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Hutchison ‘looking for options’

With the merger of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK approved by the European Union, the current UK leaders, O2 and Vodafone, will be mulling their competitive responses. So far, Vodafone has mainly focused on revamping its software brands and its higher-value services, but it could also move to acquire the country’s smallest cellco, 3 UK, say analysts.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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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.

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(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.

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(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.

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(Source The Guardian)

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• European commission set to approve plan to create UK’s largest mobile phone company
• Proposed merger could still face a challenge from Vodafone and O2

The merger of Orange and T-Mobile looks set to get the go-ahead from the European commission after a last-minute deal was thrashed out over the weekend to secure the future of 3, the UK’s smallest mobile phone network.

The merged business would be the UK’s largest mobile phone company, with almost 30 million customers, and Orange and T-Mobile have agreed to hand back some of the mobile phone spectrum it would own in order to allow this to be used by rivals to run super-fast wireless broadband services.

The commission has yet to inform the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) about its decision, and the merger could still face a challenge from Vodafone and O₂, which are understood to be “lukewarm” about the concessions made over spectrum.

The commission’s decision is a blow to consumer groups that had been campaigning for authorities in the UK to investigate the deal.

This month the OFT formally requested jurisdiction to investigate the merger from the commission, which had until 1 March to give a decision. The OFT will tomorrow publish the reasons why it had asked to be allowed to run its own investigation, although the commission now believes it has dealt with any concerns. It was the OFT’s request that spurred Orange and T-Mobile into action.

Fears that the merger, announced last September, would become clogged up in the UK’s lengthy competition procedure led both companies to come up with a solution that met the concerns of the commission about the deal. The OFT and Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, were extensively consulted by the commission during the process.

The main concern was about the merger’s effect on the future of 3, which has driven price competition in recent years. However, over the weekend, 3, which is owned by the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, signed a new deal with T-Mobile and Orange, which will give it access to 3,000 more mast sites across the UK over the next few years, bringing the total to 16,000, the largest 3G network in the country.

Second, the UK authorities and Brussels were concerned about the level of control that the merged company would have over the scarce resource that is wireless spectrum. Specifically the merged group would have the vast majority of the spectrum granted in the 1990s, when Orange and One2One were launched, at 1800MHz. As reported by the Observer a week ago, T-Mobile and Orange have agreed to hand back a quarter of the spectrum the merged group would hold.

Neither 3, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, O₂ nor the OFT would comment.

The OFT will tomorrow give its reasons for asking the commission whether it could have jurisdiction over the case, in a stock exchange announcement.

A copy of its reasoning, seen by the Guardian, makes it clear that the OFT’s main concern about any deal was also the future of 3. “The OFT considers that any weakening/elimination of Hutchison 3G would effectively result in a reduction of vertically integrated competitors from five to three and cause significant detriment to competition in mobile retail telephony,” the document reads.

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(Source The Guardian)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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(Source The Guardian)

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Flash friendly budget touchphone

O2 has the exclusive on HTC’s Smart, a low-cost touchscreen handset that combines Qualcomm’s Brew mobile platform with HTC’s own Sense user interface.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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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.

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(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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Carrot dangled for O2 contracts coming to an end

Vodafone has rolled out revamped Sim-only price plans.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Free on O2 with 600 minutes and unlimited texts for £25 per month, plus you can claim 7 months half price line rental via cash back. Stock is due within a few days.

The Nokia X6 has an impressive 3.2 inch touchscreen that covers almost the entire front of the phone giving it a very innovative and unique design. The phone is 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 32GB 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 of other smartphones on the market. The new X Series range from Nokia, will replace the XpressMusic range. As well as launching the X6, Nokia will release the entry-level X3 slider phone iearly in 2010.

The X6’s TFT capacitive touchscreen gives a crisp, bright image and comes with scratch resistant glass. There is a built in accelerometer for automatically switching the screen from portrait to landscape, for widescreen images and videos. For texts and emails the X6 also supports handwriting recognition. The 5 megapixel camera from the Nokia N97 is built-in, it has Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, LED flash and geo-tagging to take fantastic images of your favourite moments and stamp them with their exact location. The camera also has video recording capabilities and there is the ability to edit images with software provided in the package.

