The o2 money site says:

“O2 is all about finding the best ways of connecting you to your world. And we know that you’d appreciate an easy way to stay on top of your cash using your mobile. So that’s why we’ve launched O2 Money cards. You load money onto your O2 Money card, then whenever you use it you’ll receive a free real time text alert.”

The ‘Cash Manager’ card is there to help you stay on top of your spending by providing a prepaid Visa card. The card has an annual limit of up to £10,000 and is free to sign up and use as long as you are an O2 customer.

The ‘Load and Go’ card is aimed at the younger generation (13+) and can be topped up with a maximum £1,800 a year. Cash can be added to the card using O2 shops, debit card online (i.e. parents) and also Paypoint and e-pay locations across the UK. Again users will receive text alerts and is available exclusively for o2 customers.

Whilst both cards can be used to top up your Pay as You go I couldnt work out why O2 were launching these cards. What do they get out of it? The cards would cost next to nothing for them I imagine and the are run by Natwest.

I saw this tweet by the official O2 stream: 

The wallet and the mobile phone are coming together - this will allow us to bring new services to our customers

To me this seems a strange way of bridging the gap between ‘the wallet’ and the mobile phone when it would be very easy for the MNO’s to effectively become banks themselves which they have shied away from but that’s another story in itself.

The tweet lead me to think Advertising. O2 will be able to monitor users spend as well as their mobile usage and offer targeted advertisements to users and make revenues from brands etc. Competition for Blyk? Or is this just the future of mobile? after the 118800 fiasco it seems all fingers are starting to point at reaching people directly to there mobiles.

Maybe O2 will give Natwest and Visa access to their user base. The student banking market is huge in the UK with banks putting out all efforts to sign up students knowing that they will leave university with overdrafts and credit cards thus effectively signed up to that bank for years whilst they pay it back when they start fulltime employment. This gives O2 and Natwest a good opportunity to build a detailed ‘relationship’ with these consumers and understand their lifestyles.

Personally I think the card is a great idea considering the state of ‘credit Britain’ but this shouldn’t be done by O2 let alone an MNO. Maybe O2 should think about updating there Payforit scheme which offers a lot more potential and still uses the old Premium SMS technology.

What do you think?Random Posts

• E71, N96, Blackberry Bold, Sony Xperia… ALL coming on 3
  July 21, 2008
• Holmes Place mobile strategy weighed, measured and founding wanting
  September 12, 2006
• Vodafone’s Palm Treo 750v
  October 3, 2006
• Moblog UK launch year-long online moblogging community for Channel4’s Big Art Project
  March 23, 2007
• Should GMTV executives be tried for fraud?
  September 26, 2007

To say I’ve been a bit busy with other projects lately would be an understatement. However, it hasn’t stopped me putting in the hours for this esteemed publication and catching up with some of the movers and shakers in the mobile industry over the past few weeks.

Here’s a taster of what’s coming your way in the next week or so:

- Interview with Jote Bassi, VP Global Sales & Marketing at messaging experts Anam.

- A feature on brand new MVNO Uni-Tel and their MVNA partner x-Mobility, including interviews with x-Mobility CEO Wayne Myers and Uni-Tel Mobile Operations Director Mike Hall.

- A chat over breakfast with Tim Haysom from operator-sponsored mobile platform forum OMTP.

and last but not least - and slightly overdue:

- A brief round-up and who’s who of exhibitors at the Global Messaging 2009 event last month.

Would you like your company on this list? Drop an email to alex (at) alexkinch (dot) com and let me know, and we’ll try and work out a plan for a feature and interview.Random Posts

• Win an Apple iPhone with Qipit’s Cupid Competition
  February 5, 2007
• Vodafone abolishes European roaming charges for the summer
  May 14, 2009
• Anyone able to do a bit of blogging for me next week?
  February 22, 2007
• Ambassador Ricky Cadden of S60
  March 10, 2008
• skins4things is ready to wrap your device in gorgeous ’skins’
  October 10, 2008

This week Surya’s explaining how India’s mobile operators stole the hearts of almost a billion people (and sold them a heck of a lot of phones too), through the rather expert use of the medium of television advertising. Say the words ‘hutch dog’ to almost any Indian and they’re liable to break out into a fond smile. Why? Read on and watch. Over to Surya…

- - - - -

Question: What do dogs and Oscar winners have in common?
Answer: Mobile Telephony. Or to be more specific, advertisements of Mobile Operators in India. And the story goes like this….

Once upon a time, there was a country with one of the most yummy mobile markets in the world, in terms of growth and girth.

The UK? No. USA? No. France? No.

India.

To get the population’s their attention, one of the major mobile operator players decided to enlist the help of the most reliable man in the Indian movie industry (of which Bollywood is just one part of). This man had composed music for a decade for a massive number of movies, and each time the music sold like hotcakes. The operator’s plan? Get the chap to compose a jingle for their adverts that would capture the attention of a whole nation. A big challenge? Not necessarily. Here’s a sample of what he came up with:

As you can see, it’s a simple black and white ad, containing a total of twenty one words. Not one mobile phone anywhere to be seen. It became an instant hit. Even with 100+ TV channels to surf through to avoid even a microsecond of time wasted on advertisements, fingers froze when these ads played on television. The tune was downloaded, set as the defaultringtone, and provided for free by the operator to their new consumers. And then they came up with a second ad, which, this time, actually showed people with mobile phones.

And when there was a bit of an international political fracas with their estranged brother/neighbor nation, they played this ad, again with music from the magic man:

When they changed their parent company’s logo, they went with him again:

So what is a competitor got to do? How do you compete with the national phenomenon of Airtel? Get another musician? Get a movie star? Or go to the dogs?

