Elan is launching an adapter that allows an external USB hard drive to be plugged into a cellphone’s micro-SD slot.
Once connected using the Mobidapter, files can be transferred and backups made without the need for a PC.
The connector can be used on any mobile/cell phone, smartPhone or PDA with external SD socket.
It works in all operating systems and no drivers are required.
UK-based Elan said the Mobidapter will be shipping from mid-June 2009. No price is currently available.
Worldwide smartphone shipments grew 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year, according to the latest quarterly market overview by Canalys.
However, Pete Cunningham, senior analyst with Canalys, told smartphone.biz-news the North American consumer market saw shipments rise in Q1 2009 by 22.5 per cent year-on-year.
He said North American market growth was being helped by the smartphone’s shift into the mainstream.
RIM, which was instrumental in the development of the enterprise smartphone market, still dominates but the emphasis is changing.
"The smartphone market in the US has grown up predominantly as a professional-focussed market," said Cunningham. "But since the iPhone launched, the dynamic has changed.
"Now smartphones are pushing into the consumer space and that’s aiding the growth."
The analyst said he was confident smartphone shipments would continue to grow in North America, although he predicted the rate would slow slightly.
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| Pete Cunningham, senior analyst with Canalys |
He expected the Palm Pre, due to be launched on June 6th, to do well, as would the anticipated update to the iPhone.
Cunningham said that in EMEA smartphone shipment growth was 3.4 per cent in Q1 2009.
He said the bulk of growth was in Western Europe where operators were really pushing vendors to drive consumers towards smartphones.
There was also growing reluctance from the majority of operators to subsidise high tier proprietary operating systems.
"They are looking for vendors to support open platforms," he said. "There has certainly been momentum gathering in this since the beginning of the year which has caught some vendors out."
Among them is Sony Ericsson, according to Cunningham, with the majority of the phone maker’s offerings having proprietary OS rather than open platforms.
However, he said that moving forward he was confident the Western European market would continue to grow, especially with the prospect of a number of high profile launches imminent, including the Pre and upgraded iPhone.
Another factor that has been evident in the smartphone market is the practice of carriers agreeing "super exclusive" partnership with high-profile handset makers.
In the UK in 2008, this included Vodafone and the Blackberry Storm,T-Mobile and the Google G1, O2 and the iPhone.
Cunningham said this was likely to continue with the Palm Pre expected in Europe shortly after its US launch.
"The drive behind this is partly because operators are trying to focus on customer retention," he said. "And to do this they need high profile devices."
Another key feature in the smartphone market has been the growth in sales of touchscreen devices, shipments of which nearly doubled in Q1 2009 compared with a year ago, according to Canalys.
Cunningham said the success of the Nokia 5800, which had a "tremendous" first quarter, had really helped boost the technology.
However, he expected to see a lot more QWERTY keyboards on upcoming models – and touchscreen/QWERTY offerings like the Nokia N97 and Palm Pre.
"I would not be surprised if we saw more of this combination," he said.
"A touchscreen is great for browsing but, especially with the growing demand for social networking, a keyboard is very good for text entry.
"Software keyboards are sometimes not so great."
The market for ambient DVDs may still be in its early days – but if HD Coolvision’s offering is anything to go by it could take off very quickly.
The LA-based start-up has released The Moon, a DVD of high-def footage of this celestial wonder intended to be displayed as video artwork on flat-panel HDTVs.
Filmed using high-end HD cameras by a professional cinematographer the stunning images are accompanied by an original music score (see Silvery White MOON video after the break).
Bruno Bonugli, owner and managing partner of HD Coolvision, told hdtv.biz-news that the idea behind ambient DVDs is to allow consumers to use their HDTVs to display video imagery and set the tone in a room.
He said the concept was still relatively unheard of, despite the fact that many households now had flat-panel TVs.
Recent research showed that more than 39 million US households have an HDTV set – and the figure keeps rising.
"The biggest thing is that people still do not know what ambient DVDs are," he said.
"I have many friends with big, flat-panel TVs who have never heard of them. That’s one of the hurdles we have to overcome."
The Moon is HD Coolvision’s first ambient DVD. Among the options on the disc are "orange moon" rising shots, "distant moon" shots and a "white moon" moving across the screen in real time and slowed down versions.
Another feature is moon facts that can be displayed on screen.
Bonugli and his business partner, Dan Gorski, both Columbia College film graduates, said they have plans for future ambient DVDs.
After choosing the moon as the subject Bonugli said they asked a friend who was a professional cinematographer to do the filming in HD for the DVD.
"We researched the market and found that nobody really had a live view of the moon," he said.
The pair are confident that the ambient DVD market will take off in a big way.
