Welcome to the not-so-silly season
Mark Bridge writes:
August is traditionally known as the ‘silly season’… but last week’s mobile industry news was all very serious. Apple started with a move designed to reassure customers about unsafe iPhone chargers by arranging a discounted exchange scheme – and it ended the week with a patent victory in the USA.
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Surprises and statistics
Mark Bridge writes:
Google’s big announcement last week involved the company introducing Android v4.3 (as expected), launching a new Nexus 7 tablet (as expected) and also revealing a ‘Chromecast’ HDMI adaptor that’ll stream from most portable devices. That was more of a surprise.
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Not all good news...
Mark Bridge writes:
The UK is beginning its week with news of a long-awaited sporting victory for Andy Murray. The telecoms world had its own much-anticipated good news last week, when European roaming rates fell again. And regardless of Neelie Kroes’ plans to abolish roaming rates completely, there’ll definitely be another roaming cut in 2014.
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Mark Bridge writes:
The UK mobile phone industry knows all about subsidised prices. Independent mobile dealers and high-street shops will happily offer a ‘free phone with free connection’ in order to tie a customer into a minimum-term contract.
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New products from BlackBerry, Google, HP and Nokia
Mark Bridge writes:
Last year, the Google I/O developer conference gave us plenty of product announcements: Google Glass, the Nexus 7 tablet, the Nexus Q device and the Jelly Bean version of Android. This year’s announcements were less dramatic: a streaming music service, a Google-friendlier Galaxy S4 and some game development tools. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) Apple announced its 50 billionth app download in the middle of the event.
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