Oct. 24th 2009
Mobile phone giant, Nokia is to sue apple in an attempt to extract royalty payments they claim they are owed by the computer manufacturer. Nokia’s story is that a number of their patents were infringed by Apple in the manufacture of the iPhone. Analysts have estimated that they think Nokia might be looking for as much as one or two percent of the price of an iPhone in royalties, backdated to the launch of the device, obviously. That shakes out to a maximum of $12 dollars per iPhone. Apple have so far sold more than 30 million units, meaning they could stand to pay as much as $400 million dollars.
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Sep. 12th 2009
So, now that there’s going to be a giant single mobile phone provider, will Apple decide that they’ve hitched their star to the wrong wagon, or will they stand by their existing deal with O2?
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Sep. 11th 2009
In a move that has had financial professionals rubbing their hands with glee (for the first time in a while), Orange and T-Mobile have announced plans to merge, creating the biggest mobile phone company in the UK, with approximately 40% market share. The move is thought to have been prompted by increasingly hostile market conditions and mounting difficulties when it comes to turning a profit from customers.
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Aug. 14th 2009
According to a blog post written by a Unix-literate Palm Pre user, the resurgent manufacturer could be collecting data on their users without permission. Joey Hess told technology blog, ‘The Reg’ that after ‘rooting’ his pre so that he could see all the files in the OS he noticed log files indicating that the system was uploading files and information about his usage of the phone.
According to Hess, the information palm is harvesting includes fairly basic information like what apps you are using, how long you’re using them for, when those apps crash. However, somewhat more troublingly, the system is also uploading GPS information about where phone users are at any given time, a situation about which Hess seemed very worried indeed, “It seems both unnecessary and a large privacy risk.”
In response, Palm had this to say…
“Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer’s information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience. For instance, when location based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps. We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust.”
Jun. 9th 2009
Across the tech blogs, not least this one, recently you’ll have seen a lot of information about the Palm Pre and the cool touchstone charging device that works with it. In case you haven’t been about recently, the touchstone is a piece of kit that can charge your Palm Pre wirelessly, all you have to do is rest it on top and it uses something called ‘inductive charging technology’ to top up the juice on your phone.
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May. 22nd 2009
It’s looking like April to June could be the worst quarter ever for the mobile phone industry as demand for the devices continues to stagnate. The blame has been laid partly at the door of the recession but mostly the consensus is that market saturation is behind the decline in demand for mobile phones. It stands to reason, when the world and its five year old daughter find themselves already owning a mobile phone, how are you going to sell many more?
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Mar. 13th 2009
A study from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated that almost 15 per cent of the households in the US has no land-line in their house, surviving solely on mobile phones. The study found that 14.7 per cent of US citizens are solely reliant on their mobile phone.
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Mar. 6th 2009
Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners has been quoted as saying that all iPhone users are going to be switching to Palm Pres when their contracts expire. Now, this site has been as complementary as anyone about Palm’s new venture and we really do hope that they can finally compete with Apple. However, claiming that the Pre is so good that every single iPhone user is going to toss their prized possession aside in disgust and embrace the device may be slightly overstating the case. Here’s the quote in full…
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Feb. 14th 2009
The mobile sector will account for over half of all broadband connections by 2015. That’s according to a report from Analysis Mason. The online analysis company believe that by that point Europe will boast in excess of 148 million mobile broadband connections. The current growth-rate of 46 percent year on year will even see 3G and 4G connections becoming more prevalent than DSL.
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Feb. 12th 2009
Facebook is redoubling its efforts to make the world’s leading social network available on a range of mobile devices by discussing a partnership with Nokia. Nokia are the world’s biggest handset manufacturer, so any deal with them would represent a massive step into the mobile market for Facebook, maintaining, even possibly extending their current meteoric growth rate.
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Feb. 5th 2009
Despite the fact that the Smart Phone market is already hugely crowded, the launch of the latest addition, the Palm Pre, really is a highly anticipated event. The pre-release publicity and reviews have been almost uniformly positive and an impressive showing at an otherwise fairly boring CES has left people champing at the bit for a release date.
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Jan. 21st 2009
The four major US phone networks dealt with massive surges of activity on their wireless networks yesterday without major problems. The massive surge in activity was down to, guess who? Barack Obama.
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