InternetQ specializes on mega mobile promotions; they are a one-stop-shop for socializing, e-shopping, gaming on web and mobile. By 2012 they will be present in 20 countries.
We met George Kontos at the Mobile World Congress who told us about the company and its future plans.
Apple reported financial results for its fiscal 2010 second quarter – its best non-holiday quarter ever. The company posted revenue of $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion ($3.33 per diluted share).
The revenues were up 49 percent and profits were up 90 percent.
Apple sold 2.94 million Macs during the quarter (33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter), 8.75 million iPhones (131 percent growth) and 10.89 million iPods (one percent decline).
Gross margin was 41.7 percent, up from 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Steve Jobs said he was “thrilled” to report Apple’s best non-holiday quarter ever. He added that the company have several more “extraordinary products” in the pipeline for this year.
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, said that looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2010, they expect revenue in the range of about $13.0 billion to $13.4 billion.
At the Mobile World Congress we met with Jan Hoffmann, CEO of Mobil Power Europe, the sole, worldwide representative of the DOQO battery charger.
He gave us a live demonstration of DOQO that allows you to safely and easily recharge the battery of your mobile phone or digital camera in a wink. The battery is charged for an average period of 15 to 20 minutes at a cost of just 1€/1£. The charging software guarantees that 95% of all mobile phone & camera batteries can be recharged with DOQO.
Antica, a networking company specialized in providing solutions tailored for telecommunications companies, was present at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
They were presenting SESS, PayBridge and SmartRouter, the products focused on increasing revenue for mobile operators, and developing models based on prepayment.
This year, their flagship product is Antica Convergent Policy Manager, that allow service providers to manage the traffic policies that are applied to subscribers and works with multi-vendor DPI devices, or acts as a PCRF when the network support a 3GPP PCC architecture.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona we talked to Li Wei, Deputy General manager at SIM Technology Group, a leading mobile handset and wireless communications module developer in China.
They design and develop multi-platform mobile communications terminal solutions ranging from 2.5G, 2.75G, 3G to 3.5G.
The subsidiary Shanghai Simcom turns out over 200 mobile handset solutions each year. It is ranked number 2 based on worldwide shipment on ABI recent research report.
At the Mobile World Congress we spoke to James Weatherall, Chief Scientist at RealVNC, a company that provides remote control software which lets you see and interact with desktop applications across any network.
RealVNC was founded in 2002 by the original developers of VNC to promote, enhance and commercialize VNC. With over 100 million software downloads, VNC is a de facto standard for remote control.
The software has a widespread user base from individuals to the largest multi-national companies.
According to Frost & Sullivan, smartphones are expected to hit “a purple patch” in the Indian market, as consumers increasingly seek a single converged device to support multiple functionalities on the go. Smartphones cater to both individual and enterprise users due to their consumer- and productivity-centric approaches.
Analysts claim that the application development community and mobile operating systems participants are the key enablers of smartphone ecosystem, wherein users prefer a single point of access and management of content. In this scenario, product innovation and the application portfolio will be the primary market growth drivers.
"With Web 2.0 (social networking, microblogging) technologies gaining traction and the youth demographic keen on adopting smartphones, applications are expected to emerge as the key differentiating factor," says Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Thejaswi Parameshwaran.
"Touch screen technologies and customized interfaces in terms of innovative product features will also propel the market ahead."
With the urban markets having matured in terms of feature phone usage, numerous mobile users in this demographic are looking to upgrade to a smartphone. This replacement market will be predominantly populated by the younger demographic, which are early adopters of technology and avid users of Web 2.0 technologies.
"The smartphone ecosystem is looking to build a distinct identity in the application community with handset manufacturers, service providers, and operating system developers having content portals that enable consumers to access a wide variety of applications," notes Parameshwaran.
"However, over 70 percent of the population consumes only voice services, and data services have not yet gained traction, which can slow down the adoption rates of smartphones."
To compound participants’ issues, the existing data bandwidth is insufficient to support data-intensive applications. They are hoping to remedy this issue and support smartphone-based applications by deploying high-speed 3G networks, as Frost & Sullivan claims.
According to the report, in a highly competitive market where handset manufacturers and service providers vie for subscribers, a comprehensive value proposition is likely to be the factor that will tip the scales. Both these stakeholders will be aiming to lure consumers with an end-to-end service offering, significant investment in product R&D, and attractive revenue sharing agreements with content developers.
Meanwhile, with the emergence of open source operating systems, there is a paradigm shift toward a collaborative ecosystem, wherein participants leverage each other’s expertise. This has fostered an environment of strategic alliances that will help offer a one-stop shop for handsets, data plans, and the point of access for an application ecosystem.
"All participants of the ecosystem will have to collaborate to develop an end-to-end value proposition that will engage consumers and thereby, increase customer loyalty and satisfaction," observes Parameshwaran.
At the Mobile World Congress we met Rémi Lacombe, VP of Business Development at DxO Labs, a company whose business model is based on developing and licensing intellectual property of optics and silicon architectures.
Their embedded imaging product portfolio integrates a range of image processing and extended depth of field technologies for camera phones. They are focusing on making cameras for smartphones smaller and cheaper.
In a traditional camera module design, the image processing is done completely independently of the lens design. The sensor is chosen, then the optics. An ISP is then adapted to the sensor and optics.
DxO says its DOP technology breaks century-old optics design limitations by co-optimizing the image processing and the optics as a whole system. The result is that the accessible space of lens performance is greatly enlarged.
At the Mobile World Congress we spoke with Ralph Kimmig, General Manager of ITM Einkaufs, an internationally operating manufacturer and marketer of telecommunication and electronic devices located near Karlsruhe/Germany.
Many of their mobile phones are dedicated to senior or handicapped people. The phones include features like Fall Detection Sensor, SOS Emergency Number as well as Dual SIM Card functionality.
Hagenuk – the long establish German brand for telecommunication end devices is specialized in user friendly telephones with convincing design in the domains of fixed line network corded, fixed line network DECT and GSM mobile devices.
Moovade is a startup that was created to further develop iNTERACT – the award winning mobile platform that enables a new level of interaction between mobile phones and kiosks.
At the Mobile World Congress we talked to Frédéric Feytons, CEO & Co-Founder of the company.
Further to its flagship product, Moovade is expanding its product portfolio with mobile solutions such as Feedr, a smart, limited footprint add-on that enables any public screen to "print" any rich media content into consumers’ phones, allowing for a costless and maintenance-free printing.