appreciate the disruption Apple has caused, look at the mobile phone market as it was in late 2006. It was a vast, stable, mature business dominated by a few global handset manufacturers – primarily Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, RIM (makers of the BlackBerry) and Samsung – and telecom-derived network operators who were obsessed with “owning” their subscribers.
The networks saw the internet as a threat and an opportunity: a threat because of the potential of internet telephony as represented by Skype (established in 2003) to siphon off voice revenues; and an opportunity because they controlled the pipe from mobile phones to the internet and could impose swingeing toll charges on anyone seeking to go online while on the move. So although the mobile phone business was fiercely competitive internally, as an entity it was a very cosy ecosystem.
For an outsider to break into such an established market is a pretty tall order, and accordingly most of us were sceptical about Apple’s ambitions. After all, Microsoft, with its vast resources, had been trying for years to do the same thing, with very limited success. Within a month of the launch of the iPhone in June 2007, however, it was clear that we’d got it badly wrong. Like the iPod before it, the iPhone changed the game by focusing on the internet. Mobile phones had been feeble little machines designed for voice and text; the iPhone was a portable, internet-ready Unix computer that could also make voice calls.
The extent of the disruption caused by the iPhone was vividly conveyed in a presentation to the Web 2.0 Summit by Mary Meeker, the celebrated Morgan Stanley analyst. She thinks the iPhone/iPod Touch is the fastest-growing consumer electronics product of all time – with an adoption ramp steeper than those for the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. Meeker also says that the mobile internet market is growing much faster even than the web-driven “desktop” internet market of the 1990s. All of which neatly explains why the iPhone has become so dominant so quickly: it was the first mobile device explicitly designed to ride this tiger.
The other company that understood the significance of the mobile internet was Google. Unlike Apple, Google decided not to get into the handset business and instead focused on developing a Linux-based operating system for phones that would then be offered to any manufacturer who wanted in on the act. Thus were born the Android operating system and the Open Handset Alliance – the manufacturers to make the phones.
The first Android phones – launched about a year ago – were disappointing compared with the iPhone. But it was clear that they had got the key factor right – the centrality of permanent access to the internet – and so it was only a matter of waiting for the next generation of handsets to arrive. Last week they began to appear, led by a striking phone (the Droid) from Motorola. Initial reactions from the technology community are pretty positive, so Apple might be about to acquire some real competition.
And not just Apple. The sting in the Android tail was also unveiled this week: Google has launched GPS navigation for the new handsets. It does everything that TomTom, Garmin et al do, and a lot more besides. For example, you can talk to it: tell it to “navigate to the museum with the King Tut exhibition” and it will do an instant Google search and present you with a list of options. Its maps are continually updated because they’re not held on the phone. It’ll give you live traffic data for your route. And when you get close to your destination it switches to Street View to show what it looks like. And it’s free.
You can imagine what that did to TomTom shares. The great thing about the technology world is that there is always someone out there whose business plan involves eating your lunch.
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(Source The Guardian)
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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Available SIM free for under £200.
The Nokia 6760 is a 3G phone running on the Symbian S60 OS. It has HSDPA and GPS, but no Wi-fi. Designed for email and messaging it has a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The screen is 2.4 inches and switched into landscape mode when opened for typing. There’s a basic 3.2 megapixel fixed-focus camera. It should be relatively cheap when compared to other Nokia messaging devices such as the E75 and N97.
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Finnish company Nokia admits that it has underperformed
The many touchscreen mobile phones that have hit the shops this year, from the Apple iPhone and Palm Pre to the HTC Hero, have continued to eat into the commanding lead once enjoyed by Nokia, with the world’s largest handset manufacturer reporting its first loss for over a decade.
The Finnish company admitted that it underperformed the overall mobile phone market in the three months to 30 September. The decision to slash the value of its networks joint venture with Germany’s Siemens, due to the continuing economic gloom, plunged the company into an overall quarterly loss of €913m (£836m) compared with a profit last year of €1bn. It is the first loss for the company since it started reporting on a quarter-by-quarter basis in 1996.
Nokia, which once made more than four out of every 10 mobile phones sold worldwide, has suffered as new entrants including Samsung, LG, Palm, HTC and Apple have barged their way into the lucrative market for so-called smartphones, devices that can access the web, send email and play music. Consumers are increasingly being offered a range of touchscreen devices, most recently the Palm Pre, Motorola Dext and BlackBerry Storm 2, which will hit Britain later this month. Nokia has been slow to react; as a result its average selling price has slipped as it has sold more so-called mid-range phones and its smartphone pricing has come under intense pressure.
