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Ban still looms despite temporary truce after BlackBerry maker RIM grants authorities access to ‘secure’ data passed between devicesAfter weeks of standoff between south Asia and North America, the Indian authorities yesterday won limited access to data from BlackBerry smartphones. The 800,000 users of the devices in the country had been threatened with a blackout because of the Delhi government’s growing fear that militants could use the BlackBerry’s secure network to plot terror attacks without fear of being monitored.The authorities can now get access to some data. The arrangement will be evaluated for 60 days, but the prospect of a ban still looms large for Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company behind the smartphones.India has also opened up a front against Google and Skype. The home secretary, GK Pillai, said the internet companies were being asked to set up servers in India so that the authorities there could monitor data.India’s moves underline the anxieties of emerging governments about the reach of western communications groups, and particularly the BlackBerry.The United Arab Emirates is threatening to block BlackBerry services by 11 October if it does not get access to encrypted messages. Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon are also reviewing the future of BlackBerry services in their countries; all cite security fears over the level of encryption afforded to communication sent between devices.However, this strategy risks alienating the very global businesses such countries are trying to attract, because the employees of multinationals increasingly rely upon BlackBerrys to conduct their day-to-day work.RIM’s problems – its shares have fallen to a 17-month low – lie in the way BlackBerry devices get access to the internet and email through secure centres around the world using specialist encryption.BlackBerry’s Messenger instant-messaging service and its email service have different levels of security, and email security depends on the server being used. Since the BlackBerry was launched 11 years ago, it has been the mobile phone of choice for business users and governments across the world. But RIM’s reputation for producing apparently impenetrable security for high-profile customers is at risk of being irreparably damaged by these new demands.Last Thursday, RIM said it would lead an industry forum on how to allow law-enforcement agencies to get access to communication networks while not encroaching on the security needs of private enterprises. That was all well and good, Indian government sources told Reuters, but the country wanted a technical solution – and quickly. “The government’s position does not change,” the source said. “We are hopeful [RIM] will come up with some solution.”Risk that RIM will lose users’ trustThe problem for RIM is that if it gains governments’ trust by giving them the means to see messages, it will probably lose the trust – and perhaps the business – of users who have previously relied on its security as a way of avoiding the government’s gaze.A university professor in UAE, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Guardian: “The issue has received a lot of coverage in the UAE, but nothing compared to the conversation ‘on the ground’. Since virtually every Emirati aged 17 to 40 owns a BlackBerry and uses the messenger feature constantly, this has been of great concern to them.”I’d guess that around 30% accept this is for security reasons, while the rest believe it to be, at the least, intrusive. The latter believe it to be a response to a number of fairly high-profile Emiratis being attacked, derided, vilified via the messenger broadcast service. Emiratis send many broadcasts daily, and gossip runs through the community like wildfire.”One of the biggest issues for the countries concerned is this messenger broadcast function. Allowing users to send one-to-many messages to everyone in their contacts book has proved an effective and galvanising way of spreading comment, and is often used as a vehicle for anti-establishment opinion – something UAE authorities are sensitive about. “The government walks a very thin line between appearing liberal and modern to the west, and traditional and Islamic at home,” the professor said. “This issue cuts to the heart of the impossibility of doing both at once.The professor, who has owned a BlackBerry for more than a year, said he would have no qualms in switching to another device if RIM’s concessions infringed his right to communicate without fear of government interception. “I can only presume RIM is aware of this and is treading carefully,” he said. “I have faith in the company, as it clearly does little for them to give up what makes the device so valuable – its security.”He added: “This has been called another public relations disaster for the UAE, and I fail to see how someone will not point this out to the rulers – and they are exceptionally concerned with remaining attractive in the eyes of western governments,” he added. “This has done them no favours with the business community internationally nor with the majority of locals and expats domestically.”Falling foul of authorityBeing on the wrong side of officialdom is not new to the Canadian manufacturer. Ironically, given the more recent bout of security concerns, three years ago the French government banned its officials from using BlackBerry devices, citing fears that communication could be intercepted by countries hosting the enterprise servers – namely Canada, the US and the UK. When Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the BlackBerry he had used on the campaign trail was replaced with one with extra security, approved by the US National Security Agency, which was concerned about people trying to tap it.Further east, security demands meant negotiations to take the BlackBerry to China and Russia took two years to resolve in both countries.Unlike Indian officials, who have slipped anonymous tidbits and soundbites to the news agencies, RIM has remained tight-lipped about its negotiations. In a rare public statement addressed to customers earlier this month, the Canadian manufacturer said it co-operated with all governments to a consistent level: “Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded.”The complexity and range of security solutions offered by RIM may be the source of the company’s friction with governments, said Leif-Olof Wallin, vice-president of the IT research company Gartner. “What seems to be the big challenge is that lots of BlackBerry service and infrastructure is not very well understood by the regulatory authorities or by its users,” Wallin said. “Although physically it is the same device, it can be used in lots of different scenarios.”Financially, Wallin said, a ban in India would have negligible impact on RIM’s global business, although the country was the second-largest mobile phone market in the world behind China. And RIM would emerge less tarnished than the countries involved.Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that there will be more than 600,000 BlackBerry sales in India this year and that India’s smartphone market will have reached approximately 12m – a figure forecast to grow to 40m by the end of 2015.”At the very last minute there will be an agreement in place,” Wallin predicted. “Banning BlackBerry devices in the country has significant implications affecting foreign diplomats, foreign enterprise executives. It would be a major inconvenience to lots of important allies.”Monitoring messages on a case-by case basisThat is not to say that the Indian or UAE governments will be given free rein to tap emails or messenger messages. “Our interpretation of RIM’s public statements is that the company is willing to facilitate mobile operators to lawfully intercept some messages,” said Wallin.”And BlackBerry will – on a case-by-case basis – be assisting network operators to decrypt BlackBerry Messenger, we think. With email between the BlackBerry and BlackBerry Enterprise Server, RIM simply does not have the capabilities to decrypt it, and the encryption key is unique to each user.”Though some of our clients are worried about what to do in case a ban is put in place, it looks like BlackBerry [manufacturer RIM] is benefiting from this as they’re not caving in – they’re being perceived as an honest secure company.”Gail Thompson, owner of a landscaping company based in Dubai and a BlackBerry owner, said the ill thought-out warnings were not atypical of Emirates officials. “I’m expecting them to backpedal on it,” Thompson said. “I’m anticipating that [the authorities will] issue a blanket mandate, then realise that it’s unworkable – that’s what I’m I’m hoping. I think they’ve had a kneejerk reaction to things.”They need to take into account that business people are coming into the country and [the UAE doesn't] need another hurdle in the economy,” Thompson said. “People are thinking that it’s ludicrous – we all understand that our emails and calls are monitored, it’s just part of our lives. I just think it’s a cultural thing out there.”But that thinking is not shared by all of UAE’s half a million BlackBerry users.A teacher who has lived in the region for 10 years and wished to remain anonymous said she would blame RIM “for caving into demands that compromise people’s privacy” if the manufacturer facilitated greater access to their emails.”There is no alternative but switching to another device,” she said. “If [RIM] allowed the government to intercept messages, I wouldn’t be sending you this email.”BlackBerryData and computer securityMobile phonesIndiaJosh Hallidayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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One of the world’s largest casual gaming companies today unveiled HTML5 versions of 47 of its games websites, proclaiming that it will be the new standard for gaming devices within three years.SPIL Games has thrown its considerable weight behind HTML5 and the upward trend in casual gaming, with users now able to play its games on mobile browsers supporting HTML5 (ruling out devices running Android pre-2.0). Previously, mobile visitors would have been taken to the full browser window displayed in Flash – but that would be slow to render with most phone browsers, and incompatible with Apple devices.But close to a million mobile users try accessing a SPIL gaming website every month, a company spokesman tells us. More than half (52%) of these visits are from Apple devices, 15% from Android, 15% from Symbian (ie Nokia and/or Sony Ericcson) and 6% from BlackBerry devices.The company, which currently has more than 4,000 games in its portfolio, is offering developers prizes totalling up to $50,000 (£41,000) for the best HTML5 game, encouraging the potential it says is “hampered by different protocols, operating systems, and platform-approval processes within the mobile world”.An aside: Nick Jones, Gartner analyst, has an interesting take on that very subject:”Native platforms will certainly become less important relative to the web platform because HTML5 supports a wider range of applications than the last-generation web. “But native platforms can stay ahead by evolving faster than HTML5, and in different directions to HTML5, it’s not hard to outrun a snail driven by a committee. So although HTML5 will be important the native platform will retain a big edge if you want to develop clever apps. And the native platform owners want it to stay that way.”"Openness is at the core of everything we do,” says Peter Driesson, chief executive of the Netherlands-based company. “We are aware that HTML5 is still at an early stage, but already developers can use it to make great games, and we are confident that the industry will quickly embrace it. Within three years we expect HTML5 to be the standard in gaming devices.”Analysts at Forrester predict the Western European mobile gaming market to grow from €746m (£616m) at the end of 2010 to €1.46bn (£1.2bn) by the end of 2015, due to the growth in paying mobile gamers (31 million to 45 million over the same time frame, Forrester predicts) and a growth in smarphone adoption.• Another noteworthy HTML5 development: Ephemeral rockers Arcade Fire have teamed up with Google Chrome to put together a personalised music video. Nice.HTML5Casual gamingGamesMobileMobile phonesJosh Hallidayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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Service provider SpiriTel has struck its largest deal to date after being awarded a three-year contract worth £5 million by Punch Taverns