The last idea actually did not prove to be that bad.

There were some similarities with the first ad of the competitor. Lots of good music, no mobile phones, anywhere on screen. But that’s where the similarities ended. While Airtel went the ‘lets appeal to the higher plane of human emotions‘ way, Hutch decided to be a little more direct. Have a watch of this one…

This advert sparked a nationwide plea from little boys demanding to have their very own ‘Doggie like in the Hutch ad‘. The prices for the particular brand of dog in pet shops shot up. Harried parents went searching for a ‘Hutch dog’ - instead of asking for a Pug; thus adding a popular phrase to the urban collective consciousness of that country. I trust the marketing director got a good bonus.

To maintain interest, they swiftly introduced another ad:

And another:

And thus, they inched their way into the wallets hearts of the urban, apartment dwelling people of India. The Hutch marketing team did such a good job that a bigger, multi-national player bought the company.

During the re-branding, the music used in the ads, changed to more locally flavored tunes, since the focus moved to India’s rural markets. They changed the little boy with a little girl (yay! go girls! ;-D).

The logo changed.

The brand colours changed.

Even the fonts changed.

What did not change was… well, why don’t you take a look?

Of course.

- - - - -

Thoroughly entertaining Surya! I had no idea about the popularity of the ‘hutch dog’! Very smart marketing. I particularly liked the ‘make love, not war’ advert from Airtel! Random Posts

• Opinion: The INQ1 — 3rd attempt at a Skype-friendly handset?
  December 5, 2008
• Microsoft wants to double Windows mobile sales
  May 28, 2008
• The continued Apple App Store dilemma
  March 11, 2009
• MMS your photos direct to BBC’s studio
  January 29, 2006
• Did you ever have a penfriend when you were younger?
  August 28, 2008

They’ve got their hands on 3 vids of a T-Mobile rep apparently demonstrating the Visual Voicemail interface, including the ability to save messages to memory cards, on the upcoming T-Mobile myTouch (Vodafone / HTC Magic most other places in the world). Is this an early view of a new feature in the upcoming ‘Donut‘ Android update?

To my eyes the interface doesn’t quite match the base Android OS so I’m wondering if this is an in house solution developed by T-Mobile purely for the myTouch? Many T-Mobile US phones come with a similar looking ‘myFaves’ application, could this be one of the reasons why T-Mobile US have apparently said no to the HTC Hero (G2 Touch)? Maybe they have plans for a T-Mobile specific Android build, and this visual voicemail feature is the first evidence?

Here’s a screen capture of one of the videos showing the system working:

See the demo videos over at TMONews.Random Posts

• Podcast Episode 13
  July 14, 2008
• MobilePeople Gets It With Local Contextual Ads
  February 19, 2008
• 17 Questions to Alex Kinch of SendMyTxt.com
  August 16, 2006
• Jo & Nat redux
  June 22, 2006
• uLocate Buys Zync And Looks For What’s Next
  February 9, 2008

That means that they’ll be shortly receiving a brand new Samsung NC 20 Netbook along with a Nokia N96 handset. Get IN.

Don’t despair if you didn’t win though — there’s another few weeks to go, still. There’s still time for you to hurry over to betavine and submit a nice MIR-branded widget!

Find out more about the widget competition here.

Each of the widgets, designed for the S60 platform, are pretty nifty:

LiveTube by neverscroll
Live Tube displays real-time status information of the London Underground. You can forward such info via SMS / Twitter SMS

WotsforDina by eggsy84
A widget allowing people to search for recipes, view ingredients and follow steps to create the recipe

AnimalLogic by jappit
AnimaLogic is a puzzle game where you have to pop animals from the board, by placing 3 or more of each kind horizontally or vertically

The widgets are available right now for download — you just need to be sporting an S60 device with a data plan. Random Posts

• MobileMeg.org sets the record straight on UK data rates
  July 31, 2008
• UK students reckon mobile web is crap
  May 12, 2007
• Consumerist reports T-mobile USA doubles price of SMS from 0.05c to 0.10c
  February 1, 2006
• Truphone update
  January 23, 2009
• MyStrands revamps, connects music across mobile, physical parties and the web
  January 24, 2007

The buyer, mobile messaging company, Mobispine, has just completed the deal. Super news for James and the Fun Text team. And super news for the chaps at Mobispine — this is their fourth acquisition in about a year.

If you need a reminder on Fun Text, they deploy mobile messaging facilities for consumers, enabling them to send and share ‘professionally created multimedia’ on mobile. Birthday messages, jokes, that sort of stuff — it’s the kind of services that the MMS manager at a mobile operator loves — in many cases, Fun Text has delivered triple-digit MMS ARPU for their clients.

Mobispine is growing into a bit of a behemoth — working with over 30 mobile operators around the planet. Good news all round. Congratulations everyone!Random Posts

• $300k suicide text from Trades Union
  May 28, 2008
• 3 turfs out new small business mobile broadband deals, plus increases data limits
  November 4, 2008
• Nokia N86 in the flesh, in Prague
  March 2, 2009
• SMS text world cup
  March 4, 2006
• The Guru is mobilcasting his wedding!
  March 27, 2008

Congratulations to the team — they’ve had a pretty good month — they’ve gone live with o2 Germany and they won the TechCrunch Europe Award for Best Mobile Startup.

Nice!

If you haven’t tried the multi-platform messaging service for mobile, I recommend you check it out. Random Posts

• Building your own LifeCam with a Nokia, Timed Spy, ShoZu and Flickr
  October 10, 2006
• Mobile instant messaging users aren’t texting as much
  April 28, 2008
• ROK Talk still rokking my world
  March 13, 2008
• Anybody remember Business 2.0?
  April 22, 2008
• Apple iPhone UK - a tale of woe and “can’t-help, won’t-help, please go-away”
  January 12, 2008

If you’re quick, you can still get a ticket — but you’ll need to be ultra quick.