The market as a whole, meanwhile, has been suffering as consumers have been holding off getting a new phone, instead switching to cheaper Sim-only deals because of worries about their own finances in the economic downturn. Nokia signalled in its third quarter results that this trend may be coming to an end, helped in part by the slew of attractive new touchscreen devices which operators are using to lure consumers on to long-term contracts. This year, Nokia expects industry mobile device volumes to be approximately 1.12bn units, down 7% from 1.21 bn units in 2008. That is a better performance than Nokia’s previous forecast of a 10% decline this year.
But Nokia itself does not appear to be capitalising on the pick-up, with its sales lagging the overall market in the third quarter.
Nokia said it reckons the entire mobile phone industry shipped 288m units in the quarter, down 7% on the same period a year ago, but up 7% on the second quarter. Nokia, however, shipped 108.5m units in the third quarter, which is down 8% on the same period last year and only up 5% on the previous quarter.
Nokia blamed a shortage of components for its poor third quarter performance compared with the wider market. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, its chief executive, said “We would have sold more devices and smartphones in the third quarter without the capacity constraints. The constraints did in fact hit the smartphone part of the business more than the rest of the devices.”
Nokia’s average selling price in the quarter was €62, at the same level as in the second quarter, but well down on last year’s €72.
Analysts believe Nokia has yet to come up with a real competitor to the iPhone. In a note issued after the results, Standard & Poor’s equity research team said Nokia’s overall market share actually fell in the third quarter, to 37.7% from 38.5% in the previous quarter and its share of the high-end smartphone market was also down. Nokia had originally forecast that it would grow its market share this year but was forced to ditch that forecast in July.
“While commentary that the demand environment for handsets improved during Q3 is encouraging, as is the improved industry outlooks for both handsets and infrastructure, we believe competitive pressures are intensifying and we see nothing from our preliminary read of results to change our view that Q4 will be challenging from both a market share and profitability standpoint,” the S&P team added.
Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at industry specialist Gartner, said sales of Nokia’s flagship N97 smartphone do not appear to have been exactly stellar. “Despite their positive comments on the N97 I am reluctant to say that sales of 1.8m for a flagship product are good enough. Moreover, as Nokia stated at the beginning of September that N97 shipped 1.5m devices since the launch we can see that sales are actually not accelerating.”
Nokia plans to launch four new touchscreen phones in the fourth quarter including the 5230 and 5530. Milanesi said she expects them to do well but “they will help drive volume, not necessarily value” because they are likely to be relatively cheaply priced.
Nokia stripped out smartphone sales for the third quarter, saying 47m “converged mobile devices” were shipped in the three months, compared with an estimated 44.2m units in the third quarter 2008 and 41m units in the second quarter 2009. Of that total figure, Nokia sold 16.4m units in the third quarter 2009, compared with 15.5m units in the third quarter 2008 and 16.9m units in the second quarter 2009.
Nokia’s share of the converged mobile device market was an estimated 35% in the third quarter 2009 down from 41% in the second quarter 2009, suggesting that consumers who were on Sim-only deals in the summer and have recently decided to take a phone on a long-term contract have not been rushing to grab a Nokia device, but instead plumped for rivals such as the iPhone.
In a note on Apple, American investment house Northeast Securities said it has run supply chain checks which indicate that shipments of the iPhone in September “exceeded [Wall] Street estimates of 7m by 25%-30%. Wider distribution and share gains were contributing factors”.
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(Source The Guardian)
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Microsoft is launching a full-frontal assault on Apple’s iPhone and
Google’s embryonic mobile phone platform Android with a global advertising campaign to promote the launch of its new Windows Phone software that will run to “several hundred million dollars”.
Windows Phone – technically Windows Mobile version 6.5 – will appear on over 30 devices in 20 markets across the world, including the UK, by the end of the year. Deals with handset manufacturers including Toshiba, Samsung, LG and HTC were unveiled on
Tuesday.
As well as press and poster advertising across multiple markets, Microsoft is using TV spots in the UK, US, France and Germany to push its mobile platform for the first time.
The new range of Windows Phone devices will battle with a slew of new handsets to be released in the next few weeks, in time for the crucial Christmas trading season. On Wednesday Orange will launch the Motorola Dext, which uses Google’s Android platform, while Sony Ericsson will launch the Satio, which has a mammoth 12.1 megapixel camera, and the rather more compact Aino. From next week, meanwhile, O2 will be selling the Palm Pre.
Tuesday, meanwhile, saw America’s largest mobile phone network Verizon – which is part owned by Vodafone – join forces with Google to create, market and sell a range of consumer devices using Android. Verizon Wireless chief executive Lowell McAdam said it wants to create a range of smartphones and netbooks using the software, with the first two phones appearing in the next few weeks.
Phones using Microsoft’s software have actually been available since 2002, but the company has failed to grab anything like the market share it has in the PC world. In addition, the recent emergence of the iPhone and Android phones have made Windows Mobile look very stale and tired.
Microsoft has shipped about 50 million Windows phones in the past few years, but recently its annual shipments are estimated to have been overtaken by sales of the iPhone.
