Mobile Insight Vol: 9
Issue 354 February 16th 2007
3GSM Barcelona Special Edition
Omnifone launches music for operators
In a move largely viewed as a reaction to Apple's launch of the iPhone, mobile music company, Omnifone, has announced a new service - MusicStation.
It claims to have agreements in place with 23 operators worldwide.
The crucial point about MusicStation is that music can be downloaded over 2.5G and 3G connexions - unlike the iPhone which can only use WiFi or a computer link.
More to the point, Omnifone claims its software will run on both Java and Symbian based phones which it argues constitute about 80 per cent of all handsets. Those that can't run it will be motivated to upgrade anyway.
The service employs its own DRM software but if the handset is lost or stolen, when the handset is replaced all purchased tracks can be downloaded again for no extra charge.
The service is being offered on a 'all-you-can-eat' basis for £1.99 per week in the UK. The first operator partners to announce rollout agreements for MusicStation will be Telenor and Vodafone's partner network, Vodacom, in South Africa.
Omnifone's list of countries where it expects to launch the service doesn't include the USA, however.
It claims its full track music service includes content from major labels as well as independent music labels and aggregators in local territories. The file format is Enhanced Advanced Audio Coding format (eAAC+).
For an extra £1 per week handset owners can subscribe to a premium version of the service which enables the tracks to be sent to a Mac or PC as well as downloaded onto their handsets.
The service is also intelligent and if a handset is running out of storage space it will automatically delete the oldest track to make room. If storage space is increased the old track can be reloaded.
Rob Lewis, CEO with Omnifone, suggested to Mobile Insight that the main reason why operators are willing to sign up for his company's service is fear of revenues lost to Apple and its iTunes service.
The real beauty of MusicStation is that not only do tracks download in the background, the actual data fee is included in the cost of each track. This means that operators will actually get useful data traffic over their 2.5G and 3G networks.
Mobile Insight has learnt that the former Sendo handset design team is alive and working on the newly-announced Motorizr Z8 from Motorola. This Symbian phone is also using the UIQ interface.
Under intensive questioning, former Sendo top techie, Ron Schaeffer, confessed, "I'm working on the Z8 right now." He also hinted that he and his former Sendo design team had survived the recent Motorola cuts intact.
Motorola is making a lot of noise about the Z8's unusual shape – which it calls a 'kick slider'. It's intended to curve to match the contours of your face.
Never mind that. This is actually a Symbian based phone and more to the point it is the first handset to deploy the UIQ interface after the company was acquired from Symbian by Sony Ericsson.
So UIQ hasn't lost its independence at all.
A prime feature of the Motorizr is its ability to playback video. Plus it supports high download speeds thanks to its HSDPA/Superfast 3G capability. And it's got 90 MB of internal memory.
The company has also done a deal with BSkyB so you can watch its Anytime mobile TV programmes. Plus the handset can reputedly be used to program Sky + boxes.
Oh. And thanks to the Z8's stereo Bluetooth support, this handset will make a pretty good MP3 player too.
It's nice to know what Sendo would have given us if the company hadn't been acquired by Motorola.
Apparently there's a niche for smartphones aimed at the "I only want to make calls," brigade. And HP with its Windows Mobile 6 based iPAQ 514 thinks it's got it covered.
The 514 offers full support for 'push email', for example. So busy executives can receive urgent emails OK. But it ain't got a keyboard.
Yet execs still need to reply. No problem. They can simply push a button and speak into the phone. The iPAQ will then send the reply as a .wav attachment.
Another voice centric capability is support for voice control. This is HP's own – not part of Windows Mobile because that doesn't support enough different languages.
There's another crafty angle to this handset. All the settings can be managed remotely thanks to technology HP acquired when it recently purchased Bitfone.
Another key feature of the 514 is built-in WiFi support so that it can offer VoIP/Internet telephony. Apparently, HP is going to customise this handset to include support for UMA – Unlicensed Mobile Access.
That means it will work with BT's Fusion service so HP has done a deal with the former Brit telecoms monopoly.
Incidentally, if Mobile Insight heard Microsoft correctly yesterday, Windows Mobile 6 ships with full versions of Office applications.
So you don't need a document reader/converter. You've got the whole thing. A bit bizarre since in this case, it would be very difficult to actually edit an Excel spreadsheet.
The handset should become available mid-2007 and cost around 350 Euros.
Typically, it's taken an adult application to make creating a .mobi based site – worthwhile. Point your handset at the site and you should be able to watch the video with no problems, if you must.
Fanerotica is the creation of a Czech mobile house, Wirenode. The game is intended to illustrate how the company can build a rich featured application which will work on just about every current mobile phone.
Fanerotica is definitely one game only for mobile geeks. Players have to chat up a lady by trying out their best lines.
The more successful you are, the more of her togs she takes off.
