Eric Matthes, Channel Manager for HTC, was interviewed by Biz-News.com reporters at IFA 2009 in Berlin. He explains the innovativeness of the two company’s handsets – Magic and Touch Diamond2 – that have been nominated for Plus X Award.
Our reporters were also one of the first to see the HTC’s Tattoo, short of the release.
Eric also talks about his expectations for the smartphone market before the end of 2008 and unveils how the financial crisis has affected the HTC.
VIDEO INTERVIEW. At IFA 2009 in Berlin, Biz-News.com reporters interviewed Jacques Giribet, CEO & Founder of IDAPT.
He showed us the company’s star product – a universal desktop charger that allows to charge several portable devices (such as mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, PDA notebooks, GPS, Bluetooth devices, game consoles, etc.) at the same time, through a system of interchangeable tips. According to the company, it’s compatible with over 3000 devices.
The IDAPT has been nominated for Plus X Award as one of the most innovative products at IFA 2009.
IDAPT is the concept of INOITULOS, the high tech start-up company located in Barcelona.
Introduced to the market in 2006, the Universal Charger is now available in 25 countries on 6 continents in electronics and department stores such as MediaMarkt, Wal-Mart, Carrefour or Orange shops.
In 2008 IDAPT won “HEC Start-up of the Year” award from HEC Paris. It was also designated an “Innovative Enterprise” by Barcelona Activa during the Mobile World Congress 2009.
Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom are planning to merge T-Mobile UK and Orange UK. The companies have entered into exclusive negotiations to combine T-Mobile and Orange in a new 50:50 joint venture company.
If the negotiations are successfully accomplished (the deal is expected to be completed by the end of October), the new joint venture will create the UK’s leading mobile operator. It will have a combined mobile customer base of around 28 million, representing approximately 37 percent of UK mobile subscribers.
The companies assure that this combination will result in expanded network coverage and better customer proximity through a larger network of own shops.
Obviously, the other aim of the new enlarged business is to compete more effectively with the other two large UK operators – O2 and Vodafone.
“By combining our operations in the UK, we anticipate the long-awaited consolidation in one of Europe’s most competitive markets. This will reinforce fair competition and will provide strong benefits for our customers through improved coverage, quality of service and an enhanced capacity to develop new services and technologies,” said Gervais Pellissier, CFO of France Telecom.
“Our shareholders will benefit from higher profitability and an immediate cash flow per share accretion without impacting the overall indebtedness of the parent companies.”
The business will have pro forma 2008 revenues of approximately £7.7 billion. The merger and integration of the operators should generate estimated synergies with a net present value in excess of £3.5 billion, as the companies claim.
Estimated opex-based synergies should reach an annual run rate of over £445 million from 2014 onwards.
The operators predict that the key areas for the opex synergies of the joint venture will be network & IT – large-scale site rationalisation leading to savings notably in site rental expenses, network operations and maintenance expenses – and distribution and marketing – higher proportion of sales through own shops, resulting in lower distribution costs and savings in marketing costs primarily post roll-out of a new branding strategy.
“We will become market leader,” stated Timotheus Höttges, CFO of Deutsche Telekom.
“Our customers will benefit in many ways, for example from the best mobile broadband offer in Britain. In the second-biggest market in Europe, which is undoubtedly one of the toughest and most competitive, 
we are giving T-Mobile UK a clear and strong future.”
The joint venture expects to invest £600 to £800 million in integration costs over the period from 2010 to 2014. Those costs would primarily relate to the decommissioning of mobile sites, the rationalisation of the network of retail stores and the streamlining of operations.
The Board of the new joint venture company will have balanced representation from both firms. The management team would be led by Tom Alexander, currently CEO of Orange UK, as CEO and Richard Moat, currently CEO of TMobile UK, as COO.
The T-Mobile UK and Orange UK brands will be maintained separately for 18 months after completion of the transaction.
Digium, the Asterisk Company, and Skype announced the general availability of Skype for Asterisk.
Skype for Asterisk is an add-on channel driver for Asterisk-based PBX systems. The software is compatible with the free and open source Asterisk versions 1.4, 1.6 and AsteriskNOW, as well as the commercially licensed Asterisk Business Edition.
It enables multiple concurrent Skype calls from a single Skype account, and supports both G.711 and G.729a calling.
According to Digium, with the new software, customers can:
• Manage business Skype accounts with the Business Control Panel
• Get low Skype global rates on outbound calls (as low as 2.1US¢ per minute)
• Receive inbound calls to online numbers
• Route calls according to Skype profile fields, online status and privacy settings
• Streamline customer contact by allowing Web site visitors to place free Skype calls directly to their business with global click-to-call buttons
The companies promote the software as a solution for connecting Asterisk-based business phone systems to Skype.