To appeal to the wider consumer market and move away from its roots as a business tool, Microsoft has updated its mobile phone software so that it sits easily on the new generation of phones with touchscreens.
Windows Phone, which was initially revealed in a ‘beta’ test version in February, sees the company jettison the traditional Windows menu system in favour of a new ‘today’ screen which gives the user a quick overview of their email, calendar, calls, instant messages and texts and provides easy access to web browsing through a new version of Internet Explorer which – crucially – supports Flash, unlike other devices such as the iPhone and Pre.
Microsoft has also made use of the ‘lock’ screen to provide the user with notification of calls missed as well as new emails, texts and instant messages received. It is also looking to capitalise on the boom in downloadable mobile applications with its own Windows
Marketplace. At launch, however, it only has 60 applications in the UK,
compared with over 85,000 for the iPhone, and British customers will have to pay by credit card if they do download anything – unlike their American counterparts who are offered the chance to pay through their phone bill.
Windows Phone also includes a service called MyPhone which allows a user to automatically store all the content – including contacts – of their phone on the web so that it can be retrieved if the handset is lost or stolen. MyPhone also allows users to track the location of their handset – handy if it gets left in the back of a taxi, for example.
Kevin Keith, general manager of Windows Mobile Marketing, said Microsoft believes the emergence of touchscreen handsets has heightened consumer interest in the actual software and services that run on new devices and this could give the company an edge over some of its rivals.
“What’s great about a smartphone is that it is the software and the
services that people start to get attached to and that plays to our core
strengths,” he said.
He admitted that the company has performed poorly in the mobile space up until now.
“People don’t know that Windows has a phone,” he conceded, with less than 10% of people who use Windows PCs understanding that there is a mobile phone variant they could also use. “Our main goal with the launch is to make people aware Windows Phone exists.”
He refused to put a figure on the global marketing push, saying only that it runs into the “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
But Microsoft’s push to present a unified front against Android and the
iPhone is likely to suffer as some of its handset partners will continue to put their own ’skins’ on top of Windows Phone in order to personalise devices either for particular markets or particular operators.
Microsoft’s mammoth marketing push also hardly received a ringing
endorsement from one of the software company’s own UK retail partners, Phones4U, at Tuesday’s launch event in London. The retailer’s marketing director, Russell Braterman, said it will be selling Windows devices on its website rather than in its store.
“It is quite a subtle story which we will lead with the handset,” he said, adding that the company will be pushing the Samsung Omnia II phone.
In the UK, Windows Phone is available on the HTC Touch II and HTC Touch HD II from T-Mobile, the LG GM750 from Vodafone, the Toshiba TG01 from Orange and the Samsung Omnia II and Samsung Omnia Lite across several of the mobile phone networks.
Customers with an existing T-Mobile HTC Touch Diamond II can upgrade to the new version of the software, as can Vodafone customers with an HTC Touch Pro II. The HTC Snap S552 can also be upgraded.
At the end of the month, Windows Mobile will also appear in the UK on the Samsung Omnia Pro and Sony Ericsson X2, from Vodafone, while in late November, O2 will start stocking the Samsung Omnia Pro B7610.
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(Source The Guardian)
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It’s taken barely more than a year for 2bn apps to be downloaded. But how much money do they put in Apple’s bank account?
Two billion applications have been downloaded from Apple’s iTunes App Store in just over a year since its launch, the company announced today.
With roughly 85,000 different apps now available, and around 50m iPhones and iPod Touches (capable of running the apps) in use around the world, the statistic confirms the importance of the store to the success of the iPhone – which in the UK will get an added sales boost once it goes on sale through Orange in competition with O2, which has previously had the exlclusive franchise here.
And hey, here’s an official quote: “The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”
Of course, you could ask whether they’d be loving it slightly less if they had to pay for the overwhelming majority of those apps, rather than getting them for free; Mark Mulligan of Forrester noted that “lt took Apple over 3 yrs to hit 2bn song downloads. It took less than 1.5 years to hit 2bn app downloads”.
But of course, those 2bn song downloads will have brought in around $2bn in revenue (of which record labels get about $1.4bn and Apple gets the remaining $600m or so – which it’s earned, don’t forget, over three years, accelerating as it goes.
For apps, the income is rather smaller because the average price is likely to be lower because so many of those downloads are freebies.
That means that claims that the App Store is bringing in $2.4bn per year look vastly inflated (as that blog post points out). The proper number might be closer to $250m to $500m per year, of which Apple gets 30%, or $75m-$150m.
Even so, that implies that the App Store is doing pretty well for something that’s only a year old. If multiple phone carriers gooses that, the indications are that it will keep being a tidy money-earner – though nothing much compared to the actual hardware sales, which keep the coffers full.
