Citizen journalism.
Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, provides a call-to-arms for media to make more of citizen journalism: "The London bombings were the first domestic news story where the most significant coverage came from people at the scene [...] But a year on, it is interesting that while the theory that citizens can be reporters is no longer in dispute, it is not clear that the mainstream media have developed a series of fantastic applications for this type of material."
3's internet focus.
Flat-rate internet access and a pre-installed Skype client are the headline items of 3's announcement of their X-Series offering. The flat-rate billing is of particular interest as users have cited cost, or "bill shock", as reasons not to make more use of their handsets. The estimated "£10 and £15 a month on top of their usual price plan" (Guardian Unlimited) may put customers off, but the bundle of applications, including Ebay and IM clients, may offset the additional price to some degree.
"Without giving full details, 3 announced the first commodity-style pricing model for mobile data. There'll be no by-the-minute or by-the-byte billing, rather "it's free when you see it", meaning you pay for the pipe not the data. There will be fair use caveats though, including a higher access charge for high bandwidth video" (The Register).
Also of interest is that 3 have not sided with any particular internet giant: software is bundled from Microsoft and Yahoo!, and Google is the preferred search engine. Google's mobile mapping and GMail software is not (yet?) included. Users of Slingbox and Windows PC always-connected to the internet will also benefit from the bundled Slingbox and Orb clients.
X-Series launches in the UK in December, other regions in 2007, and is available on the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W950i.
Sources:
Mobile phone as a "human right"?
iSuppli analysts ask if the mobile phone should be seen as a human right. "The level of penetration globally for wireless communications is astounding [...] Nothing comes close, except for electrical power." They "see that mobile phones are an enabling factor, not just for the economic growth of nations, but also for individuals' ability to live and thrive in the developing world."
From Cellular News.
Open source mobile Java.
Back in August Sun announced they would open source Java ME, the software platform that runs on more than a billion handsets. This is expected to mean that developers, networks and handset manufacturers will be able to view the code and make improvements that will benefit all the players. However, Sun have not yet made a decision on which license the code will be released under.
Motorola have stepped up, according to Cellular News, by announcing "an invitation to the broader Java ME ecosystem to establish a complete Java Micro Edition (Java ME) software stack for the mobile industry, under the Apache License Version 2.0" (see also, the Motorola press release). The Apache license is one of the more relaxed of the open source licenses, allowing for redistribution, contributions and modifications which can be open or closed source. It will be interesting to see how that license sits with Sun's requirement for compatibility between implementations, which is one of the corner-stones of the Java platform.
The Philippines: more revenue from data than calls.
"Pyramid Research, says that the average data revenue per subscription in the Philippines now stands at $3.90 (£2.08) a month, compared with $3.50 a month for voice - meaning that data accounts for 53% of the total". Although this is a milestone in the use of data, this change is not due to some new killer app. The cause appears to be due to the pricing model used in The Philippines, where text charges are much cheaper than voice calls.
"While there are some other examples of operators getting up to 30% of revenue from data, notably O2 and 3 in the UK, and NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in Japan, in the majority of cases the data share is between 10% and 20%."
From The Guardian, via SmartMobs.
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