Posts filed under Rumours

More pics of the new Nokia phone after the jump.

More figures are in from the big mobile phone manufacturers.  Following on from Nokia and Motorola’s reporting earlier this month, Samsung and LG have announced their latest figures.  Samsung Electronics, the world’s third-largest mobile phone manufacturer, held its second-place spot in North America for its sales of cellular phones in the third quarter of 2005. U.S.-based telecommunications giant Motorola ranked number one in sales commanding 36-percent of the North American market.

Samsung reportedly sold 6.7 million handsets accounting for more than 17-percent of the mobile phone market in North America which consists of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Korea’s LG Electronics claimed third place, and Finland’s Nokia ranked the fourth-best seller of mobile sets.

LG Electronics sold the most third-generation code division multiple access (CDMA) cell phones in the world in the third quarter. Market researcher Strategic Analytics in a report Monday said LG sold 8.8 million CDMA cell phones and captured a 23.8 percent global market share in the third quarter.

Korea and North America are the big markets for CDMA phones. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have been competing for the top spot in the global market in recent years, with Samsung coming first in the first two quarters followed by LG, Motorola and Nokia.

[Source: Chosun.com]

Vodafone has announced it is joining forces with Universal Music to offer its customers a music download service with tunes frrm Universal’s catalogue of 600,000 songs.   The agreement, announced today, will see the introduction of a broad range of products and services featuring such market-leading stars as Eminem, U2, Black Eyed Peas, Kaiser Chiefs, 50 Cent, Keane, Rammstein, and Scissor Sisters. The new partnership between Vodafone and UMG’s Universal Music Group International (UMGI) division represents the world’s most extensive offering of music for mobile, including:

• Realtones and ringback tones
• Full-track audio downloads
• Full-track video downloads
• Video streaming

The service will be part of Vodafone Live! and is intended for 3G only.  However, they key part of the service, price, has not been announced yet.  If Vodafone price this too high (and remember, they’ll be competing with iTunes and P2P networks), then file this under “failure”.  The only advantage any mobile phone music service has over traditional ways of getting music onto a mobile phone (e.g. download MP3 tunes onto your mobile phone from your PC) is convenience. However, convenience is not worth all that much – price the tunes too high, and the extra convenience simply isn’t worth the money.

[Source: Vodafone]