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ExclusiveLast week at The Fonecast: 1st July 2013

Mark Bridge writes:

I don’t know about you but I’m delighted to see Sony Mobile getting plenty of coverage for its new smart watch and giant smartphone. The company’s impressive presence at Mobile World Congress 2013 showed plenty of promise... and I’d say it’s now delivering.

ExclusiveLast week at The Fonecast: 24th June 2013

Mark Bridge writes:

Another week, another couple of product announcements from Samsung. There appears to be no stopping them, despite a recent drop in the company’s share price.

This time it’s a couple of tablets – one of which runs both Android and Windows 8 – and a 20 megapixel camera that’s got a 4G-enabled Android device built in.

ExclusiveLast week at The Fonecast: 17th June 2013

Mark Bridge writes:

The telecommunications industry was making plenty of headlines last week – but much of it wasn’t particularly upbeat.

The debate about privacy and security continued in the wake of allegations about US agents intercepting internet traffic. Meanwhile, Nokia prepared to make its last Symbian smartphones and Tradedoubler warned that mobile devices were having a negative effect on high-street consumer loyalty.

ExclusiveHow to shield from internet snooping

George Putic of voanews.com writes:

When news broke about U.S. government agencies collecting metadata about its citizens’ Internet and phone communications, many were surprised by its scope. The surveillance covered a vast number of Internet messages and phone calls. The government did not deny the action but pointed out that the collected data contained, not the substance of the communication, but the so-called metadata.

ExclusiveGiving it all away

Mark Bridge writes:

There’s been a lot of talk recently about PRISM, which may allow the US National Security Agency - and anyone they choose - to access some of our personal online information if it passes through the USA. It’s unclear exactly what (if anything) is being shared with whom… and given the nature of national security, we may never know.

However, alongside the possibility of governments seeing information we thought was secure, it’s also worth pointing out that we choose to share plenty of online information ourselves.

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Last week at The Fonecast: 27th January 2014

Mark

Expecting the unexpected

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Mark Bridge writes:

Great news for mobile phone users. Ofcom’s new rules preventing unexpected mid-contract price rises came into force last week, which means UK consumers can no longer be surprised by their subscription charge increasing while they’re still locked into a minimum-term deal.

However, it didn’t rule out all price increases, as O2 chose to demonstrate. Its contracts include a clause that says monthly charges will keep track with inflation – and that’s exactly what they’re going to do. Hmmm. Perhaps not such a straightforward consumer victory after all.

What else has been happening with UK mobile networks?

Well, charity-friendly MVNO The People’s Operator has appointed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales as a board member and co-chair of the company. Three UK has been told off for describing its network as 3.9G. And the GSMA has warned that plans to increase annual licence fees for the 900MHz and 1800MHz spectrum bands could adversely affect investment in 4G services.

Talking of 4G, a new survey showed that a tiny proportion of customers are using an enormous amount of data. Figures from JDSU revealed that 0.1% of the world’s 4G users consumed more than half of all LTE downlink data in 2013, making them 10 times more data-hungry than the equivalent 3G customers.

While on the subject of surveys, we learned that phablet manufacturing, spending on mobile advertising and the adoption of M2M retail devices are all increasing. Hooray for mobile.

Finally, to money... in a variety of forms. Qualcomm has bought around 2,400 patents from HP, including some from its fondly-remembered Palm business. T-Mobile USA has launched a new financial service that combines an app with a prepaid Visa card. BlackBerry is selling most of its property in its home country of Canada, leasing back essential offices to ensure it still has somewhere to work.

And Samsung has partnered with Italian coffee company illycaffè in a deal that’ll see both company’s products appearing in their retail flagship stores – and illycaffè coffee being served at Samsung events. I reckon this’ll make the Samsung stand at Mobile World Congress more attractive than ever.

On Monday mornings we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in an email newsletter that’s very much like this article. To receive it, simply register your email address at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page.

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