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Friday, March 11, 2011

This week at The Fonecast: 12th March 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

Sadly we’re ending the week with yet another natural disaster. Barely two weeks after New Zealand’s earthquake comes news of Japan’s biggest quake in living memory.

Still, I’m here to talk about mobile phones, so – after a quick mention of the great work being done by the Red Cross – I’ll get on with it.

What’s new this week? we7 is new. The company – set up with help from Peter Gabriel – has launched an Android app that doesn’t just stream music for free, it also works without an internet connection (thanks to some neat caching technology).

There’s something new from Opera Software as well. It’s opened an application store. There’s a direct link from the company’s Opera Mini mobile browser, so it could do a roaring trade. However, rival app store GetJar – which has previously supplied 30 million copies of Opera’s browser – wasn’t happy with the new app store integration and kicked Opera Mini out.

Three UK has a new tariff – an unlimited data deal for prepay customers – and O2 UK has signed its first smart metering agreement, which will give it around 200,000 new connections.

Time for some research. Smartphone shipments were up 74% last year, according to Berg Insight. Next year, over half of all in-car navigation device sales will be mobile phones, according to IHS iSuppli. And within five years, one in eight mobile customers will use mobile tickets, according to Juniper Research.

Moving on to financial news, and Rovia – best known for the Angry Birds game – has just announced $42 million in funding. It’ll also get investor and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström as a new board member. Meanwhile Finland’s Digia is acquiring the Qt commercial software licensing business from Nokia.

All relatively upbeat… although it’s not been a good week for Vodafone or Microsoft. The former saw protests from the UK Uncut action group appearing on its World of Difference blog, while the latter has delayed the cut-and-paste update for Windows Phone 7.

Finally, if you’ve not yet listened to this week’s podcast, I have three words for you. Iain Graham rapping. Next week, I’m thinking about producing the entire programme as a musical. Perhaps.


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Opinion Articles

Is Android losing its impact for Google?

Mark Bridge writes:

Recent figures released by ABI Research have prompted the market intelligence company to ask whether Google is losing control of the Android ecosystem.

At first glance, Android dominated smartphone shipments for the final quarter of 2013. ABI Research says 77% of the 287 million smartphones shipped in Q4 2013 were running Android.

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It’s time to prepare for the upcoming surge in signaling traffic

Robin Kent writes:

After initially suffering from slow pick up by consumers, 4G has begun to accelerate, and is now well on the way to the forecasted one billion subscribers by 2017. In fact EE, owner of T-Mobile and Orange, recently announced the addition of 493,000 new 4G customers to its existing base of 1.2 million.

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Mobile phone coverage: is this as good as it gets?

Mark Bridge writes:

A new report has highlighted the issue of poor mobile phone coverage in rural Sussex villages. BBC Sussex invited me onto their ‘Sussex Breakfast’ radio show to explain what could be done - and, as usual, I made enough notes for a lecture rather than a three-minute interview.

Here’s what I would have liked to have said if I’d been given a disproportionate amount of time to talk.

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Last week at The Fonecast: 27th January 2014

Expecting the unexpected

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.

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Ofcom changes the rules for mobile phone contracts... and so does O2

Mark Bridge writes:

This week, new Ofcom rules came into force. They’re designed to avoid unexpected price rises during the minimum term of a mobile phone contract. Yes, just because you signed a fixed-term contract doesn’t mean the charges can’t increase. Networks said they needed this option in case of inflation or regulatory changes. Customers felt trapped.

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