Connectivity-wise, the Nokia X6 has all the usual feature you would expect in a smartphone, 3G, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a microUSB slot to transfer files with or without wires. To ensure you never get lost the X3 has Ovi maps 3.0 satellite navigation software pre-installed. The X6 combines style and technology to bring a fantastic, feature packed flagship phone to the X Series.

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A new set of audited figures for mobile internet use, the GSMA Mobile Media Metrics, reveal a landscape with one very tall peak

More than 25% of UK’s population – some 16 million people – accessed the Internet from mobile phones in December. And what were they looking for? The GSMA Mobile Media Metrics, published for the first time on Friday, provide an insight: on the mobile internet, people want to know what their friends are up to – and perhaps do a bit of flirting.

Facebook has a clearly lead in GSMA’s top 10 UK mobile internet sites, with 5 million unique users against 4.5 million for all of Google’s sites. (Mobile internet users want answers, too.)

And the domination is much greater in terms of times spend online and page views. Facebook had 2.6bn page impressions – nearly three times as many as Google, and more than a third of the 6.7bn total. Nearly half the total minutes online in December were spent at Facebook Mobile – 2.2bn minutes out of 4.8bn, with Google on 400m in a very distant second place.

One fifth of UK mobile subscribers now tote smartphones, which is driving a rise in mobile interent use. In December, already 25% of UK’s population or 16 million people accessed the internet from their mobile phones and viewed a total of 6.7bn pages.

Besides Facebook and Google, the sites of the mobile phone operators scored well, with spots three to five going to Telefonica Mobile Networks (owners of O2, with all those iPhone users), Orange Sites and Vodafone Group.

Finally, the BBC site on the seventh spot indicates that people are reading the news on the go. Breaking news is also available on the mobile networks’ sites, and those of Microsoft and Yahoo at spots six and eight.

Regarding unique users, Apple’s and Nokia’s site come in last in the top 10 UK mobile internet sites in December. Once you look at page views and time spent online, Flirtomatic – which is integrated into most mobile operator portals – also comes into the picture.

Mobile minutes spent online:

1 Facebook 2.2 bn
2 Google 396m
3 Microsoft Sites 166m
4 Orange Sites 139m
5 AOL (and Bebo) 106m
6 Apple 104m
7 Vodafone 89m
8 BBC sites 84m
9 Flirtomatic 55m
10 Yahoo 49m

The GSMA Mobile Media Metrics report was commissioned by GSMA and comScore in partnership with five UK mobile operators: O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3UK. It is being audited by ABCe.

Richard Foan, managing director of ABCe, who also chairs the web media standards committee JICWEBS, called the new metrics “a great step forward for mobile media”.

The figures are based on irreversibly anonymised mobile Internet usage data from all five UK mobile operators, collected with consent from a representative sample of mobile users. In addition, Wi-Fi traffic, not seen in the mobile network traffic, is captured in the server-side logs of media owners and ad networks.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, apple, bbc, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, google, gsm, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, nokia, o2, orange, phone, phones, room, sam, sol, t-mobile, three, uk, vodafone, world

BT has won a five-year managed services deal to consolidate Telefonica O2s mobile and fixed core networks in the UK into one network using its 21st Century Network (21CN) platform. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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• Chief executive “very interested” but refuses to say whether talks have taken place
• Vodafone reports better-than-expected third-quarter profits

Vodafone has set its sights on selling the Apple iPad in the UK after its success with the iPhone, which it started selling in the UK last month.

Speaking after the world’s largest mobile phone company by sales announced better-than-expected third-quarter results, chief executive Vittorio Colao said he was “very interested” in the iPad, which Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled in San Francisco last week.

“I have not, personally, touched one but I really look forward to it. I believe it is going to be another important piece of the [mobile] data experience.I think anything that improves the customer experience with mobile data is welcome and as such I would be very interested in having it.”

He refused to say whether any talks have actually taken place, but Apple is understood to be scouting for UK wireless partners for the device. Earlier this week O2 UK chief executive Ronan Dunne said he is also interested in the iPad, but it is unclear exactly how it will be sold this side of the Atlantic.

There is speculation that O2 and Orange have already put in an order for the micro-SIMs needed to provide 3G wireless connectivity in the iPad.

