The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Archive for September, 2007
The iPhone didn’t outsell the Blackberry after all
Sep 7th
Link: iPhone didn’t beat ALL Blackberries in July – News – Tech.co.uk
As part of the ‘ooh look we sold truckloads of iPhones’ story that was around earlier this week, there was an interesting line from market research company iSuppli, claiming that it’d “comprehensively beaten its smartphone rivals – including RIM’s Blackberry series – to take the number one sales slot in July”
Obviously some people at RIM (who make the Blackberry) weren’t too chuffed about this, and a few phone calls later (probably involving highly paid lawyers) it emerged that what iSuppli meant to say was that the iPhone had outsold individual Blackberry models – not the range as a whole. In fact, the range as a whole outsold the iPhone by a factor of 2:1.>As the article in Tech points out, the iPhone has sold well. That’s an undisputable fact. However, claiming it’s beaten all your rivals – especially when most people think that a Blackberry is one device, and not a range of models – is not a very clever thing to do.
iPhone price cut sends Apple shares falling
Sep 7th
Link: Apple Stock Falls After iPhone Price Cut
There’s been a bit of a backlash since Apple decided to cut $200 off the price of an iPhone – resulting in an open letter from CEO Steve Jobs offering early adopters $100 of Apple Store credit for paying over the odds for the device. However, even that didn’t go down too well on Wall Street.
Apple Inc.’s price cut of its iPhone and the new lineup of iPod players are expected to ring in healthy holiday sales, but Wall Street investors accustomed to Apple’s meaty profit margins appear a bit disappointed.
Apple stock dropped $1.43, or 1.1 percent, to $135.25, in Thursday morning trading, but it was still up 2 percent over four weeks ago. On Wednesday, after the price cut was announced, shares had fallen 5 percent.
BBC feature Monitise mobile banking
Sep 7th
Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Hot picks: UK tech start-ups
Nice to see the BBC getting excited about mobile technology..
Monitise is a young UK start-up that has already made significant in-roads into the US market.
The firm was founded four years ago by ex-professional sportsman Alastair Lukies and provides a mobile phone banking and payment service.
“An injury put paid to aspirations of being a full-time rugby player,” said Mr Lukies. “Ever since, I’ve been building businesses.”
(thanks to Ben for the tip!)
Safecell in-flight technology patented
Sep 7th
ASI Entertainment have just filed an international patent to cover their SafeCell concept for in-flight phone calling.
The SafeCell invention incorporates two unique components. A small device called a “communicator” that turns a cellular phone into a WiFi communicator, and a shielding accessory that allows the cellular phone to be switched on in-flight.
SafeCell was originally designed for use in passenger aircraft as a means of accessing low cost voice and data services via WiFi, using a cell phone. One of its unique features is that it can also be used at any WiFi hotspot on the ground, so a passenger subscribing to the in-flight service can also use remaining credit on the ground or vice versa.
According to the company, a SafeCell system starts at $10,000 per aircraft, SMS will cost 25 cents. The system can also accommodate VoiP and will be less than $1.00 per minute.
Happy birthday GSM
Sep 6th
Twenty years ago tomorrow, an historic agreement was signed in Copenhagen by 15 telecommunications operators from 13 countries that led to the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and a mobile communications industry that today serves more than 2.5 billion people across 218 countries and territories.
The ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ agreement of 7th September 1987 laid the foundation for the first Europe-wide digital cellular system, which soon became the world’s first global mobile system as used by more than 700 mobile operators and served by thousands of suppliers today. The agreement also triggered a technology evolution path that continues today with the roll-out of more than 120 mobile broadband networks in 61 countries.
“The 1987 agreement is widely regarded as the foundation of today’s global mobile phone industry and the birth of one of the greatest technological achievements of our age,” said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators. “The early vision of our industry created international cooperation on an unprecedented scale that has led to a socio-economic revolution benefiting people, businesses and countries throughout the world.”
“GSM is the single most important agreement in the history of telecommunications,” said Sir Christopher Gent, one of the original signatories of the agreement and former CEO of Vodafone and today Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline plc. “With 2.5 billion users around the world today, it has done more to bridge the digital divide than any other innovation, and is a tremendous example of global cooperation.”
Today, the GSM family of technologies makes up 85% of the global mobile services market, which accounts for about 1.6% of global GDP. Each year, mobile users purchase more than one billion new handsets, make more than 7 trillion minutes of calls and send about 2.5 trillion text messages.
From basic mobile voice services, that have enabled people to connect to others for the first time in their lives, to the evolution of mobile multimedia, including internet access, information and entertainment services, the industry continues to innovate at a breathtaking pace. The arrival of mobile broadband, combined with the convergence of the mobile, entertainment, computing and financial service industries, is today forging new opportunities and services that will see the industry continue to evolve long into the future.
The GSMA, which also celebrates the 20th anniversary of its foundation through the agreement, plans to celebrate this historic landmark with a unique documentary film travelogue, the Mobile World, commissioned to explore the diversity of mobile use and innovation globally. A film crew is currently travelling across 20 countries of the world from South Africa, Kenya and Rwanda to China, Japan, India, South Korea, Europe and the US, to capture on film, the myriad of mobile services that are changing, enhancing and saving lives on a daily basis.
The Mobile World will be previewed for the first time at the GSMA’s forthcoming Mobile Asia Congress (Macau, 11-15 November 2007). More information about the film, including a short trailer, and twenty photographs depicting mobile use around the world can be found at: www.gsmtwenty.com
ICSTIS to become PhonepayPlus
Sep 6th
In possibly the least exciting re-brand of the year, UK premium regulator ICSTIS is changing it’s name to PhonepayPlus.
