Posts Tagged “maker”
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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Smartphone maker HTC has denied copying patented features of Apple’s iPhone in its Nexus One – a handset it launched in collaboration with Google.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, google, HTC, iphone, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, uk
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Taiwanese mobile-phone manufacturer backing Google’s Android OS is accused of infringing 20 Apple patents
Apple is suing the Taiwanese handset maker HTC, alleging that it has infringed 20 patents relating to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”.
Among the patents that Apple alleges have been infringed are a number relating to touchscreen interfaces – for which the iPhone has become the best-known, though it was not the first, mobile device.
“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
It is thought that a key element that triggered the lawsuit is that in February HTC released handsets which use “pinch-to-zoom” functionality resembling that of the iPhone.
Apple has filed the suit in the US courts in Delaware, Maryland, but also with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), which has the power to halt imports of products. That would stymie HTC and Google, whose free Android mobile operating system is built into a growing number of HTC phones, and has made significant inroads into the burgeoning smartphone market in recent months.
But the move was received with surprise in the technology community. “I don’t fault Apple for acquiring patents. They have to, for defensive purposes, given the current laws,” noted John Siracusa, a journalist at Ars Technica who has followed Apple closely for years. “But using them offensively sucks.”
The use of the ITC could be key for Apple. A recent analysis found that where lawsuits are filed both with US district courts and the ITC, plaintiffs succeed in the latter more often than the former, by 58% to 35%. That means Apple is roughly 50% more likely to win the case with the ITC – and so could block HTC imports of newer handsets.
HTC indicated that it was completely surprised by the case, and had not even received the formal complaint from Apple when the American company announced it publicly.
Apple has submitted more than 700 pages of exhibits relating to its patents to the court in Delaware, Maryland, where it is filing the case. It cites a number of handsets, including the Nexus One handset powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, and also other handsets which use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile system. HTC has in the past been the largest manufacturer of Windows Mobile handsets – although it has recently shifted its allegiance to Google’s Android, which is free and has captured significant market share since being launched in 2008.
Apple has specified 10 patents in the Delaware filing, and a different 10 in the ITC filing.
The case is thought to be the first in which Apple has taken the first step in suing a rival mobile phone company. Although it has an ongoing patent dispute with Nokia, the Finnish mobile handset maker, the first move there was by Nokia. Apple has since countersued. The case is ongoing.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, best, bmi, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, google, HTC, iphone, largest, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, nokia, phone, phones, released, sol, Touch, twitter, uk
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Mini on the iPhone? Still waiting
You still can’t run Opera on the iPhone. But Opera-loving Apple fanbois can take some comfort from the fact that a beta version of the Norwegian browser maker’s latest desktop creation is now available for the Mac.…
Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing
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(Source The Register)
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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.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, confused, free, gadget, iphone, line, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, uk
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Fanboy credit cards at the ready
Want a the 3G-less Apple iPad? The Mac maker will begin taking advance orders for the product later this week, it has been claimed.…
Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work
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(Source The Register)
Tags: 10, 3, apple, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, sol, source the register, uk
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The US lnternational Trade Commission has announced
plans to investigate a patent infringing complaint filed against BlackBerry maker
Research in Motion by Motorola.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, Blackberry, compare, comparemobiles.com, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, moto, motorola, new, sol, uk
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Goole has acquired
reMail , the
maker of an iPhone application that allows Apple users to access email inboxes
while on the move.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, all, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, email, google, iphone, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, uk
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• HTC’s Legend smartphone will come to UK in April
• Analysts hail design classic in same league as Apple
• Vodafone snaps up handset for Europe
HTC has come of age. The Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer, once known only as the maker of Windows phones under the SPV brand, today unveiled a new phone sporting Google’s Android software which analysts are predicting could steal a march on Apple in the smartphone design wars.
The HTC Legend, which runs the latest Android software called Eclair, is made from a single block of aluminium and has a very bright and clear 3.2 inch AMOLED (ultra-bright LED) display. Vodafone has grabbed the handset in Europe, wary of losing out after missing the iPhone in some of the company’s key European markets.
The Legend will come to the UK in April and already analysts are predicting that it will be a design classic following its launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
“Legend’s clever use of milled aluminium casing could scoop Apple’s direction for the next iPhone design,” said CCS Insight.