Orange has already started talks with Apple to sell the iPad in the UK. The company, owned by France Telecom, was also the first British network to break O2’s exclusive hold on the iPhone. It started selling the handset last November and is understood to have sold over 200,000 by Christmas.

Vodafone’s third-quarter results yesterday were boosted by sales of smartphones, which pushed the company’s revenues from mobile data services – such as internet browsing – over £1bn in the quarter for the first time in the firm’s history. In the three months to end December, 25% of all new phones sold by Vodafone across the world were smartphones, up from 20% in the second quarter of the year, with the bulk of those sales in Europe. Colao said he expects smartphones to make up between 30% and 40% of all the phones the company sells in its next financial year to end March 2011.

The figures were warmly welcomed by the City as showing signs of recovery in some key European markets such as the UK and Germany, where the company has lost ground to rivals and been battling against the tough economic climate, while its cost-cutting programme is also bearing fruit. Shares in the company were up almost 5% after the company raised its forecast for free cash flow for this year by £500m to between £6.5bn and £7bn and forecast annual operating profits of £11.4bn to £11.8bn, rather than its initial forecast of £11bn to £11.8bn.

On a like-for-like basis, revenues fell slightly in the quarter but the decline was far less than in previous quarters. Overall third-quarter revenues were up more than 10% to £11.5bn as the company benefited from currency fluctuations.

Colao said he was conditionally optimistic about the group’s prospects. “I keep my feet on the ground; I see what I see. I see a few things going in the right direction. I see mobile data continuing to grow. I see a good performance in [fixed-line telecoms]. I see in some markets like the UK and Italy a good performance, but I still see a lot of price pressure in voice and I still see unemployment being a concern in Europe.”

There had been some speculation, ahead of the results, that shareholders were pushing for a break-up of the company as it has consistently underperformed its publicly quoted peers. Colao, however, said the size of the company – which has operations from western and central Europe through to Turkey, India and South Africa as well its Verizon Wireless joint venture in the US – not only gives it scale in purchasing, but also an advantage in international roaming rates and helps it to attract business customers”There is a full set of opinions on how to structure Vodafone and we take due notice of all of them,” he said. “The board regularly reviews our corporate structure but there is unanimous consent now that in our opinion the current structure serves shareholders well.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Big iPhone, tiny card

O2, Orange and DoCoMo are all apparently stocking up on micro SIMs suitable for Apple’s iPad, though taking a sharp knife to an existing SIM is always an option.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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• Orange and T-Mobile hoped to escape UK scrutiny
• Merger would create country’s biggest operator

The Office of Fair Trading is calling for the proposed merger of Orange and T-Mobile to be investigated by the regulatory authorities in Britain rather than merely subjected to scrutiny in Brussels.

The news, expected to be announced on Wednesday, will be warmly welcomed by consumer groups that have campaigned hard for OFT scrutiny of the deal. There are fears the merger, which will create the UK’s largest mobile phone network, could hamper competition and force up prices for consumers.

It is a blow for Orange and T-Mobile, currently the third and fourth placed networks in Britain, as it means a further delay to a deal originally announced in September. They had hoped scrutiny of the merger would be confined to regulators in Brussels, with clearance possibly granted as early as mid-February. Orange and T-Mobile have been lobbying the OFT, the telecoms watchdog, Ofcom, and Brussels regulators in recent weeks to try to assuage competition concerns.

But the OFT will inform the European commission that it remains worried about certain aspects of the merger and wants to subject it to further scrutiny, dragging out the process for weeks, possibly months. The OFT is understood to be particularly concerned about the effect on the UK’s smallest mobile phone network, 3, and the merged group possibly having a stranglehold on the country’s mobile phone spectrum.

The OFT’s decision raises the possibility the deal could be referred to the Competition Commission, whose investigations can run for six months or more. The OFT is not, however, believed to be planning to call for an immediate Competition Commission inquiry. Instead it hopes to use the threat of one to wrest a number of undertakings from Orange and T-Mobile.

The deal would give Orange and T-Mobile more than twice the mobile phone spectrum owned by market leader O2 or second-placed Vodafone, and more than five times the amount held by 3. The government is hoping to auction more wireless spectrum over the next few years, including the slice of the airwaves freed up by the switch to digital TV. But before it can start the sell-off, the regulator needs to deal with the capacity the companies already own. Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile all want to upgrade the spectrum they were given in the 1980s and 1990s to carry so-called 2G voice services, making it capable of running 3G mobile broadband. But they all own different parts of the spectrum and 3 has no legacy network capacity at all.