From 15th October 2007, the much loved/feared (depending on whether you’ve ever run premium services) ICSTIS name will disappear, to be replaced with the new “more accurate” branding.
According to ICSTIS, PhonepayPlus will give consumers a much better understanding of the help and advice they can provide. PhonepayPlus will continue where ICSTIS left off. They’ll also be “focusing on on pre-empting and preventing problems”.
And so the press release goes on, waxing lyrically about all the things they’re planning to do – which in a nutshell is nothing that they didn’t do before. Which is nice.
So to summarise, it’s business as usual from mid-October, ableit with a new shiny name. Hurrah 
O2 drop non-geo from bundles
Sep 6th
Link: O2 starts charging for calls to non-places | The Register
With the world and his wife now seemingly having a non-geo number (0845, 0870, 0800), it’s curious to hear that O2 have become the last UK mobile network to drop these numbers from customers inclusive minutes packages.
According to The Register, O2 customers who’ve signed up since March have already had to pay for calls to these numbers, with older customers being notified last week by text of the impending changes.
O2 have also decided, rather kindly, that this change is “significant”, so much so that they’re offering users the chance to cancel their contract early. If you’re in that position, get your skates on – you’ve got until the end of September to cancel.
dotMobi upgrade mobile web test tool
Sep 6th
dotMobi, the consortium behind the only Internet address created specifically for mobile phones, today launched an upgraded version of ready.mobi, its free, industry- leading mobile Web test tool.
Already lauded as a “great resource for mobile Web developers” by WAP Review, the 2.0 version of ready.mobi evaluates the quality of mobile Web sites using mobile industry standards and best practices to ensure sites work on all mobile phones around the world.
ready.mobi generates free reports with easy-to-evaluate scores for every page on a mobile site, as well as in-depth analysis of more than 35 attributes to determine how well a site is likely to perform on mobile phones.
In addition, users of dotMobi’s Developer Forum are able to maintain ready.mobi test preferences and a history of previous test results to show the improvement of sites over time. This allows ready.mobi to become an important part of the users’ mobile Web development and quality assurance processes.
Andy Moore, Director, Palace Marketing said, “The new features of ready.mobi allow me to run a check on an entire site. The new interface makes it much quicker and easier to assess how ready a site is. And the complete site-processing feature is a great time saver. I can initiate a crawl, then return later and view a complete profile of how ‘ready’ the site is. The reports give a bigger picture to the readiness of a site, save me time and save my clients money.”
WAP Review noted that ready.mobi’s ability to check a complete site is “nothing short of amazing.”
The new version of ready.mobi delivers many user-requested features, including additional mobile phone emulators, the ability to specify mobile device headers to crawl sites (and save them for later use), and color-coded results that provide at-a-glance views with an option to “drill down” to greater detail for each attribute. Developers who build .mobi sites also have the ability to stop and start the site crawlers and review results in real- time.
“I’ve never seen such a human-friendly validation tool,” said Andy Moore of Palace Marketing. “The ‘help me fix it’ links are fantastic and provide comprehensive, easily digestible guides on how to achieve mobile readiness. It’s not just a tool for geeks. It gives an easy to understand, human-focused view on how ready a site is.”
Launched in November 2006, ready.mobi has already been used to test more than 250,000 pages of mobile content, ensuring that sites are of the highest quality for mobile consumers.
“ready.mobi has proven to be incredibly popular with the mobile developer community,” said Neil Edwards, CEO of dotMobi. “Being able to take the feedback of the community and offer an advanced version – still at no cost – to users is gratifying to dotMobi. The high level of use and discussion around ready.mobi and our Developer Forum proves that interest in creating .mobi content and services is growing daily.”
Apple slice $200 off iPhone price
Sep 6th
Still umming and ahhing over an iPhone? Does the $599 price tag put you off? As of today your decision may have been made easier after Apple announced they’re chopping $200 off the price of the iPhone 8GB, bringing it down to $399 (previously $599).
According to CEO Steve Jobs, “The surveys are in and iPhone customer satisfaction scores are higher than we’ve ever seen for any Apple product. We’ve clearly got a breakthrough product and we want to make it affordable for even more customers as we enter this holiday season.”
The 4GB model has also been discontinued, and will only be on sale whilst stocks last.
Pay your utility bills with your mobile
Sep 6th
If you’re based in the UK, or even if you’ve only visited, I’m sure you’ve heard of PayPoint. They’re the people that let you top up your mobile or pay your utility bills at virtually every corner shop, newsagent and off-licence. Now thanks to a deal with Telrock you can use PayPoint from the comfort of your own mobile.
The Telrock textDebit service enables end users to make secure payments to clients of PayPoint using SMS text messaging. Consumers will pre-register a debit, credit or pre-paid card which can then be used to pay a variety of bills such as energy, telecommunications or water, or top up a prepaid mobile phone.
The partnership will create a new payment channel for PayPoint, complementing its existing over-the-counter cash payments network and internet payments division. It will also offer Telrock an opportunity to work closely with the market leader in handling cash and pre-payments for utility providers and mobile phone operators.
Telrock’s leading mobile payment and customer account servicing platform is already being used by British Gas, Scottish and Southern Energy and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
Dominic Taylor, Chief Executive of PayPoint, commented: “This partnership with Telrock will enable PayPoint to exploit the increasing popularity of mobile payments while broadening its proposition to existing and new clients and offering customers a further convenient way to pay bills and buy other services.”
Commenting on the deal Russell Robinson, Managing Director of Telrock, said: “The deal provides Telrock with a new route to market, serving a large and growing industry through a popular consumer brand. The agreement acts as a clear endorsement of our services and we look forward to working with this leading cash and internet payments group.”
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