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Monday, January 7, 2013

TheFonecast.com newsletter: 7th January 2013

Time to catch up with everything mobile

Mark Bridge writes:

Happy New Year!  It’s been three weeks since our last newsletter and a fortnight since our podcast of mobile predictions for 2013, so there’s plenty to catch up with.

Although we took a bit of a break for Christmas, telecoms regulator Ofcom was especially busy. Not only did it reveal the bidders in the UK’s 4G spectrum auction, it also published its latest mobile phone complaints research – once again, O2 is causing the least trouble – and launched a consultation about protecting consumers from price rises during fixed-term contracts. That’s a particularly touchy subject for Three UK following a recent ASA adjudication.

When it comes to innovation, we heard that the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system was heading to smartphones, Toyota was planning built-in Qi wireless charging for one of its cars and free WiFi was coming to Scottish train journeys.

RIM settled its patent disagreement with Nokia but revealed a drop in quarterly revenue and profit, Google arranged to sell the non-mobile Motorola Home business, Telefónica said it had chosen Nokia Siemens Networks for O2’s 4G rollout in the UK, Kodak sold its digital imaging patent portfolio to a collection of tech giants, US mobile operator Sprint agreed to acquire broadband provider Clearwire and René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, announced his retirement plans.

We learned that SMS and WiFi had both been in demand over the festive period, that over 100 million 4G LTE mobile devices were shipped worldwide last year and that more than a billion new smartphones and tablets had cameras in 2012.

Phew. For a holiday period, things have been pretty busy in the mobile industry. And there’s more to come. The consumer electronics CES show opens in Las Vegas tomorrow… and we’re already preparing for Mobile World Congress in February. The next few weeks will be very busy indeed – but stay tuned to our free podcasts every week and you’ll always keep up-to-date!

Every Monday morning we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in our newsletter. 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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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:

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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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