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Monday, March 25, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 25th March 2013

I’m moving on up, you’re moving on out

Mark Bridge writes:

Farewell, ST-Ericsson. It didn’t bode well when CEO Didier Lamouche announced his planned departure a couple of weeks ago – and now both STMicroelectronics and Ericsson have confirmed they’ll be splitting the company between them before closing it down.

Meanwhile, as new CEO Carlo Ferro prepares to take over, there are also succession plans in the air at UK rival ARM. Warren East is off in July, handing over to company president Simon Segars.

Remaining with the subject of newness, Google has announced a new note-taking service called Google Keep. It was described by the company as an online equivalent of ‘sticky notes’ – but there was no mention of it being anything like Evernote.

UK-based mobile ticketing business Masabi announced a new £1.8 million investment from a group of investment firms led by Fontinalis Partners. Incidentally, Fontinalis was co-founded by Bill Ford Jr., the great-grandson of motoring pioneer Henry Ford.

And sticking with a transport theme, Juniper Research forecast that a fifth of all consumer vehicles in North America and Western Europe are expected to have app-capable multimedia systems by 2017.

That’ll just add to the figures revealed last week by mobile network analytics and optimisation specialists Actix. They discovered that only 30% of smartphone data sessions are user initiated; most begin automatically without the user even noticing. As Actix points out, it means that quality of service reports and usage monitoring aren’t necessarily as straightforward as you might think. After all, a dropped connection isn’t all that important if you don’t notice it.

Last week we went to Mobile Monday London, where we talked about mobile start-ups and learned about business funding opportunities. You can listen to the panel discussion on our website or read highlights on the Mobile Monday site

Every Monday morning we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in a newsletter that’s very much like this article. 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

A Sure Signal from Vodafone

Mark Bridge writes:

Today I've been using my mobile phone at home. For many people that’s not an unusual thing to do – but it is for me because, around here, coverage indoors isn’t particularly good. Downstairs it’s previously been non-existent. But this morning everything changed.

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Physician uses cell phones to bring health care to the poor

Natalia Ardanza of voanews.com writes:

In Africa there is another use for mobile phones. Public Health workers in Kenya are now using mobile phones to gather health information from patients in remote areas and upload it to the internet for instant analysis at distant centers. And it is all happening thanks to Dr Joel Selanikio.

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Making dumb touchscreen phones was a smart move

Mark Bridge writes:

I remember a report from last year that said ‘non-smart’ touchscreen handsets – generally those without a popular operating system – would be bad news for mobile operators.

Conventional touchscreen smartphones tended to result in higher-than-average ARPU thanks to their early-adopting tech-loving users, their web-friendly browsers, their email programs, their app-friendly operating systems and their fast 3G connectivity. However, dumber touchscreen devices – those with a manufacturer’s own proprietary OS and perhaps a clumsier browser – could generate 23% less ARPU than smarter phones. So, if touchscreen dumbphones weren’t good for networks… and weren’t really good for consumers either… manufacturers wouldn’t really bother with them. Right?

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"Hello Nexus One" I say...

James Rosewell writes:

Mark’s been encouraging me to write an opinion piece on the Nexus One for the last few days and I’m finally putting fingers to keyboard to share my experiences. It’s taken so long because this phone has so many features. On a positive note I could go into details about the gorgeous screen, the Android Marketplace that will out-sell Apple’s over the next 18 months, the built-in satellite navigation service and the speedy processor that makes everything run smoothly in real time. Or on a less positive note, the touch screen keyboard that sucks (think carefully about this if you’re a heavy texter or emailer, it’s even worse than the original iPhone), the lack of ActiveSync for Calendars and Tasks, no support for WMA music files or the clunky zoom functions on the web browser.

However I’m going to focus on voice dictation. Nexus One is the first phone I’ve used with this feature.

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The Amazon Kindle prepares to fight the Apple iPhone and Tablet

Mark Bridge writes:

Here’s a curious thing. Firstly, Amazon creates the Kindle. It starts selling the Kindle in the USA with a mobile deal that lets users download electronic books and newspapers wherever they are. Then it starts selling the Kindle to us in the UK, although – hang on a moment – it’s not talking about a UK mobile deal. Instead it still seems to be ‘roaming’ from the AT&T network. Next comes the larger-screen Kindle DX – also roaming away when it reaches our shores. And now Amazon is talking about third-party downloadable applications for the Kindle. Yes, a mobile device with downloadable apps. Hold that thought; I’ll be returning to it.

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