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Monday, December 3, 2012

Last week at The Fonecast: 3rd December 2012

Innovation, legislation and anticipation

Mark Bridge writes:

As the end of the year approaches, so the volume of ‘real news’ tends to reduce as it’s replaced by annual reviews and seasonal surveys. We’ll be joining in with our predictions for 2013 in a few weeks’ time... but first, here’s a look back at the biggest stories from the past seven days.

Nokia started the week by launching the Nokia Asha 205; a featurephone with a QWERTY keyboard and a dedicated Facebook button. It’s not the first ‘Facebook phone’ – I’d say 2008’s INQ1 took credit for that – but the presence of a physical Facebook key marks it out from the competition.

Musician, entrepreneur and technology lover will.i.am also had a product launch this week. The i.am+ foto.sosho (think ‘photo social’) fits on an iPhone 4 or 4S and offers a choice of different lenses as well as photo editing and sharing. Apparently the forthcoming iPhone 5 version will replace the camera sensor entirely.

In Spain, the country’s three main mobile network operators launched cross-network Rich Communication Services through the GSMA’s joyn brand, while Chevrolet in the USA planned to let Apple’s Siri voice-control technology link with its in-car entertainment system.

And dear old RIM maintained its “please wait for BlackBerry 10” campaign by releasing a new prototype device for application developers. Mind you, it also lost a patent ruling that could see Nokia blocking the sale of BlackBerry handsets in the UK, the USA and Canada. I’m expecting a licensing agreement before too long.

In addition, there was bad news for two men who’d run a UK marketing company called Tetrus Telecoms. Sending spam SMS messages resulted in them being fined a total of £440,000 by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.

Finally to some of those end-of-year stories I mentioned. Business advisory firm Deloitte LLP has calculated that around £300 million of Christmas spending in the UK will be bought on smartphones, with a further £3.2 billion ‘influenced by’ smartphone use. Mobile search specialist Mobile Commerce has analysed the year’s top mobile search terms (Facebook, Google, YouTube) and the music tagging magicians at Shazam have used their technology to predict next year’s hits. Curiously, no-one from X Factor is on the list.

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Opinion Articles

And our survey said...

Mark Bridge writes:

The coolest person in the country admires the French president's wife and lives in East London. Oh, and they use a BlackBerry by day but an iPhone by night. That's what recent surveys say. Nonsense, isn’t it?

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The mobile phone tries to grow up

Mark Bridge writes:

The end of civilisation. The dawn of the future. Mobile phones are somewhere in the middle. Once seen as novelties for people with too much money, the mobile phone is now ubiquitous. And with that ubiquity comes an acceptance that they’re just tools. Doesn't it?

Which is why I was surprised to see a news article from Voice, a trade union that wants mobile phones banned from nurseries because of concern about inappropriate photographs.

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Sounding good to me

Mark Bridge writes:

"Sounding good to me". So sang Charlie Dore, back in the day when radio stations started to realise that quality was as important as quantity. "AM, FM, I feel so ecstatic", opined Cliff Richard, although I’m betting he’d have preferred the lack of hiss and crackle on FM stations.

Yet no-one’s really thought much about the quality of a phone call. Until now.

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The landline phone may be fading... but its number still remains

Mark Bridge writes:

In last weekend’s Sunday Times, Ali Hussain asked "Is this the end for the landline phone?"

He pointed out that the average mobile bill almost halved between 2003 and 2008, while landline bills fell by less than a fifth – which has meant the average mobile bill is now lower than the average landline bill. He went on to list fibre-optic broadband, mobile broadband, mobile calls, VoIP calls and satellite phones as alternatives to using fixed-line phones.

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Mixed verdict on mobile phones as cancer cause

Art Chimes of voanews.com writes:

Nearly two-thirds of the people on Earth now use mobile telephones, according to a study by the International Telecommunications Union. But how safe are those phones? Scientists still aren't sure, but some evidence is starting to suggest there may be danger along with the convenience.

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