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  • Samsung Launches Omnia W with Windows Phone Mango

    Samsung, the world’s number two mobile phones manufacturer, has announced the launch of the Samsung Omnia W, the first company's smartphone based on the latest version of the Microsoft Windows Phone, also known as Mango.

    Omnia W has 3.7-inch Super AMOLED screen, a 1.4 GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera and 512 MB RAM and 8GB internal memory.

    According to Microsoft, Windows Phone was developed in order to provide intuitive phones, "smart and socially connected." The six Microsoft applications provide interesting content and innovative communication experience. Windows Phone People Hub integrates the most important social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Windows Live, so that the users to always stay connected to the communities they belong.

    Office Hub offers greater productivity in movement and includes access to Windows Live Sky Drive, which offers 25GB storage capacity and easy access to documents and media files. Users can create and edit documents through the mobile versions of Microsoft Office Excel, Word and PowerPoint, but can also use the One Note, a platform designed for taking notes, allowing convenient storing of the voice memos, pictures and notes in text format.

    The flawless access to entertainment can be made thanks to the integration of Picture Hub, Music & Video Hub – provided by Microsoft Zune – and Game Hub, which provides the latest social gaming experiences through Xbox Live. This interface allows players to chat even during the game.

    Users can stay up to date with the latest news and events via the Now 2.0, which offers live information regarding business, stock markets or weather. RSS Time allows downloading and reading RSS feeds for newspapers, magazines and blogs in an easy and digestible format; the articles of interest can be instantly shared by e-mail or posted on Facebook.

    The device offers enhanced integration of social networks, by adding the Twitter and LinkedIn networks to Omnia’s interface. Thus, pictures and videos can be shared instantly across a variety of social networks with no complications.

    Omnia W will be commercially available in late October in Italy and gradually worldwide, including the rest of Europe, CIS, Latin America, Africa, Southern and Southwestern Asia.

    You may also want to read:
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    Apple Launches Two New Smartphones in 2011: iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S
    Telematics Update Releases “In-Vehicle Smartphone Integration” Report

  • Warner Bros. Starts Offering Movies Directly on Facebook

    Warner Bros. Digital Distribution (WBDD) announced it will begin testing an offering of selected movies for purchase or rental through Warner Bros. Entertainment’s Facebook movie Pages. Consumers will be able to use Facebook Credits to buy or rent a title, all while staying connected to Facebook.

    Consumers simply click on the "rent" icon to apply their Facebook Credits, and within seconds they will begin enjoying the film. The cost per rental is 30 Facebook Credits or $3. This offering is presently available only to consumers in the United States. Additional titles will be made available for rental and purchase on a regular basis over the coming months.

    "Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people," said Thomas Gewecke, President of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. "Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world’s largest social network."

    Fans will have full control over the film while watching it through their Facebook account for up to 48 hours from purchase. They can choose to watch it in full screen, pause the movie, and resume playing it when they log back into Facebook. Consumers will also have full Facebook functionality including the ability to post comments on the movie, interact with friends and update their status.

  • Vonage Mobile App Provides Free Wi-Fi / 3G Calling For Facebook Users Worldwide

    Vonage has just introduced the Vonage Mobile application for Facebook, a new service that allows users to make free mobile calls to all of their Facebook friends who have the app, anywhere in the world, directly from their friends list.

    The downloadable application is free to get and free to use. According to Vonage, the new service enhances the ability to connect with Facebook friends through the addition of voice calling.

    It is available for iPhone, iPod touch and Android devices and works over Wi-Fi and 3G /4G networks in most countries.

    “The new service is easy to use,” says Vonage. The app works with a user’s existing community of Facebook friends, so there’s no need to remember screen names or to input numbers. The application eliminates dialing – users can just click on a friend and start talking. When placing a call, the friend’s profile picture and status update display on the screen.

    "The Vonage Mobile app for Facebook is a tangible example of our commitment to deliver extraordinary value and a better communications experience for individuals and their social networks, across broadband-enabled devices, around the world," said Marc Lefar, Chief Executive Officer of Vonage.

    "This is just the start. In the future we will expand on this service to include a wide range of integrated voice and messaging services that change the way people communicate," he added.

    The application can be downloaded from the Android Market in 48 countries and from the iTunes Store in 87 countries. Users who don’t have an unlimited data plan should check with their carrier to see if any charges apply.

    Related articles
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  • iSuppli: Facebook Plans New Mobile Strategy

    Facebook is set to move beyond its mobile application strategy as it plans to become a stand-alone mobile platform, which developers can distribute mobile apps with, says iSuppli.

    Already a leader in non-mobile web applications, Facebook offers more than 550,000 applications and supports 1m developers. According to the research group, the social network’s aim is to offer something similar on mobile (most third-party Facebook apps are not currently available on mobile).