For operators who dare to offer Fanerotica, Wirenode has created a number of discreet payment methods.
After all, you wouldn't want the word 'Fanerotica' to show up on your monthly bill, would you?
Chinese firm, Chipnuts, chanced upon the purpose of having mobile phone text messages password protected.
According to its startling research, men don't want their wives to discover proof of a mistress' existence.
But Chinese wives have a habit of trawling through the call records and text message traffic of their other half's mobile phone looking for evidence of any shenanigans.
Smartphone platform provider, Shanghai-based Chipnuts, is flogging phones with password protection on potentially compromising data.
The firm reckons its, "advanced data, message, call record security and recovery features help manage and protect valuable personal information stored on the phone."
This facility forms part of Chipnuts' NX200 series of smartphone platforms, which are based around its own C7200 series multi-core processors.
All you need to build a mobile phone besides an NX200 chip and a GSM/GPRS chip from either NXP or Infineon is Chipnut's own SmartNX Mobile OS.
Our understanding is that shed-loads of handsets using Smartnuts gear have already been shifted in the Chinese market.
Besides disloyal husbands, a mistress-proof handset could prove highly useful to executives who don't want their mobile phones to fall into the handsets of industrial snoops.
It would be interesting to see if the plod would be able to force such handset owners to hand over the relevant password.
It seems
that Brits win a disproportionate amount of awards at the 3GSM show. This year ex-Symbian man and Brit, Mark Edwards, staved off the competition to take home a gong for mFormation.
The actual award he received was for Best Service Delivery Platform. But that’s not the point. It clearly illustrates an industry trend here at the 3GSM show in Barcelona.
That’s because mFormation’s skills lie in the area of remote handset management. The company likes to describe itself as the mobile industry’s device doctors.
And operators are getting into remote device management big time.
When Mobile Insight ran into Mark, he was so proud he accidentally let slip that one of mFormation’s Tier one customers is Spain’s Telefonica. (So O2 is probably right behind them in rolling this out, too).
For Telefonica, the net effect of installing and using MFormation’s software was the discovery that 2 million of its existing users hadn’t got MMS/Picture messaging correctly implemented on their phones.
The software cured that and Telefonica found that subsequently around 50 per cent – or one million users - sent at least one MMS message as a result.
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, caused a little mirth when he visited the 3GSM show here in Barcelona as the UK's special envoy for International Trade and Investment.
The palace spinners obviously hadn't briefed him too well because he was heard to remark, "What's Microsoft doing here, this isn't an IT show is it?"
Nice to know that six editions of Windows Mobile have apparently escaped his notice. Not quite sure why he was on the LG stand admiring the new Prada handset either.
The best after-show party, however, was given by ENEA and Kontron. The pair supplied the UK hacks with tapas and Spanish beer all night.
None of the contingent, however, managed to discover what their hosts actually did. Even the Brit hack who was spotted deep in conversation with the hosts' PR lady.
Mobile Insight can now reveal that ENEA writes telecoms software and Kontron supplies the hardware so that mobile operators can install 'converged' networks. Now you know.
And finally, apparently, French mobile tag specialist, Abaxia, has decided to sue Neomedia Technologies.
It reckons some of the technology behind Neo's qode bar codes infringe its patents.
In a move to bolster the independence of the UIQ Symbian interface, new owner Sony Ericsson has invited other companies to invest in the company.
The handset manufacturer is hoping to emulate the setup which Symbian enjoys with ownership shared amongst several leading vendors.
Mobile Insight's not so sure this ploy will work. Besides Sony Ericsson, the other two major licensees are BenQ-Siemens and Motorola. Benq has suffered financially from trying to swallow old Siemens and Motorola previously sold up its share in Symbian.
Never mind, because UIQ head honcho Johan Sandberg told Mobile Insight that Sony Ericsson's funding is allowing the company to invest in building its developer community.
Not only does this involve building new developer tools and improving the documentation, it also means there are new people around to provide help and support.
In particular Sandberg suggested that it is a lot easier to port apps written for Nokia's Series 60 platform over to UIQ than most people expect.
Better still, UIQ can now offer advice on how to port from Microsoft's platforms over to UIQ.
"We're building on the ecosystems that already exist around Sony Ericsson, Symbian and now Motorola," Sandberg proclaimed. "We're helping people to see there really is a good business case [behind UIQ apps]."
In a remarkably frank admission, HP's Peter Dragunas conceded that a killer app for IMS – the standard for all-IP mobile networks - has yet to emerge.
But multi-player gaming sessions could prove to be a major incentive.
Currently the majority of mobile operators are still running their networks on legacy equipment – circuit-switched for voice and packet for data. Converting their backbone networks onto an all-IP basis means adopting the IMS standard and installing IP-based infrastructure.