"We have competitors out there who are putting a lot into promoting their products," said Bonugli. "They see something in this new market too."
The Moon is available for USD $19.99.
Microsoft Vista users can now stream films from Netflix through the Windows Media Center.
The development comes after Microsoft announced that it has expanded its partnership with the movie service.
Vista users can also stream Netflix movies on PCs by going to the Netflix site.
The arrangement is part of Microsoft’s plans to develop its Media Center as an online video hub.
Microsoft offers Media Center with the Vista operating system.
By selecting the new Netflix tab in "TV+Movies" Vista users can start streaming films immediately.
They will also be able to search and watch programs from Netflix’s online library of 12,000 movies and TV shows.
Microsoft’s partnership with Netflix began last year when it began offering the movie service’s streaming movies through the Xbox 360 game console.
Skype president Josh Silverman’s invitation to appear as a guest on ‘Oprah’ may not come as much of a surprise to fans of the show.
The VoIP giant has already been featured on the program and Oprah Winfrey often uses it for interviews.
But while Oprah is well known for promoting Skype, Kindle and Twitter, she doesn’t usually give over whole shows to them.
What was the excuse for Thursday’s episode-long commercial for Skype?
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| Josh Silverman Skype President |
Well the show was billed as an opportunity to discuss the features the technology offers to its subscribers.
Titled "Where the Skype Are You?", it features people calling in from exotic locations around the world, with video chats on an airplane, a submarine, Antarctica, and London’s Harrods department store.
It might have been interesting to have included a slot discussing Skype’s troubled relationship with eBay, would it not?
Billing can be a complicated process for VoIP service providers and calling card operators – especially if they want to diversify and offer more than one service.
In some cases customers end up receiving separate bills or a third system has to be used to generate them.
Now Ipsmarx Technology is offering a solution which it claims streamlines the billing process.
Called Unified Customer Management (UCM) it enables service providers to offer calling card, PINless dialing, IP phone, and video over IP services to the same customer and provide only one bill for all the services.
It also makes life easier for end users, who get the convenience of signing up for each service using one web interface.
Carrie Fedders, account manager with IPsmarx, told voip.biz-news that if a service provider does not have an all-in-one solution, they may have one system that manages their calling card platform and another system that manages their VoIP business.
"Then, they cannot send only one bill to their customer or they have to generate the bill using a 3rd system, while pulling information from their calling card and VoIP systems, so it can be quite complicated," she said.
With the IPsmarx package billing feature, service providers can decide to bill for all services on a per minute or flat rate basis as well as create selling packages, or "bundles", for different services.
Fedders said the UCM solution streamlines the billing process and gives operators the ability to offer a complete suite of VoIP and calling card services to their end users.
This in turn has the potential to increase revenue for operators, which are increasingly looking to diversify their services.
So an operator with an established client base who are making international calls could can capitalize on this by offering additional long distance services and increase their market share.
"A calling card company can now add VoIP service, for example, and advertise it to their calling card users, in order to increase their usage and call volume, thus generating another revenue stream," she said.
"Also, operators avoid the expense of multiple systems and 3rd party billing/invoicing software."
A new app is offering iPhone users a way of making Skype calls using 3G by turning outgoing calls into incoming ones.
Appropriately called Incoming, it connects to any landline or mobile phone over Edge, 3G, and WiFi – whereas the official Skype for iPhone app is limited to WiFi.
Calls made on the iPhone using the Incoming app are routed through a user’s home PC’s Skype software and turned into an incoming call.
This means users don’t eat into wireless dialplan minutes if they have unlimited inbound minutes.
There’s obviously a cost if SkypeOut credits are required but that can be limited by signing up for one of Skype’s unlimited call plans.
How it works:
1. Open the Incoming app and enter a phone number and press CALL.
2. Receive an incoming call, once answered, the dialled number is called
3. Wait to be connected
The app costs USD $4.99 on the iTunes store.
Other features include:
So the launch of the Palm Pre is June 6th – and the scene is all set for what is likely to be an exciting summer for the smartphone industry.
Those joining Palm in announcing new – or updated handsets – over the next few months are Apple with an upgraded iPhone and new phones using the Android operating system from Google.
The launch season has already begun in the US, with T-Mobile announcing the introduction of the Sidekick LX, while AT& T unveiled the Samsung Jack.
But the peak time is the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day – a spell that will be a crucial one for the industry in the US, according to the New York Times.
How the Pre fares is certain to determine the future of loss-making Palm.
It is a little surprising, then, to hear that Dan Hesse, Palm’s CEO says he expects a shortage of Pre handsets at launch.
If true, it will certainly lead to headline-making lines forming outside of stores on June 6th.
But even if it is a sales tactic, it’s a risky one for a company in Palm’s financial situation.
