"The majority of companies that only make content for mobile phones will go out of business within the next four years, said London analyst firm Wireless World Forum.
W2Forum analysts Graham Brown and Josh Dhaliwal spent three months interviewing 400 industry executives and studying the mobile-phone content markets in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. They found that many independent content providers are cranking out rich media for mobile phones, but have no marketing plans or strategy to get their products out to market. "
"Brown, however, isn't saying no one will make it in this business or that the public doesn't want any content for cell phones. On the contrary, Brown and Dhaliwal predict that the mobile-phone content market in Europe and North America will grow from $2 billion in 2003 to $4.9 billion in 2006. The Asia Pacific market, which is already worth $3 billion, could explode to $6.5 billion in 2006, they said."
"Coke, Cadbury and First Direct are among the brands starting the first major trials of MMS ad campaigns. The campaigns will let brands experiment with the full range of MMS ad executions, allowing evaluation of which functionality, from sound to colour, is most effective."
I don't know about you but if Cadbury's do this right I'm liable to eat my phone!! ;-)
"Wondered what would come next, after the current wave of camera cell phones. You bet! TV cell phones. A handset introduced by NEC yesterday will be capable of receiving digital TV signal, but won't be available before 2005... and in Asia only"
Well we already have teletext so what's the hold up here ;-)
"Operating company Symbian claimed another win with the Fujitsu F2102V phone for NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s high-speed FOMA network. The mobile phone includes two digital cameras for video capabilities, as well as authentication for mobile payments, a memory card storage slot and audio compression for streaming video."
"The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association for GSM mobile operators, has issued a rallying call to the wireless industry to speed the arrival of enhanced, fully interoperable Multi-media Messaging Services (MMS) and compatible terminals through compliance with newly agreed industry standards."
'"The availability of international and national cross network MMS services -- not just between all terminals, but between all terminals and all networks -- is seen by the Board as essential to the global success of MMS," said Craig Ehrlich, Chairman of the GSMA Board.'
Yesterday I blogged about how I'd found a brilliant application for viewing teletext channels on your Series 60 phone - Teletext II from Nowire.
Afterwards I emailed them to tell them how great I thought it was but would it be at all possible for them to add one of the Irish channels, such as the state broadcaster RTE for example.
Can you believe that I got an email from Christer in customer care today and he told me that -
"While enjoying my summer holiday I updated the channel file of the application and it now includes RTE. You can update the channel file over-the-air. In the application, select Options, then Channels and then Update Channels. I placed RTE under the Web Links of the Internet (Options > Channels > Internet > Web Links). In the future, when we compile a new version of the application, the Irish flag will be hoisted in the channel list."
Now that's what I call amazing customer service! Christer actually took time out of his holiday to setup a channel for one small country and population! Thumbs up for Christer and team :-)
"Despite its poor reputation, the number of WAP page impressions viewed in the UK more than doubled in the nine months to May 2003. According to figures from the Mobile Data Association, the four UK GSM Operators, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone recorded a total of 699 million page impressions between them in May of this year. The daily average for page views is now running at 22 million in the UK, compared to 11 million in September 2002, when the MDA began recording the figures."
"Cool MMS is a fun, template-driven MMS composer for Nokia 3650 / 7650 phones, which takes the creation and sending of MMS messages to the next level. By using Cool MMS you can create impressive MMSs for just about any occasion. "
"EZOS EzWAP 2.5 is a MMS client for Pocket PC phones. If you have such a phone, but don´t have MMS client in it, then your problems related to lack of possibility to exchange MMS messages with your friends are over".
But your other problems are only beginning, mwahaha,... ;-)
I've been using miniGPS for a few hours (on my Nokia 3650) and so far it has 'collected' 4 cell sites (masts) here in Ireland.
The weird thing is NONE of the cell ID's correspond to any of the cell ID's that are actually around me according to the Comreg Mobile Site Viewer.
Is one of them telling porkies or is there something else I don't understand about mobile mast denotation?
