Posted on August 26, 2008, at 8:04 am .
The latest report from mobile advertising agency AdMob ran through some numbers based on the four billion ads they’ve served up. As you can see, Nokia remains top dog in mobile browsing activity, capturing a solid 34% of the global share thanks primarily to heavy adoption in Africa and Asia, followed up closely by Openwave (AKA WAP) at 29%. BlackBerry took a sad little 3% slice of the pie, right along side Motorola, Palm’s and Apple’s browsers. The BlackBerry 8300 and BlackBerry 8100 are still on the American Top Ten handsets list, though the top four spots are taken by Motorola. Even internationally, the Pearl does alright, getting 9th. place. In terms of geography, Indonesia has seen about ten times more traffic than last year, and Asia on the whole has seen a significant increase in activity.
(AdMob via Electronista)
Posted on August 25, 2008, at 8:22 am .
Back in 1991, the National Association of Broadcasters attempted to lobby the FCC against pay-to-use news services over cellular networks, which would have been bad news for BlackBerry if it had gone through.
The NAB said that the cellular operators are misusing their spectrum. “Cellular spectrum should be reserved for the two-way communication for which it is designed,” said the NAB. “One-way transmission of news, sports, weather and traffic would be a misuse of this spectrum and a needless duplication of broadcast services.”
Yep, the NAB didn’t want any data services sent over cell networks, which would include that handy push e-mail we all know and love today. Too bad for them that one didn’t pan out, eh? Think they would have smartened up over the last decade? Guess again. They’re still combating the use of wireless white space by Google, Dell Microsoft and others for data services for fear of its interference with existing broadcasting in the spectrum – essentially the same premise as back in ‘91. Good luck with that one, guys.
Thanks Josep!
(BNET via Saschameinrath)
Posted on August 22, 2008, at 8:49 am .
With RIM’s first HSPA (the BlackBerry Bold’s flavour of 3G) device now available internationally, and so many worries about coverage arising, it’s time to take a look at some subscriber numbers. Last year, 11 million cell phones were running on the 3G technology, but now we’re looking at 50 million handsets cruising on HSPA networks. That substantial increase is supported by 191 service providers and over 740 devices.
“These figures highlight the global success of Mobile Broadband and the fact that we are continuing to see greater and greater economies of scale,” said Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board of the GSMA. “This is driving down the cost of devices and equipment and enabling more and more users across the world to enjoy easy access to media-rich services anywhere at anytime.”
This gives us a lot of hope for better connectivity on the BlackBerry Bold and future 3G devices, but by the looks of the BlackBerry Javelin and BlackBerry Kickstart, the 9000 may be the only HSPA BlackBerry until the BlackBerry Thunder in mid-October.
(via cellular-news)
Posted on August 14, 2008, at 1:43 pm .
Jim Prentice, Canadian Minister of Industry, recently met up with execs from Telus and Bell to discuss the upcoming $.15 charges on incoming SMS messages. In the end, Prentice, who had previously had serious concerns over the move by carriers has since backpedalled, and is advising unsatisfied customers to find alternatives.
“Given these undertakings by Bell Mobility and Telus, I would encourage consumers dissatisfied with existing plans to seek alternatives. The telecommunications market in Canada is dynamic — choice is available,”
Like who, Rogers? A single alternative isn’t exactly what you’d call choice, let alone personify a dynamic market. To be honest, it’s hardly about finding good wireless rates in Canada anymore, it’s just about finding the one who will screw you over the least. If you’re as unhappy about this as we are, the NDP party is running a petition to fight the new SMS charges. Bell’s charges have already kicked in and Telus will commence the gouging on Aug. 24.
(via CBC)
Posted on August 8, 2008, at 9:14 am .
