Over a Billion Smartphones by 2015! Smartphones to overtake PC market by 2012.

On 03.11.10, In Mobile, Mobile Phones, By Editor

The rise in the demand of Apple’s iPhone,  Google’s Android, Samsung’s Bada and Blackberry’s entry into the prepaid segment are some of the factors stimulating  smartphone sales, thus overtaking the sale of PCs. The sale of smartphones is expected to jump from approx 190 million in 2009 to over 490 million units by 2012 and touch a billion units by 2015.  On the other hand, the PC market will expand to just over 440 million units from the current approx 330 million in the same period.

Smartphones are getting more and more power everyday and with cloud computing, browser based and XMLised content and applications, it is estimated that in 2013, over 60% of the frontline content on the internet like news, email, social networking will be accessed via the mobile first rather than the PC.

This is also being steadily aided by the fact that

- Google’s android platform is taking good shape and is getting wide acceptance from consumers as well as phone manufacturers. The developer community is fast working to create apps for the platform.

- iPhone is improvising and with a huge number of apps and an ecosystem in place, it will flourish further

- Samsung’s Bada is likely to aid this as well

- Internet speeds on the mobile are finally becoming decent!

- More and more publishers are enriching their mobile offerings in a bid to ensure they don’t lose out on the 5th screen.

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Orange & Barclaycard to launch Contactless Mobile Payments

On 03.11.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Contactless mobile payments will be launched by the end of the year by Barclaycard in conjunction with Orange. The news has been confirmed by Head of Innovation Marketing, Sarah Mansfield in a presentation at a mobile marketing event organized by the Institute of Sales Promotion and Mobile Interactive Group.

According to Sarah, at the back end of 2010, the company will have a commercial launch with Orange for mobile payments and the consumers will be able to buy an NFC-enabled phone and make payments with it. The trail for the mobile payments was first done by Barclaycard in 2008.

SMS alert is also offered besides having an iPhone and Android Augmented Reality application. The application enables users to find their nearest retail outlet that accepts contactless payments, or their nearest ATM.
A joint contactless credit card was launched by Orange and Barclaycard, last month enabling users to make payments of £10 and under using contactless technology.

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Vodafone launches app store in India

On 03.10.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: An application store for the Indian market has been launched by Vodafone’s Indian operation, Vodafone Essar. The operator waited for 10,000 downloads before officially announcing it even though the app store has been running since the middle of last month. This is the third major app store launch in India recently and there’s a fourth one on the way.

These apps provide smartphone features for feature phones and the lineup is also not that fancy when compared to the one on the iPhone or Android app stores. Currently, almost 800 apps available are focused on being useable and cheap.

Between 15% and 25% of the apps on the store are currently free of charge while the rest cost between Rs 5 and Rs 30 to download or roughly $10 to $65 or 8 to 50 euro.

Airtel, which is the biggest rival of Vodafone Essar in India, also launched its apps store a few weeks back. Next month, Reliance will be launching a store as well and prices are again expected to be very low.

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China Unicom to re-enable Wi-Fi on iPhones

On 03.09.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With an aim to re-enable the Wi-Fi functionality on its range of iPhone handsets, China Mobile and Apple have joined hands. Initially, Chinese market was devoid of this facility. Some form of compensation is also considered to be offered by the company to existing handset owners in the form of improved 3G tariffs.

Selling of iPhone handset with support for Wi-Fi connectivity by the telco was banned. The decision was taken due to government regulations that favored the home-developed WAPI security standard. However, the rules have been relaxed since then and the use of Wi-Fi is permissible as long as they include support for the WAPI standard as an extra function.

According to Chief Executive Chang Xiaobing, the iPhone in China is priced similarly to iPhones in other markets after calling plan costs are taken into account but people would like to see lower prices and China Unicom will lower iPhone prices if conditions permit. However, any comment as to whether or not the company has any plans at present to lower the price has been denied.

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March Madness to stream to iPhone over 3G

On 03.08.10, In Mobile Phones, By Editor

Cheer up! You will now be able to get you March Mardeness fixed on your iPhone over WiFi and 3G and the good news is that unlike last year’s version, it won’t require a WiFi connection to stream live games. So, say goodbye to the “boss button”.

The $10app will also include push notification of score, radio broadcasts, social media integration, interactive brackets and a host of other statistics. There will be video highlights in the “Lite” version and it will come for free. A Blackberry version is also being expected, though it won’t have video.

According to the SVP and GM of CBS, Rob Gelick, the previous year their company was the first to do a live sporting event with the March Madness app and since then the appetite for video and live video has grown massively for them.

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Rogers Navigator for iPhone to hit the market soon.

