Entries tagged with “mobile data” from WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS

The explosive growth in wireless data service revenues, mobile applications and smartphone device unit shipments during the past two years is spurring a dramatic shift for the global cell phone industry says Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst with iSuppli.

Global revenue for wireless data services, excluding messaging,  is projected to grow by 26.2 percent to reach  $87.7 billion in 2009. This follows 57.1 percent growth in 2007 and a 60.3 percent expansion in 2008 for total data revenue among the world's wireless carriers. iSuppli is forecasting that total data revenues of carriers worldwide, excluding messaging, will grow to approximately $188 billion by 2013.

In contrast, total revenues for all services offered by the world's wireless carriers will remain roughly flat at approximately $866 billion in 2009.

Mobile applications, such as those on Apple's App Store, are key to stimulating the data service revenue growth.

"Clearly, mobile data revenue is key to the continued health of wireless carriers and the cell phone value chain in the future," Rebello said. "In this battle, ownership of customers and who can monetize data services and applications are up for grabs."

Apple's rejection of Google Voice is a dramatic illustration of this fight for data revenues.
"By introducing applications and services that allow customers to make calls and send text messages without paying the operators, wireless operators have no incentive to invest in network upgrades," Rebello said. "This is the reason why many carriers are pushing out the upgrades of their networks to 2010/2011, compared to 2009/2010 before. With billions of dollars in expected investments, the stakes are huge for the wireless carriers."

Forty-eight percent of Americans would drop their mobile data plan completely if they have to cute expenses, according to Strategy Analytics' Multiplay Market Dynamics service. Only 10% would drop their home broadband subscription.

Strategy Analytics asked respondents this question: Imagine that, due to household budgetary constraints, you have to reduce home entertainment /communications services expenses. How would this affect your spending on broadband Internet, digital television, fixed voice, mobile voice and mobile data?  Second to mobile data cutting was fixed voice, aka landline, followed by mobile voice, digital TV and broadband.

If you wanted to give meaning to these figures it would mean that people believe they couldn't live without broadband Internet but could live without mobile data.  It also could mean that they are more connected at home.

Even IT pros don't protect their data on their mobile phones notes a new CREDANT survey. IT Security professionals report that they are suffering from password fatigue when using their mobile devices, exposing their data to personal and corporate identity theft if thedevices were to fall into the wrong hands.

CREDANT Technologies conducted the "mobile usage survey" of 227 IT professionals with the majority drawn from companies that employ more than 1000 people.

Thirty five percent revealed they just don't get around to using a password on their business phones and smartphones, even though they know they should as they contain sensitive and confidential information.

Surprisingly, IT professionals are only marginally better at using passwords than the general population, as a survey conducted earlier in the year by CREDANT found that 40% of all users don't bother with passwords on their mobile phones.

The sorts of information that IT professionals are storing on their smartphones and mobiles, many of which are totally unprotected with a password, include:

• 80% Business names and addresses.
• 66% Personal names and addresses.
• 23% Business emails.
• 16% Personal emails.
• 12% Bank account details.
• 12% Business diary with details of all their appointments and meetings.
• 7% Personal diary.
• 5% Credit card information.
• 4% photos.
• 1% Passwords and Pin numbers.

Wal-Mart will start selling the HTC Android T-Mobile G1 with Google on Wednesday October 29 in 550 stores for $148.88, less than the $179.99 direct price from T-Mobile with a two year contract.

The T-Mobile G1 phone, formerly known as the HTC Dream, has a lot of iPhone-like features but lacks some enterprise features. It uses the open source Android operating system.  Reviewers liked the peppy web browser which has a slight security flaw that was updated on Friday October 31. The T-Mobile G1 lacks a video recorder and ability to sync contacts with a computers.  Wireless and Mobile News Review of Reviews rates it at 3.5.

The press is calling selling the T-Mobile G1 Google phone a Wal-Mart a controversy

According to a new research report by Berg Insight the number of mobile subscribers downloading navigation routes using their mobile handsets is expected to grow from 16 million users in 2008 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.9 percent to reach 70 million users in 2014.

The growing adoption will be driven mainly by the introduction of GPS-technology in smartphone handsets and bundling of navigation applications with mobile devices or service plans.

Tele Atlas, a global provider of digital maps and dynamic content for navigation and location-based solutions, unveiled Tele Atlas MultiNav the company’s newest digital map platform.

