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Monday, April 22, 2013

Last week at The Fonecast: 22nd April 2013

Spring in the air

Mark Bridge writes:

The past few days have seen the arrival of two familiar seasons. Not only has the sun peeked its head from behind the clouds in an approximation of Spring but the mobile industry has been releasing its quarterly results.

In the last week we’ve had figures from Microsoft and from Google. Both appeared to be in pretty good shape, although Google’s Motorola Mobility business is still making a loss.

Sticking with talk of money, Visa Europe is enhancing its mobile payment service to offer participating banks two new features: Multi-Currency and Immediate Payments. Together they’ll make it possible for consumers to receive money sent from mobile phones across Europe within 30 minutes.

Meanwhile Vodafone launched its M-Pesa mobile money transfer and payment service in India – a market of around 700 million potential customers awaits – and Ofcom announced plans to simplify premium rate call charges.

Moving seamlessly to the legal world, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about an ‘unlimited’ mobile data tariff from T-Mobile, while Foxconn’s parent Hon Hai has signed a patent licensing deal with Microsoft.

But it’s innovation that’s caused the most buzz this week. Top of the list was Twitter’s music service, which is called Twitter #music. This is a discovery service that links with iTunes, Spotify and Rdio to make help with recommendations and sharing trends.

We also have Orange’s all-in-one VoIP and messaging app, which is now available on Android and will become RCS Joyn compatible later this year.

And finally there’s HTC, LG and Samsung all joining the Power Matters Alliance, which wants an open standard for smart wireless power. Mind you, all three manufacturers have also used the rival Qi wireless charging technology – so this story’s not over yet.

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.
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Opinion Articles

4G doesn't come to Three

Mark Bridge writes:

Earlier today, Three.co.uk published a blog post headlined “4G comes to Three”. But it hasn’t.

I spent most of this morning here at Mobile World Congress muttering about the blog before returning to it this afternoon. And suddenly it’s changed.

The blog post remains. The headline is completely different. Now we’re told “Three to launch leading edge 3G service”.

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How far does it go, mate?

Geoff Varrall of RTT writes:

About 15,000 years ago some indigenous Northern Australians decided that they needed a more efficient way of talking to each other than just shouting a lot.

And blowing into a long cylindrical tube proved to be just what was needed and seriously useful fun – the dawn of the didgeridoo.

Trumpets and bagpipes were invented at about the same time. The ancient Greeks used the trumpet in battlefield communication to devastating effect.

The way you can tell that your didgeridoo is better than everyone else’s didgeridoo is to blow into it and see how far the sound goes.

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Last week at The Fonecast: 20th February 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So said Sir Arthur C Clarke.

Last week’s magic was supplied by imaging company Scalado, which announced a new product called ‘Remove’. The clue’s in the name: it can automatically remove unwanted people from photos taken on a mobile phone. Expect to see it on a handset near you before too long.

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Last week at The Fonecast: 13th February 2012

Mark Bridge writes:

It’s not been a good week for Nokia staff, with 4000 of them likely to lose their jobs from factories in Finland, Hungary and Mexico. The company says it’s moving device assembly to Asia, where it’ll be closer to component manufacturers. The three scaled-down factories will remain open with a new focus on smartphone customisation.

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Could a new legal framework for FRAND principles end the mobile patent wars in 2013?

Mark Bridge writes:

I’m not the first person to point out that mobile phone patent battles are raging all around us. They’ve been going on for years.

However, the topic of FRAND patents - those designated as ‘industry standards’ and therefore required to be licensed on Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms - has become an increasingly newsworthy topic.

In the last couple of weeks we’ve reported on an EC investigation into Samsung’s licensing of mobile patents and a Motorola/Apple legal battle that involves FRAND licensing.

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