The USA
appears to be rife with rumours that Finland's Nokia might be interested in failing PDA maker, Palm. Analysts just can't get their head around why it would be interested,
though.
They appear to be overlooking several major hints. For example, the world's Number Two handset maker, Motorola, bought a major handheld supplier, Symbol, back in September 2006.
Symbol promptly then dropped the Palm OS, so that kind of leaves the coast clear for Nokia to introduce a Palm based device.
Why should it want to do so? Well, Nokia's still leading the field in smartphones but the latest figures from Canalys showed that its lead was slipping slightly.
Nokia's weakness is in North America and guess where Palm based devices sell best? Yes, North America.
So given that its arch rival has bought a handheld device supplier and that Palm still has a big following, buying the company which owns
a version of the OS - PalmOS 5.4.x Garnet - might not be such a bad idea.
After all, if Nokia inherits some Windows Mobile based devices from Palm, it can quietly drop them just like Symbol dropped Palm.
A right royal mud-slinging match has broken out
between Profitwing of the USA and Teling of Taiwan. And
it's all over voice call quality on Bluetooth headsets.
David Clemons, CEO with ProfitWing, first approached
Mobile Insight claiming that Bluetooth headsets that
Teling have shipped over to the USA to his company "have
a higher than 37 per failure rate." He said: "We have
sent 500 units out to distribution as samples - all were
refused due to quality." ProfitWing markets the
BluePearls.us range of Bluetooth headsets – aimed
specifically at women – in the USA. Clemons claims that
Teling's "faulty" goods have damaged the company's brand
name.
But Eddie Chang – a spokesman for Teling – explained to
Mobile Insight that it is "a sound quality issue.
It is pretty hard to judge the speaker or microphone's
quality.
Everyone has their own quality level. "It is not fair to
say that our quality is no good when it is only because
of the mike or the speaker." He pointed out that Teling
had sent out a sample for Proftwing's approval and that
"while the goods were sent in middle of June of 2006, we
only receive their defective items at the end of 2006."
Teling also claims to be an adaptor member of the
Bluetooth SIG.
Clemons responded by saying that it isn't voice quality he's complaining about.
It's the fact that the BluePearl BTH-06 – made by Teling
– consistently dies after two weeks of usage.
UK drivers now
face a much harsher regime for using a mobile
phone while driving. This should encourage more motorists to invest in Bluetooth
based hands-free systems. From today, any motorist caught at the wheel with a
handset against his or her ear will three penalty points added to their licence
and face a fixed penalty fine of £60. This amount can be raised to a maximum
fine of £1,000 for ordinary citizens or - in the case of a driver of a bus,
coach or goods vehicle - £2,500. Alternatively offenders can even be
disqualified from driving. Which looks like a very serious incentive to acquire
a Bluetooth hands-free system or a car kit. This will be good news for Bluetooth
earpiece vendors. You don't need to look like a dork with an earpiece,
anyway. Companies like Anycom with the HCC-210 supply
car visor mounted units. j
Some people are calling for a total ban on talking
over a mobile while driving including the UK's Royal
Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). A spokesperson for the society claimed, "It is wrong
for anyone to suggest that using a hands-free phone
while driving is safe." So any police driver who uses the radio while
travelling is unsafe then? There's no difference and
they've been doing it quite safely for years. A severe case of double-think, however, is provided
by Inspector Russell Clark, head of West Yorkshire
Police's Roads Policing unit. He says, "Whilst it is a specific offence to use a
hand held mobile phone, a driver may not be in proper
control of their vehicle whilst using a hands free kit
and I would encourage drivers to turn off their phone."
Ahead of
celebrating the fact it's up for a major innovation award from Electronic Design News, capacitor specialist CAP-XX has posted proof of its mobile Flash capabilities on its web site.
The page shows three girls who were photographed at night using three different cameraphones. The first picture was taken with a regular Nokia N73 boasting a standard LED flash unit. The second pic was taken with a Sony Ericsson K800 fitted with a Xenon flash unit.
The third picture was taken with a Nokia N73 modified to accept CAP-XX's Briteflash offering, which features four supercapacitor powered LEDs. The difference is extremely obvious. On this showing BriteFlash wins hands down.
CAP-XX has also gained a strong endorsement from its supplier, Danny Yu, a VP with Philips Lumileds, who claims, "BriteFlash maximises performance from our Luxeon Flash LEDs so that cellphone users get a superior image quality."
Intriguingly CAP-XX says it is readying another 'Brite' power architecture, this time one to improve audio quality and power/volume in music phones.
With MP3 ready handsets forming the next wave of trendy mobile phones, CAP-XX should find plenty of takers for that.
According to a new report from Juniper Research, it's going
to be dual mode mobile handsets which will
dominate the VoIP over Wi-Fi market. Handsets which support both cellular and VoIP/internet
telephony over Wi-Fi are expected to create
revenues of over $82 billion by 2012 with the
lead taken by North America, followed by EMEA
and then Asia Pacific. The biggest losers will be those supplying
single mode VoIP handsets – such as dedicated
Skype phones. "Most single mode VoIP over Wi-Fi
handset manufactures are actively either
designing or planning to ship dual mode phones,"
claimed Basharat Hamid Ashai, the report's
author. The use of wireless mesh technologies for
providing VoIP is another key trend highlighted
in the report. These are currently in their
infancy and are being used primarily for data
applications but will eventually support voice
too. After dual mode handsets, the next biggest
market for VoIP over Wi-Fi will include
Enterprise WLAN switches – for VoIP over Wi-Fi
in the office. By 2012 single mode handsets will
only generate revenues of $1.5 billion. The report is entitled ‘Wireless VoIP
Handsets & Equipment: Current Markets (2005-6) &
Forecasts (2007-12)’.
