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  • Broadcom's Offers New VoIP Chipset For Next Generation IP Phones


    Broadcom has launched a new VoIP chip set for use in the next generation IP phones and multimedia terminals.

    The Persona IP Communications Platform gives enterprise and consumer IP phones multimedia capabilities, premium audio, robust Ethernet switching, enhanced security and extensive peripheral support.

    The platform offers feature-enhanced IP phone system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for each product segment.

    This includes:

    • the Broadcom BCM11107 for higher end Gigabit multimedia telephony applications
    • the BCM11109 for mainstream Gigabit enterprise applications
    • the BCM11170 for value-line and low-end enterprise, small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) and small office/home office (SoHo) applications
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    Martyn Humphries, vice president & general manager for Broadcom’s VoIP line of business, said next generation IP phones are positioned to become the central communications portal of both the office and home.

    He said they enabled users with advanced applications to take advantage of multimedia features, streaming video and touch screen interfaces.

    "Multimedia functionality should ultimately increase user efficiency, and productivity thereby accelerating high quality, advanced IP communications devices in the enterprise and a high quality experience in the home," he said.

    The Persona platform processors are now sampling to early access customers. Pricing is available from Broadcom.

  • iPhone Gets Copy and Paste – Finally


    Apple has released details of a new version of the iPhone OS, with over 100 new features including finally adding copy and paste.

    However, another much desired issue – allowing for background tasks from third party applications – remains unresolved, despite rival handsets running Google Android and the as-yet unlaunched Palm Pre able to support background apps.

    The reason given for the delay in delivering such an obvious feature as copy and paste – Apple said it wasn’t easy to do and security issues needed to be resolved with copying information between applications.

    Apple also announced that there are to be over 1,000 new APIs for iPhone developers.

    Among some of the other new features that will be introduced on OS 3.0 this summer are:

    • Push notifications will be standard in iPhone 3.0.
    • In-App purchasing
    • MMS
    • Peer-to-Peer connectivity
    • Third-party Accessories
    • Turn-by-Turn directions
    • A landscape keyboard option
    • Voice memos
    • System-wide Spotlight searching
    • Stereo Bluetooth audio devices are now supported through the use of A2DP technology

    iPhone OS 3.0 will be available in the summer. It will be a free update to all iPhone users, while iPod touch owners will have to pay USD $9.95 for the upgrade.

    Due to hardware differences, features such as A2DP and MMS won’t be available on the original iPhone.

    iPhone developers will be able to get the beta of OS 3.0 almost immediately.

    During today’s iPhone 3.0 Preview Event, Apple announced that its iPhone OS, which powers both the iPhone and the iPod touch, is now on 30 million devices — including 17 million iPhones by December, 2008.

    Apple also announced over 800 million App Store downloads to date, and 800,000 iPhone SDK downloads.

  • Samsung Selects Streamezzo For Its Rich Internet Portal


    Steamezzo has announced that Samsung has selected its software products and professional services to develop, deploy and run its Rich Internet mobile portal.

    The French company’s Mobile Open Development Platform is already certified on hundreds of handsets and compatible with all mobile operating system.

    By using the paltform, Samsung hopes to encourage the usage of its mobile services as well as to accelerate their deployments on the largest range of devices.

    The Rich Internet application, natively embedded on multiple Samsung devices, allows subscribers to access to a large variety of free and premium services such as news, ringtones, music, video-on-demand, and games.

    Special announcements or latest news from Samsung are also directly accessible from this portal. The service offering is continuously extended and provisioned over the air, without requiring any software upgrade on the devices.

    Dr Anthony Park, director business development at Samsung Telecommunication Europe, said the technology opens up attractive business models that end users will really get excited about.

    "Mobile users want everything perfectly adjusted to the mobile device here and now," he said.

    "And that is precisely what Rich Internet applications are all about."

    The first releases of the Rich Internet Portal were in Russia, Germany and United Kingdom. Several other countries are planned to be rolled-out in the coming months.

  • Renewable Energy Critical to Connecting the Next 2 Billion Mobile Subscribers


    Over 800,000 base stations will utilize alternative energy solutions such as wind or solar energy in 2009, according to ABI Research.

    The forecast was made by the researchers’ new Clean Telecoms Research Service, set up to meet the growing need for detailed market information about green initiatives.