While I'm on about miniGPS, I found an interesting discussion on AllAboutSymbian about the potential (or lack of it) of using the software to triangulate 'real' GPS locations. It's a pity that the required data seems to be "commercially sensitive"
"Mobile.Burn reviews the T610, Sony Ericsson's new Bluetooth-enabled cameraphone, giving it a big thumbs down, and in turn dashing editor Michael Oryl's hopes of finding a phone worthy enough to replace his T68i"
"Texas Instruments and Sharp Electronics said Monday they are teaming up to cash in on the expected surge in sales of camera-connected cell phones.
By year's end, the two companies will begin selling new camera-phone technology to cell phone manufacturers. This will consist of a combination of Texas Instruments cell phone chips, Sharp miniature cameras and color displays, and a set of camera-phone blueprints, they said in a joint statement."
I continue to be amazed by the quality and range of software I'm finding for my new Nokia 3650. But this teletext viewer from Nowire Smartphone has got to be one of the best yet. It's damn brilliant really!
There is already loads of excellent free information available on teletext channels all over the world and it's in a low res text format that is perfectly suitable for downloading and displaying on mobile devices. This is definitely one application to download.
I think Martin Brampton is seeing signs of the same tipping point as I'm observing in the world of mobile communications.
"In fact, with a good colour screen and a sensible range of applications, I am persuaded that phones are on the point of a significant shift. Although the technology has gradually developed, suddenly there comes a point when the capabilities cause the device to be seen in a new light. It happened with the personal computer and I think it is now happening with the phone."
"Quanta Computer is likely to become the second Taiwanese handset maker to launch a Symbian-powered smartphone, according to a recent market rumor. In the past, the manufacturing expertise in Taiwan for Symbian-powered devices had been limited due to the shortage of Symbian programmers. Only Inventec had experience with the Symbian OS because they manufactured the Psion Revo PDA device several years ago. Currently, BenQ is the only Taiwanese company that has signed a licensing deal with Symbian,..."
Yes sir, Symbian just keeps on getting more and more omentum all the time.
Packet Video has announced a personal video authoring tool which enables users to convert video files or live video input into 3GPP format for playback on mobile devices. It is included in the Sony Ericsson P800 and the Nokia Series 60 video enabled handsets.
"The personal recorder application converts existing video content, either from an existing source file or from a live input such as a webcam or digital camcorder", according to PMN.
This looks great and I was eagerly about to download the trial version until I saw the system requirements - Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Grrrrrr. Do I really have to upgrade from Windows 98 to keep up with this stuff? :-(
"An absolutely hilarious look at some of the mixed-messages coming out surrounding the issue of camera phones. On the one hand, the camera phones are being banned left and right, while saying it's a violation of privacy or a way for industrial spies or perverts to get pictures of what they're after. On the other hand, the same phones are being praised for helping to stop crime, by letting little old ladies take pictures of criminals in action."
Now Wireless will this month launch version 5.0 of the Now SMS/MMS Gateway (NowSMS) to offer Operators and content providers support for a wide range of different SMS/MMS applications for mobile phone users. This latest release adds support for additional protocols to extend the range of different applications and types of content available to users."
The new 5.0 release runs on a standard Windows platform and adds support for the 3GPP standard MM7, MM4 and MM1 protocols and allows content providers further scope to deliver MMS messages using industry standard protocols. The gateway has the capability to send and receive MMS messages via direct SMS and WAP delivery to the recipient mobile phone, or through intermediary connections to an operator MMSC."
"This story was in the Guardian today - about MMS having very different usage characteristics to SMS, in that it's not being used for person-to-person stuff."
"I don't see why this is such a surprise, given that MMS has been pushed out in exactly the opposite way to SMS. SMS was quietly bundled in phones and only took off when people noticed it, and it was already everywhere. MMS is a Big Deal and has been promoted even before it's launched (I don't count it as launched until you can reliably send messages between networks)."
"So, given that you can't (as yet) reliably send messages to others using MMS, is it any surprise that people aren't using their cameraphones for MMSing?"