Despite its body being engineered from a single piece of aluminium, the HTC Legend has a removable battery – something which the iPhone conspicuously lacks – which slides out from a compartment at the bottom of the phone. The back of the battery casing also contains the phone’s antenna so that its metal body does not hinder signal strength.
HTC has updated the user face – called HTC Sense – that sits atop Android on the device. Alongside refinements to the phone’s address book, so that contacts can be organised into groups such as business contacts and friends, it pulls information from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter into a single Friend Stream of updates.
The Android platform has been the making of HTC. It created the first phone, the G1, using the software, while the Legend is the new version of another successful Android phone, the Hero. The Legend, however, has a rather less intrusive “chin” at the bottom of the device than the Hero.
Alongside it, HTC also unveiled the HTC Desire, which also uses HTC Sense. It had previously been codenamed the HTC Bravo and several UK operators have been vying to get hold of it as it is essentially the same as Google’s own Nexus One device, which HTC also produced. However, it has an optical trackpad rather than a roller ball, and is understood to be cheaper than the Google device.
Orange said it will be stocking the HTC Desire from April and it will be free on selected monthly tariffs. It is likely to be priced the same as the iPhone, a policy Vodafone is expected to follow with the Nexus One in the UK when it launches next month.
The HTC Desire will also be available in the UK on T-Mobile from 26 March.
The Desire has a large 3.7 inch AMOLED screen, like the Nexus One, and contains the 1GHz Snapdragon processor which is also found on the Nexus One. It includes such iPhone staples as pinching to zoom on web pages while it also automatically recalibrates text so that when you zoom into a page, you do not have to scroll left and right to get to the end of a line.
Crucially, it also supports Flash, which Apple still resolutely refuses to back.
HTC also announced the HTC HD mini, which uses the 6.5 version of Windows Phone rather than the series 7 platform launched by Steve Ballmer yesterday.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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Microsoft made a splash by pre-announcing the Windows Phone 7 Series phone yesterday, but it might all be forgotten by the time phones appear for the (Christmas) holiday sales season
Microsoft’s launch of its Windows Phone 7 Series phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday was a huge success if you judge it by the amount of press and blog coverage. But it also provided very few details, including when phones would go on sale. Microsoft says they’ll be out before Christmas, but so will a lot of other new phones.
Microsoft’s list of Windows Phone 7 partners includes Asus, Dell, HP, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba, and it expects to have phones on most networks, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. In other words, Windows Phone 7 is still a platform. Microsoft hasn’t followed Apple’s proprietary route, though whether phone makers will still have access to the phone’s source code and the right to change it remains to be seen.
The demos showed the Windows Phone 7’s roots in the attractive user interface developed for Windows Media Center PCs and reworked for the Zune HD and the free Zune 4.0 software for Windows*. They also showed the phone’s extensive integration with Windows Live and Facebook, though at the moment, it looks as though Twitter is supported via Windows Live.
Email support includes Microsoft Exchange synchronisation, Live Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other services.
But it’s not clear where Microsoft stands on supporting Silverlight, Adobe Flash, or the still-emerging HTML5 standard.
Silverlight support would be welcomed by companies who want to put their business applications on the phone, and it would answer the objection that — apart from Microsoft Office — Windows Phone 7 phones are aimed much more at consumers than at businesses.
Adobe Flash would be welcomed by many users and web developers, and would give Microsoft a selling point against Apple, which refuses to support Flash. However, the question is still open. The Seattle Times managed to get a quote from Karen Wong Duncan, a Microsoft product manager: “We do not support Flash. We are partnering closely with Adobe. As Steve Ballmer said earlier, we are not opposed to having Flash on the platform.”
HTML5 support would be welcomed by everybody, especially if Microsoft included an expensive H.264 video codec for playing YouTube and other videos without using Flash. But we don’t know what sort of browser will be included in Windows Phone 7 phones, or what its capabilities might be.
Windows Phone 7 also has an Xbox Live connection, and users will be able to score points in multi-player games, but Microsoft didn’t provide details. Apparently we’ll learn more at the Mix 2010 conference in March.
Finally, there has been no mention of what has sometimes been called Pink: the code-name for putative next generation versions of the old Sidekick device. (Microsoft bought the company.)
