Mark Bridge writes:
Easter is often seen as a time for customs and rules – whether it’s giving up sugar for Lent or waiting until Sunday morning to eat your chocolate eggs – and this year the mobile industry seems to have joined in.
UK regulator Ofcom has announced a consultation about its plans to simplify ‘non-geographic’ calls. It wants to ensure that calls to 0800 telephone numbers are free from all mobile phones.
Meanwhile, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute is struggling to get an agreement about a new ‘micro’ SIM card size. ETSI’s Smart Card Platform Technical Committee has delayed its vote in the interest of trying to achieve a broad industry consensus.
And the European Commission has opened two antitrust investigations against Motorola Mobility because it wants to find out if Motorola is playing fair with its ‘standard essential’ patent licensing. It comes as Microsoft is reportedly moving its European logistics operations from Germany to reduce the potential damage from its current patent battle with Motorola Mobility.
However, it wasn’t entirely a downbeat week. Google cheered us all up with confirmation of its head-up display product development – although there was little mention of practicalities – while ARM, Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient created a mobile device security partnership. Samsung got into mobile advertising, Sony Mobile got into football, RIM got into Apple iPhones and O2 got its free WiFi into McDonalds.
We even had an upbeat growth forecast from KPMG, which expects the value of global mobile payment transactions to grow by 97% per year over the next 3 years.
Finally – and returning to a slightly tenuous Easter theme of new beginnings – Sony Mobile Communications continued its transformation with news that President and CEO Bert Nordberg was stepping down. The new man is Kunimasa Suzuki, who’s been with Sony for approaching 30 years.
At this point I feel I ought to end with an egg pun. Well, that’s un oeuf for now.
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