"Europe looks set to lose the lead it currently holds over the US in the use of wireless mobile communications, according to a senior Nokia executive.
The US has seen a revolution in both wireless technology and more importantly pricing, according to Bob Brace, VP of mobile solutions at Nokia Internet Communications, speaking at IDC's Mobility Conference in London."
Anyone in the vicinity of Dublin on December 10th might like to catch the Wireless Wednesday Breakfast Briefing being held in association with Meteor and Nokia. Entitled 'Driving MMS deployments to mass market success' it features Gavin Barrett, Business Development Manager Nokia talking about ‘MMS – Success cases from World markets’ and Warren Harding, Project manager GPRS, Meteor on 'Launching MMS in a sophisticated market as the third operator'
Location is The Shelbourne Hotel, Stephens Green, Dublin 2 and registration will take place between 7.30am-8am. Might be worth going along, for the Nokia presentation, not the Meteor one :p
While nosing through the latest InfoSyncWorld.com stories I noticed that Jørgen Sundgot echoed my previous thoughts on Bluetooth by refuting the inane musings of some so-called technology pundits in regard to premature proclamations of Bluetooth decay.
"According to Sendo itself, the company has had Series 60 running on its hardware since January, and contrary to what one might believe it does indeed seem as if though the manufacturer is about to pull off the brilliant stunt of delivering a device that rivals - and perhaps even surpasses - the very cream of its competitors.
The hardware design of the unit is also incredibly slick, and compared to Nokia's 6600 it appears much smaller - which it also is, but the design emphasises this. In fact, one might go as far as saying the X is the first truly pocketable Series 60 smartphone.
I hate to sound a negative note but I think Sendo is really going to be up against it in terms of brand recognition, of which they have none! But I hope they prove me wrong and help the Series 60 platform to flourish.
Korean firm WiderThan's service lets you choose what the person calling you hears when phoning. "It replaces your normal dial tone with music or any kind of content you want," said WiderThan's Jonathan Kim.
The service has been very popular in South Korea, and could be offered by European mobile networks by mid-2004.
Call me a luddite but I just cannot see ring-back tones taking off here in Europe.
So I decided to try out the FoneBlog demo and must admit it works rather nicely, with sound clips and all. However, the fact that Vodafone in Ireland limits the size of MMS to 30kb means I can only use the basic quality setting on my photos if I want to submit them in large format. Why such a miserly limit? :(
FoneBlog v2adds enhanced messaging functionality designed to drive increased MMS traffic. Visitors to FoneBlog can now forward picture messages directly from the web or WAP site. In addition, FoneBlog can notify users of comments on their site by sending alerts with embedded links using WAP Push, MMS and SMS messaging. This encourages the development of user driven phone communities resulting in increased data activity.
It sounds like this product is developing in all the right directions, fusing the best of blogging, community message boards, multimedia, push messaging, interactivity, and most of the uniquely powerful mechanisms of the wired and wireless internet. Newbay seem to recognise the mantra that contact is king and content is the catalyst.
Effective from the beginning of 2004, Nokia will be split into four divisions with profit and loss responsibility - mobile phones, multimedia, networks and enterprise. Nokia expects phones to account for 65 percent of revenue, networks 20 percent, multimedia 10 percent and enterprise 5 percent.
A bit of an eye-opener for me - the expectation of multimedia bringing in twice as much revenue as enterprise!
Sounding a little ominous, Microsoft warns us to, "Get Ready for Moblogs. Turn an ordinary blog into a moblog by including pictures from your Pocket PC or Smartphone. Check back here in December to learn how to create yours." Forgive me if I forget Mr. Gates :p
SENT will invite professional photographers, filmmakers, media personalities, and regular folks to explore the camera phone's potential as a creative tool. Here's some very insightful commentary from their site -
"Phonecams are changing the way we see the world, and our place within it. They're an extension of urban eyes. They democratize, hack, and deconstruct photography. When everyone is both photographer and publisher, how will art change? How will human conversation change? What will be the difference between professional and amateur?"
Is it annoying anyone else that we can't seem to settle on a single term for mobile communications devices with digital image capture capability? What's it going to be people? Camera phones, camphones, phonecams, or phone cameras? Or if you've got another suggestion please leave a comment :-)
Alan informs us that Nokia may now, already, be the largest digital camera vendor in the world. As he adds, "this is indeed momentous". And it reaffirms the viewpoint that there is a whole new and separate market out there for disposable photography.
"Self-created content is probably one of the biggest opportunities in the mobile market, ' Gartner analyst Robin Simpson says. 'We haven't yet thought about SMS and MMS as self-created content, but basically that's what it is."
Precisely. Because self-created content is 'only' the catalyst for contact between people and contact is what's king.
"Yellow Computing, a software developer for various mobile devices, has released MMS CAM for the UIQ P800 from Sony Ericsson, a utility that enables you to receive images from the built-in camera in return for an SMS message."
After the novelty wears off, is something like this of any real practical use?
And a thorough review it is too. I knew Russ liked Series 60 but the rate at which he's moving through the complete range (7650,3650, N-Gage, 6600) is really making me jealous :-(
Can anyone confirm if the commentator on Russell Beattie's blog, Tom Price, was correct about Vodafone requesting the Opera browse not be included on their phones in Europe, even though the Nokia 6600 was supposed to come with it? If this is true it's yet another example of the operators losing the run of themselves. According to Tom the reason may that they don't want any 3rd party apps to be installed, possibly for support reasons, but haven't the PC makers been shipping 3rd party apps... forever? Can you imagine getting a PC without a 3rd party app?
"Strong demand for phones with colour screens and integrated cameras, partly driven by low prices, has left many shops struggling to obtain supplies of the most popular models."
