Business News Holding

Category: smartphone

  • Vyke Announces Mobile VoIP For Windows Smartphones


    Vyke Communications has announced a beta version of its mobile VoIP software and service for all Windows Mobile 6.0 and higher based smartphones.

    The solution is based on Vyke’s stand-alone proprietary mobile VoIP technology, which the company claims allows it to provide high quality voice service while circumventing any operator handset tampering issues.

    Jan Berger, chief marketing officer, Vyke Communications, said the mobile VoIP software addressed the significant portion of the enterprise market that is Windows Mobile based.

    "As this stand alone software is compatible with a wide cross section of business orientated mobile handsets, it adds significantly to our potential customer base and will be an important tool in helping our enterprise sales team reach its goals," she said.

    While primarily intended for the enterprise sector, Vyke said the beta software will also be available for consumers to download before the end of November.

  • Web Conferencing Coming To Smartphones


    PhoneTopp has announced an online conference and collaboration tool for use with smartphones – initially only for the iPhone and the Blackberry Bold.

    Intended to allow desktop conferencing on high end handset, PhoneTopp currently has an alpha product available and will be releasing a public beta in Q1 2009.

    The company plans to charge subscriptions fees, estimated at USD $8 per month.

    Tom Barsi, CEO of PhoneTopp, said that until now, only people sitting at their computer in a pre-arranged meeting could participate in a web conference.

    "Holding back expansion of web conferencing is tying the user to the desk,” he said “The proliferation of smart phones capable of running web conferencing allows PhoneTopp to lead an opportunity that will dramatically change business communication – enabling true ‘adhoc’ mobile collaboration.”

    Gartner estimates the web/audio collaboration market to be USD $5 billion today.

    In 2010, the consultants forecasts web conferencing will be available to 75 per cent of corporate users as standard facility alongside email, presence and calendaring.

    The PhoneTopp system software runs a thin client-computing model, hosted by the company on the Amazon EC2 cloud.

    The architecture off-loads computer intensive tasks to the datacenter, saving on power dissipation and network traffic.

    PhoneTopp said its patent work around adaptive virtualization protocol (PAV) reduces “over the air” latency to an estimated 5 seconds.

    The protocol takes on the difficult task of managing multiple streams to the smartphone while dynamically adapting and optimizing how the content gets pushed based on the available bandwidth.

    From now through the end of 2008, PhoneTopp is encouraging early beta sign-ups with an incentive of three months free service when launched.

    Interested parties should go to www.phonetopp.com and input their email address for follow-up.

    The hope is to also have support for more smartphones by next year, possibly including Google’s Android platform.

    When commercially launched, PhoneTopp will first allow users to host or participate in a web meeting directly from their smartphone, through a simple click-to-collaborate approach that includes the ability to:

    • accept an invitation via text message to join a web conference
    • answer a phone call that launches an application to participate in the meeting, with no phone numbers or passwords to remember
    • navigate and zoom natively with integrated tools, including a PhoneTopp-developed “mobile rewind” capability that allows users to independently go back within the presentation if they missed a slide.

  • iPhone Ousts Razr As Smartphones Dominate US


    Apple’s iPhone has overtaken Motorola’s Razr to become the best-selling consumer cellphone in the US in the third quarter of 2008.

    Results from research firm NPD show the Razr, which has been the top-selling phone for the last 3 years, now sits second, with RIM’s BlackBerry Curve in third place, followed by two LG phones, which rounded out the top five.

    NPD’s report doesn’t include sales figures, but Apple’s exclusive US carrier partner AT&T said it activated 2.4 million iPhones in Q3. Motorola said it shipped more than 3 million Razrs worldwide in Q3, but didn’t specify its US sales.

    The iPhone’s success is all the more impressive considering it costs upwards of USD $199, while the RAZR has been virtually free with a signed contract for the past few years.

    It’s US achievements follow recent reports that Apple has overtaken RIM as the number two smartphone vendor globally.

    The success of smartphones – four of the top five are high-end handsets – also underlines the trend in the US market towards more powerful, full-featured devices.

    Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD, said: "The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality."

    Overall domestic handset purchases by adult consumers declined 15 per cent year-over-year in Q3 to 32 million units.

    Consumer handset sales revenue fell 10 per cent to USD $2.9 billion, even as the average selling price rose 6 per cent to USD $88.

    NPD consumer cellphone ranking for 3rd Quarter 2008:

    1. Apple iPhone 3G
    2. Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)
    3. RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)
    4. LG Rumor
    5. LG enV2

  • Wow-factor Converting New Fans To Mobile Gaming


    Show most non-gamers an iPhone running the 3D fighting game Kroll and the reaction is usually some variation of "wow".

    What surprises them is that a game of such quality and with such stunning graphics is on a handheld device.

    That’s an experience Xavier Carrillo, CEO and founder of Digital Legends Entertaiment (DLE), the games and technology developers that created Kroll, is getting used to.

