Introduction

It is human nature to over-estimate what can be achieved within one year and under-estimate what can be achieved within five years. Even from an outsiders perspective this is a fundamental reality of the wholesale telecommunications industry. The long-term changes have been almost impossible to predict, whilst the industry response to short-term changes has been somewhat of an over-reaction.

April 2005: Samsung slightly raised its estimates for industry handset shipments, to 700 million this year from 660 million in 2004. That reflects a growth rate of about 6%. By comparison, Nokia is looking for 10% unit growth for the industry.

Mobile Phone Definition

The mobile phone is a portable device which has to support voice calls whilst being able to move over a wide area. Today most mobile phones are able to process data services as well (i.e. messaging, information, entertainment etc). In this definition we do NOT include WLAN-PDAs (handheld devices) without voice call functionality.

Visions of the Future

Nov. 2006: Kang-Hun Lee, vice president of Samsung’s Next-Generation Terminals Team said that they are pretty much focusing on the multimedia capabilities. Other than the run of the mill voice communications, the mobile phones will incorporate sensors to check the user’s health and will offer an array of multimedia features. He expects the mobile phones to use flexible or holographic displays, processors clocked at up to 5GHz, 10GB flash memory, hard disks storing 20GB of data or more, mobile cameras shooting 3D images, and network flexibility by the year 2010. Samsung, itself will launch a GSM handset by the middle of 2007 that will integrate Wimax support.

Statistics

Global Mobile Market

Q3 2005 Mobile Market Share

December 2004:

June 2005:

Mobile Workforce, Enterprise Connectivity

Platforms and solutions to email, phone, short message service, organizer, Internet, and intranet-based corporate data applications.

OTA

September 2003. Operators are increasingly investigating over-the-air (OTA) for three main functions:

The idea is that you will buy a new phone because of its shape and style and when you'll turn it on, the operator (who knows your profile) will send you the configuration files, the software updates, the themes and mobile apps that fit your needs.

China's wireless value-added services market

July 2004: Many companies are entering the wireless services market, including the recently public TOM Online (TOMO:Nasdaq), Linktone (LTON:Nasdaq), Shanda Interactive (SNDA:Nasdaq) and KongZhong (KONG:Nasdaq).
 
KongZhong delivers services such as games, news, karaoke and instant messaging to cell-phone users, and it has focused on 2.5G services. KongZhong faces competition from Sina and, to some extent, Sohu.com.
 
Shanghai, July 16th 2004: Linktone Ltd., a China based wireless value-added services provider, has reached a definite agreement to deliver the audio news produced by China National Radio Channel 1 on the 2004 Olympic Games to mobile users in China through its IVR (Interactive Voice Response) platform. Mobile users will be able to access news on the games of their interest simply by calling Linktone's IVR service number.

TV-like display and low CPU requirement

Flash Lite: Flash on Mobile Phones

Flash Lite is the Macromedia Flash profile specifically developed for mobile phones. Flash Lite is an integral part of NTT's i-mode experience for over seven million phones.

Mobile Marketing and mCRM

In essence every mobile phone is a powerful relationship-building tool and a virtual loyalty card.

M-commerce

Mobile 3D

Global Roaming and Clearing Solutions

Real-time billing and prepaid systems

Global Handset Statistics

The sales of cellular phones in the U.S. continues to grow. In 2002, it was estimated that approximately 90 million cellular phones were purchased in North America. That number is expected to grow to 164 million in 2007, with up to 70% of those sales being newer phones to replace older ones.

Western European handset sell-in grew at a healthy 23% rate year-over-year in the third quarter of 2003, and up 7% sequentially. Healthy demand for color and camera phones was mixed with continuing strong demand for low-end handsets. Siemens accounted for an impressive 17% of total volume, gaining share from Nokia, Motorola and Alcatel, among others. Strategy Analytics has raised its full-year estimate for Western Europe to 125M in 2003.

Mobile Statistics snapshot

2003

During Chinese New Year celebrations (2003), China Unicom and China Mobile users combined to send a total of 7 billion SMS messages.