The keynote is going to be particularly interesting. Three chaps, one from Google, one from Palm and one from Nokia are having a fireside chat. Without the fire, I suspect. It’s going to be a particularly difficult one for Nokia’s Dr Tero Ojanpera, given the fact he’s going to be stuck in a room with a few hundred people, most of whom wrote Nokia off about 5 years ago.

Browsing the speaker list, I’m interested to see the arms-crossed figure of Ben Piilani, Zer01 Mobile’s CEO. That’s a very defensive position. And for good reason. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to about Zer01 is telling me ridiculously negative things.

I have it on good authority that Dave Katz, VP of Mobile for Yahoo, is what we in England call ‘a good Egg’. I’ve never met the chap, but I will look on with interest to see what Yahoo have got to say for themselves. They were a player, a big player, in mobile. When Terry Semel stood up and did a Steve Jobs years back (announcing Yahoo Go 1.0) they really could have been a player. That was back when they created a brilliant applications set for S60. It synched everything. Your mail, photos, the whole shebang. Then they chickened out for the next set of versions, deploying services on the browser which, although nice, reduced them — in my eyes — to also-ran status overnight.

Donald Pitt, Senior Director of Business Development at Samsung should be smiling brightly. I’m looking forward to seeing their first Android device hit the UK next month.

Eric Chu, Head of Google’s Android App Store has got some explaining to do. It’s widely accepted by many as a piece of bollocks. It’s certainly improving incrementally but it’s got some way to go before you could call it an App Store. A ‘list’ might be a little bit more accurate. I trust he’ll be explaining what’s coming soon.

Henri Moissinac, Director of Mobile at Facebook, deserves a round of applause. In fact I think we should aim to cheer Henri for his entire speech, continuously. Facebook has done more to push the adoption of mobile data services by the rest-of-the-planet (i.e. normobs) than almost anything else. I trust Henri will shower us with ridiculously exciting statistics about how the normobs of the planet are using FB mobile more and more.

Props to GerJar’s CEO, Ilka Laurs, who’ll be proudly explaining that his site accounts for something like 30-40m application downloads every month. GetJar’s portal has been helping hundreds of independent (and massvie) application developers get their apps into the hands of consumers, particularly those consumers without app portals on their devices. Don’t forget Patrick Mork, VP Marketing of GetJar. Patrick — another ‘good Egg’, has just moved to the Valley. If you catch him, tell him hello from me.

Jason Devitt, a MIR favourite, is CEO of Skydeck Mobile. He’ll no doubt be telling us all about Skydeck’s next generation of services. If you’re US based, you should definitely check out Skydeck.

Jason Spero is AdMob’s General Manager of North America. I reckon he’ll be focusing on their rather successful mobile application monetisation offerings — and giving us a super perspective on the mobile advertising marketplace. How many billion impressions are they serving now? I’m not sure. MIR’s mobile website earned a cool $120 last month thanks to AdMob.

I’m not quite sold on CBS Mobile yet. So if I can I’m going to pop along and watch Jeff Sellinger. We’ll see what he’s got to say. Could be good, could be good.

I’m also not sold on Qualcomm. Keith Kressin, the Senior Director of Product Management, is speaking. Go on then Keith, surprise me.

I’m hoping that Matthaus of VentureBeat has arranged for the bulletproof vest and a SWAT team on standby for Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation. It is good to see Symbian getting out and about in the valley where they are completely, wholly, massively and unreservedly irrelevant. It is laughable. I’d like to point out that I am seriously impressed, daily, at the ability of my trial Nokia N97 to run background applications whilst all the iPhone chappies here in the Valley have to keep on pressing the central-button-of-death every time they want to check their email. Or do anything. The entire Symbian offering needs a complete rewrite. Telling people in America that Symbian is the ‘most widely used operating system for mobile products and services’ doesn’t do much for them. Accurate, yes. But try getting an iPhone developer to wrap his or her head around the Symbian development framework. Yeah. Canny be done. So every success Lee. If you’re looking for a friendly face amidst the crowd at MobileBeat, you can count on me.

Luke Bao from China Mobile will, I imagine, sweep into the conference on a cloud of mobile angels. There’s not many companies that can be successfully relied upon to make the Americans completely irrelevant. China Mobile is one of them. Bring on Luke’s presentation.

Richard Wong of Accel Partners, always has something intelligent and interesting to say. It was Richard who moderated the AdMob mobile apps panel back in April. The one that generated a ton of controversy regarding iPhone developers and their perception of Nokia/Symbian as irrelevant.

Spare a thought for poor Peter Barry of Vodafone Ventures, who — at time of writing — has no profile up on the speaker list. He is a partner at Vodafone Ventures… and… well I’m sure he’s a lovely chap. He’s not on the first page of Google so I’m led to wonder whether he’s entirely irrelevant or whether Vodafone Ventures haven’t quite got the internet as yet. Let me click to page two, just in case. Nope. Let’s try ‘Peter Barry Vodafone’, that should work. Rubbish. He’s mentioned at a few conferences. I wanted you link you to his profile. Would you believe that a search for ‘Vodafone Ventures’ doesn’t return you their website? In lieu of this, here’s their email address.

OK on with the speaker list.

Russ McGuire of Sprint Nextel will, I’m sure, be telling us all about the Palm Pre success. But I’m sure he’ll also highlight Sprint’s super job at converting its customer base over to mobile data. Their Samsung Instinct device range has been particularly successful over the past year.

Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, has got explaining to do as well. The market rumours I keep hearing aren’t entirely brilliant at all. What’s next with Loopt, Sam?

I see that Stephan Noll of T-Mobile Ventures also has no profile listed. Another faceless wonder. His LinkedIn profile is, at least, the first result on Google.

I’ve got a little bit of my heart reserved for Stephen Saltzman, Head of Mobile Investment at Intel Captial. You can always rely on Intel to chuck a bit of cash into a happening startup. I’m a particular fan of their Soonr investment. I’ll be paying attention to what Stephen’s got to say.

Steve Boom of Mig33 deserves a lot of attention for the success story that is Mig33. We’ve been following mobile instant messaging player, Mig33, for quite a while. Bring it on Steve.

Kudos to Pandora’s CTO, Tom Conrad. They’ve done a brilliant job of mobilising their music service — just, I’d like to see them leap the licensing issues preventing them launching in Europe.

Venetia Espinoza is T-Mobile USA’s Director of Product Development, Mobile Apps and Partner Programs. So she’s the lady you want to be speaking to if you’d like to do business with the operator. Likewise Will Lowry, VP of AT&T Mobility. Both of them could make you famous.

So that’s a potted list of names that popped out at me. You can browse the full list here.

See you there..Random Posts

• Zenith & Nielsen unite internet, mobile video and out-of-home viewing data
  March 14, 2008
• o2’s Business Call Plan caught my attention
  February 19, 2008
• A riot of comments
  July 3, 2006
• LG Shine reaction, part 2
  February 7, 2007
• Terrorist attacks in India underline the personal criticality of mobile
  November 27, 2008

Dear Ewan,

Do you know any providers of non-shortcode based virtual sms numbers for recieving SMS?

So a local virtual mobile number for the UK, France, Spain, etc?

I can’t seem to find any providers?

Thanks,
Nigel

I’ve used the services of FastSMS regularly for some of the businesses and projects I’ve been working on recently. I only needed UK +44 mobile numbers though. It’s £99 for the year per number — which enables you to easily do two-way SMS (Here’s their product page). Their API is nice, simple, easy to integrate.

I’ve also had a lot of success with iTAGG — they even provide some useful code samples — but their primary business is based on shortcode/keyword traffic, not necessarily what you’re looking for Nigel. I use iTAGG a lot for outgoing traffic myself.

Does anyone have some good suggestions for Nigel? I think he might struggle to obtain French/Spanish numbers — at least, the last time I tried to find any providers (and this was a few years ago), I wasn’t at all successful and ended up having to use hosted sim cards (which does work, but is a bit rubbish!)Random Posts

• Fliptrack becomes Moblyng, gets $5.7m from VCs
  May 22, 2008
• Vodafone: No speedy number porting in the UK, thank-you-very-much
  September 19, 2008
• Safecell in-flight technology patented
  September 7, 2007
• Nokia N96… meh… I hope it’s good
  December 20, 2007
• 3.5G to get upgrade by end of 2007
  July 21, 2007

So is calling over GSM really secure? Yes and no. Yes as in your call is encrypted between the handset and the network, so its not just a case of someone with a scanner ‘tuning in’ like the old days with analogue cordless phones - but no as there’s so many other places it can be tapped. Plus the encryption standard used by GSM was cracked in theory about 10 years ago, so anyone with a suitably large amount of technology could in theory break the code. Last year two researchers - Steve Muller and David Hulton - claimed they’d come up with a method of doing it quite quickly without the need for silly amounts of computing power you’d normally only associate with a government.

Then there’s the theoretical possibility of a physical ‘wiretap’ within the mobile network or public telephone system. Let’s take a call between a 3 mobile user in the UK and someone in Germany on T-Mobile. It’s quite possible that call will go from 3 to BT, across BT’s international network to Deutsche Telekom in Germany, off Deutsche Telekom’s transit network to the actual T-Mobile network, and then onwards to the other end. Across that path it’s more than likely that call has passed through not only four different networks but quite a few exchanges - as an unencrypted digital stream. Pick an exchange that call happens to pass through, find a disgruntled and persuadable (with a nice brown envelope of cash) switch engineer and voila - one wiretap.

Of course this is all theoretical, and I’m not suggesting it happens all the time. However with increasing concerns about the security of phone calls, many companies are beginning to use encryption technology you’d only see spooks and the military using five years ago.

One company to offer such technology is British-based CellCrypt. Their software-based offering can be installed on Nokia, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile smartphone. With just a few clicks you can make a secured call over the 3G/2G or Wi-Fi data network to another CellCrypt-enabled device (or office PBX if you’ve got the relevent hardware installed) and not only completely bypass the voice network but also secure your conversation with something called Encrypted Mobile Content Protocol (EMCP). Here’s a little diagram of how it works:

So how secure is secure? Not wishing to get too techy about it, but CellCrypt uses RSA 2048 bit and AES 256 bit encryption, DH and RSA algorithms for key exchange, SHA512 and MD5 for hashing and DSA and RSA to authenticate data.

Does it work? Is it simple to use? Yes, in a word. I had the opportunity to have a play with the CellCrypt technology a few weeks ago, and it seems quite straight forward. Select a contact from your CellCrypt phone book, hit the button, and within 10 seconds its placed the call, secured it, and you’re ready to rock and roll. As the call does go over your operators 2G or 3G service it can be a little delayed, but to be honest its not really noticeable - and not that much worse than a normal mobile to mobile call.

Even if you don’t think CellCrypt - or similar technology - is for you, here’s CellCrypt’s CEO Simon Bransfield-Garth with some top tips for mobile safety. Obviously he’ll want you to place an order for his service, but quite a lot of this is common sense and simple to do.