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Heard of Silicon Street? It’s Paul Street, in central London – just round the corner from Silicon Roundabout and a cousin of Silicon Fen… and it’s where messaging service HulloMail is based.Founded in 2008 with seed funding from venture capital, the service has 25 staff and claims phenomenal growth in the past six months with more than 150,000 downloads. Next on the to-do list is a co-branded smartphone version for mobile operators that, hopes chief executive Andy Munarriz, will open the service to millions of users. • What’s your pitch?”We answer your phone when you can’t, sending messages left by the caller straight to your phone – you can play it back as if it where a music track on your iPod. It also tells you when someone called you but did not leave a message. You can see all your voicemails in one single list with a photo of the person next to each message – this saves you time as you can play each messages by simply selecting it. You don’t have to make a call and listen to the person telling you who called, when they called and then wait to hear the messages in the order they were left. It’s much less frustrating! “We have another a cool feature that lets you send a voicemail without having to call that person. Press record, leave your message and then send – it’s is quick and free. “HulloMail is a cloud-based service. Users sign-up by downloading the mobile app from the relevant marketplace (currently Android, BlackBerry and iPhones in the UK, USA and soon Ireland). Part of the sign-up process sets your mobile divert to our cloud answer service (voicemail, in layman’s speak). We then have the ability to answer your phone calls when you don’t – essentially, we replace your mobile operator voicemail service. When someone leaves you a message, we then push it directly to the HulloMail mobile app on the phone and also to your email, so you can play it directly from your device or as an MP3 attachment. “Finally, we let you send new and reply-to voice messages to your contacts without having to make a physical call. These messages are called Hullos – short voice messages you can send directly to fellow HulloMail users or anyone with an email address.” • How do you make money?”We make most of our money from technology licenses and services, but this will shift to revenue from co-branded cloud-based services for consumers, in conjunction with mobile operators. We also expect the consumer services to pay for themselves when we launch paid-for advanced features from autumn 2010.” • How are you surviving the downturn?”We are keeping focused and not overextending ourselves. We are lucky that smartphones are still selling like hotcakes and users are hungry for apps.” • What’s your background?”My background is in software and systems design. I consider myself a technologist with a passion of user interface design. “I’ve worked for 20 years in software and telecoms. I also founded VoxSurf in 1999, which pioneered the world’s first web and open standards-based call completion and messaging platform. This is currently deployed to 35 million users globally. I previously worked for companies such as Accenture and Sprint, specialising in the design, development and installation of service delivery platform architectures to a number of industries. This ranged from phone banking to field force management. I’ve also authored several mobile web and messaging technology patents.” • What makes your business unique?”Being the ‘son of VoxSurf’, HulloMail is in a sweet spot of having large-scale services deployed with mobile operators and now a consumer focus of our own in one of their core service areas. I believe this is a unique and fresh combination in the industry today and places us in a very good position to modernise voice messaging services as a consumer brand. Our strategy to scale the business is to offer mobile operators a co-branded HulloMail. We are extremely focussed and good at what we do so our goal is to work with mobile operators in a fresh way to help deliver a service that people want. “We are passionate about providing consumer-led innovation as opposed to simply delivering technology for technology-focused solutions, which is what I believe many traditional vendors currently present to mobile operators.” • What has been your biggest achievement so far?”We licensed our technology to one of the largest telco vendors in our space that continues to use it as the basis of one of their successful platforms today. I cut the code of the prototype for what became our technology platform over a two-week holiday. It still puts a smile on my face when I think of it.” • Who in the tech business inspires you?”In business James Dyson inspires me. I would imagine that telling VCs you have re-invented the Hoover must have been as hard as telling VCs you have re-invented voicemail. He had to go to Japan to prove a point. I’ve been luckier – I only had to nip over to Ireland. “Steve Jobs and his Apple team turned mobile on its head. Despite the negative vibe on their walled garden approach, it is thanks to Apple that companies like HulloMail could prove a mobile concept directly with consumers. Only five years ago it was impossible to deploy an app without getting involved with a device manufacturer and a mobile operator – the process length alone could kill the business.” • What’s your biggest challenge?”Scaling the business, by accelerating consumer growth.” • What’s the most important web tool that you use each day? “Email – I believe that email continues to be the killer app. However I use email too much and I should call people more often.” • Name your closest competitors”You have the traditional telco vendors such as an Ericsson or Comverse, or Acision selling messaging systems to the mobile operator. You also have the web-based guys such as Google and Google Voice. Neither of them offers mobile operators a web-based cloud model coupled with actual consumer demand for the product, like we do.” • Where do you want the company to be in five years?”As a recognised telco brand, which is deployed to millions of mobile users.” • Sell to Google, or be bigger than Google?”If I was a mobile operator focussing on differentiating my services, HulloMail would be a good option to enable a horizontal voice and video messaging strategy across multiple devices. Is there a mobile operator bigger than Google?” hullomail.com Internet startupsDigital mediaMobile phonesAppsJemima Kissguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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BEIJING (Reuters) – China Unicom, China’s second-largest telecommunications operator, may start selling Apple Inc’s iPhone 4 in the mainland market in September, state television reported on Thursday.