    He told smartphone.biz-news.com that the technology available on today’s handsets means sophisticated games previously only possible on consoles are now feasible on smartphones.

    The proof of that has been people’s reaction to Kroll ever since it was announced at the Worldwide Developer Conference by Apple earlier this year.

    "People are not aware what you can do on a mobile – what’s possible and how capable it is," he said. "It’s an eye-opener and it will attract a lot of people."

    Head-quartered in Barcelona, Spain, DLE has served as a Nokia N-Gage First Party Developer since 2004 and began publishing games for Apple’s this year.

    Kroll was specifically designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

    Content Is King


    With the latest smartphones now capable of running such advanced games, Carrillo said having excellent content was essential.

    He believes this will drive the sale of handsets as consumers seek out everything from games and music to maps.

    "People will buy a handset because of the game in much the same way as someone will buy a laptop for gaming," he said.

    In the case of the iPhone, Carrillo said the big publishers were now treating it as a console-standard gaming device.

    This means they can cross-market big movie releases – as they did with Indiana Jones – along with games for the PS3, the Xbox 360 and mobile devices.

    "We believe it’s going to be a huge opportunity," he said.

    Interestingly, smartphones have become such attractive platforms for gaming almost as a by-product of the drive to create multi-media handsets.

    The demand for more megapixels on cameras led to more RAM, the popularity of mobiles as music players required more storage capacity and the addition of TV functionality led to improved hardware accelerators.

    For gamers, Carrillo said it means someone playing a game on a smartphone on the train to work can now expect a quality similar to that on their PS3 at home.

    And while he doesn’t believe mobile gaming will replace consoles such as the PS3, it’s opening the whole gaming world up to a new market.

    "The mobile consumer audience is much wider – and it’s a different consumer," he said. "People that have never played games are discovering them now."

    The appeal to the mainstream was borne out in a recent Newsweek article.

    It compared the quality of games from Apple’s App Store more than favorably to desktop PC or console games and claimed the iPhone and iPod Touch were well on their way to becoming important forces in handheld gaming.

    Price A Factor

    That success will possibly owe a great deal to the price of games as well as their quality, according to Carrillo.

    He said experience in the PC gaming market had shown that several "micro" payments are a better pricing strategy than a higher one-off purchase price.

    Charging just a few dollars a time to download games from the Apple app store ensures people aren’t put off and make them more likely to take a chance on a game.

    Where developers can increase revenue is by offering extra content – often in the form of additional characters, weapons or scenarios – that players can buy separately.

    "People prefer games with less content that they can then add to," he said. "They can play the game and if they like it, they can pay more. If they don’t, then they don’t have to.

    "So it’s much better for them to spend a small amount several times than one large amount."

    Carrillo said mobile gaming will evolve in tandem with technological advances. So features such as touchscreens, accelerators and GPSs are being incorporated in developing location-based and community-oriented games as well as music and head-to-head games.

    But he said games developed for consoles can not just be copied over to a mobile platform.

    Aside from the hardware differences, PC games are played in very different settings to mobile games and that requires the content and controls to be adapted to that environment.

    DLE seem have got that right with the graphically-stunning Kroll – so expect to see a lot more people glued to their handsets.

  • iPhone Beats Blackberry In Business Smartphone Survey


    It may lack some vital business tools – no cut-and-paste, for starters – but it seems that Apple’s 3G handset is gaining followers who see it as more than just a fun device.

    The iPhone has received the highest customer satisfaction marks in the most recent JD Power & Associates customer satisfaction survey of business smartphone users.

    Out of 1,000 possible points, Apple’s smartphone received the high score of 778, with Blackberry-maker Research in Motion and Samsung coming in second and third with scores of 703 and 701.

    The iPhone scores high marks for its design, features, and ease of use, but owners of Apple devices also paid the highest average price for their smartphones, at USD $337.

    While the survey success doesn’t mean the iPhone is suddenly going to be enterprise phone of choice, it is yet another feather in the Apple camp’s cap following a couple of other positive news items over the past few days.

    At the weekend, independent warranty provider SquareTrade released a report showing that iPhones are more reliable than either BlackBerry or Palm Treo devices.

    The report, titled "iPhone More Reliable than BlackBerry, One Year In", analyzes failure rates for more than 15,000 new cell phones covered by SquareTrade warranties.

    SquareTrade found that after one year of ownership, iPhone owners were half as likely as BlackBerry owners to have a phone failure, and one-third as likely as Treo owners.

    After 12 months, slightly over 16% of Treo owners had experienced a failure, while just less than 12% of BlackBerry owners had their smartphone die on them.

    Only 5.6% of iPhone owners had a critical failure.

    Then at the end of last week, Canalys reported that Nokia’s market share dropped down to 38.9 per cent in the third quarter; which is down from 51.4 just a year earlier.

    On the other hand, Apple jumped to 17.3 per cent, and RIM increased to 15.2 the same quarter.