    Facebook’s mobile growth remains strong. It now counts more than 150m active mobile users (out of more than 400m total users), compared with 100m in February 2010.

    “Mobile will continue to play a key role in growing Facebook’s overall user base. In May 2010, it launched Facebook 0, a text only version of the social network aimed at mobile users in developing countries with lower-end phones and limited access to mobile data. Facebook has deals with more than 60 network operators in 50 developing countries to provide the service for free,” said iSuppli analyst Jack Kent.

    According to him, while Facebook will likely remain the leading social network on mobile, a number of new players will force it to innovate. Foursquare, the location-based mobile social network that offers a gaming element and check-in functionality, is most prevalent of these new entrants. While Foursquare‘s 2m user base is tiny compared to Facebook, its implementation of location specific data is likely to be similar to Facebook’s forthcoming local features.

    “Facebook’s drive towards creating its own mobile platform may cause a headache for developers who will be forced to develop for another set of APIs (application program interfaces) in the already fragmented mobile sector. The prospect of tapping into a 500m-strong social graph could however prove enticing for many, as is already the case for many websites that integrate Facebook’s APIs,” said Kent.

    He thinks that having previously focused on developing native applications for mobile operating systems (including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android), Facebook’s new strategy will likely focus on mobile web based applications that give it greater control over its ecosystem and the user experience it provides.

    “For Facebook, offering its own platform for mobile web applications will help drive its core advertising and microtransaction business models. It will be able to serve ads and gain revenues from its Facebook Credits virtual currency, outside the realm of other mobile ad-networks and mobile application stores,” concluded the iSuppli analyst.

  • Poken: Say Goodbye to Business Cards

    Stephane Doutriaux

    Poken is a startup based in Switzerland with offices in Silicon Valley, CA. Poken has established itself as the social business card for staying connected. The Poken network makes it easier to connect and stay in touch with the people that you meet.

    The first product is a fashion accessory that you can carry on your keychain and easily share your social media information by touching pokens and connecting with them on the poken platform.

    Data is wirelessly and instantly sent from one device to the other based on the proximity and now both users will have the contact information that matters most in a digital world.

    The Poken network online allows you to download your data stream to view your contacts, allowing you to see who you just met. The data includes all of their social profiles allowing you to to connect with them on a much deeper level. Simply explained, you can see their latest Tweets, their latest Facebook updates, their Flickr profile, etc, all based on what profiles they filled out and added to their Poken.

    "Many people easily forget name, I’m one of them, but we remember people more easily when we can see faces or key in on information that remind us of where we met them," says CEO and Founder, Stephane Doutriaux in an interview with Smartphone.Biz-News.com.

    The network has now become an action verb. The hope for this startup is that more and more people Poken each other.

    The Concept of Poken

    The idea first came to Stephane while in business school, completing his MBA program. Originally from Canada, transplanted to Switzerland, Stephane enjoyed the camaraderie of his classmates but all good things come to an end. On graduation day everyone was exchanging emails, phone numbers, but residence information was hard to share because few had permanent locales.

    It’s too easy to assume that everyone has a Facebook or LinkedIn account, and in this case, it was just not so. In various countries around the world, certain popular networks are not as popular and substituted with local niche networks. In this case it made it hard to keep track of everyone.

    Stephane notes that "In the world today, internationalization is changing how we communicate and stay in touch with one another."

    Aside from exchanging emails and phone numbers, another option was to surf the school alumni network which is manually exhausting and very hit and miss.

    In an example Stephane gave, with 90+ people in his graduating class alone, he was not always sure if he found the right "John Smith" in the database, and if he didn’t, he started his search all over again. It just didn’t seem functional, and created more confusion and frustration when you sent invites, hoped they responded, hoping the invite didn’t go into junk mail.

    "Finding people can be filled with too many barriers," states Stephane.

    This was where the inception of Poken came from, a quick touch and go system that could gather you everyone’s information, giving you multiple points of contact.

    The name itself came from a lot of brainstorming. In Facebook you can poke someone which gives them access to your profile for a few days, and it says that you’re wanting to get to know them. A token is a piece of information in the digital world, so Poken was the natural combination of both those words. An important factor to the entire process was it had to be something that did not exist already, but was catchy enough to attract attention.

    Thus Poken as it stands today was born.

    The World Pokens

    Staying connected is increasingly important, especially with a younger generation that is constantly switching jobs or residences. To be clear, Poken is more than just the little devices you see on our site, Poken in a broader sense is the act of connecting with people in the real world. Poken looks to create ways that people can build a network, they are also looking at mobile devices and other real world products that makes sense to use when you connect with people in the real world.