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Google and Apple are gearing up to launch ads on their apps, a strategy which is set to change the advertising landscape for everBritish mobile users will soon find themselves embroiled in the epic confrontation taking shape between Apple and Google. iAds, Apple’s bid to run advertisements inside apps, is expected to make its UK debut in September. Separately, Google has adopted what its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, calls a “mobile first” approach, prioritising investment in a medium that has become “fundamental to everything we do”.With the iPhone moving into mass market territory and the iPad selling 200,000 units a week, Apple’s decision to start selling mobile advertising seems likely to concentrate a few media minds.In early June, Steve Jobs demonstrated iAds in front of Apple developers in San Francisco. The ad he showed off was a work-in-progress by Nissan. The demo, which included a 15-second video, an interactive application and a form to sign up for a competition, didn’t quite live up to Jobs’s aim of “trying to combine the emotion of video with the interactivity of the web”. But it was slick. In the future, Jobs promised, iAds would bring in the revenue that would allow developers to continue producing “free and low-cost apps to delight users”.There are early signs that mobile advertising, like everything else touched by Cupertino’s genius, will turn to gold. During the eight weeks leading up to the presentation in San Francisco, Apple sold $60m-worth of iAds to the likes of Unilever and Disney. This compares with the $250m mobile online display revenue generated across the whole of 2009 in the US.For media owners, there are two major problems with Apple’s ad model, which the analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research suggested in a recent report has the potential to become an $800m-a-year business within the next year.First, Apple’s approach threatens to reduce media owners to the status of “developers” alongside tens of thousands of competitors. The second problem is that Apple’s business model, like Google’s, reduces media owners’ involvement in advertising markets to a minimum.Mobile giantsApple and Google already own the world’s two largest mobile ad networks. Both are already selling ads directly to advertisers. Advertisers, for their part, aren’t paying to reach mobile users attracted by a specific media company. Instead, in the case of iAds, they pay Apple to reach broad swaths of iPhone and iPad users who share common demographic characteristics.In order to stitch together these communities of users, Apple has been analysing the purchasing history of its 150 million iTunes account holders worldwide who also use iPhones and iPads. Its own hardware produces a separate stream of data about what users do, and where and how they do it. Notably, the privacy policy associated with the iPhone 4 allows Apple, for the first time, to collect anonymised real-time location data on its users.How much of this data will Apple share with advertisers and publishers? “We talk to Apple a lot,” says one publisher. “But we haven’t had that conversation yet.” The ad industry seems similarly uncertain. Michael Collins, the chief executive of Joule, a WPP-owned mobile agency, recently told Business Week that data sharing is “the question that many of us in the industry are very curious about”.Google, too, is forging ahead, but in a different way. On the mobile web, it continues to emphasise lead generation rather than branding. Ian Carrington, director of mobile ad sales for Google Europe, Middle East and Africa, sketches out a scenario in which a mobile user is reading a book review on a handset in a cafe. “The accompanying ad will understand its context,” he says. “It will know what book is being discussed in that review. He adds: “You’ve also got GPS in most smartphones now, so your handset can tell you that this book is £5.99 in a shop 100 yards away, and £4.99 in a shop a mile away.”Google, Carrington says, already knows how to do “the contextual part” of a scenario like this. “We’re still working on the location-based bit,” he adds. Yet the bottom line is that Google’s results-based approach will probably yield small revenues on the mobile web, just as it did on the desktop web.Despite different approaches to advertising, one thing unites Apple and Google. Both companies want to hold on to a relatively large proportion of the ad revenue they generate. Apple, for example, proposes to pass on to developers 60% of the revenue generated by iAds. Google continues to suggest it passes on to publishers “at least 50%” of the revenue generated by ads it runs next to publishers’ content. These levels of commission will look high to anyone who recalls the 15% commission that used to go to media agencies for bringing in advertising for publishers.There’s a further reason for publishers to be wary about the mobile web. As it turns out, Apple and Google plan to take a large slice of what, by anyone’s standards, is a very small pie. Last year, the latest in a series of years dubbed the “year of mobile advertising” by industry boosters, advertisers spent a mere £35m trying to reach British mobile users, according to Enders Analysis. That’s 1% of what advertisers spent on all digital advertising and, as Benedict Evans, a consultant at Enders Analysis, points out, less than the £50m he estimates Britons shelled out last year to have pornographic images texted to their handsets.In the words of one publisher, the cumulative effect of these challenges is a “cautious” and “risk-averse” approach to publishing on tablets and handsets.Others take a more positive view: Matt Kelly, digital content director at Trinity Mirror’s national papers, says Apple has the upper hand “because they’re first into the market, they’ve done all of the development, all of the creative hard work”. “They’re reaping that reward,” he adds. “At the moment, content producers are at the mercy of great technology innovators. But it won’t stay that way forever. We may see a swing towards publishing content on Android if Google’s business terms become more attractive.”Not a bad dealKelly is also wary of the argument that Apple and Google are skimming off too much mobile ad revenue. “The overheads at Trinity Mirror’s newspapers are 75% of revenue – for paper, ink, transport and so on. If someone comes along and says, we’ll replicate the revenues, but the bulk of your costs will be 40%, it’s not automatically a bad deal.”Kelly remains confident about the value of content: “Technology will become commoditised and homogeneous, more open for third parties to come in and innovate and copy. The profits for platforms will decline and the profits associated with content will increase.”Steve Pinches, lead product development manager at ft.com, says that Apple wants to use iAds to sustain a “huge long tail of apps that really have no easy way of monetising themselves”. Big media is different, argues Pinches. “We have very deep relationships with our advertisers that have been formed over years and years,” he says. “We also have an incredibly deep relationship with our readers.”Evans also sees positives in Apple’s pricing of iAds. “They’re trying to catalyse the market,” he says. “If they’d gone out and said this is going to be cheap, advertisers would have carried on with their small experimental budgets. “But Apple has told advertisers they’re not spending $80,000 on another experimental campaign. Instead they’re each going to spend a minimum of $1m on each iAds campaign.”Rupert Murdoch thinks the iPad “may well be the saving of the newspaper industry”. Yet Apple would like to claim the lion’s share of profits from the mobile web by charging a high price for its hardware. By contrast, Schmidt at Google foresees a future in which handsets and airtime are free, subsidised by advertising.Both Apple and Google need what Jobs describes as “free and low cost” content that engages users and attracts advertisers. On the mobile web, the task facing media owners is to figure out how much revenue they can wring out in return.AdvertisingGoogleAppleAppsSteve JobsiPhoneNissanMobile phonesTrinity MirrorRupert MurdochPeter Kirwanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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Evo Morales has a plan for Bolivia’s lithium – but will those who brought him to power agree to it?In the south-western province of Nor Lipez in Bolivia lies the world’s largest deposit of lithium. The vast and spectacular Uyuni salt flats sit 3,600 metres above sea level. They are shaped like an inverted cone, 400 metres deep, in which layers of salts have sedimented, interwoven between layers of mud and brine, in which the mineral salts have dissolved.In recent years, lithium’s commercial value has risen astronomically. The development of laptops and mobile phones has depended on lithium batteries, and demand has grown to the point where it is now profitable to exploit the mineral even when it is found in a place as remote and inaccessible as this.Uyuni is in the department of Potosí, the site of the legendary Cerro Rico (rich hill), which supplied the Spanish colonial regime with silver for 200 years. Mining continued there in the 20th century, particularly after the Bolivian revolution of 1952 which nationalised the mines, creating among the Bolivian people the collective belief that they were now the owners of huge potential wealth that would never again be exploited by “foreign interests”.So strong was this belief that the first attempt to exploit lithium commercially, in 1992 – 10 years before the wave of popular uprisings in defence of Bolivia’s natural resources which would culminate in the election of Evo Morales – led to a period of protests across the region, and the then government of Jaime Paz Estenssoro was forced to break its contract with the Lithco corporation.Today, the potential exploitation of Bolivian lithium exposes contradictions within Morales’s government, and the possibility of social conflict, as multilayered as the salt lake itself.On the one hand, Morales decreed in 2008 that the state would take full control of the exploitation of lithium. A new arm of the Bolivian Mining Corporation was set up with the aim of constructing a plant for the mineral’s exploitation.On the other hand, since 2009 the Bolivian government has begun negotiations with foreign companies with a view to signing contracts for its industrial production. Interested parties include the Japanese firms Mitsubishi and Sumitomo. And there are other possibilities, too: Morales has travelled widely looking for possible joint investment in lithium production with Chinese, Russian and Iranian firms.Through such partnerships Morales hopes to further fund a number of social welfare projects through the so-called conditional transfer of resources – small amounts of money are given to families, so long as certain conditions are met (for instance, that children are sent to school). This is central to the government’s social strategy.However, the indigenous population of Bolivia’s western areas, who are among the poorest people in the country and who have strong communal traditions, appear to disagree with the policy. The social movements that brought Morales to power have mobilised over recent months around demands for local development, and in defence of water rights. In the mind of many Bolivians, the most important thing is that local communities decide on the uses of resources in their own territory.Bolivia today is undergoing a reconstruction of the state, in the course of which progressive nationalist policies find themselves in conflict with a highly politicised population with its own vision of how best to utilise “the gifts of Pachamama (Mother Earth)”. Not only do the Uyuni salt flats sit above multiple layers of strategic minerals, they also raise questions of how to use them – to which there are multiple answers.BoliviaMobile phonesComputingMiningRaquel Gutiérrezguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Terms & Conditions