    Canalys credits some of the Apple and RIM increases to new phones and new marketing strategies.

    In a statement, the firm said: "The introduction of the iPhone 3G in July and Apple’s expansion into many more countries helped propel the vendor to second place globally.”

    The researchers went on to say that “it was ‘quite feasible’ to expect RIM to take the second place from Apple in the holiday sales fuelled fourth quarter, helped by new products—Bold, Storm and clamshell Pearl 8220.”

  • Advertisers Need To Adapt To Mobile Internet


    Internet advertisers will need to create campaigns that work with multiple devices and display sizes if they want to benefit from growing mobile advertising revenue.

    That’s according to telecom analysts Berg Insight, who say a significant proportion of mobile advertising revenues will actually derive from mobile Internet users accessing conventional web sites.

    Smartphones will be the key device used to boost traditional Internet advertising revenues.

    Other predictions for the mobile advertising market included in Berg Insight’s report are:

    • Ad-funded business models will become a new paradigm in the discount MVNO segment of the mobile communications market. Price sensitive young consumers with low income will be most inclined to accept ads in exchange for voice minutes or text messages. Incidentally this group is also highly interesting for major advertisers.

    • Idle-screen will eventually become the largest mobile advertising channel. Virtually all consumers carry a mobile handset wherever they go and check out things on the display many times per day. Embedded advertising on the idle-screen and in the user interface would provide an unmatched exposure.

    • The current economic downturn will hold back revenue growth but not innovation. New unproven channels such as mobile media will see a negative effect from cutbacks in marketing budgets. However there is still going to be much innovation in the mobile space that will create new channels for advertisers to reach out to consumers.

    • Size will matter in the race for market leadership. Financial strength will be especially important if the market develops more slowly than previously anticipated. Existing digital and mobile industry players will have a major advantage over venture capital funded start-ups, many of which will have difficulties to find financing.

  • Will Apple Challenge iPhone Clone?


    Meizu is planning to launch its M8 smartphone in various markets around the world before Christmas.

    The Chinese-made touchscreen handset bears a striking resemblance to the iPhone.

    Quite what Apple’s response will be is uncertain.

    So far, the US company hasn’t acted against perceived copyright violations in China.

    It has, however, frequently filed lawsuits and tried to prevent sales of companies with imitative designs in countries with stricter copyright laws.

    Meizu is now saying it will launch its device in China before the end of the month before rolling it out to India and then Europe, Hong Kong and the US, possibly by Christmas.

    According to Meizu CEO, J.Wong, the company is waiting for a license for the phone from the Chinese government but will release a test version to users there even if the license isn’t issued by the end of the month.

    The M8 is based on a heavily modified Windows Mobile interface with numerous references to Apple’s cellphone, including a Safari-like web browser front end, an iPod-like media player and a similar overall look.

    Where it differs is the three-megapixel camera and FM radio at the expense of 3G data, using EDGE instead when away from Wi-Fi.

    Prices for the M8 have been reported as USD $348 for an 8GB version without subsidies and USD $421 for a 16GB model.

  • Wyless Appoints New Group CEO


    Wyless Group Holding announced this week that Rami Avidan was appointed group CEO as of 1 November 2008.

    Avidan has acted as a non-executive board director of Wyless Group for several years.

    As Group CEO he will have direct responsibility for all Wyless operations globally. Mr. Avidan previously served as COO of Cryptzone AB, a Swedish listed company.

    Michael Jeffries, chairman of Wyless plc, welcomed Avidan to the business.

    “His professional and industry experience will be invaluable in taking the Wyless business to the next level,” he said.

    Wyless Group Holding is the parent company of the expanding Wyless Mobile Data Network Group, with offices in the UK, Boston, Gothenburg and Malaga.

    Wyless, an international wireless data communications group, pioneered, developed and manages a global wireless data network, which enables organizations to securely and reliably communicate with their remote and mobile devices in over 120 countries, using a single network provider.

  • Handshake App Simplifies iPhone Contact Passing


    Passing your contact entry to other iPhone users just got a whole lot easier thanks to a new app called Handshake.

    The free app, which also runs on the iPod Touch, allows contact information and photos to be exchanged with another user nearby.

    Handshake works by using Core Location coupled with other technologies to send address book cards over the air.

    Straightforward to use, Handshake sends data over WiFi, 3G, and EDGE connections.

    The iPhones don’t connect directly to each other – instead the connection goes via Handshake’s server, so it only works on the iPod Touch when there’s good Wi-Fi.

    When first launched, it will look for the address book card – or the user to specify a card if that can’t be located.

    Handshake then connects to its servers and the user’s card, contact’s card or a picture can be sent by selecting one of the main three buttons.

    The app also allows the default card to be changed by choosing the wrench in the top-right corner of the application and hitting the blue arrow under "My Card".

    Available from the iTunes Store it comes in two versions: free or the ad-free paid option. An updated version is due out any day.