    It also estimated that nearly 70 million mobile devices will be ethically disposed of or will be recycled in 2009.

    Vice president and chief research officer Stuart Carlaw said one only had to look at the splash of solar powered mobile devices at Mobile World Congress 2009 to see that environmentally friendly solutions are becoming increasingly important to mobile consumers, service providers, application developers and OEMs alike.

    At MWC, Dutch company Intivation launched the world’s first low-cost solar-powered mobile phone that combines a single solar cell with its chip software.

    "Renewable energy will be a critical aspect in connecting the next two billion subscribers in off-grid and brown power areas," said Carlaw.

    "Not only is it environmentally friendly but it is also extremely cost effective."

    The new ABI Research Clean Telecoms Research Service covers important aspects such as:

    • energy consumption
    • renewable energy penetration
    • manufacturing and materials usage
    • corporate responsibility
    • regulatory issues
    • recycling
    • product end-of-life management

  • Truphone Launches Business App Aimed At Halving International Mobile Call Charges


    Truphone announced today that it is launching a Blackberry application that enables business users to make international phone calls from their devices at fixed line rates.

    The company claims that the new Truphone Business app will reduce call charges by at least half.

    Geraldine Wilson, CEO of Truphone, said the company’s global infrastructure meant the savings are available for calls made from the UK to every destination globally.

    "The launch of Truphone Business follows demand for a business solution from our existing customer base," she said.

    "The proposition is extremely compelling, particularly in this economic climate.

    "Companies are keen to cut costs but find that an increasingly mobile and global workforce need to make international calls from mobile devices as a part of day-to-day business.
    "Truphone solves that problem by providing international calls from mobiles at fixed line rates."

    Last month, Truphone unveiled its plans for a single-SIM, multi-country mobile service that will enable users to make calls in supported countries at local rates.

    Truphone Business is pushed to each device via the BlackBerry server, instantly activating the service on the handset.

    Specifically designed for business use, the service also offers centralised monthly billing with itemised and departmental reporting.

    The app is available at two rates; TruStandard and TruSaver, for a monthly subscription of GBP £2.50 and £5.00 respectively.

  • ION Television HD Debuts On HD-PRIME


    SES AMERICOM has signed a multi-year distribution agreement with the US’s largest station group, ION Media Networks, to launch its full suite of television networks in HD.

    The move means that SES now has 60 HD channels on its HD-PRIME delivery platform.

    The ION channel provides a mix of television series, theatrical and made-for-television movies and specials.

    Mark Greenlee, senior vice president of network operations at ION Media Networks, said ION has tapped expanded distribution capacity aboard HD-PRIME to offer its HD programming to viewers in more than 94 million homes across the country.

    He said ION Television HD will carry both native and up-converted HD programming on all 60 network stations in the US.

    ION HD starts this week over HD-PRIME satellite AMC-1, with ION’s qubo, a multilingual kid’s network. ION Life, a digital network devoted to active lifestyles, is set to follow later this year.

    "SES AMERICOM provides the reach and reliability ION Media Networks counts on day in and day out to serve both our cable and broadcast audiences nationwide," he said.

    David Goosey, senior system engineer at ION Media Networks, said HD-PRIME offers the advanced technology, the know-how, and the top-of-the-arc orbital slot needed to serve its affiliates and audiences from Honolulu to Boston.

    The HD distribution agreement between ION Media Networks and SES AMERICOM runs through the life of the AMC-1 satellite, which was launched in 1996.

    The hybrid C- and Ku-band spacecraft is located at 103 degrees west, where it is home to national television networks broadcasting to thousands of cable headends that reach tens of millions of homes across the country.

  • Apple TV To Get a Wii-like Remote?


    Apple     has filed a set of patents for a Wii-style remote control for Apple TV.

    In the two patent applications Apple describes a "wand" for controlling the operations of a media system, suggesting the iPhone-maker may be considering games for Apple TV.

    That would involve distributing them to the device through the iTunes App Store, as is currently the case for the iPhone.

    In January, it was suggested that NVIDIA’s Ion platform is likely to be included in the next Apple TV.

    Among the uses proposed by Apple for the wand are zoom operations, a keyboard application, an image application, an illustration application and a media application.

