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Monday, September 23, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 23rd September 2013

Black days for BlackBerry

Mark Bridge writes:

There are bad weeks... and there are BAD weeks. Blackberry had one of the latter. It all started so well. The company announced a new flagship phablet – the Z30 – and said it would be launching its BBM instant messaging service for iOS and Android handsets at the weekend.

Then came the quarterly results, with an admission that poor Z10 smartphone sales had contributed to a loss of almost $1 billion. Around 40% of jobs worldwide would be cut and the product range was also going to be reduced.

If all that wasn’t enough, an ‘unreleased’ version of the BBM Android app found its way online, causing BlackBerry to temporarily remove the official apps from the Apple and Google app stores. All very messy.

However, even with the delay to BBM, consumers are expected to download over 100 billion mobile apps this year. Figures from technology research company Gartner expect 102 billion applications to be downloaded from mobile app stores this year, up from 64 billion in 2012. App revenue will rise as well, despite less than one in ten of those apps being chargeable.

Also increasing is the number of 4G networks in the UK. Well, kind of. Virgin Media Business has launched a 4G virtual mobile service that’s based on EE’s network. It’s called Business Mobile, which seems pretty straightforward.

And finally, to news of some old technology that just keeps going. No, not your BlackBerry 7230. I’m talking about SMS and cell broadcast. Both are being tested by the UK government as potential methods to deliver emergency messages to mobile phones. People in North Yorkshire, Glasgow and Suffolk have been invited to opt-in for the test. They’ve also been reassured that their local areas haven’t been chosen because of any specific threats. Recommendations are expected to be published next year. Regardless of any technical considerations, I reckon it’s the Orwellian implications that’ll worry most people. After all, what could possibly go wrong when the government starts sending messages directly to your mobile phone?

On Monday mornings we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in a newsletter that’s a lot 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

f u cn rd ths thn wts th prblm?

Iain Graham writes:

Text language. Why do they do it?  What an interesting question!  Normally asked by people who have never ever sent a text, believing it to be the invention of the devil!! "Texters are vandals, doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago" asserted Jhn (sorry) John Humphrys of Radio Four fame writing in the Daily Mail. The new 'text language' has been blamed for many things including...

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Is Google’s new mobile phone distribution model really a big deal for the UK?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Google offers New Model for Consumers to buy a Mobile Phone”. Not my words but those of Vodafone as it announced it was the first operator to bring the new Google phone offer to Europe.

There’s a lot of talk about Google’s online ordering process for its Nexus One smartphone… or ‘superphone’ as the company described it at yesterday’s launch.

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Mobile shopping is worrying... and usually successful

Mark Bridge writes:

I really don’t like to complain. Honestly, I don’t. I’m an optimist. True, I can be a bit of a cynic – but that’s because I like to see things work first time.

So when I saw a headline that said “Shopping via mobile phone causes concerns for consumers”, I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed but not surprised.

And then I looked closer – and I got annoyed. Not annoyed at the companies that make mobile shopping so disappointing. No, annoyed at the organisation that published the report.

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Is mobile technology too young to predict?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Leave them alone, they’re just kids”

My word, Anakin Skywalker was a smart boy. Child prodigy. Wunderkind. Genius, some would say, albeit fictional.

But, without the benefit of hindsight (or the Star Wars box set, as many would call it), very few people would have expected him to marry his babysitter, fall into a volcano, turn to the Dark Side and end up looking like the late Sebastian Shaw.

Which brings me to the mobile phone industry.

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Did 2009 turn out the way we expected?

Mark Bridge writes:

At this time of year it’s something of a tradition – certainly within the mobile industry – to make predictions for the year ahead. It’s a trend we’ve followed with The Fonecast… and we’ve done reasonably well over the last few years.

We’ll be making this year’s predictions for 2010 in our programme on 23rd December. Ahead of that, I’ve been listening to our last show of 2008 to see what we thought 2009 would hold for us.

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