Hello — Ewan here — at the most recent Unlimited Drinks we decided to do a quick survey of the attendees. My initial idea was to give everyone a pen and an A5 sheet of paper with three easy questions on it. However eventually we ended up having Momchil walk and talk to every attendee to record their results on a spreadsheet (using a Nokia Booklet 3G laptop — the battery lasted the whole evening).

I’m pleased to say that the results are in and they do make interesting reading. Just before that though, I’d like to thank Qualcomm and their Snapdragon platform for supporting the event.

Right then, over to Momchil.

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This is Momchil here with an overview of the results from the survey at the recent Unlimited Drinks. I’d like to thank everyone who participated in this initiative. Thanks to the strong involvement of all participants, the results are very colourful and interesting.

QUESTION 1

What is the most important attribute you look for in a phone or tablet?

A. Processing and graphics performance

B. Power management capabilities

C. Size

D. Screen resolution

E. Other (please state)

QUESTION 1

The first question clearly engaged all participants as more than 50% chose “Other” and gave their own perspective. The answers were so impressive we decided to provide a separate breakdown of  them below. Out of the four pre-suggested answers (A,B,C and D), the most popular was “A” – Processing and graphics performance. The choice of 15% of the participants was B – Power management capabilities. Just 8% were concerned about the “Size” of the device, as we are all prepared to carrying bulky handhelds as long as they do the job. Just 3% found the Screen Resolution of significant importance, which probably wouldn’t be the case several years ago.

QUESTION 1, Answer “E” – Other

User Experience was one of the favourite “Other” answers, with 12% considering it the most important attribute of their Smartphone or Tablet. Equally important are Operating System and Applications. Nearly 10% expressed their brand loyalty to the big “Apple” – “Latest iPhone” and “Apple Logo” being some of the Apple fans’ answers.

QUESTION 2

In your view, what do you see as the most exciting technology currently making its way onto phones or tablets?

A. Console quality games

B. LTE connectivity

C. Advanced Augmented Reality

D. NFC

E. Other (please state)

QUESTION 2

Clearly the most exciting technology currently making its way onto phones and tables is NFC, as more than 40% of the participants have indicated. Advanced Augmented Reality is second, closely followed by LTE connectivity. Just 10% found Console Quality Games more exciting than any of the other answers. There were very few “Other” answers; Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology and Contextualised Content amongst the most interesting.

QUESTION 3

What do you see as being the most important future wireless technology?

A. Wireless health monitoring

B. Wireless charging technology

C. Femtocells

D. LTE

E. Other (please state)

QUESTION 3

The most popular answer for Question 3 was LTE, closely followed by Wireless Charging. Wireless health monitoring was seen as the most important wireless technology by 13% of the participants. The least favourite answer was “C” – Femtocells, and there were several “Other” views. “Mobile Payments” was the most popular alternative answer; and the most extravagant views were “Wireless Everywhere” and “Device Independence”.

Stand by for details on the next Unlimited Drinks event. Further details to follow soon!

I haven’t really thought about the communications side of tomorrow much, seeing as I’m more worried about everything else. However, as Ewan pointed out to me tomorrow morning I will spending more time than I have in a long time, using my mobile phone.

From what I’ve seen from previous year groups (we’ve been shown videos into scaring us to work hard), everyone is using their mobile; so how will I be using mine tomorrow?

Firstly, there are my plans to Twitter everything. It’s more of a plan to keep me sane whilst walking into School than anything else. Then again it’s also partially so that anyone who is interested enough to care, can follow what’s happening on my Facebook and Twitter profile.

Then, there are the “after reading the results” communications. Obviously, whether good or bad (that sends shivers down my spine), my family will want to know.

That’ll mean making a phone-call to my Mum, and trying to tell her everything whilst everyone else in my year group is at the same time. My School is also built in such a way that gaining a signal is near impossible, so I’ll have to hunt around for a good spot, preferably away from my teary-eyed and excited peers.

I don’t doubt for a single second that the hundred and eighty strong year group will not be making dozens of calls and texts. With everyone owning a mobile phone, and eager parents, I expect everyone will have fully prepared and topped up mobiles.

The rest of my family, namely my Grandparents have asked me to send them a text or “drop call” them. I can only imagine that even if I text them the results, they’ll be phoning me up, probably with speakerphone on, so that they can all hear.

And finally, another Twitter update.

Isn’t it odd to think that five years of work will be summed up by 180 characters on the internet? Hmm, whatever the outcome, I don’t want think about it now.

What’s even weirder to think about is that there will be around three hundred thousand students receiving their results tomorrow, and probably doing the exact same thing. Maybe not the Twittering though, because I don’t know of anyone in my friend groups, or year group who micro-blog; but I can guarantee that a number of texts and phone calls will be made.

With any luck whatever I will be texting and saying on my phone tomorrow, it’ll be good – although I don’t have high hopes for Music. But even so, at least I can phone up a reassuring voice in the event of anything drastically horrible.

And that is why I love my mobile phone.

Best of wishes to anyone else who are also receiving any results tomorrow!

Such writedowns are a bit of a nebulous beast – who can really guess how much people’s warm and fuzzy feelings are worth towards a brand? – but wiping £366 million off Virgin Mobile’s value, even if it is purely on paper, has got to smart a bit.

That said, it doesn’t look like this is a major blow for Virgin Mobile. The decision to go ahead with the writedown comes as a result of declining values for mobile phone companies across the board, according to Virgin Media. Virgin Mobile’s got a few other reasons to be cheerful too: the company is planning to get into the tasty 3G data market, it’s doing better selling mobile contracts to cable customers and it’s squeezing more cash from its pre-pay customers as well as adding more post-pay users. It might be a knock, but Virgin shouldn’t have any difficulty in putting it behind them.

“Nokia expects the mobile device market to decline in value in Euro terms in 2008, compared to 2007. The change from our previous estimate of value growth for this market primarily reflects the negative impact of the recently weakened US dollar, the general economic slowdown in the US, and possibly going forward some economic slowdown in Europe,” the company said, and added that average selling price is expected to go down too.

There’s also discussions on how rising food prices will affect Nokia’s performance in emerging markets. According to Business Week, Nokia’s CEO said the chance there will be a knock on effect is “pretty remote. The mobile phone is a necessity item”. That sounds somewhat on the optimistic side to me, unless Nokia’s next line comes with Bluetooth, a two megapixel camera and a few loaves of free bread.