“We created Skype accounts such as Digium Sales and Digium Support—a convention I suspect many companies will quickly adopt. Now, our customers all over the world can call us for free using Skype and our Asterisk PBX processes the inbound call just like it would a normal call,” said Danny Windham, CEO of Digium.
“Skype for Asterisk allows businesses to access the 400 million community of people communicating over the Internet, natively encrypts all voice calls and lets companies manage their Skype user accounts via Skype’s Web-based Business Control Panel,” the company says.
Businesses already using an Asterisk-based phone system can add Skype as another complementary form of communications by downloading Skype for Asterisk, without additional costly hardware.
Skype for Asterisk is available to download for $66 per concurrent call. It comes with 90 days of installation support from the time of purchase.
Today at IFA 2009, Philips presented Wireless HDTV Link that allows to connect TV to set top box and AV components without any cable.
Wireless HDTV Link transmits 1080p/30 HD signal up to 20 meters, making it possible e.g. to stream devices like a Blu-ray player to a TV from the other side of the room.
The device has two digital HDMI connections and two component connections, allowing switching between devices (TVs, DVDs, games consoles) without having to change cables and plugs in between uses.
Philips admitted that there are products already available that can wirelessly replace cables but, as they claim, their Wireless HDTV Link is the only that doesn’t deteriorate the picture quality “allowing you to enjoy the same high standard of picture quality without wires.”
HDTV Link allows connecting all major brand (CEC) HDTVs with audio and video. Compliance to the HDMI CEC standard will allow devices to seamlessly work together.
The receiver has also been specially designed to fit behind standard TV wall mounts so that it is out of sight and won’t ruin the aesthetics of the room.
It looks as if there was some more room for a device like that on the market, after Belkin has said in July this year it will not be releasing its FlyWire wireless HDMI accessory because of the current state of the economy.
We can understand the move of Philips even in the time of a crisis, as its Wireless HDTV will cost €599.99, while the Belkin’s device had an expecteds retail price of USD $1,499.
DataCore announced support for native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for its its SANmelody and SANsymphony storage virtualisation solutions.
The company has added the Emulex and Brocade FCoE converged network adapters (CNAs) and Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches to its FCoE-qualified support list.
FCoE software drivers are currently available for Microsoft Windows and VMware ESX/vSphere.
FCoE is a new way of using Ethernet in data centres. It is primarily used to consolidate back-end cables in a data centre – enabling network administrators to use the Ethernet infrastructure for FC and IP protocols. What is needed to make it work is a converged network adapter (CNA), which serves as an FCoE card, along with a network switch.
According to DataCore, their customers can now transition to an FCoE infrastructure while still supporting existing Fibre Channel investments.
Customers can run both FCoE and IP traffic through the same port and on the same wire, eliminating the need and expense for separate SAN and LAN adapters and cables.
The ability to run FC protocol over existing Ethernet cabling is significant for network administration, the company claims. It means that administrators do not need to have a separate network for running Fibre Channel protocol.
Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing in DataCore stated that their customers can take advantage of FCoE in their “highly scalable, non-stop storage pools without having to replace or modify their existing back-end storage, which may well include DAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces.”
Samsung announced that it has developed, as it claims, the first Long Term Evolution (LTE) modem that complies with the latest standards of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which were released in March 2009.
The modem, branded the Kalmia, supports download speed up to 100Mbps and upload speed of 50Mbps within the 20MHz frequency bandwidth.
Samsung assures that the users of a mobile device equipped with the LTE chipset can download a high-definition movie file (800MB) in one minute at speeds of 100Mbps, while simultaneously streaming four high-definition movies with no buffering.
Utilizing Release 8 of the 3GPP, this LTE modem is an upgrade from the previous standard that was released in December 2008.
The company also announced it has successfully developed a 3G baseband modem based on the Release 7 standard with an HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) Evolution platform.
This modem, branded the Broom, allows download speeds of up to 28Mbps and upload speeds of 11.5 Mbps. This makes the Release 7 more than twice as fast as the Release 6 HSPA Service, which had a maximum download speed of 14.4Mbps.
Because the LTE and all other HSPA evolution models share the same platform, the new LTE modem is fully compatible with earlier standards.
Through this technology, a mobile communications service provider can upgrade to HSPA service or evolve into a LTE network simultaneously in order to convert their existing networks to broadband.
