Business 2.0: It’s a critical juncture for the nation’s largest carriers. Cingular, Sprint, and Verizon are all betting on their next-generation networks and 3G phones to bolster their profit margins, hoping that consumers will sign up for data plans that give them access to video clips, mobile games, and downloadable music. But the new networks, which could send lucrative services over the air to tens of millions of people, also present a potential gold mine of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Sooner or later, like Apple, phone companies will wake up and realize that the small entrepreneurs who are building services and peripherals for 3G phones will ultimately be the best salespeople for their networks. And that’s when the 3G economy will really start to take off. [Start-ups covered in this report include Junxion and brand new company called SoonR] Continue reading this article @ Business 2.0 website.

7:18:42 PM    comment   

Another T-Mobile smartphone is on its way for the holidays. Apart from the Vario we told you about this morning T-Mobile Vario expect to see the SDA II with almost the same functions T-Mobile's current SDA smartphone, but with a QVGA resolution display and more memory. There was also supposed to be a MP3 version of the SDA II called the SDA Music, though it looks like that's been canceled since it was announced at CeBIT 2005.

6:57:59 PM    comment   

The paper quotes Ramesh Kumar, chief operating officer at Cricinfo (a Wisden Group company), "Considerable advertiser education has happened over the last two years. Most advertisers are slowly waking up to the realities of the online medium and what it can deliver in terms of value." So, the industry is witnessing a turnaround from a point immediately after the bust when, "advertisers gave a knee-jerk reaction and used 'unrealistic' methods to include the Internet medium in their media plan."

[ContentSutra]
5:37:02 PM    comment   

(InfoWorld) - The French mobile phone market may be about to get a bit more crowded. Virgin Mobile Holdings said on Monday that it's in talks with mobile phone operator Orange about launching a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in France.

4:16:30 PM    comment   

More cool Japanese phone news comes our way with the new KDDI lineup, allowing you to watch short segments of digital programming on your mobile phone. Made for KDDI's main phone service au, these phones aren't only state of the art, but should have afforadable service as well—something all of us would like to see more of as new features increase. In addition to the digital TV function, these phones will also gives you access to something called "Hello Messenger", which lets you send text messages and images to up to four other people—kind of like a group chat on your computer. The phones will be manufactured by Sanyo and Kyocera.

Japan's KDDI unveils phones with digital TV, chat [Reuters]

4:09:28 PM    comment   

This thing slides, rotates, twists, inverts, flip-flops, and every other descriptive word out there. Actually it only rotates and slides, but it is also capable of receiving satellite DMB programming. What else does it have? What DOESN'T have? TV-out, video-on-demand, EVDO, IrDA and Pictbridge WiFi printing. This diddy is straight out of Korea and should be available to come December.

Samsung Introduces SPH-B2300 DMB Handset [Samsung HQ]
Pictures Galore! [Keben]

4:06:58 PM    comment   

Story on the launch of M-Trade application for trading on mobiles. On a related note, Airtel had sometime back launched a mobile stock tracker application.

The mobile trading platform also allows investors to get connected using their mobile handset and see the market rates, enter, modify, cancel orders, view their positions and transactions through a secure encrypted channel, he said.

“We are happy that JRG has become the first commodity broker in India to provide the integrated mobile trading facility through wireless internet on NCDEX and MCM to the investors of the country,” Mathew said.

I can understand the need for real-time alerts for people active in the stock and commodity markets. But if the person has to take action on those alerts like buy and sell, wouldn’t it be more convenient and reassuring for him to just call his broker and place the trade rather than do it over a slow GPRS network.

4:05:07 PM    comment   

The blogosphere just woke up from collective deep sleep and discovered Nicholas Carr’s post on amateurs. I wrote about it last week, 2 weeks after Carr wrote it. So what triggered the buzz today? A story in the big media aka San Jose Mercury News by Mike Langberg. Enough said!

4:04:10 PM    comment   

Sky buys Easynet to get into DSL. British Telecom, a Sky distributor gets pissed off, dumps BSkyB, and the gloves come off. Battle of the leviathans … waiting for the big thud!

2:49:31 PM    comment   

Intel showed some "future innovations" today, though most of them weren't anything you'd actually be able to put in your pocket anytime soon. Demonstrators were quick to explain to me that I would never see the exact products they were showing, but hopefully, sometime in the next 3-5 years, we'd see something similar. In terms of hardware, there was something called The Ruby, a complete PC running XP about a tad bigger than a PDA. This included wireless capabilites and of course, Centrino mobile technology. The biggest problem with something this small is heat, so Intel is focusing mainly on low-power efficiency rather than just minaturization. Very cool, though I'd definitely bring a bigger keyboard if I ever planned on actually working on this thing.
Another little diddy I saw was called the Bishop Rock (not quite sure why). Again, it was quickly pointed out that this was not a real product and never would be. In fact, this tiny media player (which was really just a small LCD with some buttons along the sides) was really just being shown to explain to less technically inclined people how small working LCDs could be. One day, something like this could possibly play full length movies and other longer content, but for now, it played maybe one hour of video and had a mini-SD slot. Lastly, the Universal Communicator was a great idea, but I dare anyone at Intel to get it past the cellphone carriers. With five different radio signals built in seamlessly, you could easily switch from a VoIP call, to a GSM call, then move to WiFi and to a GPS network—all without any interruption. Except explain to me why any carrier would want to switch you from a paid call to a free one? I certainly can't. Maybe Intel has some inside deals working.
Basically, an interesting array of technology, though it would have been nice to see something that was a little more pret-a-porter.

7:21:34 AM    comment