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Thursday, December 2, 2010

UK leads the world in many aspects of mobile usage, says Ofcom

Research from telecom regulator Ofcom says UK consumers are some of the world’s earliest adopters of new communications technologies.

Ofcom’s fifth International Communications Market report compares services in the UK with 16 other countries: France, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, Poland, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Although Italy has the highest mobile take-up overall, with 95% of the population owning a mobile phone, the UK isn’t far behind with 91% penetration. Italy also has the highest smartphone take-up – 26% – compared with 18% in the UK. However, the UK saw the highest growth in smartphone take-up in the past year with a 70% rise in subscriber numbers between January 2009 and January 2010.

29% of internet users in the UK say they use their mobile to access the internet at home, second only to Japan at 43%. Overall, UK users favour laptops to access the internet at home: 69% of internet users.

Although downloading mobile apps doesn’t vary much across different countries, use of mobile mapping and direction services has grown fastest in the UK (an 86% increase since 2009). 9% of people in the UK now use these services, compared to 5% in France and Germany.

People in the UK also use their mobile phones for social networking more than those in other countries. (24% of UK consumers compared to 13% in Germany). The UK is also the second biggest text messaging nation in Europe after Ireland, with 140 messages per person per month (218 per person per month in Ireland).

However, it's not all good news. The report notes that mobile broadband speeds have increased among the countries surveyed, with maximum theoretical downloads speeds of 100Mbps now available in Sweden - yet consumers in the UK and France only have maximum theoretical download speeds of 7.2Mbps available due to the lack of HSPA+ and LTE services.

[Ofcom pdf document]

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Opinion Articles

The art of accessory sales is changing

Mark Bridge writes:

We're told it's not merely 'sales'. No, it's an art. "The art of selling". And with over 4 million hits on Google, you could easily argue that the art of selling is more popular than painting.

The same goes for the two sub-categories of cross-selling and up-selling. They're arts as well, you know. Mystic and creative disciplines...

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Secure mobile phone calls explained

The security of 3G and GSM mobile phone calls has been questioned recently. Mark Bridge spoke to Dr Simon Bransfield-Garth, Chief Executive of Cellcrypt, at Mobile World Congress to find out how real the problems are. The interview was included in our podcast on 19th February 2010; here's an edited transcript of the interview:

Author: The Fonecast
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‘The App is Dead. Long Live the App’ at Mobile World Congress

James Rosewell writes:

Apps (defined as games, information services, social networking video and web content among other things) dominated MWC10 with debate focused on the provision of radio network capacity to support them, the technologies used to create them and the methods for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to monetise them. Given the fragmentation in technology and the investment needed from MNOs to provide capacity coupled with a lack of reward for MNOs, we would be forgiven for thinking the App as we know it is not long for this world. However new technologies offering broader platform support, plus smart network investment coupled with new business models, mean the App will evolve and come of age ready for 2011.

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Windows Phone 7 Series at Mobile World Congress

Mark Bridge writes:

We queued in the rain outside the Catalonia Barcelona Plaza hotel. We sat on the floor in a basement room. And we watched on TV as Steve Ballmer announced Windows Phone 7 Series.

The life of a reporter is not a glamorous one.

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HTC Smart could start a smartphone price war

Mark Bridge writes:

I’ve previously talked about a report from 2009 which warned how touch-screen phones that weren’t true smartphones were pushing down ARPU. Consumers thought they were buying something that was relatively advanced but were being seduced by form over function.

This week HTC stepped in to the arena with the HTC Smart, described by HTC's Peter Chou as "a more-affordable smartphone". Although it may not fit everyone’s definition of a smartphone, it certainly ticks most of the boxes. It has an open operating system, Qualcomm’s Brew platform, which has over 18,000 available applications and has been installed on over 1200 handset models worldwide.

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