Microsoft's touted Zune media player has a decent launch and then sales have been somewhat lackluster according to many accounts. But, given the short time it has been on the market, a fair assessment can't be drawn at this time.
Although Microsoft will have an incredible challenge trying to dethrone Apple from atop the digital music player business, the wireless capability of the Zune alone is a huge feature differentiator -- or is it?
The WiFi capability of the Zune lets it connect to other Zunes to share music (with built-in expiration), but from what I've read, the lack of wireless flexibility is its undoing. I hope Microsoft opens up the Zune's WiFi a little more than it is right now.
Helio -- the flashy MVNO that markets to upper-crust teens and twenty-somethings -- has signed on to provide access to Obopay's mobile payment service to its customers, following a similar move earlier by rival amp'd mobile.
Obopay can be sued to perform several "money sharing" functions from a mobile handset, such as sharing money with friends and transferring funds using a mobile device -- as well as making physical payments at merchant sites.
If there is any demographic that is going to lead and create the space of mobile payments, it is the crowd that both Helio and amp'd mobile strive to land as customers.
Visto has been awarded $7.7 million in damages on charges that Seven Networks infringed on several of its patents, in a blow to the maker of mobile push e-mail applications that has quite a few high-profile wireless carrier deals.
In the case, the court ruled that Seven willfully infringed on Visto's patented intellectual property. At this time, Seven has its own lawsuit pending against Visto and the trial is set to get underway in June 2007. Seven has accused Visto of infringing on two of its mobile email patents, which Seven claims predate the Visto patents.
The world's largest wireless infrastructure manufacturer -- Ericsson -- has announced it will acquire technology vendor Redback Networks for $1.9 billion. That's quite a bit for a company not many people have heard of -- but rest assured, Redback is quite an important player in the emerging IPS and possible IPTV field.
Ericsson's CEO said "The pace of IP deployment is accelerating as operators move to all-IP converged networks, in which quality of service requires increasingly intelligent routers with higher capacity." Redback makes routing equipment for those next-generation networks, so Ericsson just made a leap over the competition by becoming a pre-eminent player in the field.
Wachovia is bringing mobile banking to its U.S. customers starting this week, as the U.S. banking giant has begun the first phase of its mobile banking system.
For some odd reason, mobile banking is only available --according to Wachovia -- on handheld devices running Windows Mobile 5 with Pocket Internet Explorer. That is rather odd, seeing as that is a slim minority of all handsets.
But, after just having tried to access www.wachovia.com/mobile with a standard xHTML browser, it worked just fine as well.
Want the world's smallest GPS module for your phone, clothing or anything else that strikes your fancy? You're about to be in luck, as Epson is just about to release a "world's smallest" object.
What is it? A global positioning system chip. This new chip was made exactly for all the small things we have in our lives these days -- such as ever-decreasing mobile handsets. Epson's chip looks built to handle the faintest signals indoors and out regarding GPS.
After reading this description of T-Mobile's trialed "HotSpot@Home" WiFi service in the Seattle area, it looks like it will someday be a very neat and promising service if all the bugs can be ironed out like what happens when anything new is released.
Frequent call drops and other annoying nuances plagues this trial user, but when it works, the voice quality was excellent and the service appeared to be the cheaper alternative that was needed. Might as well make all the use out of that home broadband connection, yes?
As the holiday shopping season hits its fever pitch, here are our Top 5 stories from the past week that will help to bring a little sanity to your weekend. Enjoy!
U.S. wireless users losing interest in buying ringtones, study says In a study that should send shivers up the spines or wireless carrier CFOs everywhere, a new study from M:Metrics says that U.S. wireless users are bored with ringtone buying over their cellphones, even as Italian teens are leading their U.S. and Western European counterparts in consuming user-generated content and social networking applications.
High prices for mobile content hurting consumer adoption In something I have preached for over a year, there is finally a study that says the high prices of mobile content is actually hurting consumer adoption. Data prices for mobile content like phone wallpapers, ringtones and downloadable music selections is still way too high. For some reasons, the carriers think they'll recoup their investments with higher content prices. Wrong.
Wireless 911 systems must be enhanced NOW! Officials in Napa, California are planning to take steps to enhance its 911 dispatch center so that emergency calls from cellphones will go straight to responders.
Cell Broadcast testing is underway for emergency use CellCast held a test last month that had the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) probably quite interested. In the test, CellCast tested the *Cell Broadcast* feature that lets an operator or authorized agency send out a text message to every phone on a cell, in an area or on the entire network at once.
Windows Moble 5.0 smartphones running on the Alltel Wireless network will soon have photo sharing and synchronization applications available, as Alltel continues to roll-out its newer EV-DO high-speed data network in its national networks.
The drag? Alltel's application by Sharpcast Photos only supports Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones at this time -- and Alltel's WM5 selection is pretty weak at this time, being a CDMA carrier and all (GSM WM5 smartphones are much more readily available from worldwide markets in my opinion).
The largest mobile carrier in the U.S. has decided to extend its partnership with TruePosition in order to continue expanding location-based information across the entire U.S. Cingular network. according to Cingular Wireless officials.
With the FCC's E-911 mandate still looming on the horizon, the top-two companies using current GSM technology (but moving to W-CDMA soon) are still not yet fully E-911 compliant (Cingular and T-Mobile).