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Free broadband firm TalkTalk promises competitive prices in mobile services deal with Vodafone

Internet and phone firm TalkTalk has struck a deal with Vodafone to launch a mobile service under its own brand.

TalkTalk, which helped revolutionise the broadband market by introducing “free” internet access four years ago, will offer both contract and pre-pay tariffs to existing customers from the autumn.

Market watchers will be looking to see whether the company, the second-largest residential broadband provider in the UK, will have as big an impact in the mobile industry as it did in on internet services.

Chairman Charles Dunstone said TalkTalk, which was spun out of Carphone Warehouse earlier this year, would make a “gentle” entry into mobile services, but would offer competitive prices.

“It will be a way to add a very good value mobile package to the account you have with us for your fixed-line phone and broadband,” he said.

TalkTalk entered the phone market in 2003 and the broadband market in 2006. Carphone Warehouse, meanwhile, still has its own mobile venture called TalkMobile, which also uses Vodafone’s network.

News of the mobile phone service came as TalkTalk announced first-quarter results which showed it added 34,000 net broadband customers in the second quarter, taking its total to 4.23 million. That puts it ahead of Virgin Media, which announced earlier this week that it had 4.21 million customers, having added 28,100 in the quarter. BT said yesterday it had 5.2 million broadband customers, adding 96,000 in the last three months, although it does not split out its residential customers from its large base of business users. The UK’s fourth-largest broadband provider, BSkyB, meanwhile, added 119,000 broadband customers in the quarter, taking its total customer base to 2.6 million.

TalkTalk’s average revenue per broadband user was £23.90, slightly up on a year ago. TalkTalk, which bought rival Tiscali a year ago, said its share of net broadband adds was about 10% this quarter, keeping it on track to add 140,000 to 180,000 customers over the year as a whole.

Revenues climbed 31% in the quarter to £444m, broadly in line with expectations.

The company said it remained confident it would deliver 6-8% revenue growth, and 20% growth in normalised earnings per share and dividends per share for the year to 31 March 2011.

Vodafone, meanwhile, has a number of other wholesale deals which allow companies to use its network to become what are termed mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). It provides network coverage for BT, Asda and Lebara, which targets the UK’s immigrant population.

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Adults banned from searching children’s computers or phones under a new law passed in Chongqing, southwest China

It is a ruling that teenagers around the world will regard with a certain amount of envy. Parents in one Chinese city are to be prevented from snooping on their children’s online activity and text messages.

Adults, including family members, are banned from searching through children’s computers or phones under a new regional law passed in Chongqing, southwest China, state media reported today. The regulation outlaws snooping into their emails, text messages, web chats, and browser history. The regulation is designed to protect the rights of children, but is surprising given widespread concern in China about excessive internet use among young people and their access to unsuitable material. Psychologists have sought to have internet addiction listed as a clinical disorder and treatment camps have sprung up across the country. The Chongqing Evening Post described the new regulation, adopted on Friday by officials in Chongqing, as the first of its kind in the country. Other Chinese media said it expanded an existing national rule. But both experts and children doubted whether it would have an impact in practice.

Lu Yulin, a professor at the China Youth University of Political Science, told China Daily that children were unlikely to take their parents to court.

“Parents who habitually check such information won’t stop due to the regulation,” he said.

Eleven-year-old Song Jingbo, from Xi’an, told the newspaper he did not think his mother and father would be able to access his data anyway, adding: “I am far more internet savvy than them.”

China has the largest population of internet users in the world and minors alone account for more 126 million of them, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, all, email, largest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, uk, world

Mobile phone operator reports its first quarterly service revenue growth since the recession

Strong demand for mobile data has helped Vodafone increase its service revenues for the first time in 18 months, as its key markets recovered from recession.

Britain’s third-largest mobile phone operator today reported a 1.1% rise in service revenues to £10.58bn in the last three months, reversing a trend that began in the final quarter of 2008. Revenue from data services such as smartphones and high-speed internet “dongles” jumped by 25%.

“These are the first quarterly results to show service revenue growth since the global recession impacted,” said chief executive Vittorio Colao.

“We have achieved these results through our continuing commercial approach in key European markets, focusing especially on data, and from strong growth in emerging markets, with India now cash-positive at an operating level and our highest ever quarterly revenue in Turkey,” he added.

Colao also said that Vodafone would announce a change of strategic direction in October, to “drive shareholder value”. This is understood to include a new focus on data services, especially in emerging markets like India and China.

Colao declined to give further details this morning, saying it would be “disrespectful to his board”, but hinted that it may be driven by the increased number of mobile operating systems on the market today.

“The world has changed,” he told reporters. “Many operating systems are strong and competing … this is a good opportunity to have a look at our strategy.”

Vodafone saw strong growth in demand for smartphones in Europe during the quarter, particularly in the UK where the company started selling Apple’s iPhone earlier this year.

Since taking over as chief executive in summer 2008, Colao has been trying to increase growth in Vodafone’s existing territories rather than continuing with the acquisition drive that has given it stakes in markets around the world.

Vodafone also announced today that it has finally resolved a long-running dispute with the UK tax authorities. This row centred on Vodafone’s decision to register Mannesman, the German mobile giant it acquired in 2000, in Luxembourg.

HM Revenues & Customs had claimed that Vodafone owed taxes in Britain under the Controlled Foreign Companies rules, which the mobile operator disputed. It has now agreed to pay £1.25bn to settle the case, having previously made a provision of £3.1bn on its books.

Shares in Vodafone rose 1.88% this morning to 151.85p.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, drive, global, growth, iphone, largest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, phone, phones, service, sol, three, uk, vodafone, world

Reports that phone-maker Nokia has launched top-level search as it struggles with falling profits and declining market share

Nokia is reported to be searching for a new chief executive as its CEO for the past four years, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, struggles with the company’s falling profits and market share, notably in the smartphone market.

