Mobile services revenues to exceed $1 trillion in 2013

Research firm Informa Telecoms & Media today released early findings from its new Global Mobile Forecasts to 2014 report, which claims that the growing number of data services will offset lost voice revenues, creating a new revenue earning potential of $1 trillion in 2013.

The report also reveals that 2G is still used by 90-percent of the world's wireless subscribers. That number is expected to fall below 50-percent by 2014 when more users adopt 3G and 3.5G+ technologies. As data services become more robust during that time period, in countries like Japan, data revenues and the average revenue per user (ARPU) for data services will surpass voice revenues and voice ARPU

 

http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=8568

Motorola Introduces MOTOROI™, Korea’s First Smart Phone Powered by Android 2.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 17, 2010

SEOUL, Korea. – 17 January 2010 – Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), a global leader in mobile telecommunications, today inaugurated a new era in Korea’s mobile lifestyle with the introduction of MOTOROI™, the first smart phone in Korea to be powered by Android™ version 2.0.

For people who want the ultimate smart phone experience, MOTOROI™ offers the ability to use multiple applications at the same time, effortless pinch-and-zoom browsing, and cinematic navigation through music, videos, and maps of the world.  

“We are delighted to announce MOTOROI™, the first Android-based phone, with SK Telecom in Korea, a key partner in one of Motorola’s key markets in the world, ” said Sanjay Jha, co-chief executive officer of Motorola and chief executive officer of Motorola Mobile Devices. “MOTOROI™ is a smart phone without compromise, delivering a wiser, richer web and messaging experience with the most delightful touch-interface you have ever experienced, all made possible through the combination of Motorola’s expertise in design, a truly differentiated Android experience, and the power of SK Telecom’s network.”

“Motorola’s smart phones powered by Android are receiving tremendous response around the world, and it is our pleasure to introduce one of them for the first time in Korea,” said Ha Sung-min, MNO president of SK Telecom™. “MOTOROI™ by Motorola will bring a paradigm shift in the domestic mobile market with outstanding Internet, multimedia features and access to the fast-growing Android Market™.”

Thousands of Android-Based Applications 

Android is widely recognized as the most exciting mobile platform in part because of its unequalled openness. Anyone can develop Android applications and make them available through Android Market, and you can download them on MOTOROI™.

Designed to take full advantage of the power of Android 2.0, MOTOROI™ gives you a full touch screen with a huge 3.7 inch, high-definition WVGA (480X854) display, making it easier than ever to view full page websites, videos, games, or photos. The display uses a powerful combination of Motorola’s touch user interface (UI) and a capacitive touch sensor for smooth screen flipping and scrolling, and five main displays let you customize your MOTOROI™ with various widgets with more freedom than ever before.

Google Mobile Services in Your Hand

MOTOROI™ delivers fast and powerful mobile versions of Google™’s most popular services. High speed web-browsing¹ is possible at home or outdoors with MOTOROI™’s Wi-Fi support and Android Web Kit Browser, supporting up to eight open browser windows¹ and giving you the greatest possible freedom in using Google™’s various mobile services¹, including:

• Google Maps™: Search for places near your location, get driving directions, view map with Street View and satellite imagery

• Gmail™: Integrates and supports multiple accounts

• YouTube™: Enables one-touch playback from home screen widget or app

• Google Talk™: Provides messenger service by Google

Imaging Technology for Digital Camera Experience & Premium Multimedia Features

You expect a Motorola device to offer superb imaging, and MOTOROI™ breaks new ground, offering an 8 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and a 720p HD camcorder – the first of its kind in Korea. Your new MOTOROI™ not only lets you capture, view and share² high quality photos and videos, it helps you make them look better than ever:

• Smart image capture: Includes easy panorama, face detection, multi-shot (6 shots in a row), face filter, red eye reduction, camera shake prevention and many more elements designed to improve the quality and variety of your photos

• HDMI™ (High Definition Multimedia Interface): With Korea’s first HDMI™ capable phone, play your HD video from your phone directly to your HDTV.

MOTOROI delivers an upgraded mobile entertainment experience from the company that pioneered mobile entertainment:

• MP3 player: Enables you to send and listen to MP3 files without the need to convert files

• Terrestrial DMB¹: Enjoy up to 24 TV and audio channels for free

• 3.5mm ear jack: Listen to music through connecting your favorite head phones

• Storage up to 8GB³ and Micro SD support up to 32GB³

• Unique docking station: Enjoy movies by setting the phone on the docking station designed exclusively for the MOTOROI™, or use the phone as table clock or digital frame

User-Friendly and Innovative UI

MOTOROI^™ adds a host of small touches to your user interface to help make using a powerful smart phone easy and intuitive:

• Smart widgets let you use your content more conveniently, adjusting the size of the calendar, memo pad, contacts, e-mail and other widgets and shortcut icons on the home screen as you are using them

• Pinch to zoom in and out lets you enlarge or reduce the size of web pages with ease

• MOTOROI™ offers five distinct text-input methods, including a 3X4 keypad, full QWERTY, half QWERTY, hand writing and writing pad

• The screen lock with proximity sensor lets you talk on your phone with ease as the screen automatically locks when the touch screen gets near your face

Advanced Mobile Office for Efficient Working

We all have to work sometime, and MOTOROI™ supports management of multiple accounts and document editing to ensure you work more efficiently with cutting-edge text recognition and true multi-tasking, which lets you run multiple applications at once:

• Synchronize and manage multiple email accounts simultaneously, letting you separate your work and personal inboxes

• Gmail Contacts sync: Synchronize contacts from the accounts that are added on the device.