The lack of detail makes it look as though Microsoft has announced too early. Presumably it couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a splash at WMC, and there’s only one a year. Next year’s congress would be too late….
* This is worth a download if you want something to manage an MP3 player: it’s much nicer than Windows Media Player. However, you won’t be able to use the Zune Marketplace outside the US.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, email, free, HD, HTC, lg, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, orange, phone, phones, pink, sam, samsung, service, sol, sony, sony ericsson, t-mobile, twitter, uk, vodafone, world
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• Phones with the new software will appear at the end of the year
• Nokia joins forces with Intel to create a free software platform
Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer is hoping that 7 will turn out to be a lucky number again. With Windows 7 helping to bury the ghosts of the poorly received Windows Vista in its core PC market, the software group is hoping to repeat the trick with a new version of its software for mobile phones, a device that has refused to yield to the firm’s attentions despite almost a decade of trying.
Windows Phone Series 7 is the result of a complete overhaul of Microsoft’s vision of the mobile phone. It has abandoned its attempts to turn mobile phones into mini-PCs, focusing instead on giving users easy access to social networking, music, video and mobile phone applications. Coincidentally Ballmer’s presentation, at the mobile industry’s annual trade show in Barcelona came hours after the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia revealed a tie-up with chipmaker Intel that is headed in the opposite direction.
The two companies have pooled their software development resources to create MeeGo, a free software platform which they reckon will pave the way for the next generation of wireless communications devices.
Both companies have Apple, Blackberry and Google, with its Android mobile phone platform, firmly in their sights. Fierce competition has eroded Nokia’s share of the market over the past year, and Microsoft fears that if it cannot get back in the game now, it may never manage it.
Ballmer admitted that Microsoft, which has failed to gain any significant share of the mobile phone market, had been forced to “retool and reform” its mobile phone software two years ago. “There is no doubt that the phone market is highly competitive, highly dynamic, super-exciting,” he said. “There was no question in our minds… that we needed and wanted to do something that was out of the box, clearly differentiated from our past and clearly differentiated from other things that are going on in the market.” “We’re taking a big step,” he added. “I hope seven’s our lucky number.”
The first phones using the new software will not appear until the end of the year and Microsoft is being very prescriptive about what they should look like, which has raised questions about whether handset manufacturers will be willing to make Windows Phone devices that they will be unable to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.
Manufacturers including HTC, LG and Samsung have, however, signed up, while Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange are all likely to sell the devices in the UK. The proliferation of so-called open source software platforms – such as Android – has raised the question of whether Microsoft, which still charges hardware manufacturers a licence fee to use its Windows Phone software, should adopt the same model.
Refusing, as ever, to actually name Apple, Ballmer spoke about “vertical competitors” – companies that make devices as well as the software that sits on them, such as Apple – saying “their model is really clear, it’s sell devices. We sell software to companies that make devices” and that is not going to change. “My mother used to say to me, if something is free, you should take a look and find out what the real cost is.”
Nokia, however, has become a convert to the idea of open source platforms. Having bought out its partners in smartphone software developer Symbian and made that available free to all developers and hardware manufacturers, it announced a tie-up with Intel under which it plans to do the same for the next generation of mobile devices. Nokia was already working on an open source platform for so-called internet tablets, called Maemo, which it used in its recently launched N900 phone. Now it is merging it with a similar programme which Intel ran for laptops, called Moblin, into a new platform called MeeGo.
“It is the future of how we think people are going to use computing,” said Renee James, Intel’s head of software and services. “From Intel’s perspective, we see expansive growth which brings new users to computing and at the heart of that has always been software innovation and that happens when there is a stable platform that developers can bet on being there long-term. So I consider this critical to the long term growth initiatives of Intel.” The first MeeGo devices will start appearing in the second half of the year, but Intel already has hardware manufacturers such as Dell, Asus and Samsung making laptops for its existing open source platform and they will all be moved over to MeeGo.
“They have understood the only way to beat Microsoft, Google and Apple is to do it through scale – get the platform to more devices,” according to John Strand, owner and head of Strand Consult after the announcements at the Mobile World Congress fair.
