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Monday, March 4, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 4th March 2013

What happened at Mobile World Congress?

Mark Bridge writes:

We’re back from Mobile World Congress – and what a show it was. Located at a new site that saw more visitors than ever before, the show had everything… except any particularly obvious theme from hardware manufacturers. Last year was the year of the quad-core smartphone, this year there was plenty of incremental innovation but nothing truly startling.

Probably the biggest shock was the lack of a flagship handset announcement from Samsung, which released an 8-inch tablet and told us the Galaxy S4 (probably not the Galaxy SIV, given the opportunity for sieve-related humour) would be launched on 14th March.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of interest in Mozilla’s Firefox operating system, which was being shown off on smartphones from Alcatel, LG and ZTE. LG also surprised quite a few people by picking up what’s left of the webOS platform from HP. It says it’ll be putting it inside televisions – although that doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t ever see an LG webOS smartphone.

Mobile payments were (still) on the agenda in Barcelona; Visa, Samsung, MasterCard and BlackBerry all had announcements about their plans. There was plenty of research as well, covering everything from mobile advertising to mobile security and SMS spam.

And there were prizes from the GSMA for Samsung and Nokia, plus an award for crowd-sourced coverage map app OpenSignal (UK’s Most Innovative Mobile Company 2013) and the Tethercell battery adaptor (Bluetooth Breakthrough Award).

But not all the week’s big news came from MWC13. Telefonica saved the introduction of its TU Go VoIP app until after the show. It’ll let O2 UK customers make and receive ‘mobile’ calls on any compatible internet-connected device. In addition, it decided to sell its O2 and BE fixed-line broadband businesses to Sky.

Finally, the UK’s 4G auction also came to its official end with Ofcom allocating specific spectrum bands for each winning bidder. BT and Vodafone paid an extra £27 million to choose exactly where in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands they’d be operating, increasing the total raised by the auction from £2.341 billion to £2.368 billion. No, those figures aren’t the week’s most exciting news but at least it means the winners can all start rolling out 4G coverage across the UK!

Every Monday morning we summarise the past week’s mobile industry headlines in a newsletter that’s very much 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.

Missed our podcast report from Barcelona?  Listen on our website audio player, download the mp3 file or find us on iTunes.
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Opinion Articles

RIM is still committed to the consumer market... like there was ever any doubt

Mark Bridge writes:

There are times I feel like turning my back on the mobile phone industry and joining a monastery. That’s probably not going to happen, given the monks’ tradition of not admitting wives. But yesterday was another of those frustrating occasions. Let me tell you why.

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Are social media and smartphones really killing SMS and MMS?

Mark Bridge writes:

A couple of research reports this week have noted that text messaging and picture messaging growth is slowing down. Could this be the end for our trusty friend SMS and its bolder, brighter (and slightly flakier) sibling MMS?

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Last week at The Fonecast: 26th March 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s been a week of ups and downs for the mobile industry.

It started with good news as Apple – fresh from hitting 3 million new iPad sales – announced its plans to spend some of the $100 billion sitting in its decidedly non-mobile wallet. There’ll be a quarterly dividend and a share buy-back scheme.

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New product overtakes old product: why the surprise?

Mark Bridge writes:

Sometimes I’m a simple soul. This is one of those occasions. I simply don’t get what all the fuss is about.

Sales of Windows Phone 7 smartphones have overtaken Symbian device sales in Great Britain for the first time ever. Yes, the new heavily-promoted mobile phones from Nokia are more popular with consumers and retailers than those using the obsolescent Symbian OS. Windows Phone 7 now has 2.5% of the British smartphone market, compared with 2.4% for Symbian.

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Mosaik Solutions: providing mobile coverage data by putting all the pieces together

Mark Bridge writes:

Some parts of the mobile industry are all glamour and glitz, megapixels and multi-cores, apps and ads. And then there are the essential parts of the industry, quite often with considerably less competition... and therefore accompanied by less singing and dancing.

Despite hailing from the city of Memphis in Tennessee, Mosaik Solutions isn’t from the rock ‘n’ roll end of the mobile industry. It creates mobile coverage maps and provides coverage data, as well as supplying information about coverage patterns, wireless spectrum depth, network configurations and licencing.

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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.

Author: The Fonecast
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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

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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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