• Never assume that voice calls are secure – like fax or email, never discuss confidential or sensitive issues on the phone, or use phones with voice encryption
• Never leave confidential voice messages or send confidential texts
• Make sure you use your mobile phone PIN and protect it in the same way as your Bank Card PIN –  voicemails can be accessed from any phone with the PIN
• Be vigilant to prevent malicious use of your phone – be wary of texts, system messages or events on your phone that you did not ask initiate or expect; turn off Bluetooth if you are not using it and don’t leave your phone lying around
• Think about the value of the conversation and then choose the right communication means for the call – if you are discussing something very valuable, such as a business deal, don’t leave information lying around or use communications means that can be intercepted

You can find out more about CellCrypt at http://www.cellcrypt.com - and watch out for an interview in the coming weeks.Random Posts

• Scots MPs spend £50,000 on better mobile reception
  March 27, 2008
• Carphone Warehouse FAILS to sell me an iPhone
  July 12, 2008
• Match Capital Partners launches; hunting for wireless, mobile internet companies
  January 29, 2008
• Text2store launches in Chicago today
  February 25, 2007
• Adobe’s shitty Flash ordering shit system = FAIL
  December 7, 2008

The PocketSurfer3

Here’s the deal. The PocketSurfer3 and PocketSurfer3 Lite, like their older siblings, have a Vodafone SIM superglued into the device. When you buy the device you get 30 hours per month of GPRS Internet browsing included for a year (it was 20 hours per month with the PocketSurfer 2). After a year you pony up £29.99 and get another years worth of 30 hours per month. Or at anytime you can pay £5.99 a month for unlimited access and £59.99 for ‘lifetime of the product’ unlimited access.

Now comes the interesting bit - roaming. Instead of paying per megabyte, Datawind charge European access at 5p per minute. There’s even a little timer on the screen so you can work out how many minutes you’ve been online.

Anyway, some brief specs on the device. At 152 x 75 x 15 mm and weighing in at 174 grams, both the PocketSurfer3 and its ‘Lite’ version have a 640×240 TFT colour screen, quad band GSM/GPRS radio, backlit QWERTY keyboard, and about four hours of usage with a standby time of four days. It runs Linux and apart from a web browser has email and IM applications built in. The PocketSurfer3 also has GPS and a funky touch pad, which the Lite doesn’t have.

Price-wise? The PocketSurfer3 is £199, and PocketSurfer Lite is £159. It’s available now from Maplin and, rather curiously, the Ideal World TV shopping channel.

Ubisurfer

Datawind also unveiled the Ubisurfer - a new netbook. Similar in concept to the PocketSurer, it’s got a 7″ TFT screen running at 800×480, 128MB of RAM, 1GB of Flash, onboard Wi-Fi, an Ethernet port, sound, an SD card socket, 3 USB ports, and a few more applications - like media player, XIP Office (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation), PDF Viewer, Paint, and a handful of games. Again it runs Linux, and as with the PocketSurfer it comes with 30 hours a month of Vodafone GPRS surfing, and 5p/minute roaming access in Europe.

Pricing for the UbiSurfer is a rather reasonable £159, and again its available now from Maplin and the Ideal World TV shopping channel.

Review units should be hitting the streets in the next few weeks, so as soon as they wing their way here we’ll bring you a full in depth road test. In the meantime you can find out more about the UbiSurfer here and the PocketSurfer3 here.Random Posts

• MovaMail.com — fantastic email client for your mobile
  November 19, 2006
• Hutchison reduces Indian SMS costs
  April 17, 2006
• The Imperative Awards by NetImperative
  August 11, 2006
• Apple to release 2 iPhones in early 2007
  October 19, 2006
• How do you stay ‘live’ with your mobile across the day? Batteries and all.
  May 22, 2008

Apparently there’s an Easter Egg in the Orange Mobile Watch video.

I’m told by extremely reliable sources that something good will happen if you call the phone number shown on this video:

Now. I queried ‘what kind of good’.

I’m the guy who only ever needs one wish. Why would you need 3 wishes, ever? Your first wish: Unlimited wishes on demand, job done, right?

Anyway I’m not entirely sure what kind of goodness descends upon you when you phone the number.

Maybe you get put through to the Orange call center and get a 10 quid credit?

Maybe you and 10 other friends win a Mobile Watch (which, by the way, is very, very cool).

Or maybe you just get your name in lights on the Orange website?

I don’t know.

But I’ll phone in a minute and find out.

Although…

You know what, I won’t phone.

Just in case it’s a prize or something decent… you, dear reader, should be the one to benefit. Not me.

So I won’t phone. But if you’ve got five minutes, try out the number and mail me — ewan@mobileindustryreview.com — and let me know what happens?

Find out more about the Orange Watch Phone here.

Available from Orange for a limited time period, the Watch Phone will be available at an exclusive price point on Orange pay as you go. The device features a compact and stylish design with a Bluetooth headset, in-built speaker and a full touch-screen interface, as well as 3G+ and video-calling capabilities.

Random Posts

• NO PICTURES!!!
  February 7, 2007
• Unlimited sms texting for a fixed daily rate in the Philippines
  February 21, 2006
• Did the N95 kill Nokia or revive it?
  April 25, 2008
• Nokia’s Big N-Gage conversation; news soon?
  June 2, 2008
• Flashmobbing at the weekend
  November 19, 2007

The paper reports that the operation, launched in mid-2007, has just filed accounts at the Companies’ Registration Office (CRO) - Ireland’s equivalent to the UK’s Companies House - which show the deficit on the balance sheet as of December 31st last year, compared with a €3.1m deficit at the end of 2007.