In the future, this flexibility will be crucial as wireless mobile service providers will require compatibility with pre-existing systems, in order to offer LTE in urban areas while still supporting 3G in suburban or rural areas, as Samsung claims.
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JongKyun Shin, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics said that the company is partnering with LTE developers preparing for a LTE service launch in 2010 and will unveil a variety of LTE devices of different types and with diverse features and options, including memory cards, handheld devices and MID.
Separately, Samsung has developed the mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) modem chip, a product that is already resonating in the mobile market. The company has already adopted the modem into commercial WiBro handsets in Korea.
They have also demonstrated a full lineup of modems from 2G/3G to modems for the next generation of mobile telecommunication systems with its HSDPA Evolution modems.
Samsung is strengthening its position in mobile telecommunication system standards. The campany currently holds the most chairman seats within the IEEE 802.16 Working Group, a WiMAX standardization association, and also chairs the WiMAX Forum, an affiliate organization.
NOKIA WORLD 09. Nokia announced the launch of the new Nokia X6, the latest edition to the company’s Xseries touch-screen device portfolio.
Nokia calls X6 a ‘Comes With Music’ device, as it provides unlimited access to the Nokia Music Store, 35 hours of music playback, comes with built-in FM radio, 3D stereo ringing tones, a new Bluetooth headset, that looks like a cool, sporty headband and dedicated pocket-size battery-powered mini speaker.
This very slim (14mm) handset features stroke-sensitive, 3.2 inch 16:9 widescreen nHD, that enables to fit 20 shortcuts onto a home screen, 32GB internal memory, 5 megapixels with Carl-Zeiss optics and dual LED flash, built-in features to edit videos, show them on TV or online, built-in GPS with Assisted GPS (A-GPS) support, compass and Nokia Ovi Maps.
It packs high speed MicroUSB connector, WLAN (China WAPI), Bluetooth 2.0, WCDMA, GPRS/EDGE, HSDPA connectivity and full web browser (OSS) v7.0 with Macromedia Flash Lite 3.0
The Nokia X6 is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of 2009 for an estimated retail price of EUR459.
The new phones will be the first to feature Windows Mobile 6.5, the latest version of Microsoft’s mobile phone software.
The company didn’t unveil any new details, they just promised “easy-to-use user interface”, “better browsing capabilities” and “access to valuable services”, which will be Windows Marketplace for Mobile (the company’s app store) and Microsoft My Phone (backup cloud service), that are also set to launch on October 6.
“Windows phones bring together the best of the Web, the PC and the phone so you can connect instantly to the experiences you care about, no matter where you are,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO at Mobile World Congress 2009 in February this year, when the company revealed the new series of smartphones.
In North America mobile operators like AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, TELUS and Verizon Wireless, and phone manufacturers like HP, HTC, LG, Samsung and Toshiba are committed to updating or expanding their portfolios to include phones with Windows Mobile 6.5
Also AT&T has informed that starting on September 14th, customers with Wi-Fi-enabled Windows Mobile smartphones and unlimited/other qualifying data plans will receive unlimited access to AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide.
IPsmarx has released Version VI of their Direct DID solution based on "service provider demand for an affordable way for their customers to make international calls."
According to the company, with the IPsmarx Direct DID Solution, corporations and call centers are able to maintain many phone numbers with multiple area codes and have them forwarded anywhere in the world.
For example, a corporation located in Hong Kong, may have a US toll-free number ring at their office for the convenience of their US customers.
Using this new solution, calls can be forwarded without routing through an IP phone. The calls are placed using a landline or cell phone eliminating the need for an IP phone or internet access.
The IPsmarx Direct DID Solution also supports multiple DID numbers. For example, a client could have phone numbers in London, New York, and South Africa all routing to his cell phone in Toronto.
“Business professionals on the go need multiple phone numbers around the world and the ability to forward calls to one number,” says the company.
Using DID solution, Call Centers streamline their operation by avoiding the need for PSTN gateways and IP phones. They now have the flexibility to route many different DID’s to one call center with no additional hardware needed.
Service providers, that use DID platform, can offer a toll free number that is forwarded to a call center in a different country.
"The Direct DID solution is an excellent addition to IPsmarx’ line of VoIP solutions, as it compliments our Softswitch and Calling Card platforms very well," said Ludymar Reveron, Sales Manager with IPsmarx.
"Our existing service provider clients are already implementing this feature to expand on their current service offerings," he added.
At the enf of July, IPsmarx and DIDX have agreed a partnership with the aim of allowing VoIP service providers to extend their global reach.