Mark Bridge writes:
Sometimes it seems that everyone and everything is out to get you. Recently, Nokia’s been in that position – but this week it looks as though RIM is taking over as the mobile industry’s whipping-boy.
Despite launching the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in the UK, RIM has suffered a series of setbacks. Dolby is taking legal action against it, the year’s not started well, redundancies are coming and O2 has said it won’t stock the PlayBook because it doesn’t play nice. Or something like that.
Talking of legal action, Nokia and Apple have made up. Hooray. I love happy endings. Terms are confidential but the end result is that Apple is paying Nokia... and not the other way round. Make of that what you will.
Oh, and while we’re talking disappointing figures, results from the Carphone Warehouse show that Best Buy UK is costing it quite a bit. Over £62 million last year, in fact.
A few movements now. Navigon is joining the Garmin family. Sir Julian Horn-Smith has joined the Acer board. Shazam has acquired real-time lyric technology from Tunezee. And LG’s Optimus 3D smartphone is getting ever-closer to the UK.
Finally, if it’s been a bad week for RIM, it’s been a good week for mobile payments. Everything Everywhere, Telefonica UK and Vodafone UK have announced plans to create a standalone m-commerce joint venture that’ll provide a single point of contact for suppliers.
And Pizza Express has launched an iPhone app in conjunction with PayPal, enabling you to pay the bill without even clicking your fingers. Nice... but does this mean I’ll need an m-payment app for every single retailer I visit?
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