The report in the Wall Street Journal of the top-level search follows reports on Bloomberg at the end of last week that the board of the Finnish company was calling for changes after seeing the company’s value slump by $77bn (€60bn) – about 67% – in the three years since 2007, when first Apple’s iPhone and then Google’s Android platform have transformed the smartphone market.

Although Nokia is the world’s largest phone-maker, and has the largest market share in smartphones at about 41%, it has issued two profit warnings in the past three months and seen its stock fall by 25% this year alone as it was forced to delay newer smartphones.

Nokia’s last big success in the smartphone market came four years ago with the N95, which boosted profits in its smartphone division to 21%. But since then Apple, Android and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, have eaten away at Nokia’s profitability, so that the division’s profit in its most recent figures was just 12%.

James Kelleher, an analyst at Argus Research in New York, told Bloomberg that a new chief executive is “the first order of business”. Nokia’s share price has dropped to €6.83, from €20.81 on June 29, 2007, when the iPhone went on sale.

The Android platform also poses a considerable threat to Nokia: Google announced earlier this year that it was activating 160,000 Android phones every day.

An analysis by Goldman Sachs earlier this month comparing smartphone companies’ profitability in 2007 with 2009 suggests that Apple has grabbed a growing slice of profit from the handset industry. While total profits remained static in total at about $14bn since 2007, the American company took up to $8bn in 2009, and is expected to take more than half the industry’s profits in 2010 and 2011 – despite selling far fewer handsets than its rivals.

Earlier this month the new head of Nokia’s Mobile Solutions division, Anssi Vanjoki, wrote a combative blogpost on Nokia’s “Conversations” blog in which he declared that “the fightback starts now” and said that “I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices. Achieving this will require performance and efforts over and above the norm.”

He also insisted that there were no plans to adopt Google’s free Android software platform; Nokia will instead remain with its own open-source Symbian and Meego mobile operating systems: “Symbian and MeeGo are the best software for our smartest devices. As such, we have no plans to use any other software. Despite rumours to the contrary, there are no plans to introduce an Android device from Nokia,” he wrote.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, apple, best, Blackberry, blog, free, google, iphone, largest, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, sol, test, three, uk, world

Growing speculation on the future of Apple’s iPhone 4 has hit the company where it hurts – and its reputation is also on the line

Apple shares dived by 4% last night, cutting $9.9bn (£6.5bn) off its $230bn value after speculation grew that the company would have to recall or issue hardware fixes for the new iPhone 4.

The fall follows a report by the independent American testing organisation Consumer Reports which said reception problems meant it could not recommend the device.

Apple was accused of censorship by removing discussions about the negative Consumer Reports evaluation from its official message boards over the weekend, though it seems now to have relented.

A number of PR experts contacted by Cult of Mac blog yesterday said a recall of the iPhone 4 was “inevitable,” comparing the situation to Toyota’s global recall of its hybrid cars earlier this year.

Yet others including Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, say that a wholesale recall would be a step too far, but that Apple needs to “replace, redesign, or relocate the proximity sensor” – which tells the phone when it is close to the user’s head or hand and changes its radio output and screen brightness accordingly.

UK consumer watchdog Which? told the Guardian that although it had done initial tests on the iPhone 4 proximity sensor – finding that the screen is “disabled” the closer to your head the phone is held – it would carry out a “more comprehensive” review of the device in the near future.

Others have suggested that Apple should give owners free rubber “bumpers” – sold for $29 (£25 in the UK) – which fit around the edge of the phone, ostensibly to protect it from damage, but which also cut the signal loss that is at the core of the dispute.

But for Apple to do that would be tantamount to admitting that the device has a design problem, which could open it up to class action lawsuits from aggrieved buyers.

Apple has tended to decline recalling products that have had design issues, preferring to deal on a limited basis where people complain. Earlier this week it quietly announced that it would replace faulty versions of its Time Capsule backup product, after thousands of them failed after just 18 months. When a number of its iBook computers were found to have faulty soldering in 2007 by a Danish consumer investigation, it did not issue a recall.

Apple UK had no comment this morning on whether it will be making any announcements about the iPhone. UK Consumers’ Association magazine Which? said that it intended to test the phone “soon”.

Despite the fall in the technology company’s share price, it remains the largest on the US stock market, ahead of long-term rival Microsoft. And although Consumer Reports did not “recommend” the iPhone 4, other commentators have pointed out that it still ranks it highest among the smartphones it has tested – and that its second-ranked smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, the predecessor to the latest version.

Even with a growing clamour from users and testers who have discovered that the phone’s reception seems to drop off abruptly when they position their hand around the left side, the company has remained almost silent – except for a statement on Friday 2 July, when it put out a “letter” a week after the phone’s release in which it said that the dropoff in reception was due to a “simple and surprising” mistake in every iPhone’s software which meant that it overstated signal strength in weak reception.

Although the launch on 28 June saw 1.7m iPhone 4s sold in the first three days, the most successful yet of the annual refreshments to the model, it has proved to be a continual headache for Apple.
The first issue to appear was the discoloration of the high-quality “retina display“, which appears to be linked to the adhesive used to bond the glass and display together.

But the major woe for consumers has been the signal issues. Testers at Consumer Reports said that holding the iPhone at the bottom left-hand corner causes the signal to decay significantly.

Despite Apple’s low-key suggestion that there is nothing wrong with the phone, it is understood that staff on its warranty service AppleCare have been advising customers to buy a case or hold the phone in a different way.

Consumer Reports has held off recommending the iPhone 4, despite it gaining a higher rating than all other smart phones they have evaluated.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, apple, blog, consumer, deal, free, global, HD, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, latest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, new, phone, phones, review, service, sim, smart phone, sol, test, three, uk

Number ‘porting’ must take place within one working day from April 2011, regulator rules

Mobile phone users in the UK will at last soon be able to transfer their phone number to another network within one working day.

Britain will come into line with European Union guidelines on the matter in April 2011, Ofcom ruled today, following several years of wrangling between the communications regulator and the mobile telecoms industry.

Currently a mobile operator is allowed to take two working days before allowing a departing customer to “port” their number to their new operator. Ofcom originally tried to bring this down to two hours, but lost a court challenge from Vodafone, O2 and Orange in 2008.

Ofcom has also decreed that the code required to switch provider and retain a number, called a PAC, should be issued to consumers immediately over the phone or within a maximum of two hours via text message. This will end the practice of some PACs being sent out by post, forcing customers to wait several days before changing to a new operator.

“Ensuring consumers can switch between communications providers by removing unnecessary barriers is one of Ofcom’s priorities for 2010/11,” said the regulator’s chief executive, Ed Richards. “Being able to switch quickly and easily between mobile providers is an important part of healthy and effective competition.”

But the decision was criticised by 3, the fourth-largest UK mobile operator. It is unhappy that the onus for moving the number still falls on the customer, rather than the operators involved, and accused Ofcom of failing UK consumers.

It said that the system of “recipient-led porting”, where number transfers are handled by the new provider, was “the fundamental platform for choice and competition” in the mobile market. “Nowhere else in Europe is a consumer forced to ask permission to take their number with them when they choose a new operator,” said a 3 spokesman. “The donor-led porting system that Ofcom proposes to keep makes it more difficult for customers.”

