Verizon Wireless raising texting rates

Verizon Wireless is raising the text messaging rate for customers without a monthly texting plan to 15 cents per message sent or received, an increase of 5 cents.

The increase, slated for March 1, comes soon after identical price hikes by Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc.'s Cingular Wireless, which raised the rate for pay-as-you-go texting from 10 cents per message to 15 cents.

T-Mobile USA still charges 10 cents per message sent or received for users without a texting plan.

source: msnbc

China tests next generation of mobile phones

China has launched a trial of the latest in wireless phone technology, despite government restrictions that have delayed internet-ready mobile phones from being offered in the country.

The Shanghai-based trial will use home-grown fourth-generation mobile technology, which will allow faster speeds than currently available phones offer, as well as better image quality for visual data and the potential to offer services such as high-definition television broadcasting.

"It testifies that the technology we've developed is feasible and brings us one step closer to put it into commercial use," said the China Daily, quoting You Xiaohu of China's 4G development program, the Future Project.

The 4G trial will cost 150 million yuan, or $22.8 million, and eventually lead to a commercial trial in 2010.

source: cbc.ca

Presenting, the MOTORAZRmaxx V6 Ferrari Challenge

Motorola, Inc. presents today the new MOTORAZRmaxx V6 Ferrari Challenge Mobile Phone Limited Edition, a perfect marriage between the style of Ferrari and the technological innovation of Motorola.

Characterized by a modern, elegant design and the ease of use of its technology, the MOTORAZRmaxx V6 Ferrari Challenge Mobile Phone Limited Edition is a unique handset with HSDPA capability and offers a series of exclusive features:

*the Ferrari emblem on the exterior glass

*the roar of the Ferrari F1 eight-cylindre engine accompanies the switching of the handset on or off,

*images of the Ferrari F430 engine on the mini external display and the image of the Ferrari emblem on a grey Ferrari in the internal display.

excerpt: HULIQ.com

Cheaper Mobiles Boom, Chipmakers feel Squeeze

Mobile phone sales may be booming worldwide but many suppliers of component chips aren't happy.

Chip makers are complaining that strong demand for affordable cellphones in emerging markets has begun to hurt their sales and profits because cheap phones contain fewer chips than expensive smartphones.

The sudden pain among chip makers is significant because the world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia, has been feeling the impact of the shift to cheaper phones for years, without it apparently impacting its main chip suppliers.

Analysts point out that rich consumers in developed nations are not buying expensive phones the way they used to.

With the notable exception of Japanese-Swedish Sony Ericsson , which had a stellar fourth quarter with its expensive Walkman music handsets and Cybershot camera phones, Motorola, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics all reported a shift to cheaper phones and price pressure in medium and higher priced models.

Sony Ericsson is proving that consumers will buy more expensive models only when there is a clear benefit, for instance because they contain a high quality digital camera, said analyst Niels de Zwart at Rabo Securities.

source: Yahoo!News

Mdog - Blogging Mobile Search

Mdog is a new blogging search mobile offer. Users can simply point their browser to mdog.com and search blogs or browse mobile sites. But, the aim of the company is to encourage sign-up to the service and personalisation.

With over 55 million blogs in the world, finding what you are looking for can be a headache. Mdog’s Bingo mobile search allows users to add their blog URL to do a search or to select a search category by type of blog… Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress etc.

Source: GoMo News

Double-Digit Growth for Mobile Phones

In 2006, unit sales of mobile handsets around the globe increased almost 20%, and according to a study from In-Stat, double-digit growth will continue for at least the next five years.

Overall, In-Stat predicts that global penetration of handsets per population will increase from 25% to 50% by 2011.

Currently, the size of the global wireless handset market is over $144 billion, and by 2011 it will increase to $200 billion.

Growth will be driven by penetration within developing countries, the popularity of prepaid service plans and the continued rollout of higher-speed data networks.

In addition, for the first time the replacement handset rate now exceeds the new handset market.

source: eMarketer.com

The Telecom Conundrum (not for the faint of heart)

It's almost as if John Madden is responsible for creating the diagram that sent this whole Telecom-thing in to a tailspin.

Ok, we need some clarity, and Stephen Colbert is just the guy to do it.

Honestly, if somebody explained the evolution of Telecom to you back in 1956, would you have believed 'em?

Click below and be prepared to crack up.

Job Hunters Pound the Job Search Pavement

Those that know say job-seekers have been slammin' the job boards big-time as 2007 gets under way. Maybe it's the recovery from the year 2000 slump, or, maybe the ice-cream man is collecting on our holiday purchases.

Either way, the job-hunt is on as job-seekers appear to be looking for opportunities to increase the cash flow.

According to Hitwise, market share for visits to the job boards rose 31% for the week ending January 6th, 2007, as compared to the prior week.

CareerBuilder took 14 percent of the job board traffic, followed by Monster at 11.5 percent, and Yahoo's HotJobs at 5 percent.