Cingular will extend the coverage of the TruePosition Finder wireless location system to now cover the former AT&T Wireless territories. This looks like the last true piece of integration between former AT&T Wireless areas and Cingular areas, as the voice and data network has been integrated as of this year in full fashion.
A few months after shutting down Mobile ESPN, the ESPN network says it will be announcing licensing agreements for its wireless phone content in the near future.
The company didn't leave any hints as to who they would be making these deals with, but you would have to assume all the major cellular service providers will have explored the opportunity to offer ESPN-branded content, which certainly cuts across a wide demographic.
One would guess the content would include game highlights, statistics, and ringtones and screensavers among the offerings.
Although we are seeing more smartphones enter the American marketplace, the devices have long been accepted by European consumers and it will take a while before the U.S. catches up.
According to a new study from Telephia, in the third quarter of 2006, smartphone penetration equalled nearly 9% in Europe as opposed to less than 4% in the U.S. Surprisingly, Italy is the leading market for smartphones at a nearly 20% penetration rate, followed by Spain at 9.5%, and the UK with 7.5%.
As smartphones continue to lower in price, along with the assorted data services that one can purchase, we will see more U.S. consumers purchasing these devices in the days ahead.
In addition to the varied artists featured at Sprint's music store -- which is accessible from many Sprint handsets with over-the-air downloads -- Sprint has started making free downloadable songs available from independent artists.
I applaud this move as Sprint tries to get more customers using the service -- and nothing will get people more interested than the word "free". Perhaps Verizon and Cingular should follow suit with their music offerings? Well, Cingular's store is not really a store but access to existing paid-music services -- but giving free tunes to people to entice them to use the service is a great marketing technique I think.
A former YouTube sales executive has joined mobile advertising company AdMob as vice president of advertising sales. While I still have not seen a non-intrusive and workable advertising solution for mobile phone screens, perhaps Nethercutt -- the former YouTube'ian -- will see that vision through with AdMob.
Nethercutt was cut from YouTube as Google bought the company, as he spent four years at Yahoo as director of media strategies. Folks from Google and Yahoo! don't work together of course. I guess. As many marketers have found out, the most lucrative advertising on the Internet is Google's model -- let's just hope that this model can work on mobile screens. As in, relevant and non-intrusive.
This news come to no surprise to those of us who have been following the advent of WiFi closely, but it's still pretty significant.
A new study released by the Wi-Fi Alliance along with In-Stat says that sales of WiFi chipsets have increased by 25% this year over the same period last year. The companies say that sales are expected to top 200 million units in 2006.
The jump in sales can be attributed to the increased use of wireless networking both in homes as well as in the business sector and, of course, coinciding with that are the increased sales of devices that leverage wireless technology, such as laptops and smartphones.
Wireless is only going to get bigger, folks, and it appears that those companies producing products that use wireless technology have an excellent chance of making a nice profit.
Microsoft's touted Zune media player has a decent launch and then sales have been somewhat lackluster according to many accounts. But, given the short time it has been on the market, a fair assessment can't be drawn at this time.
Helio -- the flashy MVNO that markets to upper-crust teens and twenty-somethings -- has signed on to provide access to Obopay's mobile payment service to its customers, following a similar move earlier by rival amp'd mobile.
Visto has been awarded $7.7 million in damages on charges that Seven Networks infringed on several of its patents, in a blow to the maker of mobile push e-mail applications that has quite a few high-profile wireless carrier deals.
The world's largest wireless infrastructure manufacturer -- Ericsson -- has announced it will acquire technology vendor Redback Networks for $1.9 billion. That's quite a bit for a company not many people have heard of -- but rest assured, 
Wachovia is bringing mobile banking to its U.S. customers starting this week, as the U.S. banking giant has begun the first phase of its mobile banking system.
Want the world's smallest GPS module for your phone, clothing or anything else that strikes your fancy? You're about to be in luck, as Epson is just about to release a "world's smallest" object.
After 
As the holiday shopping season hits its fever pitch, here are our Top 5 stories from the past week that will help to bring a little sanity to your weekend. Enjoy!
Windows Moble 5.0 smartphones running on the Alltel Wireless network will soon have photo sharing and synchronization applications available, as Alltel continues to roll-out its newer EV-DO high-speed data network in its national networks.
The largest mobile carrier in the U.S. has decided to extend its partnership with TruePosition in order to 
A few months after shutting down Mobile ESPN, the ESPN network says it will be announcing licensing agreements for its wireless phone content in the near future. 
Although we are seeing more smartphones enter the American marketplace, the devices have long been accepted by European consumers and it will take a while before the U.S. catches up.
In addition to the varied artists featured at Sprint's music store -- which is accessible from many Sprint handsets with over-the-air downloads -- Sprint has started making free downloadable songs available from independent artists.
A former YouTube sales executive has joined mobile advertising company AdMob as vice president of advertising sales. While I still have not seen a non-intrusive and workable advertising solution for mobile phone screens, perhaps Nethercutt -- the former YouTube'ian -- will see that vision through with AdMob.
This news come to no surprise to those of us who have been following the advent of WiFi closely, but it's still pretty significant.