Mobile Porn is not the sort of service you'd like your name linked to
while the company's name is in the spotlight. But that's exactly what's
happened to Monstermob with Moistmob. The 'news' behind the launch of
this new WAP site is that it will be 'hosted' by Tera Patrick. She's
described as the "first erotic supermodel to host a mobile portal. Well
the job of putting together the site was farmed out to well-known adult
content supplier - to Cherrysauce. The company's client appears to be an
outfit called Burst Mobile which has a number of adult portals including
- Mobshack, Moistmob and Knobmob. However, the press blurb accidentally
admits that Moistmob was "created for Burst Mobile (part of MonsterMob)."
Oh and Burst Mobile is based in Leeds and uses Bango to handle payments.
When Mobile Insight accessed the site via 3, it was properly
protected from minors and required proof of age via a credit card or a
phone call. The URL for your WAP phone is
http://wap.moistmob.tv.
It's not too much of a disaster really because what's on offer via
Moistmob is very light blue. Wonder if Hans Snook knew about this before
he left Monstermob?
EMI
has decided to licence the lyrics from its extensive back catalogue as part of a new mobile phone game.
The game has been created by Hollywood Gaming and given the totally uninspiring name, Lyric EMI, but will be distributed to mobile operators by Player X.
The game works a bit like 'hangman' where players have to guess who sang a particular lyric. The list of artists whose lyrics will appear in the game should appeal to old groovers since it includes Queen, Sting, the Rolling Stones plus numerous Motown bands.
"Lyrics are a powerful and emotive art form often evoking memories from the key moments in life," said Jonathan Channon, a senior vp with EMI Music Publishing.
Sadly, lines like – I am the Walrus– won't ger a hearing since EMI doesn't have the rights to the Beatles' songs.
Given that EMI stores are struggling to sell CDs, any new outlet for its stuff is a blessing. The games should start appearing in Q2 2007
An out-of-date link on its Web site led to O2 sending out hundreds of free handsets, according to a report in
Mobile magazine.
The glitch mean that it was possible to add a handset for nothing to an order for a SIM-only tariff on the company's web site. Handsets involved included the Samsung E900s and X830s plus the Motorola W220s.
Details of how to obtain the handsets for free spread by email and surfers took advantage of the error for around seven days before O2 installed a fix.
An O2 spokesman told Mobile that, "A few hundred phones had already been dispatched before the fix was in place, but all other pending orders were stopped and as no payment had been made, they were not fulfilled."
A designer mobile phone that's intended to be mass market. An odd idea - but that's the plan with this Prada Phone by LG.
The KE850 – to use the proper model designation – is about looks, looks and looks. Significantly, it also boasts a touch sensitive screen.
So it'll beat Apple's iPhone to the post since it's available in the UK from 25th March 2007. This isn't a smartphone, however, it's a regular handset which just so happens to have a touch driven user interface.
The best demo of the handset's graphics capabilities came courtesy of the optional 'fish' idle screen. Touch the screen and the goldfish that swims around starts to head in the indicated direction. Pointless but fun.
Good points are its supplied 256 MB microSD card and a two megapixel Carl Zeiss
built-in camera with LED Flash. Bad points are that with the sample Mobile
Insight was shown, the memory card could only be swapped via a battery removal.
j Which is strange because the specs say it has an "external memory slot".
The other downside to this particular handset is that it is only 2.75G [EDGE plus GPRS] not a full 3G phone. We're talking about the GSM version here, of course. For the money it really should be 3G compatible.
Especially since it supports email. The catch is that the Prada Phone offers an 'onscreen' rather than physical keypad. Which is OK for text but there's no 'soft' QWERTY keyboard for creating emails.
Luckily the KE850 supports Bluetooth so LG will be supplying a special Prada Bluetooth headset to go with the phone. As standard the handset comes with hands-free headphones so you can listen to music, etc. The snag is that the headphones connect via the mini-USB port not a standard jackplug.
Still, the Prada phone makes a perfectly acceptable MP3 player as well as a video player. Touch the screen and you can watch movies in landscape rather than portrait mode. So it's good enough to take on a video iPOD.
The whole black and white Prada look works very well and this handset really does look the business. It's the natural successor to the Motorola Razr, so when you pluck your mobile phone out of your pocket or pocketbook, you look the part.
It's a real shame that this version isn't 3G compatible otherwise Mobile
Insight would have very definitely lusted after one.
Nokia has recently announced a joint trail with
Elisa, the Finnish network. The trial will gauge reaction to Nokia's next generation N-gage dedicated games platform which
supports online gaming. Nokia has even created a specific futuristic site for
the new phones although the company refuses to comment on exactly which devices will be involved in the trial.
http://futurewatch.n-gage.com
In Site of the Week (by Tony Dennis)
This week
Moistmob
The big news behind the launch of this
new WAP site, Moistmob, is that it will be 'hosted' by Tera Patrick. She's
described as the "first erotic supermodel to host a mobile portal." It's not
very clear exactly what tasks Tera has to carry out in order to 'host' the site
but at least her picture is up the top of the site. What's on offer via Moistmob
is very light blue and aimed at heterosexuals. Mobile Insight suspects
that another sister site called Knobmob will cater for homosexuals when it's
launched.
The site is run by Burst Mobile which is based in Leeds and uses Bango to handle
payments. When Mobile Insight accessed the site via 3, it was properly
protected from minors and required proof of age via a credit card or a phone
call.
