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Monday, April 2, 2012

Last week at The Fonecast: 2nd April 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s always a relief when April Fool’s Day doesn’t fall on a work day, isn’t it?  Still, that didn’t stop the jokes. Even though the mobile industry traditionally tends to head to the pub for a roast dinner and a pint on Sunday, there was many a prank in the morning of April 1st. Our friends at 51Degrees.mobi revealed left-handed device detection, Google prepared to run mobile ads on phones with dials, Phones 4U introduced Gnomes 4U femtocells, Nokia made a Windows Phone device out of ice… and so on.

Back to reality now – and with a bump.

BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion reported quarterly results that weren’t as good as previously hoped. CEO Thorsten Heins talked about a ‘refocus’ on enterprise users, which led a number of journalists to assume the company was about to drop its offering to individual consumers. Not true.

On a positive financial note, UK-based mobile commerce business Monitise plc agreed to acquire US-based mobile banking company Clairmail Inc. The deal values Clairmail at approximately £109 million.

The other big headline-grabber of the week was the European Commission, which moved closer to seeing its new roaming rules becoming law. It wants price caps on data use from this summer, along with the ability to choose a separate contract for mobile use abroad from July 2014. Call me a cynic but I can’t see this running smoothly.

While we’re talking about networks, O2 UK introduced a new tariff called On & On. It offers unlimited calls and text messages, along with a fixed data allowance. O2 isn’t the first network to do this, so it’s beginning to look like a trend.

Meanwhile T-Mobile UK has announced that it’ll be increasing some of its prices from May. Customers on most ‘pay monthly’ contracts will have their basic monthly charge increased by 3.7%. It’s a somewhat gentler announcement than last year’s Orange price rise.

Mind you, network operators need every penny they can get. Juniper Research has calculated that the mobile telecommunications industry lost more than $58 billion last year due to inadequate Fraud Management and Revenue Assurance processes. The figure is the equivalent of over 6% of global industry revenue. And that’s no joke.

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. More details about advertising and sponsorship opportunities are available on the About us section of our website.
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Opinion Articles

Why a mobile TV service is just like a zombie

Mark Bridge writes:

Here in the UK, we’re struggling a bit with mobile TV. Which made me wonder what the problem really was. Well, after a long evening with the finest stilton and the cheapest port, the answer came to me in a dream. A mobile TV service is just like the lurching, drooling nightmare creatures that appear in every zombie film. And once consumers understand zombies, they’ll understand the problems with mobile TV. Let me explain.

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Selling your way out of a recession? Of course you can!

Iain Graham writes:

Everybody these days (apart from a lucky few!) is suffering from a lack of business or reduced sales due to the current 'downturn in the economic climate'. In my opinion, this is the time when sales people should stand up and be counted!

No, I don't mean the hard nosed, foot in the door double-glazing, second-hand car or mobile phone types (no offence!), I mean EVERYONE! Selling is a concept as much as it is a profession.

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Mobile & Contactless Payments

James Rosewell offers his opinion on the current state of mobile and contactless payments.

The banking and mobile industries have big plans for Near Field Communication (NFC) as the mobile payment mechanism of the future. Barclaycard has been leading the way from the credit card sector forming a partnership with Orange, having previously worked with O2, and running a catchy TV advert prompting contactless cards using VISA’s paywave system.

However the reality of NFC payments appears a lot further away. The Point of Sale (POS) technology appears to be badly deployed by some of the first-phase retailers mainly made up of low-value high-volume businesses like coffee shops, fast food outlets and newsagents.

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Insecure Mobile Browsers

James Rosewell writes: I note with interest Barclays mobile on-line banking home page extolling the safety of mobile banking whilst claiming it’s as secure as their non-mobile equivalent. This is on the same page that recommends customers use Opera Mini to access Barclays mobile on-line banking.

Yet following the link to the operamini.com web site and looking at the help section we can read Opera’s answer to the question “Is there any end-to-end security between my handset and — for example — paypal.com or my bank?” and the answer is “No. If you need full end-to-end encryption, you should use a full Web browser such as Opera Mobile.”

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