Mobile Choice Blog

Analyst claims mobile phones will slow the growth of MP3 players

Forrester Research has released its latest consumer technology report, and it claims that the growth of music-capable mobiles will restrict the growth in sales of MP3 players, which are set to go from 40 million households at the end of this year to 48.4 million in 2012 (these figures are for US households).

It's a plausible theory, with phones getting ever more storage capacity and slicker interfaces for playing music. It's arguably also shown in Apple's decision to launch the iPhone, to try and cannibalise its own sales, rather than have Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc nab its customers.

What about in the home though? We can't help feeling there'll still be growth in the number of people buying iPods and similar devices to store their music on and pipe it through their hi-fi. Although maybe more hi-fis will come with built-in hard drives and MP3-playing capabilities, come to think of it.

(via Cellular News)

Mobile hotlinks: 11 September 2007

Check these five slabs of mobile news:

T-Mobile revamps search feature on T-Zones portal (Cellular News)
Nokia takes its mobile maps to the next level (SlashPhone)
Netvibes launches iPhone version (The Cell Freak)
Texan teacher rapped for risque TXT homework (Pocket Picks)
Wales to get giant mobile phone recycling plant (MobileCrunch)

Top 5 ways mobile phones make you feel old and confused

Once upon a time, owning a mobile marked you out as a young hip gunslinger, at the cutting edge of mobile communications. Not any more. Now it just shows you up as a frazzled old fuddy-duddy. Here's some examples:

1. You get annoyed at kids on the bus playing music through their handset speakers - not because you think it's rude, but because you've got no idea how to make your phone do it.

2. Your children openly laugh at the way you write text messages with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.

3. You get your fingers tangled up playing the latest mobile games. Even the ones designed to be played with one thumb.

4. You keep forgetting to lock your phone before putting it in your pocket, meaning that at the end of an average train journey, the battery's run down, you've called your mum for 45 minutes, or you have 17 photos of your pocket fluff.

5. You think mobile TV is a silly idea. Actually, this marks you out as 'wise', not old...

Mobile hotlinks: 10 September 2007

What's happening in the mobile world today:

Apple sells one millionth iPhone (SlashPhone)
The mobile phone design based on fruit trays (Textually)
First photos of the Beyonce phone. Well, probably... (Dialaphone)
What to call singles + ringtones bundles? Ringles! (MocoNews)
Lewisham healthcare trust cuts missed appointments with texts (SMS Text News)

Does O2's EDGE upgrade mean the UK iPhone won't be 3G?

An internal memo from O2 has revealed that the operator is upgrading its GPRS network to offer EDGE technology for faster data speeds. However, the news has been seized upon as proof that O2 will be selling Apple's iPhone, which in the US uses EDGE for its mobile internet surfing.

If true, the news isn't worth celebrating, as it would seem to imply that the UK iPhone won't be 3G, as has been rumoured. In the US, Apple has tackled criticism over slower EDGE speeds by pointing out that the iPhone also has Wi-Fi for faster surfing, but here in the UK we're a bit behind in terms of the rollout of public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Either way, the details won't be known for sure until Apple actually announces its UK operator partner, which is likely to be later this month.

(via Engadget Mobile)

How Vodafone's MusicStation subscription service could take on the iPhone

Mobile music is set to be the key battleground for the UK mobile operators this Christmas, and while Apple hasn't announced which operator will be selling the iPhone, you can bet that the ones that miss out will be pushing their own music phones and services hard.

Take Vodafone, which has just announced an exclusive deal with Omnifone to launch the latter's MusicStation subscription service in the UK this November. It will allow users to pay £1.99 a week for unlimited song downloads from a catalogue of more than a million tracks, with the ability to share playlists and songs with friends added into the mix.

The future for Big Brother? Your mobile video clips, of course...

Pretty soon, you won't have to go through an audition process to appear on Big Brother. Mobile company Ericsson has launched a new mobile video service called Me-On-TV, which lets you upload videos from your mobile phone to share with a wider community of users.

Ericsson plans to sell the technology to broadcasters, websites and mobile operators, with the first customer being Endemol - the company behind Big Brother. The idea is to use it to make shows like Big Brother even more interactive.

How? Think about spin-off shows like Big Brother's Big Mouth, where an audience of BB fans give their opinions on recent events. Now imagine a version hosted by a presenter, but with the opinions coming from viewers all over the country, via uploaded vids or live videocall interviews. It's being used in the Netherlands first, but hopefully Me-On-TV will feature in the next UK Big Brother, in some way.

(via MocoNews)

Steve Jobs says sorry to iPhone early adopters for price cut

There was plenty of celebration about Apple's decision to slash $200 off the price of an 8GB iPhone on Wednesday, but some people weren't so happy: the people who bought one at the original price point in the last two months. Apparently, hundreds of them emailed Apple boss Steve Jobs to express their disgust too.

Jobs has responded with a letter published on the Apple website, effectively saying sorry and offering each and every one of them a $100 credit for Apple's online and offline stores. We think people should stop moaning: the whole point of buying a new piece of technology is to get it first, in the full knowledge that it'll probably be cheaper a couple of months down the line.

Steve agrees, although he's a bit more polite about it than us...

HP's new mobile phones show why the PDA market is dead as a dodo

Pretty soon, it'll be necessary to explain what a PDA is to people young enough not to remember their heyday. The massmarket simply aren't interested in Personal Digital Assistants any more, thanks to the twin growth of smartphones on one side, and music/video focused personal media players (PMPs) on the other.

The main thing keeping PDAs going recently has been GPS navigation, but now even that is moving into smartphones (and, in China and Korea at least, into PMPs too). The announcement this week of new smartphones from HP shows the trend.

Mobile hotlinks: 7 September 2007

What's rockin' the mobile world today:

Pay your utility bills with your mobile phone (SMS Text News)
Mobiles DO interfere with sensitive hospital equipment after all (Textually)
Research: 43m people will be using mobile navigation by 2012 (Cellular News)
Big list of all the native iPhone applications (ModMyiPhone)
Play Quake on your Series 60 phone (Pocket Picks)