    Poken strives to be as universal as possible. They added many popular networks, and depending on what countries took off, they’d look at them and see what networks were heavily used there and create a network connection for them. Now an open API exists where the networks themselves are able to create their own social connections for the product to recognize.

    "The debut of Poken has been a wild ride. I had a startup back in 2000 that didn’t get as far as Poken has today so I’m happy to see that it’s been received well," Stephane shares.

    Poken started out with fundraising efforts, and building a strong team, but what gained them traction and notoriety was an online site that encouraged users to spread Poken around them, share with their friends, and accumulate points and popularity, and for some even money. That really started working well in many different countries, and in some that could not support the bandwidth required for a system like Poken. So it was very surprising.

    The Poken interface is very simple and logical, where users can upload information from their keychain accessory, no drivers, no installation required. Click the link on the drive and the website pops up. You’ll see the people that use Poken and when you met them.

    The timeline matches your real world experiences with the people you meet. Finding people is simplified since it’s easier to remember a general timeline as opposed to finding them on Facebook contacts when you can’t remember their name. The timeline has proven to be effective for users so the user interface has remained for now.

    Currently Poken is sold in more then 40 countries. For 2010 they are working on updates to the tools used to create a Poken network with a more targeted strategy. They are still a relatively small startup, so no TV or billboard, no Superbowl ad, but keep doing what they do best.

    A focus on building tools for advertisers and event organizers is key in their plans. The hope is to encourage people to use Poken where they are at establishing an ecosystem of contacts.
     

  • Requestec Provides Bell Mobility with 3G Mobile Video Calling App for Facebook

    Requestec, an Adobe Flash-to-SIP telephony provider, announced their key involvement in the release of Bell Mobility’s, Bell Video Call application built on the Facebook platform.

    The application allows Facebook users to visit the profile page of a Bell subscriber that has added the application and click on their Bell Video Call tab. From here, calls can be made from anywhere in the world to the Bell subscriber’s HSPA Video Calling handset; all at no cost to the caller.

    The company claims it’s the first video calling application in North America that is fully integrated into Facebook.

    The application is available to Bell Mobility subscribers with video calling capable phones on the new HSPA network.

    “We were approached by Bell Mobility about the possibility of incorporating video-calling functionality into Facebook. This was our chance to show the world our technology within the Internet’s leading online community, Facebook,” said Requestec’s CEO, Marek Zwiefka-Sibley.

    According to Bell, its the new HSPA network (launched last month) covers 1.2 million square kilometers, reaching approximately 20,000 Canadian towns and cities and 93% of the population. It offers mobile speeds of 21 Mbps.

    Over the last 4 years Requestec has been focusing on developing Adobe Flash-based telephony solutions built on the Zenon Telecommunications platform. In 2008, the company launched Voixio, one of the world’s first web-based no-download Flash-to-SIP telephony services.

  • What Do Consumers Do With Their Phones?

    A recent Canalys consumer study, which surveyed over 3.000 people across France, Germany and theUK, looked at what features consumers are using on their phones.

    The first conclusion is that the use of data services is limited outside of smart phone owners and that customers on SIM-only contracts consume more data than their pre-paid counterparts. “The results go some way to quashing the expectations that SIMonly customers will only use voice and text,” says Canalys.

    When comparing the usage habits of respondents with pre-paid contracts versus those with SIM-only contracts, usage was higher in every category for individuals with SIM-only packages.

    For example, 27% of SIM-only users regularly browsed web sites on their handsets compared with just 14% of pre-paid users. Equally, the number of customers accessing social networking services on their mobile phones was considerably higher among SIM-only users (16%) when compared with pre-paid users (7%). The use of e-mail was also greater among those who subscribed to SIM-only deals (23%) versus consumers on pre-paid tariffs (16%).

    According to Canalys, operators will hope that the uptake of data services will steadily increase across their subscriber bases. “The major challenge that operators face is ensuring there is a sufficient penetration of handsets that are capable of accessing connected services, a questionable factor, especially looking at the difference in usage between handset brands across data services,” the report says.

    The other conclusion is that social networking on mobile phones remains a relatively small, but growing service. The research shows that despite the large usage figures quoted by companies such as Facebook, usage of social networking in the mass market remains limited.

    Only 10% of end users regularly accessed this type of service from their mobile phones. iPhone users were by far the most active, with almost half regularly accessing social networking services. Figures for BlackBerry (27%) and HTC (23%) users were lower than those for Apple, but were still significantly above the average.

    “These results show that usage of social networking services is higher among smart phone users, and as the market leader in the smart phone market, it is fair to assume that usage on Nokia’s flagship products would be similar. Usage of social networking services across all of its products, however, was only 7%,” says Canalys.