On 03.08.10, In Mobile Phones, By Editor

New iPhone navigation app from Canada’s ‘Big Red’ is on its way to hit the markets very soon. After launching the Samsung Galaxy ‘Spica’ powered by android 1.5 and the new Rogers ‘RedBoard’ the Rogers is all set to launch ‘Big Red’.

The navigator for iPhone will be made available by March 26th and it will be priced around $4.99. The prominent features of the set will be voice turn by turn directions, real time traffic alerts, one touch reroute, 2D or 3D maps, business finder, listen to music while navigating, and integration with address books.

The turn-by turn directions is expected to be voiced by Kenny Rogers.

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XS Games announced “Red Star” for iPhone and PSPgo

On 03.08.10, In Mobile Phones, By Editor

The early spring 2010 will witness The Red Star for iPhone and PSPgo, announced XS Games. The mashup of top down shooter and beat ‘em up game play- the Red Star is based upon the graphic novel of the same name by Christian Gossett.

According to the Chief Executive Officer of XS Games, Steve Grossman, the Red Star is a proudly old school combination of classic action games, much in the spirit of Contra and Streets of Rage. He is also of the opinion that PSPgo and iPhone are the perfect platforms for this game in terms of controls, visuals, and price.

The Red Star is all about the dystopian United Republics of the Red Star (URRS), a mystical and technologically advanced alternate reality resembling Soviet Russia. Here an individual can choose to play as one o the graphic novel’s there most important characters. The names of the characters are Maya Antares who is regarded as a powerful sorceress in search of her husband lost in battle, Kyuzo, Maya’s personal bodyguard as well as a powerful fighter and Makita, a quick and agile warrior forced to abandon her life as a world-class athlete when her homeland was invaded.

The iPhone and PSPgp offer fresh visual polish as compared to PlayStation2.

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Netvibes & Orange to bring world’s largest widget collection

On 03.08.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 130 million mobile users all over the world can now receive widgets from one of the leading personalized home page providers, Netvibes. Netvibes has entered into a deal with world’s fifth largest telecom operator, Orange as per which a catalog of some 200,000 widgets will be offerd to Orange’s mobile users throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East across a wide variety of handsets.

“Netvibes Ecosystem”, a name given to Netvibes’ widget collection will be available on the “Orange widgets” service. Orange widget is a feature on 80 percent of Orange’s handsets.  Djinngo mobile, an Orange service that any cellphone user in the world can take advantage of, and soon in the new Orange Application Shop will also be available on Netvibe’s widgets.

Widgets are described by Netvibes as “highly-portable Web applications that can run on a variety of platforms, such as start pages, desktops and mobile devices like the iPhone.” All the currently available widgets developed for Netvibe’s original home page product will be immediately available the Netvibes Ecosystem.

A software developer kit allowing widget developers to ensure that their widgets work properly on mobile devices is also being worked upon by Orange, and this will also help them to easily develop new widgets with mobile in mind.

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Sony developing handsets to compete with Apple

On 03.08.10, In Mobile, By Editor

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A new lineup of handheld products is being developed by Sony Corp to compete with Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The products are scheduled to launch this year. The range of products includes a smart phone capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games.

Sony and Sony Ericsson are working together to develop these handsets. Apple has a wide range of products that connect to its iTunes media platform and Sony’s product aims at having a dig at them. The portable-gaming market which is dominated by Sony has now being invaded by Apple. The nascent e-reader market where one million units have already being sold by Sony is expected to be disrupted by iPad tablet.

Project to develop a portable device is also underway to compete against multifunction products such as Apple’s coming iPad tablet. The product is designed in a way that blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP.

Sony’s online media platform will work with both the new smart phone and the multifunction device. The media platform is due to launch later this month in the U.S. as the company’s answer to Apple’s iTunes.

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By 2011 iPhone will beat Blackberry: Analyst

On 03.07.10, In Mobile Phones, By Editor

Blakberry is the buzz word in North America today. However, witnessing the meteoric rise of the iPhone, it is expected that the phone will nab RIM’s number one market share spot. This conclusion was reached following the clear outpacing of growth Apple has enjoyed with iPhone.

As per the data, the growth of iPhone sat 0.3% in 2007 and 2% in 2009 while RIM went from 1% to 3% in the same period. According to Trefis, by 2011 Apple’s mobile market share will hit 11% and RIM will reach 8%.

It is eventually obvious that Apple has a ludicrously large marketing budget, which will continue to be used to capitalize RIM’s buttoned-down image and win the dead hearts and vacant minds of the masses. However despite all the competition the model has, the latest forecast for RIM shows positivity. it says that Blackberry still has more than a little fight left in her.

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