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)
