2011 July | Mobile Industry Review

Archive | July, 2011

Operator Innovation: Fancy a MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad for £100/month?

By Ewan on July 28, 2011 in Operators

It’s time for the third post in my Operator Innovation series here at Mobile Industry Review. This week I’m looking at lifestyle. Before we get to that, here’s a brief word on this series. Generally speaking I will touch upon issues that I’ve briefly explored before here on the site — or that I’ve mentioned [...]

I’ve signed up for a hosted BES account for Google Apps

By Ewan on July 27, 2011 in Applications

I have finally decided to try out hosted BES (“BlackBerry Exchange Server”) for my BlackBerry. I’ve tolerated the BlackBerry Gmail Plugin for a few years and whilst it was a blessing back in 2008 or whenever it was made available, it’s a total arse that it doesn’t sync properly (delete on the BlackBerry and it [...]

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Put CrackBerry’s Kevin Michaluk on the RIM board!

By Ewan on July 27, 2011 in Devices, Opinion

Kevin is the top man at the world’s #1 BlackBerry site, CrackBerry.com. I’ve worked with him and his ace team of CrackBerry addicts regularly through the years and found them really nice, smart people. RIM’s having a few challenges at the moment, particularly when it comes to keeping the faithful in line. One reader emailed [...]

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40% of Android devices are returned… well, sort of, maybe

By Ewan on July 27, 2011 in Devices

There’s a wee bit of a storm kicking off over at TechCrunch today because of comments from a source. First the introduction: It’s generally accepted that, on the aggregate, Android device sales will far outpace iOS sales year after year. However, there’s a dirty little secret about Android devices that most manufacturers are facing the [...]

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Vodafone UK: A fascinating example of a super sales approach

By Ewan on July 27, 2011 in Operators

For a few days I’ve seen the phone number 0808-something call my main handset. I haven’t been able to answer. I thought it might be someone from a utility company. British Gas, maybe? Or perhaps an insurance company. This afternoon I had a spare few minutes when the phone rang again from that number. I [...]

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What’s your speaker system of choice for your PC?

By Ewan on July 26, 2011 in Devices, Opinion

Ok this isn’t quite mobile per se. But we’re all geeks here, yes? So I could use your help. Right now I have no speaker system for my Mac Pro. I used to have a JBL Creature set — but that’s at my other place. So right now I’m using the Mac Pro speaker — [...]

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Do you work in mobile music? Check out midem 2012

By Ewan on July 26, 2011 in News

If you’re working in mobile music, I strongly recommend taking a look at midem. Most people working in music know all about midem, however it’s not so well known in the mobile sphere. modem — always written in lowercase — is the world’s largest and most influential music industry event. It takes place each year [...]

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Mobile World Congress to stay in Barcelona: Arse

By Ewan on July 26, 2011 in Opinion

Did you catch the news? Mobile World Congress, the industry’s largest event, is staying in Barcelona for at least the next five years or so. The GSMA did put the whole thing out to bid so there was a distinct possibility of the event being moved somewhere else — cities such as Munich, Milan and [...]

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Free WiFi in all Tesco stores? Good idea!

By Ewan on July 26, 2011 in Services

Here’s a note I picked up from MobileToday: The new service will allow smartphone, tablet and laptop users to surf the internet while browsing the aisles for their weekly shop at no cost. via Mobile Today | Tesco to offer free Wi-Fi in stores. I think this is only going to help Tesco in the [...]

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“Relax when you’re on holiday with 3″ — not flipping likely!

By Ewan on July 26, 2011 in Operators

Another newsletter in from Three this morning. I commend the team on their communications strategy out to the masses — you see, often, operators are (righty) accused of being rather vague on their pricing strategies, especially when roaming is concerned (See Vodafone’s inexplicably complicated text). Not Three though. No, they’ve been entirely clear with their [...]

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ipadio: Sell me a MacBook Air, Vodafone

By Ewan on July 23, 2011 in News

Posted via email from MIR Live. In reply to my audio podcast embedded above, here’s a comment contributed by Stefan Constantinescu on the audio blog page (I wanted to highlight his points): What you’re asking for is a radical transformation of well established business models. Whereas before an operator subsidized a device over the length [...]

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For my 1 year old, the ‘telephone call’ is ancient history

By Ewan on July 23, 2011 in Operators, Opinion

You and I, we’ve got a problem: We’re old. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve only just got used to the fact that you can hop off a plane almost anywhere on Earth and make a phone call back home. I remember when you actually had to phone up your mobile operator to [...]

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