So can we call that figure a loss? Not exactly. Whilst the accounts do say the operation made a loss in 2008, as it’s classed as a small company it only has to file a balance sheet and not a full profit and loss account. The Irish Times did ask the same question, and a spokesman for the venture said they ‘would not elaborate on its performance last year, and did not provide any details on the number of subscribers that it has recruited.’

According to the accounts, the shareholders (Tesco and O2) stumped up €11m in July 2007 to finance launch and development. The venture spent €2.5 million of this in 2007, and €6 million last year, a total of €8.5 million. This leaves €2.5m in the kitty. Not a great deal in the grand scheme of things.

So is Tesco Mobile Ireland in trouble? Maybe not quite yet. Tesco and O2 have agreed to provide ‘last resort’ funding to the company until at least 30 June 2010. But that still leaves the issue of the €8.5m it has spent so far - and whether it can repay O2 and Tesco. The accounts show the €8.5m was provided in the form of interest-free unsecured loans, of which €1.5m must be paid by December 31st 2010 and the remaining €7m by December 31st 2011.Random Posts

• TextAgent — Start the (text) relationship at your signboard!
  January 8, 2007
• Tango hunting for customers wanting to dump SMS Spam
  January 15, 2007
• Fresh Mobile online top up repeatedly WON’T WORK
  June 23, 2006
• Eurovision text news by Vodafone Malta
  May 17, 2006
• NokiaWorldWatch: the N97 - for 550 euro
  December 2, 2008

The Telefonica O2 group operates mobile networks in the UK, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Isle of Man - so you’d expect the launch to encompass all of these countries? Nope, think again.

Spain, the UK, Ireland and Germany will get the Palm Pre in time for Christmas. Where does that leave the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Isle of Man? Nowhere, apparently. And the rest of Europe? Nothing concrete yet - although it wouldn’t be a surprise if a handful of the other operators scoop up the rest of Europe.

Still no word on pricing, the exact launch date, and how many months worth of contract you’ll have to sign in blood. However there is a set of ‘pre-notification’ pages on Palm’s website:

• UK and Ireland: http://www.palm.com/uk-pre-notify
• Germany: http://www.palm.com/de-pre-notify
• Spain: http://www.palm.com/es-pre-notify

Random Posts

• Samsung Cleo launches in Canada
  November 8, 2008
• 4,000 sign Telegraph’s No Mobiles On Planes petition
  October 26, 2007
• Opera drops Yahoo for Google on mobile browsers
  February 28, 2008
• Karin Du Rietz of Rubberduck Media on Video Transcoding
  March 4, 2009
• Pay your bills via SMS with Citibank
  August 10, 2007

The most notable is Dabr, a really efficient mobile web interface to Twitter, created by the quiet genius that is Mr David Carrington.

Former MIR contributor, Ben Smith, came across this rather nifty Channel4 News article article highlighting David’s service and carrying a good few quotes from the man himself. Have a read!

One point — for the Chinese censors reading, blocking Dabr won’t help you. David rather smartly wrote the code to port extremely, extremely easily — as he explained in the interview:

“In theory, the site ‘dabr.co.uk’ could be blocked, but as I mentioned - there are many copies of my site up and running created by Chinese users just in case that happens.”

One Twitter user in China explained: “we use third-party clients of Twitter, like dabr.co.uk, official Twitter site was banned this afternoon.”

In fact it’s so smart and lightweight, I reckon you could probably host Dabr from a Nokia running a web server.

Nice work David!Random Posts

• Live coverage from the UK iPhone 3G launch
  July 11, 2008
• Checked out Flirtomatic recently?
  December 29, 2006
• Txt 8555 New Zealand wins Lazarus Award for refusing to die
  February 1, 2007
• MyStrands revamps, connects mobile, parties and the web
  January 24, 2007
• Orange: Save 25% on your 200% overpriced calls
  March 7, 2007

It’ll be available on pay as you go, and comes with a bluetooth headset, built-in speaker, 3G and video calling. And that’s all we appear to know right now.

“Pay as you go only”, you may gasp, “why?”

Well here’s my thinking. What perfect way to sell you a gizmo you’ll probably get bored of using within a few weeks, and notch up another SIM ’subscriber’. Imagine being tied in to a 36 month contract on a watch? I couldn’t either really. It’ll also go down well with the kids - who, unless they have crazy parents with deep pockets, are usually on pay as you go these days.

The device will be available, according to Orange, ‘for a limited time period’ (there’s a pun in there somewhere), and is the first of at least three new ‘market leading’ devices they’re planning to announce before the end of the year.

Over to Tom Alexander, CEO of Orange UK, for the obligatory soundbite: “The Watch Phone is the must-have gadget of 2009. It’s handcrafted, exclusively limited, and will turn heads on the high street. Our ambition is to become the best loved communications brand in the UK, and the destination brand of choice for high-end mobile users in the market. To help us achieve this, we have secured some of the most original and innovative devices available.

“The Watch Phone is the first of these devices, all focused on bringing a 21st-century experience to our 21st century customers. Over time we also intend to match the power of these devices with bespoke multimedia packages, driving even more inspirational conversations and deeper connections for our customers.”

The last time we spoke on this very blog about mobile phones meeting watches was back in 2007 when Sony Ericsson and Fossil launched a Bluetooth watch. Seen many on the street? No nor have I - and to be honest you’d get some very funny looks talking into your wrist.

So how will the Orange/LG watch phone fair? Only time will tell. And on that note, I’ll leave you to watch the lovely demo video courtesy of Orange.