But other operators argue that if consumers did not have to request the PAC themselves before swapping networks, they could fall victim to high-pressure sales tactics known as “slamming”, where their mobile phone providers are summarily changed without their full consent.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, consumer, largest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, uk, vodafone

Mobile company claimed its 3G network reached most people, but ad watchdog said this could not be substantiated

The advertising watchdog has forced Orange to retract a claim that its 3G network reaches more people than competitors’ networks, after a challenge from rival company 3.

A press ad run by Orange for its mobile broadband made the boast that “the Orange 3G network covers more people in the UK than any other operator”.

Hutchison 3G Ltd, parent company of 3, challenged the line, arguing that on the basis of population coverage it had the largest UK 3G network.

Orange argued that it had the biggest network measured by population coverage, while admitting 3 was larger by geographical coverage.

The mobile operator said that its own population coverage percentages “were calculated based on a marriage of in-house tools and recognised public domain population to location information and that the claim was capable of objective substantiation”.

However, the Advertising Standards Authority said that while Orange may have intended the ad to solely mean covering more people where they lived – as opposed to wherever they might geographically go – the claim was ambiguous.

The ASA checked Ofcom’s UK geographical coverage maps for the big five mobile companies and found it was not ranked No 1.

As a result the ASA banned the ad, ruling that it was misleading because Orange could not substantiate the claim as it was not based on directly comparable measurement and reporting methods.

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Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, email, HD, largest, line, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, networks, new, orange, phone, phones, sol, uk

Chief executive Steve Jobs hails ‘most successful launch in Apple’s history’ despite reported problems over phone reception

Apple says it sold 1.7m iPhone 4s in its first three days, a record for the newest version of its top-selling product, and the company could have sold more but for production constraints. The latest model features video calling and an updated body, although some users have reported problems with reception, apparently due to a design flaw.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, called the iPhone 4′s launch “the most successful in Apple’s history” but added: “We apologise to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

Research in the US by the analysts Piper Jaffray and in the UK by AQA suggests that 77% of iPhone 4 buyers queueing outside stores on the first days were upgrading from previous models – implying that 23% of buyers were new to the platform.

The record sales have come despite shortages of the smaller-capacity 16-gigabyte version of the iPhone, which is coloured white. Apple apologised last week and said it would be unable to fulfil early demand for them. By comparison, the previous iPhone 3GS model, launched a year ago, sold 1m in its first weekend.

Apple is competing for market share in the smartphone arena with RIM, maker of the BlackBerry brand; Google’s Android software, which is used by multiple handset makers; and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of the smartphone market but which has seen its share and profitability shrink since Apple and Google entered the market in 2007.

Analysts reckon Apple will be able to sell plenty more of the devices: Colin Gillis of BGC Partners in New York and Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, project that Apple will have sold 2m to June 26, the end of the company’s fiscal quarter. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, had previously estimated 1m to 1.5m.

Apple had a difficult time getting enough touch screens to meet demand for the device, said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in New York, so the early sales figures may not be an accurate reflection of demand. “It’s too early to say if this is negative,” said Kumar.

While Apple has some production constraints, the company “has a captive audience”, he said. “Demand for the iPhone 4 is not yet satiated so it just gets pushed out into subsequent quarters.”

The iPhone sales results follow Apple’s statement last week that it sold more than 3m of its iPad tablet computing device in the first 80 days. With the iPad, introduced April 3, and the three-year-old iPhone, Apple has widened its business beyond the Macintosh computer and iPod media player.

Sales of the iPhone accounted for 40% of Apple’s revenue last quarter. The device has shown an upward trend in sales: the first sold 700,000 on its first weekend in June 2007, despite a high price that was later cut. In 2008, the iPhone 3G sold 1m in its first week.

Apple’s share price has more than doubled since the original iPhone’s release on 29 June 2007, and it passed Microsoft as the largest technology company by market value late in May.

Some iPhone 4 customers have reported trouble with the new antenna design, which uses a stainless steel band on the outside of the casing. The phone signal drops when users cover the bottom left corner of the device with their palm.

Apple responded by recommending holding the phone differently or using a case to solve the problem. Customers in the five countries began lining up days in advance to buy the device. Apple said the iPhone will be available in 88 countries by the end of September.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, android, apple, Blackberry, comparison, google, iphone, iphone 3g s, iphone 3gs, largest, latest, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, nokia, palm, phone, phones, sol, test, three, Touch, uk, update

Authors such as Iain Banks and Martina Cole are increasingly supplementing book releases with apps full of bonus material

The way the books industry is interacting with digital media is developing faster than many had foreseen, with the latest example an attempt to offer fans of author Iain M Banks exclusive unseen chapters, his original notes and commentary for his latest novel.

Mobile software company TradeMobile has worked with Banks’s publisher Little, Brown to develop the free application for the iPhone, which launches this Thursday (1 July). Readers who have bought the paperback of Banks’s latest novel, Transition, will be able to scan a unique barcode on their edition with their iPhone, and companion features for the novel will be transmitted to their screen.

A best-selling author, the publishers also hope the new app may entice readers uninitiated into his complicated universe of difference worlds and civilisations. “For something as complicated as Transition it makes sense,” said Banks. “It’s very much like a DVD extras.”

The app also includes character biographies; after a “slightly anguished” email from his German translator, Banks realised that a character called Bisquitine might need her language and cultural references explaining.

“She appears toward the end of the novel and has an important part to play, and a very eccentric way of expressing herself,” says the author. “It took half a day to write and three to explain.”

Kirk Bowe at TradeMobile says: “You’re able to tap in a page number and get back all the characters, scenes and locations which may be relevant to that page.”

Beyond the iPhone

TradeMobile is currently in talks with Little, Brown about extending the application to other handsets as well as the iPhone. “This helps people who aren’t particularly familiar with an author, especially an author like Iain whom they might not have approached before … it will fill in the blanks that may sometimes scare people away.”

In March the number of books available as iPhone apps passed the number of games for the first time (www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/09/books-overtake-games-iphone-apps). “It was a tipping point,” says digital editor Dan Franklin at rival publisher Canongate. “The plan is now to be creating something you can only experience digitally” — something which, he admits, defies the instincts of a publisher. “It’s our next challenge [but] it’s difficult,” he says.

TradeMobile’s Bowe feels the “companion” approach works particularly well for fiction. “Tolkien for example would be amazing,” he says. “Really for authors with rich, detailed characters and locations it’s great.”

Banks agrees. “It works well for science fiction, especially when you have a universe or place you go back to. These places gradually build up.

“It’s there if you want it – and that’s the beauty of it, it’s an opt-in thing. It’s not being forced down your neck; if you just want the story, you can have it,” says the author. “We’ll see how it does with the science-fiction stuff – if it’s successful it’s the obvious thing to do to extend it to my other novels.”

Added value

Little, Brown is part of the UK’s largest publishing conglomerate, Hachette UK, which has already launched a similar app for popular crime novelist Martina Cole, and has apps in development for authors including Stephenie Meyer, Patrick Holford and Ian Rankin.

“Anyone can replicate the experience of reading a physical book in an app. Our feeling is that just isn’t very exciting,” says head of digital George Walkley. “With Iain Banks and Martina Cole we’ve tried to provide added value and extra material for authors who have very passionate followings.”

At Canongate, Franklin is impressed with Little, Brown’s new app. “What is cool is that they’re getting it to directly interact with a print edition,” he says. “It’s very clever and something we’re looking to do.”