    When looking at e-mail usage on mobile phones, BlackBerry owners were the most active with 68% regularly using e-mail on their handsets. Owners of handsets from Apple (67%) and HTC (53%) also used e-mail far more regularly than those who owned handsets from the leading vendors, where on average only 15% of end users were regularly using e-mail on their phones.

    Web site browsing also revealed contrasting usage patterns: 73% of iPhone users regularly browsed web sites on their handsets; 60% of BlackBerry owners and 56% of HTC owners had similar habits.

    Conversely, just 8% of Motorola owners regularly browsed web sites on their phones and, though web browsing was higher on phones from LG (18%), Samsung (17%), Nokia (16%) and Sony Ericsson (16%), it was still significantly below that of iPhone users.

    Navigation services were cited by 36% of end users as a feature that they wanted on their next mobile phone that they did not have today. The majority of respondents were keen to have an in-car turn-by-turn solution on their next phone.

    “But as many navigation solution providers are now discovering, it is not good enough just to supply the software. For in-car navigation to be successful on mobile phones the experience of portable navigation devices (PNDs) needs to be matched or exceeded. This means that car kits or cradles need to be supplied alongside the software at the time of purchase. In addition, events such as incoming calls and other alerts need to be handled in a way that provides minimal disruption to the navigation experience,” analysts conclude.

  • Fring Targets Mainstream Users With New Funding


    VoIP start-up fring has announced that it intends to accelerate its growth plans after completing a third round of funding.

    Avi Shechter, fring co-founder and CEO, said a key objective is to make the free VoIP and IM service easier to use for mainstream "fringsters".

    While no details on the level of funding were available, all previous fring investors participated in this round including US based North Bridge Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Veritas Venture Partners and VenFin Limited.

    Shechter said fring is already turning the mobile into the "ultimate social device" by mashing up people’s favourite forms and modes of communication.

    "We plan to add to the fring experience and make it an ever more central part of fringsters’ social lives," he said.

    fring users can currently share experiences with friends on facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, among others, while communicating via Skype, MSN Messenger, GoogleTalk TM, Yahoo!TM, AIM and ICQ.

    Shechter said the new capital would be used to make fring even more accessible to the rest of the mobile world.

  • Emoze Aiming To Be "Skype of the Push Email World"


    It was interesting to hear Eitan Linker, CEO of emoze, talk about his company’s efforts to introduce the mass market to mobile push email at the Showstopper event on the eve of Mobile World Congress 2009.

    Emoze’s free software enables users to configure multiple mobile email accounts and send and receive emails from corporate, personal and family accounts all on the same mobile.

    Linker told smartphone.biz-news that their aim is to simplify the user experience to help bring push email to as many people as possible – and obviously to emoze.

    He said while there are more than one billion email accounts globally, RIM had only 20 million Blackberry subscribers for its email services – making it very much a niche market.

    Emoze hopes to change that.

    Find below the VideoInterview:

    "We are a win, win, win option," said Linker. "It’s a win for the carriers because we drive data; it’s a win for the handset manufacturers because we are not operator dependent; and it’s a win for the user because it’s a free application that’s easy to use."

    Emoze’s goal is aided no end by the fact the software can be downloaded to a wide variety of mobile devices – from high-end smartphones to standard Java-enabled handsets.

    As well as providing access to several types of email accounts, users can also access social networks such as Facebook.

    While the application is free, users can upgrade from the basic one account option to a premium account, which allows them to have multiple accounts for EURO 1 per month.

    Emoze also offers an enterprise solution, which enabled small companies to give staff email without the need – or the cost – of upgrading handsets.

    "We are looking at the mass market and trying to make it easy for them," he said. "We are like the Skype of the push community."

    As the company’s website explains:

    "Emoze brings true mobility to the mass market by enabling users from all walks of life to turn their mobile phones and mobile devices into fully functional personal communication devices.

    "Emoze has created real push-event technology. emoze delivers real-time, secure synchronization of emails, calendars and contacts – pushing data and updates anytime, anywhere using any mobile service provider network or WiFi.

    With emoze’s unique technology, synchronization occurs every time there is an incoming or outgoing event, rather than via periodical checks for change."

  • 3 UK launches next-generation Skypephone


    Mobile operator 3 UK has unveiled the next-generation Skypephone handset, the 3 Skypephone S2.
    The new device gives users access to Facebook, Google and Windows Live Messenger and enables free Skype calls and instant messaging.

    Available since the beginning of September, the 3 Skypephone S2 has a revolutionary ‘carousel’ interface, with switcher key on the side of the handset to move quickly between applications.

    It has an improved 2.2-in QVGA screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, HSDPA functionality and memory that is expandable to 4 GB.

    The new device can be used as a mobile broadband dongle through its built-in modem drivers.

    It allows users to track up to 30 RSS feeds at once and is offered for GBP 69.99 on Pay As You Go and for free on any Mix & Match contract.