Random Posts

• Premier Bank launches SMS Banking service
  January 31, 2006
• An Alternative Way to Make Popcorn
  July 9, 2008
• The new Mobile Developer TV logo is coming soon
  May 5, 2009
• Any new clients, ANYTHING going on?
  March 10, 2008
• Mobile industry forum proposes TV prem guidelines
  May 19, 2007

Stefan heads out on a (sensible, I think) limb and reckons it will arrive running Android 2.0.

And it’ll no doubt have a snazzy Sony Ericsson ‘Xperia’ interface, right — especially since the Mobile.nu shots all feature Xperia branding all over it.

I reckon it’ll be about a billion times better than the original Windows Mobile Xperia though.

Random Posts

• Tesco Mobile launches in Ireland with 20c price plan
  November 10, 2007
• Mobile Blogging By SMS with Glimt
  January 18, 2008
• Report noxious vehicle fumes by text in Malta
  March 9, 2006
• I’ve got the keys …
  June 17, 2008
• Vodafone’s Mark Street is live with their MWC blog
  February 9, 2009

Andy Kitson over at Juniper Research caught this Guardian article which confirms the possibility of a Nokia device, running Android.

Interesting times.Random Posts

• US politics and the cell phone strategy
  June 27, 2006
• Vonage still alive in the UK it seems
  October 16, 2007
• Our first look at the Sonim XP3 waterproof phone
  December 17, 2008
• Epok.mobi launches mobile restaurant reviews (and free meals!)
  May 30, 2008
• The Guardian’s look at Three’s X-Series
  December 3, 2006

First, Vodafone. They announced a cut in roaming charges across the EU to £4.99 a day for up to 25MB. That works out, as the press release helpfully says, at the equivalent of 20p per MB. But wait, in true operator fashion there’s a little bit of a complicated twist.

That £4.99 a day deal is just for mobile data. Under 1MB Vodafone will charge you a per KB rate, with 100KB costing 50p. Go above a meg and you’ll instantly be charged £4.99 for the remaining 24MB. What happens after 25MB? You get charged another £4.99, and get another 25MB. And so on and so forth.

If you’re planning to use your mobile broadband dongle, that price doubles - but so does the inclusive data bundle. Whether the per KB charging for dongle usage remains is a little unclear, but you’ll be charged £9.99 for 50MB chunks of data. Again, this is all on a daily basis - so if you use 2MB of data every day for a week on your laptop it’ll end up costing a rather hefty £69.93.

If you venture outside of the Europe (Vodafone have defined all of Europe - whether it’s in the EU or not - as ‘zone 1′), it’s £14.99 per day per 25MB on your phone, or £29.99 per day per 50MB on your dongle.

At this point, I’d imagine even the more maths-savvy consumer is a bit lost in figures. Why can’t things just be simple - one price for data per megabyte whether it be on your laptop or mobile?

Cue 3 and their new charges. £1.25 per MB - no minimums, no bundles, no 24 hour windows and no differentiation between your phone or a dongle. A pricing model so simple that it takes one sentence to explain, versus four paragraphs. OK so it may be more expensive per megabyte if you’re a heavy user, but at least you don’t need a calculator and a calendar to work it all out.Random Posts

• SMS Text News: 2006’s shittest blog posts
  January 1, 2007
• ROK TV officially launches in Thailand
  June 4, 2007
• ET phones home on a mobile
  October 15, 2007
• Help: ‘Cutting my international roaming costs’
  December 9, 2008
• Palm Pre Software Product Manager interviewed
  February 22, 2009

Is he worried about being left out of the bidding war for Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK business unit? Quite probably, but he plays it quite cool. “We are watching developments closely, but if you’re asking me whether it’s consuming my time day and night, the answer is no,” he says. I’m entirely relaxed about the situation - no one is running around here like headless chickens.”

Meanwhile the Sunday Times reports Vodafone is talking to Deutsche Telekom about swapping it’s Turkish operation (formerly Telsim) for T-Mobile UK. To put that possibility into figures, Vodafone paid £2.6bn for the Telsim operation in 2006, but has since written it down due to competition from Turkcell - the dominate player in the market. It could raise £1.5bn of the projected £3m worth of T-Mobile UK by disposing of the Turkish unit.

Finally, the Daily Mail adds its usual dose of doom, gloom and ‘they’re all out to get us’ sensationalism with a report that says ‘Telecoms regulator Ofcom is warning potential bidders for T-Mobile that any takeover deal will face the toughest scrutiny, amid fears that it would lead to a sharp increase in prices for consumers.’

Happy days indeed, with sources close to Deutsche Telekom still claiming there’s ‘no rush’ to offload T-Mobile UK. With new MD Richard Moat (formerly of Orange) less than two months in the job there still may be time to avoid being swallowed up by a rival player. Speaking of Orange, they’re still in the frame for a deal with T-Mobile. Or not, if you believe the claims a possible deal was rejected a few weeks ago.Random Posts

• EXCLUSIVE: Attractive girl with a shocker of a handset
  December 9, 2006
• On this day…February 21
  February 21, 2008
• Texting and then marrying a stranger
  March 4, 2006
• MovaMail.com — fantastic email client for your mobile
  November 19, 2006
• MobileActive gunning for US marketshare
  April 13, 2006

I saw this as I was walking by… Five megapixels in this form factor? I might have to take a serious look at that. The N97 is lovely but the 6700 series are so lightweight! Good for the cut of your pinstripe or jeans pocket.
 
 - Taken at 8:38 PM on July 03, 2009 - uploaded by ShoZu

Random Posts

• 5 years of chronic under-performance at Vodafone
  July 26, 2006
• Who does T-Mobile UK whitelisting?
  January 13, 2009
• Mr Operator: Developers are out of date
  July 8, 2008
• New blog post: UK Police consi…
  January 14, 2008
• AQA tip apparently yields one punter �33,000
  August 28, 2008

After playing with, and being impressed by, the HTC Hero earlier today I decided to head to the shops after work on the off chance of finding out some news about the ‘missing in action’ Samsung i7500.