Canongate is no slouch in the digital department itself, however, launching a (paid-for) enhanced iPhone app for Nick Cave’s novel The Death of Bunny Munro in September, complete with videos of Cave and an audio version synched to the text of the book, scored by Cave himself. The app won second place in MediaGuardian’s own innovation awards, the Megas, earlier this year. And in May, it brought out an enhanced app for David Eagleman’s short story collection Sum: Tales from the Afterlives, featuring videos of Eagleman discussing the book, and a synched audio version read by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Stephen Fry and Noel Fielding.

Like Walkley, Eagleman believes it is important for an app to be more than just an electronic version of a book. “An electronic version of a book merely grants portability. But a thoughtful app can open new inroads to explore the material, as well as ways to keep the material updated and fresh,” he says.

“By having the option to explore a book beyond the original text — by dint of videos, living links, and so on — it becomes a living, breathing, updating organism, just like the rest of our technology.”

Banks adds: “Everyone’s feeling around – no one knows what’s going to work. It’s quite a nervous time to be a publisher. They’re trying to do what they can to keep books interesting. We will just see how it goes.”

Eagleman agrees. “We’re at an exploratory period now, and no one knows where it’s going. If you imagine yourself 100 years from now looking back, it’s clear that apps are in their infancy and just learning how to crawl. Once they become adults, they might offer such a different experience of the material that they will speciate into an entirely different storytelling animal — as has happened, for example, with movies.”

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, all, best, email, free, iphone, largest, latest, launches, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, sim, talks, test, three, uk, update, world

The transcript of the phone call earlier this week with Google’s chief reveals the real signals he’s sending out: Android wants to be the Windows of mobile phones

Android is getting too big to ignore. Photo by mathrock on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Below is a transcript (taken with shorthand, contemporaneously) of a conference call with Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, on 23 June. There may be some inaccuracies. After that, there is an analysis of what Schmidt said – and where the mobile market is.

Also on the conference call were journalists from Germany, the UK and Brazil. I won’t indicate here who asked what questions; see if you can work it out.

Call begins

Eric Schmidt: Verizon is just announcing the Droid X made by Motorola, its fourth Android phone. We have seen a tremendous increase in the adoption of Android. This is one of the best phones ever made, on the very fastest network.

We’ve now got 160,000 new users per day. That’s a 60% increase per month [compared to the 100,000 figure per day that was given at the Google I/O conference in May]. If you get an increase like that going on, well, I’ve done the maths, and it looks like an incredible trajectory.

[That equates to 58m per month, a 60% increase month-on-month would mean that by the end of the year there would be about 16m Android phones being activated every day, or 480m per month - which doesn't really sounds feasible. Obviously it is going to tail off or even slow down at some stage.]

Counting the number of apps, there are 65,000, compared to 50,000 a month ago. So the growth is accelerating. OK, questions?

Q: How large is Android in the US market and European market compared to the iPhone, because it hasn’t done too well in Europe?

ES: I prefer not to talk about the iPhone as a competitor. The growth rate is very very strong, but I don’t think it’s really appropriate to make claims about market share.

Q: What’s driving that acceleration?

ES: having multiple hardware partners – LG, Samsung, HTC, Motorola. The thing is it’s a totally open platorm, so open that the source is available too. Any application can run on Android as long as it doesn’t damage the network.

Q: Android is lagging in Europe compared to the US – why do you think that is?

ES: I don’t know that it’s lagging; I would have to look at the numbers. It was launched first in the US but we have enough European partners. The Droid phone was a big driver.

Q: Have you made any contacts with Nokia to discuss Android on Nokia?

ES: We have talked to everybody… I don’t want to talk about any specific companies. [A rather odd response which tailed off amid expectation.]

Q: What sort of revenues are you seeing from Android?

ES: We make zero from it. Because it’s free. (Q: but you get advertising revenue from it…) We don’t break out what our mobile advertising revenues are… [in general] we make money when people have powerful broadband devices so we invest in Android so that people can invest in it. But our mobile revenue growth is very very quick.

We know that there will be a great deal of money made in ads from the mobile industry.

Q: Do you think Android can become for mobile what Windows was for the PC?

ES: well, the thing about Android is that anybody can use it.. Android in many ways is better than Windows because it’s free, rather than Windows which had an ever-increasing price point. So anybody can build on Android, and it’s free.

Also Android has GPS and a full media stack [possibly misheard], so it can do things that even the ordinary PC doesn’t have and might never have.

Q: Who is your biggest competitor in this fight – Apple, Nokia, who?

ES: I try to spend time not focussing on those questions. Nokia has the largest market share, certainly. Apple, I was a proud board member there, I respect them. Nokia and Apple are both highly organised to be competitive.

Q: Isn’t a problem with Android that of fragmentation of the platform – that some handsets can’t update from earlier versions either because of the networks or the phones, so people are stuck on older versions which means you’re trying to cope with a broad range of versions?

ES: That’s a very good question. The first thing to say is that the networks are quite interoperable. Some phones shipped a year ago can’t be upgraded. But most can be, to 2.2, though it might take some months to roll out.

The argument about fragmentation has been used by competitors of open source for years. But we agree to support compatibility at the platform level. It’s important to understand this. Android apps will work on the current generation; any Android app written for one version will run on any phone with that version. That prevents fragmentation. Apps are written on a per-OS basis. But of course not every app written for any version will run on every version of Android – otherwise the platform couldn’t evolve.

Q: A team at Larva Labs estimated that while Apple has paid developers $1bn from App Store revenues, the comparable figure for the Android Marketplace is about $200m. Is enough money going to developers to make Android attractive?

ES: Well, I haven’t seen those figures, so I can’t talk to them. The thing is, developers go where the volume is. That’s the most important lesson from platform economics. It’s about scale and volume. It’s very important that developers get to a scale where they can see the ability to get to a very large audience. We believe we have done so.

Q: We’ve seen other companies talking about Android-based tablets – does Google intend to produce a tablet running Android?

ES: We’ve seen a number of announcements from other companies about tablets running Android. It’s a reasonably obvious product extension that people have announced. We haven’t announced any form of Google tablet.

[end of interview]

Analysis: the timing of this announcement – on 23 June, just as Apple’s iPhone 4 was reaching its first customers – was clearly aimed at taking some of the shine off the iPhone announcement by implying that even if Apple activates 1m iPhones in the first sales burst, Android will almost match that in a working week. (Do the maths.)

That of course leaves out all sorts of maybes, gotchas and provisionals: are the activation figures volatile? What’s the churn like – how many of the activations are new customers, and how many are renewing customers? An interesting calculation from the analysts Piper Jaffray, via Fortune suggests that (in the US, at least) 77% of iPhone 4 customers were existing iPhone users.

You can look at that two ways: what an enormous number of renewals! Or you could look at it from the other end: wow, Apple grew its customer base for first-day iPhones by 23% – among people who had to wait in enormously long lines. What’s the last consumer product you recall people queueing through the day for? I recall how Microsoft managed the hype machine perfectly for Windows 95, with midnight store openings; rather less so for every subsequent OS release. The Xbox 360 got some dedicated queuers too.

But in truth, Schmidt really isn’t looking at iPhone sales; he’s not trying here to court buyers dithering between iPhone and Android. This was actually a piece of dog-whistle PR aimed at mobile developers.

Unfamiliar with dog-whistle PR? It’s like dog-whistle politics: aimed at a particular group, couched in terms which don’t say a lot to the average person, but which zero in on that target group and make them sit up. The people who Schmidt wanted to hear this latest bit of PR are mobile developers. He wants them to multiply 160,000 by 5 (working days – perhaps 6), and then by 4, to reach about 4m Android phones being activated per month, and to get them to think that this is a really good platform to be building for.

