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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Here’s a new voucher code, which can be used when purchasing any 18 or 24 month contract for £30 and over, directly from Vodafone. Enter ‘freecinema’ at the checkout and you’ll receive a cinema booklet containing 12 Cineworld tickets, one for each month of the next year (up to March 2011). The offer will be available until 18th March.

Our most popular phones qualifying for this promotion are the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the new Nokia X6 and the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz, which is available exclusively in ruby red direct from Vodafone.

Compare the deals here

Sony Ericsson’s curvaceous Vivaz is an all round stunner. So is its 8 megapixel camera, which shoots video in HD – just use the dedicated buttons for photo and video. If you want to see everything in widescreen then flip the Vivaz on its side – or plug it straight into your TV. If music’s more your thing, tap the big 3.2″ touchscreen and fire up the impressive music player. The CD cover is there on your screen. FM radio is a tap away. Record a few seconds of a song, and TrackID tells you the artist and title. There’s also a standard headphone socket – so you can use the pair you love. It’s beautiful and functional. An excellent all-round multimedia phone.

The Nokia X6 16GB has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone. It’s pocket and palm friendly measuring 111 x 51 x 13mm and it’s great for watching movies with the 16:9 aspect ratio screen. With 16GB of internal memory there’s plenty of storage too. The X6 runs on Symbian OS v9.4 and has a 434 MHz processor, which is enough to compete with many other smartphones in its class. The new X Series range from Nokia with replace the XpressMusic range, it will focus on entertainment and social networking.

The Blackberry Bold 9700 has the traditional BlackBerry design with a classic QWERTY keypad and 3G connection, a combination that makes it ideal for emailing as well as quick downloads and browsing on-the-go. It has a sensitive trackpad that helps you glide through menus and a decent camera. It’s a great all-rounder.

Terms and conditions: Free cinema voucher available only to new customers purchasing a pay monthly mobile phone contract of £30 per month or above for a minimum duration of 18 months. Offer only available on orders made online and excludes orders of the iPhone.

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

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

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

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

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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

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

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

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

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

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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UK university websites are targeted by criminals peddling counterfeit drugs from fake online pharmacies.

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(Source BBC Technology)

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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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Secure Borderless Networks aims to combine the features of VPN and mobile security, to protect everything from the datacentre to end devices

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The report says:

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

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

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

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

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia unveiled a new C5 smartphone model on Tuesday, hoping to benefit from a booming demand for cheap smartphones and from rising consumer appetite for mobile social networking.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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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)

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Regulation apparently working shock

UK punters are more than twice as happy with premium-rate services than they were last year, according to the industry regulator PhonepayPlus.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

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(Source The Register)

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The UK’s online heritage could be lost forever if an act put in place seven years ago is not clarified, a group of leading libraries warns.

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(Source BBC Technology)

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Document sharing website Scribd to challenge Apple and Amazon in the mobile market

Document sharing website Scribd is making a more direct challenge to Amazon and Apple by launching a mobile service that it hopes will make it easier for millions of people to read on the go.

The move could put the well-regarded startup – described as “YouTube for documents” – into more direct competition with larger rivals such as Amazon and Apple, which is set to launch the iPad and its iBooks application next month.

Scribd already offers more than 10m documents online, including books from major publishers such as Random House and Simon & Schuster, but from today will also begin offering users the chance to read their files on any smartphone or ebook reader.

A simple system to send files to their device – regardless of what it is – may help erase complexity and give people easy access to much more content, said Trip Adler, Scribd’s co-founder and chief executive.

“Right now people are confused about which e-reader to buy, they’re confused about how to get content onto their devices,” he told the Guardian. “This solves all of that by putting all these devices so you can read any content on Scribd on your device.”

At the moment, most ebook readers acquire new titles through applications specifically built by the makers of their gadget – such as Amazon’s Kindle book catalogue. Adler suggested that providing a broad range of material across all devices was largely uncharted territory, but that it should boost the popularity of ebooks and downloads of other types of documents.

“This should help increase sales, because if people can read things they buy on the web on their device, they are more likely to buy it,” he said.

Amazon already offers access to its catalogue of books through the Kindle, as well as an iPhone application, but Scribd’s 50 million users will also be able to download other documents shared through its site – including how-to guides, research papers and self-published books.

The move is part of a wider mobile strategy that the company says will help it tap into the huge mobile devices market. Over the next month, it plans to launch a range of applications for the Kindle, iPad, iPhone and Android handsets, as well as a number of other platforms.