Update: Mulligan adds: “Lots of you [on Twitter] commented [that] many Apple apps are free. Very true. But also remember Apps only work on a quarter of all 212m [iPod] devices sold to date.” Which suddenly makes it look like a much more promising market, doesn’t it?
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(Source The Guardian)
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US firm that created first mobile phone unveils handset using Google’s Android software that will be known as Dext in Europe
The struggling American technology firm Motorola, which made the world’s first mobile phone, has taken an important step in its attempt to regain its lost grandeur by unveiling its first handset that uses Google’s Android software.
The Cliq – which will be called the Dext when it is launched in the UK next month – will compete with Apple’s iPhone and the Pre, upon which rival American group Palm has pinned its own hopes of revival, in the key Christmas market.
The touchscreen Cliq has a slide-out keyboard, like the Pre; a better camera than both the Palm device and the iPhone, at 5 megapixels; and supports fast mobile broadband and wi-fi. But it is the way the phone integrates a host of social networking services – from Facebook and Twitter to the music-sharing service Last.fm – that shows how Motorola hopes to differentiate itself from the host of touchscreen phones available.
Motorola has taken Google’s Android operating system – designed to compete with Palm’s WebOS, Apple’s iPhone OS, Windows Mobile and Nokia’s Symbian platform – and built a new system it calls MotoBlur out of it. It allows users to synchronise their contacts, posts, feeds, messages, e-mails and photos from sources as diverse as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, corporate e-mail and even Last.fm and have them appear on the device’s screen. As a result, the phone gives users an instant snapshot of all their communication services – unlike the iPhone, which relies on users downloading and flicking between a host of applications.
The Palm Pre has similar functionality for email and Facebook to the Cliq, while the low-cost INQ1 handset, from the Hutchison Whampoa-owned INQ, also allowed easy integration with the social networking site, email, internet telephone service Skype and numerous instant messaging services. But the Cliq is more integrated than any of its rivals.
The phone’s home screen acts almost like a window on to the user’s different applications. All conversation threads, friend updates, stories, links, photos and more are automatically delivered to live widgets on the home screen. Messages are relayed through a single message hub giving an instant snapshot of emails, texts and instant messages. Even news items can be amalgamated into one feed alongside friend’s postings on Facebook.
The Cliq is the first of what will be many handsets from the American firm to include MotoBlur, which will become Motorola’s smartphone platform of choice, though it will continue to make handsets using Windows Mobile aimed primarily at business users.
“Is this phone the make-or-break phone?” Motorola’s chief executive Sanjay Jha asked the GigaOM conference in San Francisco. “No, but it is a very important starting point, it points the direction … it is the first step in a long journey.”
The Cliq is also an important step for Google’s Android platform. There are already touchscreen phones in the market using Android, produced by Taiwan’s HTC, but the Cliq is the first from a “big name” manufacturer. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are all expected to produce Android phones in the coming months, leaving Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, as the only one of the top five handset makers not experimenting with the Google platform.
Two Drunks
Jha said coming together with the Android platform, which is run by Google’s head of mobile Andy Rubin, was like “two drunks finding each other in a bar”, which rather highlights the perilous state in which the company has found itself in recent years.
Motorola’s fall from grace has been long and hard. Having made the DynaTAC 8000x in 1983, the first commercially available mobile phone (an unwieldy beige handset), it went on to dominate the market with Ericsson but the switch to digital phones in the 1990s found Motorola unprepared and its share started to slip as Nokia came to dominate the global market.
Motorola then started this decade as the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world – accounting for one in four of all handsets sold – but still the market leader in the US. But it failed to follow-up the success of the ultra-slim Razr phone, initially launched six years ago, with another headline-grabbing product, preferring instead to try the same handset in a variety of different colours or with slight technical improvements.
By the time the iPhone appeared two years ago, Motorola was in freefall. In the three months to end June, Motorola sold just under 16m phones, giving it just 5.6% of the market, compared with 10% the previous year, and putting it firmly in fourth place behind Nokia, Samsung and LG.
Orange has grabbed the Cliq/Dext under an exclusive deal with Motorola for the UK. Pricing will be announced in the UK next week but the phone is expected to be free to anyone signing up to a long-term contract of between £25 and £30 a month, making it cheaper than the iPhone.
Ralf Gerbershagen, vice-president and general manager of Motorola Western Europe, told the Guardian: “This is a day we have been waiting for for quite a while.
“You have to have a great piece of hardware in the market and we believe that we have this with Dext, and you have to have a good brand and we believe Motorola is a very strong brand in the marketplace,” he said. “Motorola is a global player and it is geared up to remain a global player”.
MotoBlur is designed to cope with the bewildering array of web-based communication tools available, he added. “There are more social networking accounts around the world than email accounts and the reason is many people have a couple of them.”
The Dext, he argued, would help consumers take charge. “In the end, technology is there to make your life simpler.”
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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