Source: WirelessJobs.com

On Cell Phones and Wireless Payments

After seeing the demonstration that Visa just gave me at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I'm pretty sure it won't be too long before many of us will be paying for everything from our groceries to our Dunkin Donuts wirelessly with our cell phones. Visa had a "pod" in the Near Field Communications [...]

CES: Wireless payments at the register with your cell phone are around the corner

by ZDNet's David Berlind --

iPhone Engineering Jobs @ Apple

I got an email from Paul Galli at Apple asking for help to spread the word about iPhone engineering jobs at Apple .

Click HERE to check out the link.


source: WirelessJobs.com

Need a Job? Don't Call 1-800-SPRINTJOBS

Sprint Nextel, the third-largest wireless carrier in the United States, plans to lay off about

5, 000 employees in the coming months, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The company suffered a net loss of about 300,000 wireless subscribers in the last quarter of 2006, said company officials on Monday. They projected lower sales for 2007 than analysts has anticipated.

Most of the planned layoffs will be completed by early April, they said, and will be spread throughout the company, whose total employees are about 64,600.

Sprint and Nextel Communications merged in 2005 with the hope that the two wireless companies would become a vibrant force offering attractive new products and services. But the firm has struggled to manage its networks, and customers have increasingly turned to such rivals as Cingular and Verizon Wireless.

The company also said it plans to eliminate 300 retail stores and kiosks as well as one million square feet of leased space by the end of the year. Last year it relinquished two million square feet of office space.

source: People's Daily Online

10 Predictions for Wireless in 2007

Dean Bubley (Disruptive Wireless) put together a nice list revealing his 10 predictions for wireless in 2007.

Get the complete list with his commentary HERE (from Wireless.SeekingAlpha.com).

Here's a quick run-down:

1) Increased focus on manufacturers selling multiple "diverged" devices to users.

It only makes sense that Nokia (NOK), Apple (AAPL), Motorola (MOT) would want to offer multiple, simple, well-designed devices....strong margins should follow.

2) A lot of noise about VoIP over 3G.

Sure to steal much of the spotlight in '07.

3) Emergence of corporate-focused MVNOs

Dean says that he's waited forever, but that this could finally happen in '07.

4) Continued uptake of various dual-mode services & handsets, but they won't change the world

Dean posted last week about UMA/non-UMA developments and gave his predictions (I hope he's wrong). But he's predicting that this is still too much of a niche game.

5) Spectrum lobbying noise, regulation momentum and lawsuits ratchet up several notches.

Dean predicts that the lawyers will stay busy (2.5GHz licenses - spectrum neutrality - getting 900Mhz GSM ready for UMTS, etc....)

6) IMS confounds both its critics and its evangelists, but needs to improve integration ASAP.

The key lesson for IMS advocates to learn during 2007 will be integration - come down from your ivory towers & learn how to blend IMS with non-IMS - the real Internet, enterprise networks, SDP's, music & TV platforms and so forth. If the IMS community doesn't wholeheartedly embrace these areas of integration, in both the network and on devices, it will stagnate in 2008 and die in 2009. Isolation and "purity" is doom.

7) Navigation becomes rather more important on mobiles. Mobile search doesn't.

Handset-based navigation will become more prevalent (I agree).

Mobile search is going to take some time.

8) The City WiFi bubble bursts

Deano's not a fan of the muni-wifi. Seeing how I'm a fan of the T-Mo Hotspot, I guess I'm not either.

9) Flat-rate data becomes the norm, with browsing the killer app, driven by high-res screens

All Dean comments in numbers 9 and 10 - too interesting to summarize:

I'm still waiting for my trial X-Series phone, but I've been increasingly impressed with browsing experience recently. While cheap data tariffs are one critical driver, another has been largely overlooked - increasing screen resolution. The standard for mid-to-high end phones is now QVGA (320x240 pixels). This will increase, either with Nokia's weird 416x352 (or something like that) or more standardized full VGA (640x480). I'm a firm believer that there is no "Mobile Web," and that most people would much prefer a mobile broadband ISP experience, accessing the one, real, Internet. And of course, that means their favorite web brands & downloadable add-on client software too. The signs are already there at the end of 2006, but 2007 will be the year the mobile industry stops fantasizing about beating Google and Yahoo and Skype, and instead just gets on with optimizing their performance for their customers. Long live the Smart Pipe strategy . . .

10) No, No, No, No, No

OK, this post is already long enough, so I don't have time to detail my reasons for all of these, but I'm sure they'll crop up on the blog in coming months. Mobile IM won't replace SMS (sorry VoIP fans . . . ). Laptops with built-in HSDPA won't sell much (and even where they do, the cellular bit won't be activated by most owners). WiMAX will get a few more major operator advocates, but still won't be seen as a threat to "normal cellular." Mobile TV won't make much headway. Web 2.0 stuff like social networking really won't be a big deal in mobile outside Japan, Korea & maybe the US, unless carriers work out a way to give decent Internet access & capable devices to prepay users.

Oh, and maybe Apple's Phone-i (hey, Linksys got the iPhone brand . . . won't play music at all, but will be "just a phone." See point 1.

Technorati Post

Technorati Profile