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Monday, July 16, 2012

Last week at The Fonecast: 16th July 2012

Black days for BlackBerry?

Mark Bridge writes:

BlackBerry and bad news seem inextricably linked at the moment. RIM’s CEO admits he’s “not satisfied” with recent company performance and warns of challenging times ahead... and then the company is hit by a $147 million dollar damages order for patent infringement.

Mind you, Research In Motion wasn’t the only mobile company bringing disappointment into the mainstream news last week. O2 UK suffered over half a day of disruption that left millions of its customers unable to use their phones while Chinese manufacturer ZTE said half-year profits could be down by up to 80% due to postponed domestic deals and currency issues in the Eurozone.

A legal battle between Samsung and Apple in the UK resulted in positives and negatives for both sides. A judge ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab family didn’t infringe Apple’s iPad design (hoorah for Samsung!) because the Samsung tablets were clearly not as cool as the iPad (hoorah for Apple!).

Technology distributors Brightstar and Tech Data were claiming a win-win deal with an announcement that Brightstar Corporation was selling its 50% share of jointly-run Brightstar Europe to Tech Data. Tech Data will then have its own European distributor, while Brightstar will continue operations in Europe under a wholly-owned subsidiary.

While we’re talking about partnerships, Vodafone Ireland and Three Ireland have agreed to set up a 50/50 joint venture company to share their physical network and site infrastructure across the country. Back in the UK, Telefonica has extended its partnership with G4S Utility Services and will now be providing up to 1.4 million O2 SIM cards for ‘smart’ gas & electricity meters. And Telefonica was also in on the global machine-to-machine alliance that’s designed to help network operators with cross-border M2M deals.

Finally, in a world where – as Iain Graham often points out – every phone is becoming a smartphone, it’s clear that accessories are becoming more sophisticated as well. A new report from Juniper Research says ‘smart accessories’ will become a major new market for manufacturers over the next five years, with this year’s total of 10 million task-specific smart devices expected to be dwarfed by the 2017 total of over 100 million units.

Mind you, with ‘smart paper’ and ‘smart covers’ already on the market, perhaps that’s not really so surprising.

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

Everything Everywhere, Orange and T-Mobile: how much longer for three brands?

Mark Bridge writes:

This story starts with Mercury One2One and Orange. They were acquired by Deutsche Telekom (which changed One2One’s name to T-Mobile) and France Telecom. Next, Everything Everywhere was created to run the T-Mobile and Orange brands in the UK.

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Multiplayer Computer Games are Big Business for Small Devices

Greg Flakus of voanews.com writes:

Millions of people are addicted to playing games on mobile devices, with rivals and teammates spread around the world. A company in Austin, Texas has developed such a game, known as a mobile multiplayer online game, for the Apple iPhone and iPad, basing it on a pen-and-paper game that was popular in the 1970s called Traveller.

Author: The Fonecast
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Last week at The Fonecast: 30th April 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

Last week mobile phones and health were back in the headlines together, rather like love & marriage or salt and vinegar. The news is pretty much as we’ve heard before; this time it’s the UK Health Protection Agency’s independent Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation telling us there’s no convincing evidence that mobile phone technologies cause adverse effects on human health – but longer-term research is still needed.

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Big headlines for Three UK... but no big changes

Mark Bridge writes:

The headlines sound pretty dramatic. “Three exits business market”. “Three parts company with Phones 4u”. It sounds like the 3G network operator is cutting back and reorganising. But let's look a little closer.

Author: The Fonecast
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Last week at The Fonecast: 23rd April 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

We’ve had a few sets of quarterly results in the past week. Let me summarise as best I can.

Qualcomm: doing very well, thank you.
Microsoft: pretty decent, although no-one’s talking much about phones.
Intel: not as good as before, although better than expected.
Nokia: sorry, we’ve lost a billion Euro. Well, we did warn you...

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Recent Podcasts

Reviewing our 2015 mobile industry predictions... and looking forward to 2016

Podcast - 15th January 2016

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return to review their mobile industry predictions from last year. Which mergers, partnerships and developments did they forecast correctly... and which didn’t work out as planned?

Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

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Podcast from Mobile World Congress 2015

Podcast - 6th March 2015

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

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Looking back at February: from security scares to multiple MVNOs

Podcast - 27th February 2015

We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

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Interview with Chris Millington of Doro about mobile retailing, wearables and technology for older consumers

Podcast - 24th February 2015

In today's programme Mark Bridge talks to Chris Millington, who's Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland.

They discuss the state of mobile retailing in the UK, the future of wearable devices and - as you might expect - smartphones for seniors.

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A month of mobile: O2 counts on 3, Microsoft counts to 10 and Apple counts its profits

Podcast - 30th January 2015

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.

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