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Study suggests UK Phone Users send 217 million texts per day

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

I just came across this article on The Daily Telegraph, which says that as per a study conducted among UK’s mobile phone users, the amount of total text messages exchanged every single day counts up to roughly 217 million. Yes, that’s right, 217 MILLION texts in a DAY. The one you just sent a while back could very well be adding up to the total. As compared to the last year, mobile subscribers are sending 60 million more text messages per day.

The study, which was carried out by the Mobile Data Association suggests that the amount of text messages sent in a month could be around 6.5 billion. Along with the text messages, users also send 1.5 million picture messages and video-based text messages every day.

Could this be credited to the fall in tariffs? Or could this because of the evolution of the mobile market as a whole? I sent a total of 433 text messages last month, according to my service provider.

 

 

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Posted in Case Studies, Mobile | Comments

iPhone sales help Rogers’ profits rise 84%

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Just recently, during the Q4 Conference Call, Apple announced that it had sold 6.9 million iPhones in Q4 of 2008. Today, Canada’s leading telecommunications operator Rogers has declared an 84% jump in the 3rd quarter profits.

Rogers has reported a net income of USD 386 million, compared to USD 210 a year ago and the operator is highly crediting this to the sales of Apple’s iPhone 3G and the subscriber growth to go along with it. While two-thirds of the total iPhone sales were to existing subscribers who upgraded to the iPhone with new contracts, Rogers sold around 85,000 iPhone 3Gs to new subscribers, selling a total of around 255,000 iPhone 3Gs. The revenues of the company climbed to US$2.34 billion, a staggering 14% rise.

Speaking on the announcement, President and CEO, Ted Rogers, said:

The results for the quarter also clearly reflect the substantial and very successful investment Rogers has made to bring Apple’s iPhone 3G to more than a quarter million Canadians over a very short period of time. While the upfront cost associated with adding this many iPhone subscribers so rapidly is high, it is an investment that we expect will provide considerable returns in the form of higher revenue per customer and lower churn in subsequent periods.

All this makes me wonder what the fuss was all about.

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Posted in Apple, Canada, iPhone | Comments

Nokia’s new Benches ‘Come with Music’

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

In an effort to promote its highly touted ‘Comes with Music‘ service, Nokia, the leading handset manufacturer has now started placing special benches at various public places in the UK.

Now, before you start wondering what’s with Nokia and the Benches, let me elaborate. The benches are actually a clever advertising medium to promote their ‘Comes with Music’ service here in the UK. These benches are fitted with Nokia’s handsets and headphones into the armrests. These handsets will be pre-loaded with music, depending on the the region where they are located. For example, Liverpool may get The Beatles while Birmingham might just get Black Sabbath.

DId someone say vandals? Nokia is staying one step ahead here, by placing a security guard at every location. There will also be a live performer and different appearances will be made each day until Christmas.

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Posted in Mobile, Mobile Marketing | Comments

T-Mobile G1 gets a mystery update

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

It’s raining updates for the users of T-Mobile G1. While most of us are yet to lay our hands on the first Android phone, the lucky few who went ahead and bought it already have had to update the build OTA.

While the popular word is that the build number is RC28, one reader over at Engadget has come across a mystery RC29 update. His device now runs the RC29 after his device rebooted “a few times”, according to the post. Another user, however, required only one single reboot and only about 5 minutes of his time.

Have you come across such updates yet?

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Posted in Google, Mobile, T-Mobile | Comments

Google Earth Comes to the iPhone

Monday, October 27th, 2008

Google has finally announced Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

All this while, folks who wanted to go round the earth on their mobile screens had to be content with Earthscape, an app similar to Google Earth, but using it’s own imaging. In fact, the developers had dropped its price from $10 to FREE.

This is the third major release from Google’s stable within a span of 5 days. And boy is this a fantastic release. The Google Earth app takes full advantage of the iPhone’s hardware and gives us some impressive features including the ability to:

  • View the Terrain just by tilting the phone.
  • View your location on the globe by using the “My Location” feature.
  • Search cities, places and businesses around the Globe by making use of the Google Local Search.
  • View millions of geo-located photos from around the world with the new Panoramio layer.
  • View geo-located Wikipedia articles for the places.

The app, obviously, is available FREE on the iTunes Store (iTunes Link). I tried searching for the app on the Indian store, but I was told that it is not yet available.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Sony Ericsson announces SDK Beta for Windows Mobile

Friday, October 24th, 2008

It’s no little secret that both the Apple iPhone and Android phones have done exceptionally well in the markets. Their sales figures not only mean good business for their manufacturers, but they’ve been a boon for countless developers out there, whose apps can now reach to even more people through their respective application stores. We’ve already heard about the developer who made $250,000 in just 2 months of releasing his application for the iPhone.

However, if you’re a developer and if neither the iPhone OS nor the Android OS are your grounds, you need not worry. Sony Ericsson might just be the someone you were waiting for. After the much awaited launch of its XPERIA X1 handset, Sony Ericsson has now released a new Windows Mobile SDK version to the public. 

MobileCrunch has a list of the key features of the new SDK:

  • Compatibility with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – with predefined templates for greatest ease of use
  • Windows Vista OS support (adding to its support for Windows XP)
  • Built-in true Xperia X1 phone device emulator – allowing developers to run, test and debug panels locally on a desktop without phone hardware
  • Key mapping support in the device emulator
Is Sony Ericsson trying to gather some loyal followers here?

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Posted in Mobile, Mobile Development | Comments

Access unveils new Palm OS: ALP 3.0

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Japan’s Access, the company that purchased PalmSource and Palm OS back in 2005, has today officially announced and unveiled the successor to Palm OS, the Access Linux Platform 3.0 or simply ALP 3.0. This linux based release, which is expected to replace the Garnet OS (renamed from Palm OS), not only supports native Linux and Java apps, but also has support for legacy Garnet OS apps.

For the lesser mortal phones, Access also unveiled the ALP mini. The ALP mini operating system is like a stripped down version of the new successor and is intended to drive smaller devices.

The official availability of ALP 3.0 is yet to be announced, though ALP mini has been made available to the manufacturers already.

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Posted in Mobile | Comments

Gmail for Mobile goes 2.0

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Not too long after the Google Maps for Mobile team announced an update for their My Location feature, the Gmail for mobile team have announced the next big version of the mobile app, version 2.0

Making the jump from 1.5.x to 2.0, a lot of exciting new features have been introduced with this release. On of the most annoying things about the app was the time when there was no signal. As per the team, their focus for this version was to make the whole experience faster and more reliable at the same time. Here’s what version 2.0 brings.

  • Improved Performance: There’s a notable speed improvement and absolutely no lag while scrolling.
  • Multiple Account Management: The new version lets your manage multiple Gmail or Google Apps account, allowing you to quickly switch between them. No more running two apps for Gmail and Google Apps.
  • More Shortcut Keys: The new release adds more power to QWERTY phones, by adding even more shortcut keys for scrolling, undo, new and old conversation etc.
  • Offline Support: At times when there’s no or bad signal, the app allows you to compose a new message or read through your most emails. Outgoing messages are saved to the Outbox and sent out automatically.
  • Multiple Drafts: The new version can also store multiple drafts on the phone.
  • Additional Region Support: The version 2.0 is now available in over 35 languages.

As usual, the latest version is available for download at http://m.google.com/mail

The team has also posted a fun video run-through of the new features.

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Posted in Google, Mobile | Comments

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