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  • Google Voice Testing Number Portability


    Google Voice is testing a number portability service that would allow users to have calls transferred from an existing number to any device chosen.

    Currently, the service gives users a new number for all their phones, as well as voicemail and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls.

    However, according to Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington, users will soon be able to move a long-held phone number to Google, and avoid the switching costs.

    Arrington said that means you could switch your mobile number to Google and then choose where to receive calls – on whatever device you happen to have in your hand.

    He said Google plans to roll out the service as a general feature later this year.

    For outbound calls, Google is preparing to launch apps for the major smartphone platforms that will automatically route outbound calls through Google Voice.

    Arrington said that means whoever you call will see your Google Voice number as the caller.

    Google Voice is the Internet-based phone forwarding service by Google in the US. It was previously known as GrandCentral.

  • HiT Barcelona: Android Marketplace To Overtake Apple's App Store?

    INTERVIEW: Florian Seiche, vice president of HTC Europe, spoke to smartphone.biz-news ahead of his keynote address at the HiT Barcelona World Innovation Summit.

    He talks about the potential for Android’s Market app store and the opportunities that open source platforms offer as the mobile internet "explodes".

    Android’s Market will be at least as successful as Apple’s hugely popular App Store – and could prove even more of a hit.

    That’s the view of Florian Seiche, vice president of HTC Europe, who believes app downloads for the open-source software platform developed by Google could well emulate Apple’s success.

    Off the back of the iPhone, that success has been phenomenal – in April the App Store clocked up one billion software downloads in the nine months since it opened.

    However, Strategy Analytics recently predicted global shipments of Android-based smartphones will grow 900 per cent this year and it expects it to become a top-tier player in smartphones over the next two to three years.

    If that happens – with a range of Android-supporting handsets on the market – then Seiche’s forecast for Android apps will undoubtedly become a reality.

    He spoke to smartphone.biz-news before travelling to Spain for the HiT Barcelona World Innovation Summit,where he is making a keynote speech titled "The Application Explosion".

    He said the key to the whole mobile application ecosystem is to make it a really viable business for software developers.

    App Stores Vital

    One factor in this is for each open platform to have a central app store where consumers can discover what applications are available.

    "The iPhone has been extremely strong because it was the first to go out with a centralised market place," he said.

    "The Android Market will have at least the same impact, if not more. It combines a central marketplace but there is a much wider choice of devices being offered."

    Florian Seiche, vice president HTC Europe

    While the recent proliferation of app stores – LG is the latest to announce it will be launching one shortly – may cause consumers some confusion, Seiche said software had to reach consumers.

    "For the immediate future, the most important thing is to make applications as available as possible for the consumer," he said.

    "It’s a good thing for each open platform to have a central place where applications can be accessed."

    There’s no doubt HTC would benefit from Android becoming a global success story.

    Ties to Android

    The Taiwanese company was one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, the first product of which was the Android mobile device platform.

    And the HTC Dream – also marketed as T-Mobile G1, Era G1 in Poland, Rogers Dream in Canada – was the first phone to the market using the Android platform.

    So HTC has been closely involved with Android from the beginning.

    However, Seiche said HTC’s role goes back further, to the late 1990s when it was founded.

    "We focused our entire vision and strategy on smartphone devices," he said.

    "We did this at a time when the mobile phone market was growing very strong across the world but it was still very much a voice-centric market with just the basic parts of the data world emerging in the form of text."

    Even then, Seiche said HTC had set its vision on a completely different kind of device – one that brought together what people were doing on PCs with mobile devices.

    He said being in at the infancy of smartphone development has helped HTC over the years to pioneer technology such as touchscreens.

    Evolve and Change

    His address on Friday at HiT Barcelona will look at HTC’s role in the smartphone evolution but also look at how the market will continue to evolve and change.

    The first of two big themes that Seiche will cover is how mobile devices will drive and revolutionise what’s happening on the Internet.

    The second is the open platform revolution, which is resulting in the proportion of handsets with open operating systems rising exponentially.

    Seiche said that with the help of industry collaboration, third party developers now had access to some very credible and powerful ways to distribute their applications.

    He said that was opening up a whole new market, as consumers saw how apps tailor-made for a mobile environment were improving the mobile experience.

    "That will continue to grow even stronger," he said. "At the end of the day, all of this should benefit the end user."

    However, Seiche said empowering the end user by enabling them to personalise smartphones was only possible in a world with open platforms – where users decide what apps are relevant and important.

    He said HTC’s role in this is to ensure it designed user interfaces that allowed users to quickly and intuitively access the mobile Internet, including connecting with services such as social networking.

    However, HTC has no plans to enter the app store arena, according to Seiche. Instead, he said the company sees its role as providing the "best possible framework" for the end user.

    "Then it is to arrange the world they create in an easy and compelling way," he said.

    HTC has also developed dedicated apps and widgets on its phones to allow users to access information ranging from stock movements to weather forecasts.

    Mobile Internet Boom

    If HTC is enthusiastic about Android, it is equally positive about Windows Mobile – the OS used in the majority of its smartphones.

    With Microsoft due to launch its own mobile software store shortly, the growing choice for consumers can only be good news for HTC.

    Seiche said the mobile Internet is about to "explode" with third party developers innovating strongly.

    "It’s a great opportunity for us," he said. "We see the main shift in the market towards open platforms.

    "We see opportunity in offering choice with different platforms, but always with great user experience at the top level no matter what the operating system."

    Smartphone.biz-news will be covering HiT Barcelona – please check our site for the latest news and interviews.

    HiT Barcelona: World Innovation Summit: June 17-19 FIRA Barcelona

  • Pre Launch Kicks Off Smartphone Summer


    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.