That’s the point of his “platform economics” answer. Google can only capitalise on mobile advertising once it gets Android to a specific market share. It seems like that it has already crossed it, since it’s by all accounts bigger than Apple in smartphone share in the US (and may even be challenging RIM, though still some way behind Nokia). What the numbers are like for Europe – well, we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for the end of the quarter for all those numbers.

The interesting challenge though will be whether the Android platform will indeed become the Windows of mobile. That could cut both ways: sure, the handset makers don’t have to pay a levy to use Android (as PC makers do to Microsoft). But when they go to the networks (who are the equivalent, in this scenario, of PC purchasers) they may find that they’re forced to bid down, and that their margins get eroded as more rivals pile into the market.

Apple, meanwhile, can be entirely happy with not having the lion’s share of the market, yet making a colossal profit from both the hardware sales (because nobody else can make an iPhone) and the app sales. It does exactly the same in the computer market: it has about 5% market share worldwide, yet makes a stonking profit on every computer sold. PC manufacturers, by contrast, have long since reached the point where price-cutting to win share simply opens a vein in their profits.

Android could thus win – and for Nokia, the idea of using Android must look ever more enticing, since it would cut costs and let it use its heft with the networks to win back share – and yet the hardware makers would lose. That’s a great danger – not imminent, but it exists – for Schmidt, Android and Google. By creating a flourishing ecosystem of app developers, Android could make life better for the handset makers.

Oh, and the company we haven’t mentioned here at all, except in passing? Microsoft. If you look at what the Android and iPhone platforms are now doing, you have to ask how on earth Windows Phone – which will have a paid-for licence – is ever going to attract any handset makers. Schmidt’s Android dog whistle might be loud for iPhone developers annoyed at the company’s capricious treatment of their apps, but it must be loudest for developers considering whether the shrinking, forwards-incompatible pool of Windows Mobile phones is really worth bothering with.

Between the handset makers pondering the economics of paying for a Windows Phone licence, and developers wondering why they should write code for a platform, Windows Phone, that’s presently activating zero phones a day – because it hasn’t been released – versus one doing 160,000 per day, Microsoft has a real problem with Windows Phone. Apple can survive Android because it has that 77% base of loyal customers. Android has an expanding customer base.

But what on earth has Microsoft got?

* I asked the questions about fragmentation and Larva Labs.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, best, compare, compared, consumer, deal, drive, free, google, growth, HTC, iphone, largest, latest, lg, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, months, moto, motorola, networks, new, nokia, phone, phones, released, sam, samsung, sim, sol, test, uk, update, world

Since the very first iPhone applications were downloaded from the Apple App Store in July 2008, the app economy has grown exponentially. As industry analysts forecast the four billionth App Store download, the world’s second-largest apps store quietly continues its upward trajectory.


Photo by thetechbuzz on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Not many people have heard of GetJar, but this month the four-year-old open-market store hit one billion app downloads and secured $11m in series B funding from venture capital firm Accel Partners.

GetJar differs from the Apple App Store and, for example, the Windows Mobile Marketplace because it hosts applications for a number of platforms and devices. This, the company insists, is what will ensure its continued growth in coming years.

And GetJar founder and chief executive Ilja Laurs isn’t one to mince his words on the company’s future. He said: “It’s hard to believe that six guys that set up the first beta testing community for mobile app developers would eventually transform into the world’s second largest app store with over 1bn downloads to date.

“We look forward to our continued partnership with Accel Partners and this new funding will be instrumental in taking GetJar to the next level in our business strategy for aggressive global expansion and product development.”

In January this year Gartner predicted 4.5b mobile apps would be downloaded in 2010, saying this would surpass 21.6billion by 2013.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, App Store, apple, global, growth, iphone, largest, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, new, phone, phones, test, uk, venture, world

TOKYO/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hundreds of fans flocked to stores in Tokyo to be the first buyers of Apple’s iPhone 4 and some lined up in San Francisco as the red-hot smartphone rolls out on Thursday in five of the world’s six largest economies.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Tags: apple, iphone, largest, line, new, phone, uk, world

Chief executive Eric Schmidt says both takeup of operating system and number of apps are growing rapidly

Google is now activating 160,000 mobile phones using its Android software a day, equivalent to 4.8m a month, according to the company’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt.

The number is also accelerating, having been put at 100,000 a day in the third week of May during Google’s annual I/O conference, Schmidt said – indicating sales growth of 60% per month.

“We have seen a tremendous increase in adoption,” Schmidt said in an interview exclusive to the Guardian in the UK. “We’ve also seen a growth in the number of apps available for Android – there are now approximately 65,000 compared to only 50,000 a month ago.” He believes that that means Android could have reached the volume necessary to become an essential mobile operating system – and perhaps the equivalent of Windows on PCs.

At those numbers, roughly 15m Android smartphones would be sold every quarter, compared with a worldwide total of 54m sold in the first quarter of 2010, according to the research company Gartner.

Though Schmidt’s announcement was clearly timed to steal some of the thunder of Apple’s launch in five countries of the iPhone 4 on Thursday, Schmidt declined to compare the Android platform’s market position against its better-known rival. Apple has said that it had orders of 600,000 in a single day for the iPhone 4 last week, and was unable to keep up with demand.

Google is notified whenever a smartphone using the Android operating system is activated by a mobile network. In the US, a number of different models are sold on different networks from different manufacturers, including Motorola, which on Wednesday unveiled its latest Droid X phone on the Verizon network. “It’s the best phone ever made on the fastest network,” Schmidt said – which could be seen as a dig at AT&T, which has the exclusive contract to sell the iPhone in the US but has struggled to satisfy users’ demands for mobile data bandwidth.

Asked whether he saw Apple or Nokia – which has the largest market share of smartphones – as Android’s biggest competitor, Schmidt said: “I try to spend my time not focusing on those questions.”

Android is a free mobile operating system which any handset maker can use and alter to produce a new version, while developers are able to write apps which will work on any specific version of the system.

However, while Apple has maintained a tight focus on its App Store, which has roughly 250,000 free and paid-for apps available, Google offers them via a “Marketplace”, and allows any app to run on Android “as long as it does not harm the network,” Schmidt said.

But calculations by a company called Larva Labs, which develops for Android, suggest that iPhone developers may be faring better financially than those on the Android Marketplace. Steve Jobs said earlier this month that Apple has paid out $1bn to developers through a revenue split (which has earned Apple roughly $420m).

By contrast, Larva Labs reckons that Android developers have only earned $20m in total from the Marketplace. Schmidt said he had not seen the figures, but added: “Developers go where the volume is. That’s the most important lesson of platform economics: it’s all about scale and volume. It’s very important that developers get to a scale where they can see the ability to get to a very large audience. We believe we have done so.”

Asked whether Android could become the equivalent of Windows for PCs – the dominant operating system – Schmidt said: “The advantage with Android is that anybody can use it. In many ways it is better than Windows because it’s free, rather than Windows which had an ever-increasing price point.”

He declined to say whether Google has been talking to Nokia about the possibility of an Android-driven Nokia phone, or whether Google would release its own tablet computer similar to Apple’s iPad, which has sold 3m units in 90 days.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, App Store, apple, best, compare, compared, contract, drive, free, google, growth, iphone, largest, latest, line, maker, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phones, moto, motorola, networks, new, nokia, phone, phones, sim, sol, test, uk, world