I finally got some time to wander around a few of the less trafficked forums on AllAboutSymbian today and was thrilled to read about new Symbian Concept Phone from Mitsubishi. I'm a bit late spotting this I know but I've seen no mention of it anywhere else.
Some of the features, such as sending and receiving data using wireless LAN, and high resolution camera (Mega pixels), are excellent but the high point for me is the beautiful free style design. Make sure to check out the images!
NetImperative:"On top of all the other challenges facing MMS before it can become the success that the mobile operators are hoping for and boost non-voice revenues to new heights - one issue stands out that is crucial for the content providers before they even think about publishing and selling content via MMS - Digital Rights Management (DRM)
Without some form of DRM, anybody who receives content in a MMS, can forward that content to as many friends as they like. Those friends can again forward it to others. So a content provider is getting paid once for their content, that is then being shared between maybe hundreds - or even thousands - of mobile users, for free!"
Er, maybe I'm mean but it's much more likely that I'll let my friends pay for their own bloody content rather than pay, myself, to send it on to them so that they can enjoy it for free!! Doesn't make sense to me....
infoSync World : Samsung wrist watch phone later this year"Once again proving its technical prowess, Samsung will ship the world's first wrist watch style mobile phone, boasting GSM/GPRS, an 8-bit colour display and more in Q4....... In addition, the watch phone also supports SMS and MMS, as well as Bluetooth and speakerphone capabilities."
[Via Smartmobs.com] Economist.com - No text please, we're American. This article analyses the reasons why the USA has had such a miserable take up of a technology (SMS) that most other parts of the world have embraced almost fanatically.
"The short answer is that, in America, talk is cheap. Because local calls on land lines are usually free, wireless operators have to offer big “bundles” of minutes—up to 5,000 minutes per month—as part of their monthly pricing plans to persuade subscribers to use mobile phones instead. Texting first took off in other parts of the world among cost-conscious teenagers who found that it was cheaper to text than to call, notes Jessica Sandin, an analyst at Baskerville. But in America, you might as well make a voice call."
That's only one of the reasons highlighted. One important reason omitted from this article though, in my opinion, is the commuter culture of Asian and European societies as against the car culture of America. Every train and bus I take here in Ireland is full of heads down youths frantically poking messages into their mobiles. Maybe that's why the graph in this article shows the Irish in third place after Singapore and The Philippines for SMS takeup.
A very funny article from The Register about the growing battle between the operators and the device manufacturers to 'own the platform'. Regular reader will know my views on this but I don't mind spelling it out again.... operators are utility companies and should get used to the idea!
FastMobile announces European launch"FastMobile, provider of a platform for push-to-talk (PTT) messaging has announced that its service will be available to users in Europe from next week. The company had previously said that it would also launch in the US on 1st May 2003.
FastMobile's FastChat is a presence-based system for exchanging PTT messages over GPRS networks. The launch is operator-independent and the service will be available to most users equipped with a Nokia Series 60 device simply by downloading the client application and signing-up with FastMobile."
This is excellent news! I can't wait to try it out when I finally get that Nokia 3650 in a few weeks. I have no doubt but that this technology is poised for great success. It adheres to my 'P2P is key' principle, and slots very nicely into a niche somwhere between IM, SMS and goold ol' voice.
U.S. Wireless Carriers Up Multimedia Support:"On the heels of AT&T Wireless' announced support for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), other U.S. carriers are following suit and upping the ante, despite the fact that even more established European operators continue seeing lackluster for such advanced services. Late last year, Deutsche Telekom's (Quote, Company Info) T-Mobile USA unit began offering phones that support color pictures. Now, the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier is looking to ramp up use of consumer data services on its network, with support for the Nokia 3650 phone."
It's good to see the Americans taking a 'brave' line on this technology as I really believe it's a case of 'build it and they will come'. Ok, adherence to that tenet has burnt many a dotcom dreamer but as I've said previously "P2P is key" and MMS satisfies that criteria like no other.
Football match streamed to a cell phone:"For the first time in Portugal, fans were able to watch an entire football match as it happened on the small screens of mobile phones. With the co-operation of television channel TVI, Vodafone Telecel customers who own Nokia 7650 handsets, enabled for Vodafone live! video services, were able to watch a live broadcast of the match between Portugal and Brazil last Saturday."
Now this is what mobile streaming video was made for :-)
How is MMS going down in India?. Well, BPL Mobile’s (Mumbai & Maharashtra) chief operating officer Krishna Angara admits that there issues like availability and affordability of handsets and interconnectivity between operators are plaguing the service.
Damn it, I really hate to read things like this, about the operators investing in platform companies. In this case it's Orange and Vodafone investing in in Java phone company SavaJe who are, writing a MIDP Java-based platform [for which there] will be on the market by the end of the year. The UI reference specifies 220x176 screen devices with no touch screen, an alternative to Nokia's Series 60.
That last bit must be very worrying to Nokia as well as me! I hate to see the operators trying to muscle their way in on another layer of the mobile experience. With their penchant for creating walled gardens I don't want to see them controlling any more of the industry than the provision of wireless channels. Do Cisco try to control what operating system or hardware we use to access the internet? Why can't these operators just accept the layered internet model as an extreemely successful one and just be happy to do what they do well instead of spreading their wings into areas which should be none of their business?