As part of the government’s Digital Britain process, its independent spectrum broker Kip Meek suggested a wholesale restructuring of the airwaves, capping the amount of spectrum any operator could hold in return for freeing up existing spectrum for 3G.

The Orange and T-Mobile merger was announced towards the end of his negotiations. He was able to take it into account but the whole deal has been thrown into confusion by objections from BT, which is threatening to take the government to court.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills extended the consultation deadline on the plan by a month in an effort to appease BT. But the new deadline, this Friday, might not leave time to enact the necessary secondary legislation before a general election. The OFT is concerned the T-Mobile and Orange deal might go ahead with no workable spectrum plan in place and it wants to ensure the merged group does not rule the airwaves.

The merger with Orange could also jeopardise T-Mobile’s network sharing deal with 3. The operator has helped cut mobile prices in the UK and chief executive Kevin Russell said yesterday its two-year-old network-sharing joint venture with T-Mobile – called MBNL – is an important part of its future. The OFT is concerned the introduction of Orange could unsettle the venture, hampering 3’s ability to compete.

“MBNL for us is a fundamental strategic platform,” Russell said yesterday in a presentation to analysts about his network. “It is a fundamental piece of our strategy, any exposure, however remote, to that not being supported by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile is a risk for us we believe needs to be closed off.”

Delays and trade-offs

The OFT has no power to force companies to change the way mergers or acquisitions are structured, but it can threaten to bring in the Competition Commission to run a full-scale inquiry. Many companies would rather reach a deal than go through that lengthy process. Last year the OFT struck a deal with the Co-op: the supermarket agreed to sell 133 stores across the country in return for having its merger with Somerfield passed without a competition inquiry. The stores were snapped up by rivals such as Morrisons and Sainsbury’s. In the spring, the OFT accepted undertakings from Global Radio that it would sell a clutch of radio station in the Midlands – including Beacon, Mercia and Wyvern – to avoid a Competition Commission inquiry into its £375m acquisition of GCap Media, after raising concerns that the deal could harm the region’s advertising market. More recently, the Co-op proposed selling some of its funeral parlours in the south west to gain clearance for its acquisition of Plymouth & South West Co-operative Society, an independent co-operative which as well as being a food retailer is also a provider of funeral services.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

Exclusively available from O2 and free on all tariffs, from £15 per month.

The BlackBerry 8520 Curve is a sleek new BlackBerry with a rubberized body.

The 8520 Curve has a full QWERTY keyboard for writing emails, texts and instant messages with ease.

With BlackBerry push email, the 8520 can send and receive emails from a host of different accounts anywhere in the world.

It also features an optical trackball for sensitive and highly accurate navigation, Wi-Fi, a 2 megapixel camera and expandable memory.

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BT has announced a new multi-million pound managed service agreement with O2
to consolidate the mobile operator’s fixed and mobile networks in the UK.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Apple says it will not reveal UK pricing for iPad until its launch at the end of March

Apple has surprised would-be buyers of its new iPad touchscreen computer, saying it will not announce UK prices before it launches at the end of March.

Although it announced US prices for all six versions of the touchscreen “tablet” device with and without 3G connectivity at the launch on Wednesday night by Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs, the UK office said today that there will be no UK prices offered until the launch, expected in 60 days’ time – or 90 days for the 3G versions.

However, the MacWorld magazine website takes an “educated guess” at UK pricing for the iPad, which it predicts will range from £388 to £591 for the Wi-Fi model, and £490 to £693 for the Wi-FI and 3G model.

The iPad is a 9.7in tablet computer with a virtual keyboard which can surf the web, do email, display ebooks and play video. US prices start at $499 for a basic version with Wi-Fi wireless networking but no 3G connectivity, rising to $829 for a 3G version with 64 gigabytes of storage. However iPad users in the US will have to pay separately for 3G data plans being sold separately by Apple’s exclusive mobile partner there, AT&T, which already supplies the iPhone there.

Mobile phone companies in the UK – O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone – are looking to strike similar deals in Europe ahead of a launch later in the year. The Guardian understands from multiple source that no choice has been made.