The Opera Mini survey awhile back went to show just how popular BlackBerry is here in North America, but another survey by Springboard Research has revealed that BlackBerry devices are getting drastically outsold in Asia-Pacific. Windows Mobile devices racked up 6 million sales last year, versus RIM’s paltry 1 million. One of the main reasons for this, according to the researchers, is the high cost of push e-mail service for people in that region, making it a poor option for small and medium businesses. BlackBerry Unite! is helping a bit, since it’s free and can keep companies of up to 5 users linked together, but really it seems like a local NOC would go a long ways to increasing adoption in Asia-Pacific. There’s been talk about a factory opening up in China, and some kind of data centre in India to get around that whole security issue, but surely the biggest end result would be lowered costs for everyone in the neighbourhood. Still, with ad campaigns like this, how can you resist WinMo?
(via Windows Mobile Cool)
Posted on August 1, 2008, at 8:01 am .
The latest projections from SNL Kagan are predicting some solid growth for wireless data, particularly surround mobile e-mail. Growing adoption of mobile data services, forecasted to increase revenues by 16% annually to $100 billion by 2017, will partially be thanks to the likes of mobile e-mail which will reach 62% penetration (good news for BlackBerry, obviously), but the bigger driver will be mobile video. It will be seeing 22% growth year-on-year, and with screens like the BlackBerry Bold and iPhone becoming prevalent, it’s easy to see how people could be getting more excited about mobile TV and movies. We’re still waiting on Slingbox to get something out there for BlackBerry, but with forecasts like this one, you’ll likely be seeing a lot of other venues for mobile entertainment.
(via cellular-news)
Posted on July 31, 2008, at 11:45 am .
The latest in Sprint’s downward spiral to oblivion is the conclusion of a class-action lawsuit which ruled that contract early termination fees did not count as rates, and therefor fell under federal, rather than California state law. Using such ETFs as a means to discourage jumping ship is illegal under federal law, and so $18.23 million was rewarded to those who were forced to pay up. On top of that, they’ve got $54.75 million in unpaid ETFs that will be recredited. Ow. Tough break there, Sprint. Some appeals are likely to happen, but things aren’t looking so hot right now.
(via Kansas City Business Journal)
Posted on July 31, 2008, at 11:23 am .
W3C publications can be downloaded in either .PDF or stone tablet.
Let’s face it, unless you’re rocking the BlackBerry Bold, browsing the web on your BlackBerry is usually a frightening experience: things don’t work, page formatting is often weird and some pages are just too damn big to download. Thankfully, the W3C, which develops guidelines for website standards, has published the details of new standards that will make it easier for people to browse the Web on mobile devices, hopefully ensuring that even low-end BlackBerry users won’t be left in the lurch.
Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 provides steps for content authors to face the challenges of hardware and software diversity, device constraints and bandwidth limitations. In addition, the W3C has also released a XHTML Basic 1.1 Recommendation, providing a convergence in mobile markup languages, including those developed by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
To view both new mobile web standards, head to the World Wide Web Consortium website.
(via Cellular-News)
Posted on July 31, 2008, at 8:11 am .
Chalk it up to poor forecasts, issues with iPhone pricing, or less than stellar subscriber numbers, but Rogers’ 12% earnings increase last quarter did little to assuage stockholders. Stock price is down to around $34 from $39 last week despite making $CAN 364 million last quarter versus $CAN 299 million last year. Unfortunately, wireless additions were down to 92,000 versus 133,000 last year, but this doesn’t take into account the full punch of the iPhone, and you can bet that the BlackBerry Bold will be pushing Q3 numbers in a good direction as well.
(via cellular-news)
Posted on July 25, 2008, at 8:26 am .
As if you needed any further indication of Sprint’s downward spiral, they’ll be selling off 3,300 of their towers for $670 million to TowerCo. As bad as that sounds, TowerCo will actually be leasing these towers back to Sprint – think of it like outsourcing all of the gritty back-end work. Of course, with someone else handling all of that, it means that Sprint won’t have to keep all the tower maintenance crew on their end anymore and will probably lose a fair number of employees that TowerCo will be replacing. What do you guys think – savvy saving on Sprint’s part?
(via Engadget)