Immediately dubbed MeeToo by some analysts, MeeGo will create an open source software platform which Nokia reckons will be used in a new generation of wireless devices. Both companies want to attract a wide range of operators, handset manufacturers and software developers.
“This is not a closed club,” said Kai Öistämö, Nokia’s head of devices. “We are inviting everyone into this. “MeeGo will create a new strong single platform that will drive the future of mobile computing.”
The announcement of MeeGo, however, immediately raised questions about the future of Symbian, but Öistämö stressed: “This is very consistent with Nokia’s software strategy. Symbian is the perfect environment for democratising the smartphone, what MeeGo allows is the future of mobile computing … well beyond what can be done with smartphones today.”
The deal may raise some eyebrows at Google, however, as Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini has sat on the Google board since 2004.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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O2 and Orange are to join more than a dozen mobile groups in a project to pool resources and create ‘app’-style services across their range of handsets
More than a dozen of the world’s biggest mobile phone companies, including O2 and Orange, are hoping to strike back against the success of Apple in persuading people to download and use mobile applications – or “apps” – by building their own competing open platform which can be used by developers of games and other services.
The mobile networks hope that by pooling their resources, creating technology that would allow services to be developed that will work across a huge range of handsets, they can claw back some of the ground they have lost to companies such as Apple and Google and generate additional revenues from third-party developers.
The mobile phone networks fear that at the moment they are in danger of becoming little more than “dumb pipes in the air”, with all the revenues created by applications going to software developers and the companies that operate the stores that supply them.
Apple has already seen over 3bn apps downloaded from its App Store by users of the iPhone and iPod touch. Google, meanwhile, has an application marketplace as part of its Android mobile phone platform, and several devices sporting the software will be unveiled at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s biggest trade show, which starts today.
But it is not just Google and Apple that are profiting from the “apps explosion”. Steve Ballmer will this afternoon use the Mobile World Congress to unveil Microsoft’s latest attempt to break into the mobile phone industry. Windows Mobile 7 – or Windows Phone, as Microsoft has dubbed it – includes an application store that allows users of Microsoft devices to download a host of games and other applications. Even phone manufacturers such as Samsung and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, are getting in on the app act, while Nokia already has its Ovi store open for business.
Several of the world’s biggest operators are part of the Open API initiative, which allows application developers access to some of the core information contained within their networks, such as location and billing. Essentially an API (application programming interface) allows a developer to integrate its application with another piece of software. The Open API plan, for instance, allows software developers to create programmes that can be paid for by consumers on their mobile phone bills.
But the new consortium, which will be announced by industry trade body the GSM Association at the Mobile World Congress today, is designed to go even further. The recent explosion in mobile phone software – from Apple’s iPhone to Nokia’s Symbian platform, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone – means the “apps” market is becoming increasingly fragmented. Also, consumers who switch from one device to another will soon find themselves having to download – and pay again – for all the applications they had on their old phone just because their new phone uses different software. The operators fear that they will be at the receiving end of the subsequent consumer backlash.
Orange, Telefonica – which owns O2 in the UK – T-Mobile and several other operators are already signed up to the GSMA plan. Vodafone, however, is ambivalent as it is engaged in an open platform alliance called the Joint Innovation Lab with China Mobile, Japan’s Softbank and Verizon Wireless of the US.
In fact, applications are likely to be a highlight of this year’s Mobile World Congress, with developer workshops taking place throughout the show, helping programmers create for Android, BlackBerry and Vodafone’s recently announced Vodafone 360 platform.
Several companies will also announce their own app developments. Today, for instance, British digital music group Omnifone will announce that it has created a version of its mobile music service that runs on Android phones. Omnifone, which has access to a catalogue of more than 6.5m tracks, is looking for network or handset partners who want to launch an unlimited download or streaming music service on Android devices using its platform. It already, for instance, powers Vodafone’s unlimited music service in the UK and recently clinched a deal to have its MusicStation service pre-installed on Hewlett-Packard laptops and computers. Omnifone is currently developing apps for both the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices.
Skype, meanwhile, will today announce that it has created a version of its popular free internet telephony service for Nokia’s Symbian operating system, which is already used by more than 200m mobile phones worldwide. Skype is now available as a free iPhone app, which has been downloaded more than 12m times since its launch in April last year.
