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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Last week at The Fonecast: 6th February 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

Facebook’s certainly had its share of privacy concerns – but last week the social network revealed plans to go public in a very different way. It formally announced its intention to launch on the stock market; what is known in the USA as an Initial Public Offering. The IPO is expected to raise around $5 billion, although that’ll just be a fraction of the total (and as yet undisclosed) value of the company.

What the IPO documents tell is us that Facebook currently has 845 million active users per month, with around half of those people accessing the site from their mobile devices. It also made $1 billion in net income during 2011. Big money indeed.

Meanwhile Apple and Motorola were waving multi-million dollar cheques around on Friday, metaphorically if not literally.

In Germany, a court granted Motorola Mobility a permanent injunction involving ‘push’ email on the Apple iCloud service. That’ll affect iPhones and iPads, although Apple is appealing and – whatever happens – it seems likely that some form of work-around could be put in place.

As well as this, Motorola paid a 100 million Euro bond to enforce a German injunction originally won in December against the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4 and 3G-equipped iPads. The products disappeared from Apple’s online store for a few hours before Apple appealed, apparently making a new offer to pay.

That second case involves ‘industry standard’ patents, which are required to be licensed on Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory terms. With the European Commission having just started an investigation into Samsung Electronics and the way it’s applied mobile-related patent rights, I’ll be interested to see what happens next.

If all that’s not confusing enough, spare a thought for mobile networks in India. Those who won auctions for a total of 122 GSM licences in 2008 have had them cancelled by the Supreme Court on grounds that parts of the process were a bit dodgy. Again, the big question is “what happens next?”

What’s definitely happening is the growth in mobile devices; a fact reinforced by recent research. Canalys noted the increase in tablets and the decline in netbooks while IDC talked about smartphones winning over feature phones.

Next, to jobs. Sony has named Kazuo Hirai as its new CEO from April. Kaz, as he’s often known, has been involved with many of the PlayStation’s recent successes. Sir Howard Stringer is stepping down – but only briefly before becoming Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Industry-watchers weren’t particularly surprised with that news – but there were a few raised eyebrows when Apple announced that John Browett, the CEO of Dixons Retail, had been appointed as Apple’s new senior vice president of Retail. John was, of course, played by Darth Vader in the company’s TV ads last year.

Finally, and remaining on the subject of advertising, Everything Everywhere has launched multi-million pound UK ad campaigns for its Orange and T-Mobile brands. Orange will be portrayed as the brand that “goes that extra mile to give customers more” while T-Mobile “offers brilliant value”.

T-Mobile’s value is currently demonstrated by a new tariff called The Full Monty, which includes unlimited calls, texts and internet access. Some have suggested the name is reminiscent of a transport café breakfast or the comedy film about male strippers. In either case, there’s probably too much sausage for everyone’s taste.

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

Smart software for smart products

From cooking pots to cars and aeroplanes, the products of the future will be increasingly intelligent - able to communicate and cooperate with humans, other devices and their environment. EU-funded research is assisting this smart products trend that promises to make everyday life easier, more comfortable and productive.

Anyone who has ever tried to install a new entertainment system in their home, fit a child seat in their car correctly or learn how to use a new hi-tech kitchen appliance knows just how complicated and frustrating some products can be. Paper instruction manuals are often hard to follow and getting two or more devices or components to work together can be a nightmare. But what if the products themselves could tell users and each other what to do?

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Mobile gaming past, present and future: an interview with Sandy Duncan of YoYo Games

Mark Bridge writes:

If you want to understand mobile gaming, from the commercial side of game development to the current trends in game design, Sandy Duncan is a great person to talk to.

He spent over 16 years at Microsoft, initially working with PC manufacturers and latterly setting up the company’s Xbox game console business in Europe. He’s an enthusiastic gamer. And, for the last six years, he’s been CEO of YoYo Games.

I started my conversation with Sandy by asking him why there was so much interest in mobile gaming when PCs and dedicated consoles were always going to be more powerful than smartphones.

Author: The Fonecast
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Last week at The Fonecast: 24th September 2012

Apple loses Google Maps… and quite a few major landmarks

Mark Bridge writes:

Oooh, a new phone. It’s running a powerful new processor, it has a large edge-to-edge toughened glass display and its model name bears the familiar ‘i’ suffix. Hang on a moment. Suffix?  Yes, suffix. This isn’t a new Apple device but Motorola Mobility’s first Intel-powered Android smartphone, the RAZR i.

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Windows Phone - Life after Android and iPhone

Windows Phone - Life after Android and iPhone

3 months using a Nokia Lumia 800

James Rosewell writes:

The last time I used a Microsoft based mobile phone was 2008 in the form of the HTC Hermes. Since then Apple and Android have dominated my mobile life. It was therefore with more than a little trepidation that I switched over to Windows Phone 7.5 in the form of the Lumia 800 in July this year. Since then I’m continually being asked what I think of the phone and the operating system. Here are my experiences and thoughts.

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Article rating: 4.0

Smartphones, mobile apps and social networking in medical education

Mark Bridge writes:

I wasn’t supposed to be at this year’s AMEE 2012 conference in Lyon. AMEE is the Association for Medical Education in Europe, which - as you can probably guess - has very little direct connection with the mobile phone industry. However, my wife was going because she works in medical education. Me?  I fancied a trip to France.

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