Apple initially sold the iPhone through exclusive partners in the US, UK, France and Germany, but for the iPad the British mobile phone networks are not expecting Apple to offer exclusivity. None was willing to comment on the iPad.

Andrew Harrison, UK chief executive of the Carphone Warehouse, Europe’s largest independent mobile phone retailer, commented: “To me, the really interesting thing is what we are seeing is devices designed with how the consumer uses the internet very much in mind, rather than just a computer that was made for business use trying to fit the consumer.”

Bloggers and commentators had mixed reactions to the device. It cannot run Adobe’s Flash software, used by many advertisers and games companies online to create eye-catching motion on web pages, which some see as essential to web browsing. Many women were dismayed by the name: the San Francisco Examiner pointed out that “for North American women the word ‘pad’ means but one thing, a sanitary napkin”. But Nick Carr, author of The Big Switch, about the move towards cloud computing, described the launch as “the day the PC died”, saying that Apple “wants to deliver the killer device for the cloud era, a machine that will define computing’s new age in the way that the Windows PC defined the old age.”

Without a price ahead of the launch it may be difficult for retailers to judge the public’s interest – and so whether the device will sell in large or small numbers. Amazon’s Kindle, which includes mobile networking in the price, only launched recently in the UK, and Amazon has never disclosed sales numbers, though it is reckoned to have sold only about 500,000 to the end of last year.

The decision to keep the UK price under wraps is unusual for Apple, which usually announces UK pricing simultaneously with any launch, and could either indicate concern about exchange rate fluctuations, or a desire to keep people intrigued about the device, or that non-US networks are seeking to sell it with some sort of subsidy.

Already several UK mobile phone companies subsidise the cost of laptops to persuade customers to sign up for long-term mobile broadband contracts. Anyone signing up to a two-year mobile broadband deal with T-Mobile at £40 a month, for instance, gets a free Sony Vaio laptop worth £499.

However, Apple has forced AT&T to give up persuading customers to sign long-term contracts in order to subsidise the iPad; instead, it will effectively be available on what in Europe would be seen as a 30-day rolling Sim-only contract such as those offered by O2 and Vodafone.

“It does not look as though it has the traditional subsidy model,” said Harrison. “If you put Wi-Fi and 3G in it, it is actually more expensive not less expensive.”

In a note relating AT&T’s financial prospects following the news, Jonathan Schildkraut, analyst at Jefferies & Co investment bank said the tariffs are “in line with the current data add-on options available with voice packages, and well below the roughly $60 plans currently offered by wireless carriers for a laptop card. The prepaid plan can be activated directly from the iPad and, because there is no contract, can be canceled at anytime.”

Meanwhile anyone who already has a wireless broadband “dongle” under a long-term contract and is thinking about installing its SIM card into an iPad will be disappointed. The iPad is the first mass-market mobile device to use micro-Sim cards, which are smaller than the current range of Sim cards and were designed for small consumer gadgets such as Birmingham-based Lok8u’s range of wireless-enabled wrist watches.

The iPad is also likely to prove a major headache for makers of similar devices, especially Taiwan’s Asus which recently announced plans for its own tablet, and Nokia which last year unveiled a “booklet” computer with built-in 3G. There are also understood to be several tablet computers running Google’s Android software in the works, with France’s Archos rumoured to be planning to release one in March.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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Several mobile phone carriers keen to sell Apple’s iPad in the UK

Steve Jobs has fired the starting pistol in the race to bring the iPad to the UK, with several mobile phone operators and retailer Carphone Warehouse interested in selling Apple’s new tablet computer to consumers this side of the Atlantic.

Jobs announced on Wednesday that a version of the device that can access 3G mobile phone networks as well as Wi-Fi will start shipping in the US in April under a deal with AT&T, which already supplies the iPhone in North America. Mobile phone companies in the UK – O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone – are looking to strike similar deals in Europe ahead of a launch later in the year.

Andrew Harrison, UK chief executive of the Carphone Warehouse, welcomed news of the Apple device, adding: “To me, the really interesting thing is what we are seeing is devices designed with how the consumer uses the internet very much in mind, rather than just a computer that was made for business use trying to fit the consumer.”

