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Monday, April 23, 2012

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...

Now to the rest of the news, where there was more than a little déjà vu.

A new ad-funded virtual mobile network launched in the UK. Three years after Blyk moved away from running its UK MVNO, Ovivo Mobile has opened for pre-registrations. Good luck to CEO Dariush Zand and the rest of the company.

Meanwhile Barclaycard announced a stick-on NFC credit card for ‘mobile’ payments. It’ll turn any phone into a mobile wallet – which sounds a bit like the BOKU service we reported in February – but, unlike BOKU, there’s no software involved so it’ll turn pretty much anything into a mobile wallet. Cue much hilarity in the tech community.

In other instances of history repeating itself, Everything Everywhere announced plans to combine some of its Orange and T-Mobile shops into ‘Everything Everywhere’ stores while Motorola followed in the footsteps of HTC by preparing to close its cloud-based file storage.

Growth was reported in mobile advertising (hooray!) and mobile malware infections (boo!), with research also anticipating a dramatic increase in 4G mobile device shipments and mobile payment adoption.

In fact, it’s research I’ll end with. A study published by Everything Everywhere showed that 74% of British adults wanted to bring 4G technology to the country as soon as possible. However, it wasn’t faster mobile phone connections that most respondents looked forward to. It was the UK catching up with other countries and staying competitive.

Based on this, you could almost argue the UK government should subsidise the forthcoming UK 4G spectrum auction in order to help the economy. Perhaps someone at one of the networks would like to suggest that?

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

The cost of European roaming needn't be a worry

Mark Bridge writes:

Today’s podcast feature is a personal look at the cost of mobile ‘roaming’ in France.

At the beginning of July 2011 the rate for European roaming charges fell to a maximum of 38p per minute (incl. VAT) for calls made while abroad in the EU – and 12p per minute for calls received. There’s also a maximum 12p charge for sending text messages.

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This week at The Fonecast: 26th August 2011

Mark Bridge writes:

Today's news summary is a little early because I'm on holiday this afternoon. I'll be leaving Iain and James in charge... and, even though it's traditionally the "silly season", they'll have plenty to talk about in Wednesday's podcast.

A week ago, the big news in our podcast was Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility. This week it was HP's move away from webOS devices. And now we hear that Steve Jobs has stepped down from the CEO role at Apple, although he's remaining with the company as Chairman of the Board.

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Power your laptop by taking a walk

Rosanne Skirble of voanews.com writes:

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a technology that turns human motion into electricity.

In this week's journal Nature Communications, they describe how to power a cell phone or other mobile device - like a laptop computer or GPS system - by simply taking a walk.

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Nokia prices: how low can you go?

Mark Bridge writes:

This week Nokia has announced the latest iteration of its Symbian software platform: Symbian Belle, which follows the alphabetical theme started by Symbian Anna. Whether we'll reach Symbian Zoe, Zara or Zsa-Zsa before Symbian support ends in 2016 is another matter. But I digress.

Along with Symbian Belle came three new phones - yet it was two other Nokia phones announced from Kenya on Thursday that caught my eye.

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Don't bother looking for a dramatically reduced HP TouchPad in the UK

Mark Bridge writes:

This weekend, you could have picked up a HP TouchPad webOS tablet for $99. Both the HP USA online store and Best Buy in Canada were selling the obsolescent devices at a substantial discount.

Yet over here in the UK, we've seen nothing except a prize draw from The Carphone Warehouse and a less-than-£90 discount from Amazon. And I don't expect anything much better in the short-term.

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

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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

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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.

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

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

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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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