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Monday, July 8, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 8th July 2013

Not all good news...

Mark Bridge writes:

The UK is beginning its week with news of a long-awaited sporting victory for Andy Murray. The telecoms world had its own much-anticipated good news last week, when European roaming rates fell again. And regardless of Neelie Kroes’ plans to abolish roaming rates completely, there’ll definitely be another roaming cut in 2014.

Mind you, not all the headlines have been that positive. HTC’s preliminary results showed an improvement from the previous quarter, although the company is still very much battling from the baseline.

Even more unexpectedly, Samsung’s share price dropped after its interim quarterly results suggested that profits have hit a new record level. Apparently it wasn’t enough of a record to please some people.

There was also bad news for insurance intermediary Policy Administration Services, which was fined £2.8 million for the way it had handled Phones 4u mobile phone insurance complaints, and also for anyone who visits third-party application stores from their Android phone. Mobile security startup Bluebox Security has discovered an Android issue that makes 99% of all Android-based devices vulnerable to attack from apparently-legitimate apps. They’ll be revealing more details in a few weeks’ time, which is just about long enough to sell your current handset and buy a Firefox OS smartphone.

On the positive side of the coin, EE launched its double-speed 4G service and introduced a 'pay as you go' 4G tariff, Three UK revealed a ‘back to basics’ pay as you go offer and Vodafone teamed up with Sainsbury’s to create a mobile phone service for the supermarket.

In addition, Nokia agreed to take over Nokia Siemens Networks, proving it’s not as strapped for cash as many naysayers had suggested. Another hard-won victory, you could say.

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

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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