Verizon launches NFL application (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A free news and information application, NFL Mobile, has been launched by Verizon Wireless, ahead of 75th National Football League Draft scheduled to kick off on April 22. The application is optimized for selected smartphones and multimedia devices including the Motorola Droid, BlackBerry Storm and Storm2, HTC Droid Eris and Samsung Rogue.
In-depth profiles of current NFL players and draft prospects, team updates, mock drafts, expert analysis and related content are some of the unique features of the applications apart from NFL Network content, highlighted by live coverage of the 2010 NFL Draft.
New features will be added by Verizon Wireless in the days ahead training camp updates and preseason tilts with the beginning of the regular season. NFL RedZone, a NFL Network spinoff channel airing airs live or near-live look-ins featuring every key play and touchdown from the Sunday afternoon slate will also be featured in the new application.
LUXE City Guides launches mobile app
LUXE City Guides, the stylist pocket travel guides is all set to release its Mobile edition for iPhone and Blackberry along with handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and HTC.
Priced at £5.99, the app comes with a year of free updates sent directly to the phone, plus a discount of 50% on the second year’s subscription. The app will cover 10 destinations initially including New York, Hong Kong, Paris, London, Shanghai, Singapore, Rome, Bali, Sydney, and Bangkok – with 20 more international destinations coming soon.
SIMagine Contestants enter into finals
SIMagine, the worldwide developers contest for SIM-based mobile applications has entered into its final phase. The winners of the contest will be announced by organizers including SIMalliance, partners Team Cote d Azur, Samsung and Oracle/Sun and the sponsors including Orange, Telefonica and Telecom Italia on April 20 in Rome.
At present the show has ten nominees out of which six teams will be given prize money of €150,000 each. The money will be given on the basis of two categories including ‘Mobile Telecom Applications’, for applications developed to run on the (U) SIM card and ‘Start-up Projects’ for a business project or established start-up company leveraging the potential of the SIM cad.
Google Android’s market share rises in the USA
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 5.2% increase in the share of the smartphone market has been witnessed by Google Android in the three months ended in February to nine percent while the share of Apple’s iPhone remained relatively flat. The findings were revealed in a research conducted by a research company.
The research also revealed that if the trends continue Google could catch-up to the iPhone by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Research in Motion, the makers of Blackberry reined the smartphone market with a dominating 42.1 percent share. The list of the other top handset makers in the USA include- Motorola with 22.3 percent share, LG with 21.7% share, Samsung with 21.4 percent share, Nokia with 8.7 percent share and RIM with 8.2 percent.
The top three handsets are Android based. Android and RIM have encountered the maximum growth in the past three months growing 1.3 percent and 5.2 percent respectively. Apple lost 0.1 percent while Microsoft lost a whopping 4 percent points.
AT&T music apps to launch soon (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: AT&T Music, a new mobile broadband application integrating song and album downloads, streaming radio; song match has been announced to be launched by telecom operator, AT&T. The apps also include lyric search and an enhanced media player.
40 commercial-free, genre-specific radio stations alongside customizable personal stations are included in the apps besides providing the subscribers with the facility to preview and purchase music directly from their handsets. They can also create and manage playlists, search for tracks according to lyrics and access artist bios.
The cost of the AT&T Music will be $6.99 per month to subscribers on unlimited data plans and it will be launched on the LG Xenon, Samsung Solstice and Samsung Impression. The initial content partners of AT&T include Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music and indie music distributor, with additional deals slated to follow.
AT&T launches three new services and devices (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A trio of new services has been launched by AT&T bringing smart-phone like features to low-cost phones. Address books from a personal e-mail account to their phone can now be easily synced by the users and they can send photos to the cloud on devices that cost between $20 and $40.
The aim behind the launch of the new services is to train consumers to spend more on monthly data plans and to become more dependent on using their phone for more than calling. The three exclusive services include- AT&T Address Book, Next Generation Messaging and AT&T Mobile Share.
AT&T has also announced four new devices in the category of devices quick messaging,†which is their most popular and fastest category of devices. Samsung Strive, Samsung Sunburst and Pantech Link and Pantach Pursuit are the three new devices. Samsung Strive which is arriving on March 21 will be the first phone with AT&T’s new services.
Over a Billion Smartphones by 2015! Smartphones to overtake PC market by 2012.
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.
Rogers Samsung Galaxy Spica unveiled, Shipping with Android 1.5
The Rogers Samsung Galaxy ‘Spica’ has been officially launched with the pricing starting at $79.99, on a three year contract. The device is planned to ship with Android but it comes with a stock Android 1.5 experience.
The full pricing details of the phone are as follows: for a three year contract the phone will be priced at $79.99, for 2-year at $349.99 and for 1-year or monthly at $3999.99.
The Rogers Samsung Galaxy will feature Android 1.5 (blarg), 3.2MP camera with video, WiFi, 800MHz processor, 3.5mm headset jack, A-GPS, 3.2” touchscreen display and microSD expansion to 32GB. The box will also contain the battery with a talk time of up to 7 hours, travel changer, stereo headset, data cable and 2GB microSD card.
Samsung gravity to come to Fido on March 16
The Samsung Gravity is expected to come to Fido on March 16 this year. Priced at a measly $25 on a 2-year contract, the official date of the launch has not been disclosed as yet. However the off-contract price tag can vary later. As Rogers originally launched the Gravity on their main network just over a year ago, the move to Fido would be sensible for it.
Most of the time big daddy Rogers will pass select devices down to his dog ‘Fido’ to make an end-of-life run at a discounted price. The few prominent features of the phone include 1.3mp camera with Bluetooth, Bluetooth, QWERTY keyboard and build-in MP3 player.
Rogers Navigator for iPhone to hit the market soon.
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.