Carphone Warehouse, Europe’s largest independent mobile phone retailer, was Apple’s exclusive third party retail partner for the iPhone and Harrison obviously hopes to repeat the experience with the iPad.

“Our perspective is we play in the world of connectivity and particularly mobile connectivity and this device fits well within that; we think there will be a whole range of them. This is an extension of a smartphone perhaps even more than it being a smaller PC. It is much more in the territory that we operate in,” he said

“We have done a phenomenal job with the iPhone and smartphones in general and bringing connectivity is something we would be delighted to talk to Apple about.”

But the AT&T deal shows that Apple may be approaching the involvement of mobile phone operators with the iPad in a very different way from the way that it uses them for the iPhone.

Traditionally, mobile phone companies “subsidise” the up-front cost of hardware – usually mobile phones, but increasingly laptops – in return for persuading a customer to sign up to a long-term contract. The operator assumes it will make the subsidy back over the life of the contract. That is how the iPhone is sold in the US and Europe, while even Google followed this model with its Nexus One, signing a deal with T-Mobile in the US which sees the phone’s $529 price tag fall to $179 in return for signing a contract. Vodafone is expected to sell the Nexus One in the UK at roughly the same price point as the iPhone.

Already several UK mobile phone companies subsidise the cost of laptops to persuade customers to sign up for long-term mobile broadband contracts. Anyone signing up to a two-year mobile broadband deal with T-Mobile at £40 a month, for instance, gets a free Sony Vaio laptop worth £499.

But with the iPad, Apple has forced AT&T to give up on persuading customers to sign long-term contracts. Instead the iPad will effectively be available on what in Europe would be seen as a 30-day rolling SIM-only contract such as those offered by O2 and Vodafone.

Customers have two pricing options in the US, a mere 250MB of data for $14.99 a month, or unlimited data for $29.99 a month. That means that while the basic version of the iPad – without wireless capabilities – will start at $499, the 3G version of the device will start at $629. Under the traditional operator model, the 3G version of the device would have been cheaper.

“It does not look as though it has the traditional subsidy model,” said Harrison. “If you put Wi-Fi and 3G in it, it is actually more expensive not less expensive.”

In a note on AT&T following the news, Jonathan Schildkraut, analyst at Jefferies & Co investment bank said the tariffs are “in line with the current data add-on options available with voice packages, and well below the roughly $60 plans currently offered by wireless carriers for a laptop card. The prepaid plan can be activated directly from the iPad and, because there is no contract, can be canceled at anytime.”

“Given the prepaid nature of the service associated with this product, including the no contract/cancel at any time feature, we expect that AT&T would not have to subsidise the device. We would view this as a significant positive – given the large subsidy associated with the iPhone (estimated at up to $400). Additionally, this would imply better overall economics around the device (without the initial margin dilution of an iPhone sale),” he said

“The flip-side, of course, is that the usage patterns of this type of device are unknown. However, given the multimedia capabilities, and the video functionality in particular, we would assume that iPad could be another network hog. This could drive incremental congestion issues on AT&T’s already strained network – leading to further network dissatisfaction, and potentially a need for ongoing higher levels of capital spending”.

In other words, not getting people to sign a contract gives the operator very little chance to factor the potential cost of future infrastructure investment into its pricing plans. Then there is the worry that applications which allow internet telephony – such as Truphone and Skype, which are already available on the iPhone and will port to the iPad – will further erode the network’s profitable voice and text traffic.

Apple initially sold the iPhone through exclusive partners in the US, UK, France and Germany, but for the iPad the British mobile phone companies are not expecting Apple to offer exclusivity. None of the mobile phone companies was willing to comment on the iPad.

Incidentally, anyone who already has a wireless broadband “dongle” under a long-term contract and is thinking about buying an iPad and putting the SIM card from their laptop card into the iPad will be disappointed. The iPad is the first mass-market mobile device to use micro-Sim cards, which are smaller than the current range of Sim cards and were designed for small consumer gadgets such as Birmingham-based Lok8u’s range of wireless-enabled wrist watches.

The iPad is also likely to prove a major headache for makers of similar devices, especially Taiwan’s Asus which recently announced plans for its own tablet, and Nokia which last year unveiled a “booklet” computer with built-in 3G. There are also understood to be several tablet computers running Google’s Android software in the works, with France’s Archos rumoured to be planning to release one in March.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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