It is also launching developer tools that will enable programmers to create their own applications to search and link to any of the documents held in Scribd’s archive.

“There are maybe a million ebook readers out there, but there are billions of smartphone users,” Adler said.

The launch comes on the heels of a similar effort by Kobo Books, an American ebook retailer which earlier this week unveiled its own system aimed specifically at the UK market.

Kobo has agreements in place with most major publishers – including Bloomsbury, Penguin and Faber & Faber – and says it will also offer many titles for free.

But while the ebook industry has plenty of momentum, it has also been dogged by controversy.

Some publishers have said they will delay ebook releases to protect hardback sales, and Macmillan recently found itself in a feud with Amazon over the price of digital texts.

The outlook for sales, meanwhile, remains unclear. High street retailer Waterstone’s, which has its own ebook store, said that just 80,000 titles were sold in the run-up to Christmas and Amazon is still silent on Kindle ebook sales despite continuing to boast that they now make up a significant part of its business.

Adler said that platform-agnostic selling was a significant step forward that would not only encourage more people to buy ebooks, but could also convince publishers to sell unprotected files, rather than encumber their products with anti-piracy locks.

Scribd has raised almost $14m from investors since being founded in 2007, with backers including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and former PayPal executive David Sacks.

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(Source The Guardian)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Source The Guardian)

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A group of cross-party MPs has called on the government to rethink its
proposed
landline levy of 50p to fund next-generation access networks, referring to
it as “ill-directed” and “regressive”.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Source The Guardian)

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Several staff require continued care after 47 were treated last year for effects of n-hexane at factory that supplies Nokia

Workers at a Chinese factory that makes parts for mobile phone companies including Nokia have been in hospital for months after being poisoned by a chemical used in production.

The owner of the plant says it stopped using the screen-cleaner n-hexane in August last year after 47 workers were taken ill. But the lingering effects of the chemical have left several requiring continued medical care.

Taiwanese firm Wintek is known for its touch-screen panels for mobiles and owns several factories in mainland China. It is reported to make the iPhone’s touch-screen panels and has been widely touted as a potential supplier of iPad components for Apple.

Nokia said the n-hexane was not used on its production lines but that it had ensured measures were taken to protect workers’ safety at the plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

It is not clear why Wintek started using n-hexane to clean screens instead of alcohol, nor when it did so, although the health problems appear to have surfaced in July. The issue gained attention when 2,000 workers from the factory went on strike last month over a pay dispute and cited lingering anger about the chemical incident.

Deng Yulong, a 19-year-old worker, told Chinese Central Television she became sick soon after starting work at the plant. She suffered from weakness and severe headaches and fainted twice in the factory.

Repeated exposure to the chemical at high concentration can cause nerve damage and muscle weakness, with symptoms in severe cases lasting for as long as two years.

A spokesman for Wintek said that “almost all” of the affected workers were back at work but that some remained in hospital. He could not say how many had recovered.

He said that n-hexane was commonly used in the industry, adding that the problems arose because no prior evaluation of the plant was carried out. Because some areas were not ventilated, the concentration of the chemical built up and poisoned the workers.

The spokesman added that the company had paid the workers’ medical bills and regular wages, topped up with food and nutrition supplements amounting to more than their usual wage.

In a statement, Nokia confirmed the Suzhou factory provided parts for its handsets, but said n-hexane was not used in manufacturing its products or their components.

It said: “We became aware of the allegations regarding the use of n-hexane in July 2009 and started our investigation immediately. Although it was confirmed that the n-hexane was not used on our production lines at the supplier … we agreed on a development plan for health and safety management at Wintek’s Suzhou factory and a series of corrective measures have been taken since then.”

The company added: “Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees are vital to the success of our business.”

It said it expected suppliers to take a similar approach and demonstrate their progress in these areas, working with them to go beyond legal compliance to meet the company’s standards.

A spokesperson for Apple confirmed that the company had received the Guardian’s email queries, but no response was forthcoming despite repeated phone calls. Wintek says it cannot identify its clients and Apple does not normally comment on suppliers.

Chinese media have reported workers’ claims that colleagues died from exposure to the substance, naming one possible fatality, but the local government and Wintek says that no one died of n-hexane poisoning.

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(Source The Guardian)

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The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released new information
on its planned broadband internet overhaul.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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

Richard Wray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Source The Guardian)

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