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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Last week at The Fonecast: 20th February 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So said Sir Arthur C Clarke.

Last week’s magic was supplied by imaging company Scalado, which announced a new product called ‘Remove’. The clue’s in the name: it can automatically remove unwanted people from photos taken on a mobile phone. Expect to see it on a handset near you before too long.

Also hitting the headlines – but with slightly less magic – was Barclays, which launched what it described as Europe’s first person-to-person service for sending and receiving money using mobile phone numbers. The service is called Barclays Pingit and will be available to all UK mobile users by early March.

From magic to predicting the future. Who’d have expected a humble search engine to buy a multi-national mobile phone company?  Today Google is edging into the driving seat as its acquisition of Motorola Mobility clears two of the biggest regulatory hurdles. Meanwhile Sony has acquired Ericsson’s half of the Sony Ericsson partnership, now being renamed to Sony Mobile Communications. And Vodafone is thinking about a takeover of Cable & Wireless Worldwide. Only thinking at the moment, mind you.

Ofcom cleared a legal hurdle as well last week. Its plans to cut Mobile Termination Rates were given the go-ahead by the Competition Appeal Tribunal, despite complaints from various network operators. The new plans will be even faster-acting than the original proposal. Will consumers see their mobile bills drop overall?  It would be nice to think so.

Talking of legal challenges – fancy that – Apple won a patent-related court case against Motorola Mobility in Germany. Apparently a number of Motorola smartphones infringe the ‘slide-to-unlock’ touchscreen patent owned by Apple. You know, that magical feature you find on most Android handsets. There may be trouble ahead...

Start your week with a reminder of the latest mobile headlines. Simply register at TheFonecast.com by clicking the link at the top right-hand corner of our home page and we’ll send you this weekly news summary by email.

The Fonecast is sponsored by 51Degrees.mobi. You’ll find more about advertising and sponsorship opportunities on the About us section of our website.

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Opinion Articles

How long can Apple remain torn between two lovers?

Mark Bridge writes:

“Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool, loving both of you is breaking all the rules”.

Mary McGregor sang those words in 1976 – and Apple would do well to bear them in mind today. Why?  Well, Rick Astley is to blame for it all.

Oh, alright, Rick’s not personally involved. It’s worm-writer ikee, along with the people who’ve followed him in creating security threats for the Apple iPhone. But why am I invoking the lyrics of Mary McGregor?  It’s because Apple has two loves... and it may be struggling to choose between them.

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Everyone’s selling Android phones… but who’s selling Android?

Mark Bridge writes:

Samsung. Huawei. Acer. HTC. Motorola. LG. Toshiba. Sony Ericsson. INQ. Dell. They’re all after a slice of the Android cake. (The Android cake is an éclair at the moment. Not particularly good for slicing. But I digress).

And my, what advertisements we’ve seen. Most recently Motorola has been knocking the iPhone while HTC has been playing with marker pens.

But those ad campaigns are mainly about manufacturers and phones. As you’d expect, really. Not about Android.

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1 paisa for 1 second

James Rosewell writes:

One paisa is equivalent to 1/100 of an Indian rupee. In American dollars, a paisa is worth 0.00022 cents. For the British reading this, that’s 0.00013 pence.

Why is this important?

A company in India called MTS have launched a pay as you go SIM card that allows you to make on-network calls for ½ paisa per second...

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Two mobile operating systems to rule them all

Mark Bridge writes:

Cain and Abel. Price and Andre. Judge Dredd and Rico. History is full of pairings that didn’t work out. Two forces that started off together but ended up trying to destroy each other. And so it could be with mobile phone operating systems.

This week it’s been reported that Nokia will be dropping Symbian from its N-series devices by 2012, favouring Maemo instead.

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Who ya gonna call when the phones go dead?

Mark Bridge writes:

This week there’s a government exercise taking place in London. A number of civil servants and private sector employees are simulating the failure of the UK’s fixed-line telephone network. Called “White Noise”, it imagines a scenario where telephone exchanges are destroyed by a giant subterranean monster that pulls really hard on all those underground cables.

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