Blueooth and infrared "could soon replace leaflets and flyers"
The Guardian reports on the appearance in UK streets of wireless-enabled posters. "Interested passers-by are required to activate the infra red or bluetooth capabilities included on most modern mobile phones when in the vicinity of the advert to receive the information."
Motion sensitivity opens up new ways to use handsets.
Samsung have developed a handset that can respond to sophisticated physical motion. The report in Computing gives examples, including:
"This will particularly affect the way games are played on a mobile phone. Many functions will be controlled by movement instead of buttons."
Samsung have also been working in other hi-tech advances, such as automatic speech-to-text conversion. It is not clear when these features will appear in commercially available handsets.
Mobile game players exceed number of console game players.
The A. T. Kearney study, reported by The Economist (13 Nov 2004, p.78), tells us that the number of people who downloaded games now stands at 10% of the 1.7b mobile users. "The fragmented mobile-games industry is consolidating fast, and there are more higher quality games base don big franchises such as Spider-Man [...] Most tellingly of all, the big boys are moving in".
This year, the value of mobile gaming is expected to exceed US$1b for the first time. In India alone the gaming market is going to be worth US$26m by the end of the year, according to analysis reported by The BBC.
Segmentation: letting customers segment themselves, by picking and customizing the services they want.
This idea is presented in a piece at
The Feature.
"...New technologies are making it increasingly easy to customize on the fly [...] The end result can be happier, more loyal customers, who are willing to pay a premium to get what they want. This isn't just about designing "luxury" handsets or premium services that cost more, but about designing handsets and services that actually meet the needs of individuals -- not market segments".
To get there customers need to be able to discover these services and share their experiences of them.
Police officers to trial mobile devices to access databases and to file reports.
Computing reports on the UK trial, stating that the key benefits are: efficiency gains because officers no longer have to return to a station to file a report; also speed of access to information is improved for officers, in some cases from minutes to seconds.
In related news the BBC report that residents of Doncaster, UK, will be able to email and phone officers on the beat. A helpline will connect callers to an officer's mobile phone.
No colour screen, no camera, no PDA functions: a disposable model phone.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports
on an AU$39 handset from Motorola, which "will be most attractive to international tourists who only need a phone for the duration of their stay or to those who want to take their phone to the beach or other places where it could be easily damaged."
The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the author, and neither Spiral Arm Ltd nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.