That involves considerable investment and, according to Dragunas, it's a chicken and egg situation. Without a critical mass of IMS-ready mobile networks, third parties like ISVs won't develop innovative services and the handset vendors won't produce low cost handsets capable of fully utilising IMS services.
Push-to-talk – or PTT – hasn't provided the necessary impetus, nor has Instant Messaging (IM). Dragunas conceded, for example, that a simple 'presence' for a mobile user could be created without IP.
To establish presence, all the network has to do is interrogate the HLR to see if a subscriber's handset is powered up.
Offering VoIP as a reason for installing IMS is a non-starter, too. Why go to the cost of having sufficient QoS (Quality of Service) to support voice over IMS when it's much cheaper to simply drop the cost of circuit switched calls?
But it's not all gloom and doom. Multi-player gaming is one area where IMS makes sense since it enables a handset to easily support multiple sessions in real-time.
So besides playing the actual game, the handset user could be chatting with his or her opponents via text, IM or even email. Opponents could even speak to each other too!
Dragunas also revealed that HP is showcasing one IMS enabled application at 3GSM Barcelona – video karaoke. That should have great appeal in certain Asia markets.
In effect, we'll have to wait until handsets with sufficient processing power; internal memory and removable storage become affordable not just high end before IMS can take off.
It might take some time. We had to wait for the Blackberry and push email to arrive before GPRS became a 'must-have' option.
News about Microsoft’s new partners for Windows Mobile 6 leaked way before the official announcement here at 3GSM Barcelona. LG and Softbank got namechecks but few seem to mention Giga-Byte Communications.
This Taiwanese manufacturer introduced a Windows Mobile 6 based handset that supports the DVB-T, DVB-H, DAB and T-DMB standards for digital TV and radio.
Known as the GSmart t600, it’s GBC’s first 3.5G/3G PDA phone. The company claims that it has “enjoyed a great success with TV roaming in Russia and also received high reputation during the World Cup season in Thailand market in 2006.”
Other vendors who had Windows Mobile 6 handsets on display included Lenovo and Toshiba.
The best bit about the whole Vole presentation at the show were the digs aimed at the user interface of “another major vendor”. Which was rather obviously Nokia.
The most impressive feature, however, was how all the loaded applications can share the same handset addressbook.
Since the addressbook supports ‘presence’, when you look at somebody’s addressbook entry, you can see if they’re online and able to accept a instant message, for example.
If they ain’t you can choose to email or text them. Now that’s actually quite useful.
Vodafone will have a smile on its face at 3GSM Barcelona following its successful
acquisition of Hutchison's stake in Indian operator, Hutch.
It beat off bids from rivals Reliance and the Hinduja group. It remains to be seen how Indian company, Essar, which own the rest of the operator (33 per cent) will react.
Vodafone has reportedly signed another network sharing deal (following a similar agreement with Orange in the UK) with the Indian operator, Bharti Telecom.
That wasn't too difficult a deal to cut since Vodafone already owns a 10 per cent stake in Bharti. It's not clear whether Vodafone will have to sell that stake now it has a majority holding in Hutch.
Having had a rather acrimonious battle with Vodafone over control of Hutch, it will be interesting to see how Essar will respond to Vodafone's offer of a continuing partnership. Since the Hinduja group expressed interest in Hutch, maybe the company will sell out to them.
Vodafone's Arun Sarin will at least be pleased that his strategy of moving into emerging markets is on course. Even if analysts suggest it has overpaid for its stake.
Major Chinese vendor, ZTE, has revealed it will supply handsets that
will carry the Vodafone brand from around Q3 2007. Analysts predicted very
tenuously that this might start a price war. Rumours that China will definitely
award contracts for TD-SCDMA networks from March 2007 also boosted ZTE.
www.zte.com.cn
In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)
This week
Mobyko
As anyone who has lost a mobile phone knows, losing all the numbers in the contacts book is a pain in the butt. New portal, Mobyko, offers a free cure.
Mobyko's addressbook backup service isn't a new idea, nor is it unique. But the service is very easy to use; very sophisticated; and it's free.
Mobile Insight tried Mobyko out on a Nokia 5500 Sport and the instructions were very easy to follow. The system sends you a number of text (SMS) messages to setup the handset correctly.
Then after a very short data (GPRS) session, all your contacts have been uploaded to the Web. You can edit them, search them and – if you need to – restore them.
To entice you to further utilise the service, it's also possible to upload your own photos, videos and text messages. The site is still in 'beta' so there's one little mistake. It tells you to text your photos when it means MMS (picture message) them.
Once you're hooked, Mobyko is designed to sell you all kinds of content including wallpapers, videos and music tracks.
Hopefully if Mobyko's business model succeeds, they'll be loads of useful content to purchase later in the year.
The only criticism is that Mobile Insight couldn't see an easy way to sign up
just from the phone itself. Presumably you just need a handset with an HTML
browser.