The stakes are also high for Sprint Nextel, which has exclusive rights to the Pre in the United States.
Striking a positive note, the NYT comments that with only 100 million smartphones out of the four billion mobile devices in the world, the market is capable of sustaining more than one succesful handset.
The summer launches will add spice to the general mood of optimism within the smartphone industry.
Lee Williams, chief of the Symbian Foundation, has predicted smartphone sales will grow 12-15 per cent in 2009, while Marvell Technology Group’s chief executive Sehat Sutardja reckons smartphones will soon make up 50 per cent of the mobile market.
And the latest figures for smartphone sales suggest demand in unflagging.
Smartphone sales grew 12.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 despite sharply falling sales of mobile phones generally – down 9.4 per cent year-on-year.
Leading the charge in high-end device sales were RIM’s Blackberry handsets and Apple’s iPhone, along with a number of other touchscreen phones, according to research firm Gartner.
Sales of RIM handsets totalled 7.23 million in Q1, or 19.9 per cent of the smartphone market, up from 13.3 per cent in the same period last year.
Over the same period, the iPhone’s market share more than doubled from 5.3 per cent to 10.8 per cent, with sales of 3,94 million devices.
The growth makes Apple the third-largest smartphone maker in the world and gives it twice as much share as HTC.
Nokia remained the leading maker of smartphones in Q1 but saw its market share drop to 41.2 per cent from 45.1 in Q1 2008. It sold 14.99 million devices, up slightly from 14.58 million in the same period last year.
The Finnish giant’s smartphone sales were helped by the introduction of its 5800 device into more regions.
Nokia started shipping its 5800 touch screen smartphone at the end of 2008.
Overall Smartphone sales were 36.4 million units, which accounted for 13.5 per cent of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009 compared with 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2008.
However, worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 269.1 million units in Q1 2009, a 9.4 per cent decrease from the first quarter of 2008.
Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner, said the positive performances by RIM and Apple showed that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ success.
She said that much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touchscreen products, both in midtier and high-end devices.
"Touch for the sake of touch was enough of a driver in the midtier space, but tighter integration with applications and services around music, mobile e-mail, and Internet browsing made the difference at the high end of the market," she said.
Symbian accounted for 49.3 per cent of worldwide smartphone operating systems (OS) market share in the first quarter of 2009, but this was down from 56.9 per cent share in the first quarter of 2008.
Nokia maintained its leading position in the overall mobile market, although its market share dropped to 36.2 per cent from 39.1 per cent a year earlier.
Samsung’s market share rose 4.7 percentage points to 19.1 per cent and Gartner said the announcement of its first Android-based product, the i7500, will help Samsung in a highly competitive second half of 2009.
LG’s market share increased slightly to 9.9 per cent, with the company benefitting from a very strong portfolio of touchscreen, messaging and imaging devices.
Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, said there are some signs of a recovery in markets such as North America and China.
But she said that overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since Gartner began monitoring the market on a quarterly basis in 2001.
"This was also the first time the market contracted year over year during the first quarter, a period traditionally helped by strong seasonality in the Asia/Pacific market," she said.
Lee Williams, chief of the Symbian Foundation, is confident that sales of smartphones will remain buoyant with growth of 12-15 per cent in 2009.
While his forecast falls short of some estimates which predict 30 per cent increases, it underlines the growing confidence felt in the smartphone sector of the mobile market.
This is expected to be boosted with the launch of the Palm Pre on June 6th – and the scene is all set for what is likely to be an exciting summer for the smartphone industry.
Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology summit in Paris earlier this week, Williams said larger display sizes and more memory for media such as music were also encouraging consumers to buy smartphones.
"For the first time people are realizing you don’t have to carry your digital camera with you and your phone, for the first time people are realizing that you can do your email and access Internet services on your mobile phone," he said.
Williams’ comments were echoed by Frank Esser chief executive of France’s second-largest mobile operator SFR.
He said the company was seeing strong demand for smartphones.
This growth, couple with the contractions taking place in the wider mobile market, will see smartphones becoming increasingly widespread as mass market devices.
A report just published shows that smartphone sales grew 12.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 despite sharply fallings sales of mobile phones generally – down 9.4 per cent year-on-year.
Sehat Sutardja, chief executive of Marvell Technology, said smartphones will make up half of the mobile phone market in the next few years.
He predicted multimedia-enabled smartphones will account for at least 50 per cent of all mobile phones in the next three to four years, and grow even more popular in the following years.
"Smartphones today are only addressing the tip of the pyramid," he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.
"I would say in the next three to four years, at least 50 per cent of the market will move to smartphones."
Sutardja said this could grow to 90 per cent in six to seven years.