NTT DoCoMo to sell Xperia arc from March 24 (Japan)
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo is all set to begin the sales of Xperia arc SO-01C smartphone nationwide from 24th March.
The arc is powered by Android 2.3 and supports download speeds of 14 Mbps. It is a touch screen mobile featuring Wi-Fi connectivity, FM Radio, GPS, Camera, Email, Instant messaging, 3.5 mm audio jack, Google Maps and Media Player.
French mobile web users increased to 15.5 mn in 2010
A new research report has revealed that France had 15.5 million mobile internet users, defined as people who connected at least once a month, in 2010, 3.3 million more than a year earlier.
Half of the users are using “advanced services” (MMS, radio, video/TV, e-mail, instant messaging, video telephony) and nearly half have downloaded an app. The number of fixed internet users rose by 10% in one year to 38.3 million in December 2010, with some 24 million connecting daily, or 3.2 million more than in December 2009.
According to the report, every hour between 9:00 and 21:00, an average of 5.4 million people are online in France in 2010, versus 4.6 million in 2009. Social media have created a permanent connection to the internet, with over three quarters of internet users having consulted a blog or social network in December (32.1 million people) and 11.7 million people did so daily.
Internet users are increasing the amount of time they spend on such sites, rising to 5 hours 30 minutes, on average, in 2010 from 4 hours 10 minutes in 2009. Consumers are using the internet to seek others’ advice before buying products, with two-thirds of internet users sharing their opinions on products and services they buy by commenting on e-commerce sites, blogs, forums or social networks. There were 27.7 million online purchasers in 2010, 3.3 million more than a year earlier.
Online video is gaining more and more viewers, with video portals hosting professional and amateur productions attracting 24.5 percent unique visitors last year, nearly 60 percent of all internet users. In the mobile sphere, one in ten mobile phone owners watched video or TV content in the preceding month. Fixed internet podcast downloads were up by 26.5 percent year-on-year to over 14 million in December.
Cisco completes mobile network for RCom’s 3G deployment (India)
Networking solutions provider, Cisco has completed mobile network for Reliance Communications’ 3G deployment in India. With this the company’s customers will be able to experience mobile services such as high-quality video telephony and high-speed mobile data.
According to Cisco, it has completed the mobile network for RCom that will cover 100,000 square km – the largest 3G deployment in India.
It added that with the new network, the customers of Reliance will be able to experience mobile services such as high-quality video telephony and high-speed mobile data, along with enhanced music downloads, instant messaging and online gaming.
Skype to reimburse paying customers after service outage
Skype has announced that it would be reimbursing its paying customers for the inconvenience caused by massive service outage.
According to CEO Tony Bates, Pre-paid and pay-as-you-go customers will receive a voucher via e-mail for 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world, and subscribers will be credited with one week’s subscription service to be applied from the next renewal date.
He added that audio, video and instant messaging are running normally, and the site is back to 90% of its normal user volume. Traffic peaked at about 20 million users Thursday. Offline instant messaging and group video calling are still unavailable.
Users finding new innovative use of WWW in the Emerging Markets
Recently a report came in to being, according to which, customers in the world’s biggest emerging markets are budding extensively different practices and likings in their use of the internet, posturing challenges to multinationals’ marketing policies.
China’s internet users which are more than 400 million, the world’s largest online population works on web generally for instant messaging and online music, videos and games which is far different from other parts of the world. Whereas, users in Russia and Brazil are quite mature as they focuses on search engines and for mailing.
According to David Michael, managing director at BCG in Beijing, Habits vary widely between users in China, India, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia. One fault is to assume that users in these markets are not online, that they’re behind, and another is to assume that if they’re online, one can just transfer the existing online marketing strategy to those countries. About half of all internet connections in India are dial-up slow and expensive, therefore if you go online there, you log on, check mail, and log off again, whereas in China you might be online all day.
The varied content on offer in India’s traditional media makes online entertainment less attractive than in China, where consumers can find content online which they would not find in the state-owned traditional media.
Games on USSD lunched on RComm GSM handsets (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Reliance user can now play games in their GSM handsets from high-end to the low-end ones, on the phone’s USSD platform. Reliance communication launched the service with the most popular games Tic Tac Toe also commonly known as Noughts and Crosses.
The game is known to be educational yet fun tool for teaching concepts of strategy. Player wins the game if he is successful in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row.
All GSM phones are capable of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and associated with instant messaging type phone services.
According to Reliance Communications, Head (VAS), Krishna Durba, the product is designed keeping in mind the evolving market dynamics.