The Symbian version will initially be available as a download from the Skype website but will appear on Nokia’s Ovi store in the next few weeks. The company, which was sold by owner eBay last year, is planning an Android version for later in the year. Skype, which allows people to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free, is also expected to announce a partnership with Verizon Wireless, which is likely to raise some eyebrows as in the past the American network’s joint owner, Vodafone, has blocked internet telephony services from its own networks.
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(Source The Guardian)
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The only way to encourage developers to create great apps for all mobile phones, and not just Apple’s iPhone, is to reward them – and that means paying more
Easy to use mobile applications of the kind that Apple is pioneering are a huge economic opportunity to generate growth and jobs but also a conundrum. At a time when the whole world of computing is migrating into the “cloud”, with data stored out there on the web rather than on our computer desktops, the mobile world is moving in the opposite direction: nearly all of these games and services are being downloaded on to our mobile devices.
The result is that we are using our apps – and few more so than me – through dedicated silos rather than on the web. This has advantages, not least because data stored on your phone can be accessed more quickly, but also a big downside. This is partly because you are a prisoner of your service provider such as Apple, but mainly because if these apps were made for the web, then every phone would be able to access them, users would have big opportunities to share and developers wouldn’t have to spend money they haven’t got making multiple apps for incompatible phones.
At the moment, if you want to port an iPhone app to devices running Google’s Android operating system, you have to start building again from scratch. Apps would be much cheaper if they could be built to run across different platforms. Tom Hume, managing director of Brighton based FuturePlatforms, points out that Apple developers have to work in the Objective C computer language, whereas the HTML5 standard requires only minor changes between platforms.
FuturePlatforms operates a Google-style “gold card” system, allowing staff time off to do their own things. One developer used this option to produce an unofficial app of the Guardian for phones using Google’s Android operating system which in some ways is more flexible than the iPhone app (eg, it can download the paper during the night).
Make no mistake, something really big is happening with apps as this amazing device we still call a mobile phone extends its tentacles ever deeper into our lives. Today it is games, social networks, reading, search, location-based services; tomorrow health, work, painting, education, who knows what.
The stats are startling. According to technology research company Gartner, physical downloads of apps reached 2.5bn last year. These were overwhelmingly on iPhone and iPod Touch devices. But since iPhones amount to less than 1% of all phones, you don’t have to be a genius to realise the enormous potential. It could be that Gartner’s predictions of 4.5bn downloads this year and an astonishing 21.6bn in 2013, equivalent to more than three for everyone on the planet, will prove an underestimate.
The good – or bad – news, is that a staggering 87% of these downloads will be free for users. That’s great for you and me, but it is not an obvious way to encourage a growing industry to hire people to make up for the black hole caused by the banking collapse. Many of these “free” downloads will be supported by advertising and others will be corporations promoting their brands. But most will be free because creators don’t think they can charge for them.
At the moment, there is a grave distortion in the balance of power. Most of the money is going to the app shops such as Apple – which controls the gateway to the developers, who are often on £60 or more an hour – with the content providers squeezed in the middle of an increasingly crowded market.
I have been talking recently to developers – partly to research this column and partly because I am trying to do an app of my own to see how difficult it is (more of that at a later date, maybe). The overwhelming message is how difficult it is to make enough profit to justify the investment when costs are so high and the market flooded with freebies. Sure there are some who make good money, such as existing branded games being repackaged in mobile form and niche services. The most successful income-earning apps last year – satellite navigation guides at £30 a pop – have been undermined by Google bringing out a free turn-by-turn street navigation option.
Unsurprisingly then, ustwo of Shoreditch – maker of, among other things, mouthoff, an app that enables the phone screen to mimic movements of your mouth, which had mouth-watering publicity here and in the US – couldn’t make a respectable profit at 59p. Indeed, the company admits “the bottom line is that it’s impossible to make money at the 59p price point for 99% of studios”.
Toiluxe, a neat 59p iPhone app that uses satellite signals to tell you where the nearest toilet is in London – whether the Ritz hotel or a public convenience – got publicity in several newspapers but not enough to make a respectable return given that the developer only ends up with only 60% of income after Apple and Vat (levied at higher Irish rates where the servers are based).
The obvious answer is to raise prices, but that is easier said than done in an environment where so much is available for nothing – as newspapers in a different neck of the woods know full well.