Global Mobile Users 1.32 billion
US Mobile users 141m
Global GSM users 855m
Global CDMA Users 162m
Global TDMA users 124m
European mobile users 323m
Japanese mobile users 80.4m
African users 34.6m
Total 3G users 130.6m
Global phone sales 2002 423.4 m
Global phone sales Q1 2003 107.6 m
SMSs sent in 2002 366 billion
GSM Countries on Air 197
   
Source: cellular.co.za  

Moblogging

Media to go

Feb 2003: Microsoft Media to go is a portable, pocket-sized video-audio player capable of storing 7 hours of video. Sharp has already one on the Japanese market called MT-AV1 and Intel is also planning to launch a very similar device soon.

Mobile File-Sharing

Phone Watch: Wristomo

Audio-video players

PDA Apps

Mobile Video

June 30, 2003: RealNetworks, unveiled a deal on Monday, June 30, to supply top European mobile carrier Vodafone with software that streams live video to cell phone users. RealNetworks said Vodafone would use its software to transmit real-time audio and video -- from classical music concerts to video feeds of traffic trouble spots -- to the UK-based carrier's 119 million customers. The RealNetworks software in Vodafone's mobile networks, however, will allow streaming of other formats, including the open MPEG4 format, Apple Computer's QuickTime and Windows Media Player. This keeps Vodafone's options open to include Microsoft devices in its handset range.

9kbs Video Streams

MXI :: Motion Experience Interface

Research Projects

Media Mobility and Mobile TV

Proximity Marketing

Samsung Speech-to-text VoiceMode

Interesting Companies

Intelligent Mobile Phones for Seniors and Kids

Intriguing Wearable Devices

Access Files and Share Photos from Anywhere

Camera Phones Sales, Q4 2003
(units sold)

The new figures are published in the Wall Street Journal and are quoted on several other news services, like Silicon.com. The statistics from 2003 also reveals the fact that Motorola, which ranks second in the world in total mobile phone sales, is not even among the top five in camera phones.

ARPU of European Carriers (In Euros)

 

Carrier 3Q01 3Q02 3Q03
Bouygues 36.5 41.6
Orange (France) 32.9 31.7 31.4
SFR 40.6 40.7
E-Plus 23.1 24.3
O2 (Germany) 26.3 28.0 29.5
Vodafone (Germany) 26.4 25.0 26.0
TIM 27.9 27.9 28.5
Vodafone (Italy) 27.7 28.8 29.6
Wind 20.0 19.6 22.5
Amena 27.1 29.0 31.3
Telefonica 28.5 28.6
Vodafone (Spain) 30.8 31.2 30.7
O2 (U.K.) 29.4 29.4 32.0
Orange (U.K.) 30.7 31.8 33.3
T-Mobile (U.K.) 29.7 29.8
Vodafone (U.K.) 34.7 34.6 36.7

Technology & Gadgets

News and links

Ring-tones market

Ring tones, are quietly becoming a money-maker for the music industry.

A new study released Wednesday by London-based Informa Media Group said that authors' collection societies collected $71 million in royalties from ring-tone sales in 2002, up 58 percent from the previous year.

The royalties figure -- which is typically 10 percent to 15 percent of the total sales from ring tones -- would suggest that the overall market is over $700 million annually, and quite possibly as high as $1 billion.

The proceeds are divided between operators, labels and the artists.

The Japanese Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers reports an average of 110 million ringtones were downloaded each month in Japan throughout 2002. Global research and consulting company, Strategy Analytics, forecasts that the downloadable ringtone market, including rich media ringtones, will increase to $4 billion by 2008.

Top Ten Polyphonic Ringtones in the US

December 2003 - Source: zingy.com

1   Hey Ya! :: Outkast
2   Sweet Home Alabama :: Lynyrd Skynyrd
3   Holidae In :: Chingy
4   Super Mario Brothers :: Miyamoto-san
5   PIMP :: 50 Cent
6   Halloween :: John Carpenter
7   Walked Outta Heaven :: Jagged Edge
8   We Wish You Merry... :: Traditional
9   If I Can't :: 50 Cent
10 Changes :: 2Pac

Mobile Community

Interesting Mobile Service

Mobile solutions

J2ME Optimizer

Forums


 
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