The platform is designed to:allow navigation application developers even greater speed and flexibility for building next generation mapping applications. It offers :

• A smaller data footprint to help decrease time-to-market, enable developers to spend less time in the development process and allow a smaller run-time format for their innovative applications for a competitive advantage.
• Map content that spans across 27.2 million kilometers in more than 70 countries, to the front doors of 1.9 billion people around the world.

Developed with Tele Atlas’ comprehensive and advanced data collection processes, MultiNav is available immediately to offer partners broad, comprehensive worldwide coverage. Developers can leverage the MultiNav platform in concert with Tele Atlas’s suite of digital map content and enhancements products, including millions of points of interest (POIs), Tele Atlas(R) Digital Elevation Models, Tele Atlas(R) 3D Landmarks and Tele Atlas(R) Voice Maps. Tele Atlas plans to incorporate additional innovative functionality and content into the new MultiNav platform, including map data enriched with qualified community content.

Pelago, creators of the mobile social discovery service Whrrl, announced new mobile support for the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve. Available for free to millions of BlackBerry users in the U.S., Whrrl provides a new mobile medium for discovering and sharing local information on people, places, events and experiences.

At the nexus of social networking, local discovery and user-generated content, Whrrl combines mapping and micro-blogging technology into a unique social discovery experience. Whether accessed via the Web or mobile device, Whrrl provides users with an entirely new discovery pathway for finding and sharing local knowledge with friends and communities.

The release of the BlackBerry mobile application coincides with expanded events and calendar features on Whrrl, giving users an unprecedented amount of relevant local information from their mobile device. Whrrl can be directly downloaded to a user’s BlackBerry for free at www.whrrl.com.

The Whrrl experience captures a person’s activities, cataloging an individual history of places visited and events attended through icons pinpointed on Whrrl’s built-in mapping application. User ratings and reviews of these places and events then determine how each is depicted on the Whrrl map, color-coded as either positive, neutral or negative-charged icons.

The Sprint BlackBerry Pearl 8130,  Motorola Q9c, and Motorola i335 will all be available starting November 23, however you can only buy the  Moto Q9c online for now.

The exciting thing about Sprint is that the do have the EV-DO network which is faster for data. The BlackBerry Pearl 8130 sells for $200 with two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate.  There’s a special data plan the Power Vision BlackBerry Pack: for $30 per month added to a voice plan, allowing for unlimited web and data access, unlimited text messaging, support for 10 email accounts, plus Sprint Navigation and Sprint TV, all on the EV-DO network. the Motoroal Q9c is $150 with two-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate and the dust- shock- and vibration-resistant Moto i335  for Nextel is $ 50 with two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate.

Sony Ericsson announced the two latest additions to its Walkman® phone portfolio. The W890 and W380 Walkman® phones are slick new offerings packed with features for music lovers.

With its slim, design,2GB music storage capacity, and 3.2 megapixel camera, the W890 Walkman® phone promises to hit the right notes with music lovers and design connoisseurs.

For the music fan on the move, the W380 Walkman® phone combines a unique clamshell design with all the music users expect from Sony Ericsson’s Walkman® phones. The phone packs in never-seen before features, including Gesture control which allows users to mute calls with a wave of their hands. There is also an external display that comes to life only when you need it; to show the name of a music track or to let you know who is calling.

According to a recent camera phone study completed in Japan by MIPC (The Mobile Imaging and Printing Consortium) over 40% of respondents answered that they have printed out photos taken on their camera phones. Among working women and grandmothers print rates were particularly high, with more than 50% in each group printing photos taken with a camera phone.

More than 50% of respondents reported that they make use of their camera phone function "several times per week". Among female high school students, the number who used the camera function of their mobile phones "every day" was particularly high (20.0%).

Nokia and NAVTEQ today announced that Nokia will acquire NAVTEQ, aChicago-based digitalmapping company that licenses  content to global positioning systems and Web sites.

"With NAVTEQ, Nokia will further strengthen its location based services(LBS) offering and bringtomarket the most innovative, context aware Nokia Internet services with accelerated time to market,"states Nokia's announcement.

GPS is important to mobile handsets The Gartner Group forecasts that GPS handsets will represent around 40% of sales in 2011, up from 13% in 2007.

Nokia has been offering more Internet devices and recently acquired mobile ad company EnPocket.