It is all quite crazy, really. People who pay more than £2.50 for a cup of coffee that is gone in a few minutes are reluctant to pay £1 for a paper that will last for hours or an app that will be with you for ages, probably with free upgrades. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find an app among the hundreds of thousands on offer on the iPhone despite the growth of apps helping you to do just this (ie, looking for relevant apps) such as Chomp, or Mplayit on Facebook or Apple’s Genius. There must be hundreds of great apps that hardly anyone has discovered. Goodness knows what it will be like in a few years time.
There is an elephant in the room even though it is invisible at the moment: the bedroom programmer, shorthand for individuals working on their own. The reason is that it is very difficult to write code for a phone in the way that kids could program their BBC or Spectrum computers in the 1980s, a phenomenon that led the same kids to create a thriving computer games industry. Uncle Steve won’t let you near his phones except on his own terms. It may start to change with Google’s Android operating system based on open source, and I know of at least one developer working on an app to enable people to do their own coding on a phone in a (relatively) simple way.
If that happened maybe a new generation of cloud coders could send the apps revolution off in a whole new – and much cheaper – direction. The best things in life are not always free.
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(Source The Guardian)
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Bumper year for finger-friendly phones
The world’s smartphone makers shipped more touchscreen models in Q4 2009 than at any time in the past – and more touchphones than devices with buttons.…
What is your recession sales strategy?
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(Source The Register)
Tags: 10, 3, compare, comparemobiles.com, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, phones, sol, source the register, Touch, uk, world
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Communications chipmaker Broadcom has agreed to acquire for $123m California-based Teknovus, a supplier of Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) chipsets and software, to expand its portfolio for triple play broadband access networks.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
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Mobile phone operating system can now be modified by anyone as Nokia’s platform struggles to compete with Apple and Google
Symbian, the operating system used in the majority of the world’s smartphones, is now available as an open source platform four months ahead of schedule as it looks to compete with Apple and Google’s Android.
In a move widely seen as a desperate attempt to prevent Google and Apple from grabbing an ever-larger slice of the smartphone pie, Nokia took control of the UK-based Symbian in the summer of 2008, announcing plans to make its mobile phone software free of charge.
Nokia helped create Symbian with the UK-based Psion more than a decade ago and it is installed in some 330m mobile phones across the world. But its share of the smartphone market has come under attack. Two years ago, Symbian devices accounted for almost 60% of the market, but now account for less than 50%. Industry experts Ovum reckon that figure will fall to below a third by 2015, in part because of the influence of Android, which is also open source.
The Symbian Foundation, which runs the platform, said the switch from a paid-for proprietary model, where developers had to pay a licence fee to create devices using the software, to a free open source model is the largest in software history.
Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the code for any purpose, whether for a mobile device or another piece of kit.
Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said: “The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result.
“When the Symbian Foundation was created, we set the target of completing the open source release of the platform by mid-2010 and it’s because of the extraordinary commitment and dedication from our staff and our member companies that we’ve reached it well ahead of schedule.”
The hope is that allowing any developer to use Symbian will speed up the development of new and innovative devices, which will help the platform to see off the threat of Apple and Android.
But it is competing in an increasingly crowded market. Handset manufacturers from LG and Samsung to Sony Ericsson have their own proprietary operating systems, as do RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, Palm and Apple. Microsoft is still trying to gain traction for its Windows phone operating system, while a slew of handsets with Android installed will be launched this year.
All 108 packages containing the source code of the Symbian platform can now be downloaded from Symbian’s developer website under a public licence. Also available for download are the complete development kits for creating applications and mobile devices.
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(Source The Guardian)
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Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE has announced that its South African subsidiary has won a three-year $378m contract from mobile operator Cell C and its controlling shareholder Oger Telecom.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
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The Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo will show off a working prototype of an LTE handset in Barcelona in February, phone maker NEC has revealed
 
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(Source ZDNet UK)
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LONDON (Reuters) – Publishing group Pearson and phone maker Nokia have formed a joint venture to deliver English-language learning materials to mobile phone users in China, the two companies said on Monday.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
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The smartphone maker has seen its market share rebound slightly, while quarterly operating profits are up 132 percent year-on-year
 
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(Source ZDNet UK)
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