Today is the first Friday of the month you see - it’s when the new mobile catalogues hit the high street and when most stores find out what new handsets they’ll be getting to sell.

Like a lot of Android fans I’ve been waiting to see when the i7500 would hit the UK, so I was pretty excited to find this on page 6 of O2’s July catalogue. Talking to the guys in the store they confirmed they’re expecting it to be on sale in August.

So O2 will soon have the Android i7500, the iPhone, and if rumours are to be believed, the Palm Pre on offer. Quite an impressive device line up.Related Posts

• Android v2 release Q2 2009
  December 22, 2008
• Android cometh: Sony Ericsson confirms Android 2.0 handsets
  May 22, 2009
• I’d like to see a Wakoopa for my mobile handset
  May 20, 2009
• Got 60 friends? Spell out a message with Google Latitude
  April 15, 2009
• Ambassador, with this Samsung Omnia HD, you are spoiling us
  March 5, 2009

Jonathan Mulholland here!

I just got to have a 10 minute play with an HTC Hero, and I’m impressed.

First impressions - it feels great in the hand. It’s a very angular shape but is very comfortable to hold.

The material is a soft plastic. It seems to resist finger prints and feels much nicer to hold than my iPhone - it doesn’t get slipery or greasy like the back of the plastic iPhone’s can. It also feels quite small to hold - it’s not as big as the pictures I’ve seen suggest.

The UI is ‘whizzy’. Feels more consistent than the vanilla version of Android. Didn’t get much time to play with it but it does look good and felt reasonabley fast.

The grey colour that Orange will be selling this in looks very smart, really makes it look like a desirable handset.

I had planned to be getting a Samsung i7500 (if it ever shows up) at some point over the summer but now I’m not so sure!

(You can catch more of my posts here). Random Posts

• SoliCall Mobile SDK goes live for Windows Mobile
  February 26, 2008
• ITV to launch mobile couponing
  January 24, 2007
• View hundreds of newspapers via your Apple iPhone
  December 10, 2007
• Touching the HTC Touch
  June 28, 2007
• Get your mobile application/service in front of UK females
  August 3, 2007

At CTIA back in March, there was a small but significant buzz about Zer01 Mobile — a totally new entrant proposing unlimited voice and data within the United States for around $60-70.

Nice.

At first glance, that sounds brilliant.

Indeed, I met quite a few people who took me to a corner and quietly showed me their Zer01 mobile trial sim card. I remember being very jealous. I remember thinking I might as well get a Zer01 account, instead of signing-up with T-Mobile.

Indeed, if you can get the MVNO strategy *right* for the uber geeks, you could count on getting 100-200k customers like me and the US readers of MIR pretty quickly.

I was reading a post earlier this week by Enterprise Strategy Group’s Steve Duplessie.

Steve doesn’t mince his words and his analysis is famed across the tech industry. Mention the words ‘Steve Duplessie’ to many a wide-eyed analyst relations professional and you’ll see their eyes widen even further. The chap not only knows his stuff, he’ll beat you around the head with it.

In his post, Steve points out that any firm that, “sends out a release such as this, but can’t even get it on their own Web site.”

He’s then helpfully cut and paste the release from Zer01 Mobile (which, I would also link to, if it was published on their site… but it’s not). Finally, Steve comments, “Hey zer01 - cool thoughts, horrid execution. At least Vonage had snappy commercials.”

Agreed.

Zer01 works using VoIP. Which is a total arse. It’s perfectly fine if you’ve got bandwidth. But the moment bandwidth becomes scarce in your area/server/cell/whatever, you’ll find yourself praying for 4k/sec guaranteed throughput.

You also have to use Windows Mobile. Another gaping flaw for anyone who doesn’t use the platform.

The next flaw? You can’t actually ’sign-up’ for Zer01. You can’t buy from their site. Instead, Zer01 are waiting for enterprising chaps to contact them and setup a sub-MVNO under them.

Right.

Yes, we shall see. Like Steve, I’d like for it to be a success. But I very much subscribe to his final sentiments: “Cool thoughts, horrid execution.”Random Posts

• mBlox: Carrier revenues to grow to $8 billion in 3 years
  February 12, 2008
• Sky Mobile - Sky+ recording: Top, top application
  August 21, 2006
• HOT! Kent School implements text alerts for parents
  June 20, 2007
• My Nokia won’t remember dictionary additions
  April 24, 2008
• MIR Christmas Presents: The final 9
  December 18, 2008

Over to the seriously useful Farney Media for more information:

Adfonic launched a self-service mobile ad marketplace this week. The platform allows advertisers to build, execute, monitor and control campaigns.

Publishers have access to tools and real-time reporting and analytics to maximise their earning potential from mobile advertising.

Advertisers can bid on the mobile ad inventory, and price is dictated by supply and demand.

Mobile sites won’t be able to set a floor price on their ad inventory, but it is something Adfonic are keen to introduce.

Very, very interesting. If it gets the requisite attention, it could really change the mobile ad marketplace.

You can read Ciaran’s full post (and interview with Adfonic) here. Random Posts

• Nokia N73 or Sony Ericsson K800?
  October 5, 2006
• 19 Things To Consider When Planning A Blogger Launch Event
  October 3, 2008
• Eckohgate: ‘Cock up rather than conspiracy’
  March 9, 2007
• ICSTIS plans to do something…
  June 28, 2006
• Aussie teen girls sun-burning their phone digits on to back
  October 14, 2008