    Other possiblities for the wand include it being used to call up a dock, and then to select an option from the menu by moving the wand across the screen.

    The controller could also scroll through a CoverFlow display and be used to manipulate photos by zooming in and out and rotating.

    It will be interesting to see how this develops – and how Nintendo reacts to the Apple application.

  • Mobile Internet Becoming Part of Daily Lives


    The number of people in the US using their mobile device to access news and information on the Internet more than doubled in the last year.

    An estimated 63.2 million people accessed news and information on their mobile devices in January 2009, up from 36.9 million doing so in January 2008, according to figures released today from comScore.

    Of these, 22.4 million (35 percent) did so daily – also more than double the size of the audience last year.

    The highest growth, however, was in accessing social networking sites or blogs, with 9.3 million using the mobile internet daily to access a social network site or blog in January 2009 compared with 1.8 million in January 2008.

    Mark Donovan, comScore’s senior vice president, mobile, said that that over the course of the past year, mobile Internet use has evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of people’s lives.

    "This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices to access time-sensitive and utilitarian information."

    Donovan said that social networking and blogging have emerged as very popular daily uses of the mobile Web and these activities are growing at a torrid pace.

    "We also note that much of the growth in news and information usage is driven by the increased popularity of downloaded applications, such as those offered for the iPhone, and by text-based searches."

    In January, 22.3 million people accessed news and information via a downloaded applications, with 8.2 million people using downloaded maps applications.

    SMS is still a strong channel, with 32.4 million people using SMS to access news and information—including 14.1 million people using SMS for search.

    Donovan said that hile smartphones and high-end feature phones, like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare comprise the Top 10 devices used for news and information access, 70 per cent of those accessing mobile Internet content are using feature phones.

    Other significant segments included:

    • Traded stocks or accessed financial account, which grew by 188 per cent to 3.3 million
    • Accessed movie information, which grew by 185 per cent to 3.1 million
    • Accessed business directories, which grew by 161 per cent to 2.4 million
    • Accessed entertainment news, which grew by 160 per cent to 5.5 million.

  • Smartphone Market: RIM and Apple Closing On Nokia


    Nokia still tops the smartphone market with sales of 60.9 million handsets last year for a total global market share of 43.7 per cent.

    But the Finnish phone-maker’s sales grew by just 0.8 per cent and its market share dropped from 49.4 per cent, with rivals Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple taking bigger slices of the smartphone pie.

    Research firm Gartner said Nokia still has more than double the market share of its closest competitor, RIM, which has 16.6 per cent.

    It points to the introduction of high-profile handsets by competitors as a key factor in Nokia’s slipping market share.

    The researchers predict that while Nokia’s low-end smartphones will continue to fare well, its higher-end N series handsets are in for a tough ride.

    RIM, on the other hand, has profited from new devices, such as the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Storm, which have taken its market share from 9.6 per cent in 2007 to 16.6 per cent in 2008.

    Generally, Gartner said worldwide sales of smartphones had grown at their slowest pace yet in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the financial crisis hit demand.

    It said an estimated 38.14 million smartphones sold in the three months to December, an increase of 3.7 per cent over the same period in 2007.

    This is the slowest rise since Gartner began tracking the market for smartphones in 2003.

    Nokia suffered a 16.8 per cent drop in sales during the December quarter.

    Total smartphone sales in 2008 reached 139.3 million units, up almost 14 per cent over the previous year.

  • iPhone Likely to Get Background Application Support?


    Apple has flagged up March 17 for a special event to preview its new iPhone 3.0 software.

    One issue that could be addressed with the new OS is allowing for background tasks from third party applications.

    While the iPhone currently doesn’t allow this, rival handsets running Google Android and, crucially, the as-yet unlaunched Palm Pre, are able to support background applications.

    Since user pressure hasn’t done the trick then maybe the Pre’s imminent arrival has provided Apple with the stimulus it needed to remedy this shortcoming on the iPhone.

    With the new software expected to be available by June/July, this would be perfect timing for Palm’s planned launch of its new smartphone by the end of the first half of 2009.

    Among the other expectations ahead of next week’s Apple event is the suggestion the iPhone OS could find its way into a device somewhere between an iPhone and laptop.

    OK, so Apple recently ruled out a "netbook", but what if it’s a big screen iPod Touch?