Spiral Arm News

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Nokia expect to ship 100 million Java-enabled phones in 2004, reports the BBC.

Motorola are promising "all the circuitry for a smartphone or PDA on one chip" giving us cellular, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth for half the cost. Details at The Register.

"More mobile staff, greater productivity" according to the Financial Times report on mobile working (subscription required).

Monday, October 27, 2003

The BBC are reporting that Sony will produce smart cards for DoCoMo phones to allow shoppers to pay for good via their phone bill or bank account. Scheduled for testing in December, in Japan.

Friday, October 24, 2003

In the first 2 weeks since launch 400,000 Nokia N-Gage handsets have shipped, but no-one is saying how many have ended up in the hands of consumers. Tomb Raider is a popular title, but it's also doing well on Vodafone live! handsets, according to gi.

Thursday, October 23, 2003

It's now possible to send SMSs to Vodafone customers direct from an Oracle database, reports InfoWorld. "A no-brainer for businesses" as "sales force automation brings such quick returns."

The deal is non-exclusive, so expect to see Vodafone's web services API appearing in everything. And not just for SMS.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

In South Korea you'll be able to pay for everything using mobile phone.

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

NEC and ARM are to bring multicore processors to mobile devices according to The Register: "Allows the processors to handle multiple software threads more easily"; due sometime "in a couple of years".

New Scientist reports on the EU directive making mobile positioning available to emergency services, and the commercial spin-offs, while TheFeature reports on the Finnish proposal to allow parents to track their children.

Monday, October 20, 2003

"Mobile email soaring in popularity", and Nokia is placing a bet on business applications for future growth. Read about it at Australian IT.

Wired News has an article on the US mobile market heating up, Nokia sales up 15% on previous years. "While voice remains phones' main attraction, data services such as picture and text messaging are becoming significant".

Sony Music Entertainment and Intel are to team up to provide multimedia applications for Intel-based mobile devices, reports PC World. They want consumers to "purchase mobile devices and content at the same rates at which they purchase PC-based multimedia content".

Friday, October 17, 2003

There are still big differences between European and US use of mobiles, according to TheFeature.

Thursday, October 16, 2003

The Economist, in a feature on telecoms, is quoting a figure of 1.3 billion for the number of people carrying mobile phones. For comparison, there are 665m people with internet access.

Microsoft and Vodafone have announced a plan to use web services to access GSM features (messaging, location, payment, security) from PCs. We'll know more in January, but for now here's the full press release and an article from The Register.