  • PayPal App Introduced To Android


    Making payments just got a little easier for owners of an Android phone with the news that PayPal has introduced its app in the Android Market.

    The e-commerce business says that the app gives users easy access to many of its popular features.

    The eBay subsidiary also stresses that for those worried about security, it uses the same technology and safeguards that they have for the web client.

    Some of the features include:

    • Direct integration with the contact list – Users select a name from contacts to make a payment
    • Recent history – A smartphone can be used to look at transactions over the last couple of months
    • Balance checks – balances in any of the currencies held can be shown

  • FutureDial's Mobile Content Solution Can Have "Huge Impact" On Operators' Revenue Potential

    INTERVIEW: Sanjiv Parikh, vice president of marketing for FutureDial, talks to smartphone-biz.news about its mobile content management service and its potential to generate revenue for operators and retailers.

    Apple has shown how its App Store can be a lucrative earner – and has inspired similar ventures from the likes of Google’s Android, Blackberry, Nokia and even the as-yet-unlaunched Palm Pre.

    But how can wireless operators and even retailers ensure they maximise their earnings from the lucrative mobile content market?

    Software company FutureDial believes it has the answer.

    Sanjiv Parikh, vice president of marketing for FutureDial, said its Retail Management Solution (RMS) 4.0 allows mobile content to be directly loaded to handsets at store counters – an industry first.

    He said the "Buy Content" feature enables retailers to sell user-selected content from an integrated online content site at a store counter.

    "Online content is still very difficult to access using phone browsers. It’s still not very user friendly," he said.

    "So when someone is buying a new phone, the store would ask if they want the content transferred from their old phone, but also if they are interested in games, applications, music files and so on for their new phone.

    "It’s an additional up-selling opportunity."

    Parikh said initial feedback suggested this new feature was having a "huge impact" on clients’ business.

    He said the idea was to provide operators or retailers with complete flexibility when it came to providing their own content.

    With this in mind, FutureDial also offers a solution to clients that have their own music or content portal.

    Main Markets

    RMS is supported on over 1000 handsets and this number is continually being added to – at a rate of 50 new handsets a month, if necessary.

    FutureDial’s main markets are the US and Europe, with a major UK carrier deal expected to be announced "shortly".

    Parikh said the latest version of RMS – launched at MWC in Barcelona last month – helps stores to close the sale on new phone purchases, maximize customer acquisition and retention, and increase ARPU.

    As well as allowing content downloads, RMS also offers users phone-to-phone content transfer, backup and restoration services across thousands of handset models at the store counter.

    The mobile content transfer service handles personal address books, pictures, calendars, messages, and audio/video files.

    A major addition in RMS 4.0 is an operation from a tablet-sized touch-screen online terminal called Talisman for "mobile personalization" services, either for use by store staff or as a customer self-service kiosk.

    Solution Aids Content Management

    Parikh said the content transfer, back-up and restore features of  RMS essentially address the issue of how consumers manage old phone content when switching handsets.

    He said it helps consumers move personal content – and to protect it by offering a backup and restore function.

    These aspects of the solution work in two ways.

    Firstly, with operators and equipment retail stores so that when a consumer switches phone, content can be transferred and backed-up at the store counter.

    He said that the more tech-savvy user was happy to do this themself at home – and FutureDial provides a product that connects mobiles to PCs to back-up and download content.

    Backing-up: "Complex & Tedious"

    But he said for many people it was a complex and tedious process.

    "What we found based on our home back-up offering is that many customers didn’t like to do this themselves," he said.

    "They would rather have someone do it for them and they are willing to pay for the service.

    "This has turned into a major opportunity for service providers."

    Around 70 per cent of stores using RMS charge for the service.

    Parikh said a fear of losing content and data – which often involves a huge investment of time and effort – also put many people off changing their handsets.

    But he said that even if they overcame that fear, simply by changing to a new phone could result in lost revenue for operators.

    "When users start with a new phone it can take up to 18 weeks before they come back to the original usage levels of the old phone," he said. "That’s a lot of user revenue lost."

    That wasn’t the case with RMS because content is instantly transferred onto a new handset – enabling usage to continue as before.

    Loyalty Has Rewards

    Parikh said RMS’s second function is to create loyalty in users by ensuring they return to stores for future back-ups – and so creating the potential for sales of sleeves, cover and other accessories.

    He said one US operator using RMS in hundreds of its stores had seen a marked upturn in user loyalty.

    "This loyalty element really helps operators avoid churn and sell more," he said. "It’s a revenue opportunity but it also give consumers the feeling that the service provider is taking care of them.

    "That’s a major element in such a fiercely competitive market."

    Please let us have your comments on RMS – will in-store content delivery and back-up appeal to the mass market?

  • Google Launches Free Voice Service


    Google today launched a free service in the US called Google Voice that gives users access to all their phones, voicemail and text messages through one phone number.

    The move is being seen as a threat to Skype – but also to telecom operators and technology firms.

    Initially Google Voice will only be available to existing users of GrandCentral, a service Google acquired in July 2007.

    But it is expected to be rolled out to the general public in the coming weeks.

    Google says the application helps users manage their voice communications better by improving the way they use their phones.

    It provides transcripts of voicemail and allows all SMS text messages sent and received to be archived and searched.

    The service can also be used to make low-priced international calls.

    Google says the new service will be similar to GrandCentral but with many new features.

    GrandCentral gives users a single number to ring their home, work, and mobile phones, a central voicemail inbox that you can be accessed on the web, and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail.

    The service has been invite-only for nearly two years and has a sizeable waiting list.

    It’s too early to say for sure whether Google Voice is the beginning of the end for operators as a "voice pipe".

    What’s certain is that combined with Android it could begin to make life very interesting for them.

    The fact yet more data could soon be passing through Google’s hands is also making privacy activists just a little concerned.