A new study by Pyramid Research shows that mobile subscribers in emerging markets have high interest in mobile internet and data but little interest in paying much.

The study asked 2500 mobile phone users across the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) “under which of the following circumstances they would use data services like wireless internet and mobile TV - if it were free, if the price were right or not interested at all”.

The most recent Mobinet study, from consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the Judge Business School at Cambridge University, shows that shows that consumers are eager to use mobile data and content, yet uncertainty still exists.
The study has been conducted eight times since 2000 and uses a sample of 4000 mobile phone users in 21 countries. […]

O2 has signed a three-year £2.25 million deal with Arsenal for the exclusive mobile content rights to London’s football club’s matches. This deal follows a four-year deal £10 million O2 signed with Arsenal for the branding on players’ shirts, which ends this season. O2’s main sponsorship will now be given to the Millennium Dome, which is being renamed The O2 after a £6 million per year deal.

Paul Glen has a great opinion piece on ComputerWorld about executives being constantly connected, through cell phone and “crack-berriers”, and the actual need to be constantly on-call.

The article talks about a need to help with problems or provide information, be seen as engaged, and a likely addiction to constantly monitoring their staff. Paul continue the article by pointing out that this “hyperconnectedness” can actually hurt projects and the team environment.

Late last year, the Federal Communications Commission proposed relaxing its ban on wireless phone use during U.S. flights. Since then, the FCC received thousands of calls and letters opposing the idea. The majority of travelers, flight attendants groups, and even several members of Congress have objected to the lifting of the ban.
“The last […]

Jamster!, a provider of mobile content, is offering a new service that allows parents to enter a mobile phone number to prevent content from being downloaded to that phone.
Jamster! has received quite a bit of attention in the past for being both widely successful and widely controversial. Youths know the company as a frequent […]

Telephia’s new Mobile Internet Report states that the 191 million U.S. wireless phone subscribers are increasingly using the mobile internet, with 4.8% (9.2 million) using the mobile internet.

Telephia maintains a panel of 69,000 wireless subscribers in the United States that it samples each month for mobile phone research. For the month of June 2005, more than 1,200 selected panelists responded to questions about their mobile internet usage and demographics. Weather-related sites were accessed by 3.9% of the total wireless audience, 2.9% visited a search site and 2.5% visited a sports related site.

Ericsson has announced it will invest $1 billion in developments in China over the next three years to meet the growing demand for 3G and 4G telecom services there.

At Ericsson’s Strategy & Technology Summit in Shanghai, Ericsson president and chief executive Carl-Henric Svanberg said, “Users demand more mobile content, operators are looking for new revenue sources and media companies need new distribution channels. This is in line with our vision of an all-communicating world and we are confident that the mobile content industry has wonderful potential.”. Svanberg also said that Ericsson had signed a research agreement with Shanghai Research Centre for Wireless Communications (SHRCWC) to collaborate on technologies such as Super 3G and 4G.

Paper, magazines and blogs have been talking about the upcoming wave of WiMax and other wireless broadband services. These new technologies are fast, but analysts do not think that any of them will offset 3G.

3G is increasingly being rolled out by cellular operators in Europe and North America. It promises to deliver average data speeds of about 400K bps to 700K bps. While the WiMax Forum predicts that mobile users will receive at least 1M bps from WiMax, its coverage will be limited for the next three to four years and will merely supplement 3G offerings. It is possible that 3G, WiMax and other wireless broadband technologies will converge into a future 4G offering.

A new study release by Gartner predicts that revenues from Indian cellular services will reach $24 billion by the end of 2009, with a penetration of 30 percent and more than 300 million connections. The Indian cellular market grew 67 percent in 2004 but will need only a 35.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to meet this prediction. Given the country’s economic growth and lack of a core landline system, this seems quite reasonable.

China and Japan signed an agreement on August 26th to jointly develop research for a new worldwide standard to cover 4G. A spokesperson for Samsung, one of the key members of the 4G Forum, said that the technical specifics need to be “firmed up”, but significant research has already been performed in the area.

NTT and others have been researching 4G for some time, well before WiMax development began, but standards have not been formed as there is still debate on the uses of 4G. The original plans for 4G were to offer 100 Mbps wireless transmission. NTT has successfully blown through this barrier with a successful test of 1Gbps using their 4G technology, a Variable Spreading Factor-Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM) and a 4-by-4 Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna.

Nic Fildes from the Dow Jones recently wrote an interesting article on the shifting advertising practices of European mobile phone companies.
Mobile companies have historically spent the largest amount of their marketing budgets on sponsoring sporting events and sports teams. However, this may be changing as these companies are drastically increasing the advertising budgets for […]

Analysts are expecting Intel and Research in Motion (RIMM), manufacturer of the Blackberry) to announce a new partnership at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. As part of the deal, RIMM will begin to use Intel’s low-power communication chips and will help Intel promote its WiMax long-distance protocol.

The WiMax wireless […]

Boost Mobile has partnered with Blister Entertainment to offer the first two location based games offered nationwide on a commercial basis in the United States. Swordfish and Torpedo Bay transform the phone into a window into a new virtual world.

The Technology Suits issued a call earlier this year for more innovation in the location based gaming arena, and Blister has answered the call first for the United States. Several of us here also know the Blister team quite well and are happy to see their progress. Now a little about the games:

News began to circulate last week about a preliminary meeting between Skype and BSkyB, a News Corp satellite unit, to discuss an acquisition by News Corp. News Corp, which includes holdings such as the Fox media outlets, is seeking to expand itself into the online world, but the estimated $3+ billion price tag for […]