Posts filed under News

There are now 2 billion mobile phones in use around the world! According to a report by Wirless Intelligence, “the middle of September 05 saw a significant milestone reached in the cellular world as the total number of connections worldwide passed through 2 billion. According to our calculations this happened on Sunday 18th September. The growth rate is impressive – after clocking up 1 billion in 2002, 20 years after cellular was first launched, the 2nd billion came up in just 3 years.”

The Register adds that “most of the growth now is obviously in large developing markets, such as China, India and Africa along with Eastern Europe and Latin America. Western Europe is pretty much mined out, and penetration is expected to exceed 100 per cent in the region by 2007. According to Nokia, which Gartner says sold nearly 32 per cent of all phones in Q2 this year, getting to three billion will take another five years. ”

Damn, five whole years to reach another billion people. Seems the mobile phone industry’s in decline!

As if to confirm that this really is the year of the music phone, Samsung jumps on the bandwagon, announcing its own Nokia-rivalling 3GB hard-disked mobile phone. Not quite as good as the Nokia N91, though – 1 GB less storage, only 1.3 megapixel camera against the N91’s 2Megapixel. Also, no Wi-Fi capability, so it doesn’t offer as much potential for MobSharing as the N91. It’s based on Microsoft’s Mobile OS, so should have a nice variety of apps to play with (ToDo lists, email syncing, etc.), and Samsung are promoting it as a usedful tool for transferring files between PCs, which, with 3GB to play with, is a fair point.

At last, after much feverish speculation, way too much coverage, and not a little hype, Motorola and Apple finally announce the Motorola ROKR E1 iTunes phone. Before I carry on, we’ve had so much guessing, what’s the actual spec? Here it is, straight from Motorola themselves:

“The Motorola ROKR is the world’s first ever music phone featuring the Apple iTunes® mobile music player allowing you to take your favorite playlists – featuring full length tracks – wherever you go in one convergence product at the touch of a single dedicated iTunes button. Advanced stereo and lighting technology offer amazing sound and delivers reactions you can see and feel. The Motorola ROKR will have you seamlessly grooving to a new beat!

• Intuitive iTunes® interface : even displays album art
• Integrated Digital VGA Camera with 4 x Digital Zoom
• Side lights sync with games, ringtones, music and ambient sounds
• Removable Memory : Optional, removable TransFlashâ„¢ memory cards store photos, music and video clips
• Make and transfer playlists from your PC to your phone : note approx. transfer time is 30 seconds for 4MB music (transfer times will vary)”

Want this in English?

• o.3 megapixel camera
• 128MB memory (The New York Times puts this at about 100 tunes – but the 128MB is for the whole phone, not just the music. And most of my tunes are about 4Meg or so for decent quality, which works out at only 25 tunes)
• No OverTheAir music downloading – you must download all tunes from your PC or Mac

I knew this phone would be underwhelming, but this is just too much! I feel a major rant coming on!

More news on the new Motorola iTunes phones, which is meant to be released today…but don’t expect to be overwhelmed. According to Forbes, “A person who has seen a version of the phone says it was designed to accommodate just 25 songs, which would be ’sideloaded’ from a user’s computer using iTunes. The phone was equipped with a 128-megabyte Sandisk TransFlash memory card–just one-quarter the capacity of Apple’s smallest iPod, the 512-megabyte shuffle, which holds about 120 songs. While it should be possible to swap out the memory card on the new iTunes phone for one with more capacity, the person who has seen the handset says the phone’s software appears to artificially cap song storage at 25 songs, regardless of how much memory the phone has. ”

This isn’t the full story, as The Register notes, which reckons that the iTunes phone will be available in two different models. But frankly, I don’t care! The full release may be made today – or it may not. Whatever, my hopes aren’t exactly high.

Mobiledia discusses a report by Berg Insight that reckons that the mobile content market in Europe (i.e. the content the operators will be desperate for you to subscribe to) will be worth over $40 billion by 2012 – that’s one expensive Crazy Frog!

According to Mobiledia, although TV content will cross over to the mobile market, “the leading mobile content and entertainment services over the next 5 – 7 years will be games, sport, music and multi-media downloads and content messaging. Adult content will also provide an important revenue stream in many Western European markets, although mobile operators will often prefer to keep a distance from racier content and stick to softer branded “lads mag” type content – e.g. GQ, Loaded and FHM.”

Read more at mobiledia.com