• Microsoft and PDF document viewer

• Optical Character Recognition: Optical dictionary that translates immediately through quick scanning, business card reader which recognizes contact information on business cards and automatically stores information to your phonebook; and document reader which easily scrap books or articles to your phone as text files

The MOTOROI™ by Motorola will be available at SK Telecom™ retailers throughout Korea beginning in early February. For more information on MOTOROI™, please visit the Motorola website www.motorola.com/kr/consumer.

 

http://mediacenter.motorola.com/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseID=12314&NewsAreaID=-1

Nike Launches Impressive Hyper-Local iPhone App

Nike launched a new iPhone app yesterday called True City (iTunes link) with the slogan "Make the hidden visible." The app provides hyper-local, real-time information for 6 European cities. It combines expert curation of news and events info, crowdsourced information discovery (with a chance to become an official guide), push notifications, QR codes printed and posted around the city and apparently a little Augmented Reality. Of course True City also lets you learn about shoes you can buy.

It was built by AKQA, the same design firm that made the truly useful Augmented Reality app for the US Postal Service that lets you see if an object you're holding up to your computer will fit in a postal shipping box.

Design blog PSFK says that with the app, Nike appears determined to build "an army of hyper-local, mobile-connected advocates."

Can an apparel company's app compete with local content from companies specializing in that kind of work? As one reviewer wrote on the iTunes store, "Do you want bar recommendations from Nike? Nice app but no content. Will never compete with the likes of Yelp. Pointless really."

Presumably the expert contributors for each city will try to help overcome these limitations. Would you be interested in a handful of select people recommending places, events and news for your local area? As one component of a larger hyper-local news and events source that sounds great to me. In fact, I think it's a model that would serve any location based social network well.

The Downside of Corporate Portals Into Your True City

Nike may very well be able to dazzle a substantial number of users into using the app with its remarkable design, but there is still some concern about building your connection to your local area through the sterile lens of a marketing campaign. There are certain important but unpleasant things that seem unlikely to be served up on such a platform. Nike's app makes the hidden visible, right?

Nike's home town of Portland, Oregon for example, is a major hub of international sex trafficking. Matters like that are far more likely to be reported about by institutions that place the public interest of their communities, namely newspapers, than they are by mobile marketing apps, no matter how cool, hyper-local, curated, crowdsourced and augmented they may be. The True City campaign says it's performed "all with Nikeʼs unmistakable irreverence" - but I think that just means it's sassy advertising.

None the less, the technology and strategy is an interesting data point in the unfolding history of hyper-local, mobile technologies.

 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/nike_launches_new_hyper-local_iphone_app.php

2010 Trend: Sensors & Mobile Phones

Last week in our Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things series, we looked at barcode scanning and RFID in the next generation iPhone. We expect to see Apple and Android battling it out for both barcode and RFID supremacy this year.

Another key technology in the Internet of Things - where everyday objects are endowed with Internet connectivity - is sensors. In fact we've seen the most activity so far in the Internet of Things from sensor data. So in this post we explore how mobile phones and sensors are mixing; and what to expect in 2010.

RWW's Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things Series:

1. Mobile Apps For Barcode Scanning
2. iPhone as RFID Tag & Reader
3. Sensors & Mobile Phones

Last year we wrote a lot about sensors and discovered that there are two common scenarios for sensors + mobile phones:

1) Everyday objects with sensors pumping out data on things like temperature, noise and activity; the mobile phone reads and analyzes this data.

2) The phone is used as a sensor itself. For example the iPhone has a built-in accelerometer, which is basically a motion detector. This is used for game control and also for re-sizing your iPhone display from portrait to landscape. The iPhone also has a microphone (which can be used as a noise sensor), a proximity sensor, and an ambient light sensor.

iPhone as Sensor

A good example of scenario 2 is WideNoise, an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels and displays the data on an interactive map. WideNoise is essentially a sound sensor, using the iPhone's microphone.

You can take a sound reading on WideNoise and, if you so desire, share that with the community. I must admit that I haven't found too much practical use for this app yet. However one of the use cases cited is checking it when house-hunting, to assess the average noise levels of the neighborhood. It's one of those apps that will become more useful the more data is added to it by the community - but we all know that's a hard thing to achieve for a young startup.

Mobile Phones Reading Sensor Data

Sensors are rapidly growing as a source of data on the Web. A corollary is that sensor networks are an enormous opportunity for some of the big tech companies. In November we wrote about HP's CeNSE project, which aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth." CeNSE is a research and development program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of what HP calls "tiny, cheap, tough and exquisitely sensitive detectors."

According to HP Labs, CeNSE sensors will enable real-time data collection, analysis and better decision making. And what will be a key tool for doing all of that? You guessed it, the mobile phone. Imagine for example getting a real-time update of traffic conditions on your mobile phone, via sensors on a major stretch of highway.

Those are the two main ways that sensors and mobile phones are mixing currently. Let us know in the comments if you have a favorite mobile phone app that outputs or inputs sensor data. Also please share other use cases.

 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2010_trend_sensors_mobile_phones.php