Posted on August 6, 2008, at 4:24 pm .
So, we listened in on the talk from Edel Ebbs, RIM’s VP of Investor Relations at the RBC Technology, Media and Communications Conference today, and she had a few interesting things to say regarding the expanding consumer segment, the importance of fixed-mobile convergence, and future drivers for growth. The majority of sales still rely on hardware, but software and services revenue definitely helps. Edel went on to talk about RIM’s growing branding strategy, which we can see today in their latest advertisements showing off the BlackBerry device as an all-encompassing lifestyle choice, and is just the beginning of a bigger push in the last half of the year. That’s of course a good segue way into their consumer push…
If you’d like to hear the conference talk for yourself, head on over to RIM’s investor relations site…
…otherwise, peek under the jump for the run-down.
Posted on July 16, 2008, at 3:59 pm .
Once upon a time, VIP Communications sold GSM gateways. These magical gateways enabled extra-cheap calling by shunting the calls over the cell network, and saved the poor landline callers precious pennies and nickels every day. That’s when the big bad magenta monster, T-Mobile, came along and stomped VIP Communications into a legal pulp for overloading the wireless network in the areas around the gateways. VIP crawled away wounded and went to sell cheap cell time to enterprise through other means, but was still bitter about the situation.
One day when frolicking in the woods and gathering minutes, VIP Communications found a report…
Posted on June 27, 2008, at 8:09 am .
Vodafone, Cisco and RIM are partnering up to bring a unified communications solution called Vodafone Business One for small and medium businesses sometime later this year. In short, this service will allow your your mobile and landline to share a number and voicemail box, as well as enabling enterprise UMA calling for Wi-Fi calls while you’re in the office area. Solutions like this already exist, but it’s cool to see RIM getting directly involved with one. Who knows? In the long run, maybe fixed-mobile convergence will be just another one of RIM’s base services. I guess that would be their Mobile Voice System. For more info, and one helluva flash site, head on over to Vodafone Business One.
Posted on June 24, 2008, at 8:18 am .
PhoneFusion just announced some beta software for BlackBerry they’re working on that will bring office, VoIP, and cell voice mailboxes to your BlackBerry. It’s fairly ambitious to cover all those different voice platforms in one app, but Fusion Voicemail Plus has been running on Windows Mobile since March, which should have set a lot of the groundwork. PhoneFusion does a lot of of other stuff surrounding fixed-mobile convergence, too – be sure to check out their site. To give it a shot, just head on over to www.fvmplus.com/ and sign up for the beta.
Posted on October 5, 2007, at 11:07 am .
Despite reports that UMA adoption rates are low, there’s still big bucks to be had, as a recent study by Infonetics Research is claiming that there will be $46 billion in the fixed-mobile convergence market by 2010. Beyond UMA handsets like the BlackBerry 8820, this market includes the network controllers the facilitate the Wi-Fi voice handoff, and residential gateways (like Hotspot@Home). The report is also forecasting a jump from 188,000 FMC subscribers in 2006 to 38.2 million in 2010. We can certainly expect the 8820 to be accounting for a decent chunk of that as it gains steam.
Posted on October 4, 2007, at 7:54 am .
A recent report from Analysys is claiming that European adoption of dual-mode UMA handsets, like the BlackBerry 8820 or the upcoming BlackBerry 8120, is low due to complicated set-up and relative ease of implementing separate land-line and mobile services. UMA handoff, which lets your Wi-Fi pick up voice traffic from your mobile when you’re in range, has been equated to fixed-mobile convergence in general, but this report argues that bundled pricing and shared marketing for mobile and fixed voice services is a more effective way of bringing the two technologies together.
Posted on August 15, 2007, at 7:27 am .
Mobile carriers have taken the hint that they need to expand services to better appeal to enterprise customers, as a recent report from Infonetics Research concludes that 80% of carriers plan to offer fixed-mobile convergence plans to corporations by April 2008 at the risk of traffic falling off their network. (FMC involves merging office voice and data services with your handheld – a phone call on a single line can be answered from either office or cellphone.) That being said, enterprise VoIP will supposedly become more and more supported, and with Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerrys pulling in to harbour, carriers don’t have much choice but to follow suit. Now, if the BlackBerry had session initiation protocol supported, RIM could have a solid foothold to get in on the ever-growing PBX phone integration business that carriers are moving towards. This isn’t to say the UMA handoff that the 8820 uses right now doesn’t have a place in new IP multimedia subsystems, but working with SIP sure would open up some possibilities.
Posted on July 18, 2007, at 7:54 am .
Hot off the presses, we’ve got news that the BlackBerry 8820 is en route, packing delicious Wi-Fi connectivity. Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b and g will all be supported, as documented in the FCC patent last week, and not only for data. Generic Access Networking (a.k.a. UMA) will allow for seamless dual-mode calling while in a Wi-Fi hotspot. Although that’s the big feature, besides which the device is largely an 8800, the new BlackBerry will also also be bringing a few other goodies. For one, it will support microSDHC memory cards, meaning up to 32GB of storage capacity. We looked at the 8 GB cards that are in the works from Samsung not too long ago. No 3G just yet, still quad-band GSM/GPRS and EDGE. GPS is in there too, and RIM also points out AZERTY and QWERTZ keypad availability, pointing to an early launch in both France and Germany. In fact, RIM’s handset index lists France as the only European country confirmed to carry the 8820 so far.
Press release and more behind the jump.
Posted on June 5, 2007, at 7:49 am .
Informa Telecoms & Media is citing the distinct lack of global standards for the fixed-mobile market are the biggest hurdle companies have to overcome in order to tap into the expanding business.
Uncertainty remains on the technological evolution toward converged networks, [Senior Analyst Paul Merry] concludes. IMS was lauded as the solution that would provide fully standardised convergent capabilities but the timescale and cost of implementation has caused increasing concern within the operator fraternity. Interim solutions have been suggested such as UMA and latterly femtocell’s which solve the problems of a lack of dual-mode handsets, but such solutions do not provide the type of rich IP-orientated service envisaged by FMC. … “Developing FMC to its full potential will be a sizeable challenge requiring financial and intellectual investment as well as a discarding of vested interests” Merry concludes. “Convergence is the purest form of standardisation and requires that all parties submit to the common aim, he adds”.
ITM’s report also suggests that we’ll be seeing 120 million converged devices by 2012. The majority of those are supposedly going to be in the hands of consumers, which butts heads with a previous study that predicted 82 million of FMC devices will be in corporate hands by 2011. When it comes to numbers, these forecasts have to be taken with a grain of salt.
