Mobile Choice Blog

Five reasons why the Nokia Music Store might struggle

Yesterday, we outlined the five reasons why Nokia's just-announced Music Store has a realistic hope of challenging Apple's iTunes Store for digital market dominance. In the interests of fairness, now it's time to take the glass-half-empty approach, and look at the key challenges faced by Nokia's new download service.

1. Apple is a mighty foe. When you're talking legal music downloads, Apple pretty much built the market with iTunes, and while its dominance isn't set in stone, it's a huge challenge for any other company to try and unseat it. Just as we're rightfully sceptical about any claims that the iPhone will make huge inroads into Nokia's market share in mobile, so we should be careful about wild claims that Nokia can do the same to Apple in digital music.

LG Viewty? Samsung Croix? Enough of these poncey handset names!

If, like us, you've been writing about mobile phones for a while, you'll probably welcome the trend to give handsets proper names, rather than indefinable numbers. It's easier to get excited about the LG Chocolate or the Motorola RAZR rather than, say, the Nokia 6110 or 6555, for all their cool features.

Yet it's starting to get a bit silly. LG has just launched its five-megapixel Viewty handset, formerly known as the KU990, while it's being reported that Samsung is working on its own touchscreen phone called the Croix. Cool as both handsets are, can you imagine asking for them from a bloke down Carphone Warehouse?

Maybe we're just reverse snobs of the highest order who are just bitter at people offering us a hankie when we try to pronounce 'Croix', though. It's always possible.

Mobile hotlinks: 4 September 2007

What's going on in the world of mobile today:

Samsung files patent for phone with integrated Bluetooth headset (Engadget Mobile)
Five facts about the (possibly fictional) GooglePhone (GigaOM)
Brits miss lost mobile phones more than they miss lost pets (Cellular News)
Samsung phones make it into the Guinness World Records book (Slashphone)
Will the touchscreen iPod kill the iPhone? (Pocket Picks)

Nokia's new N-Gage shuns comparisons with PSP and DS

Amid all the hullabaloo around the new Nokia Music Store (something we're taking full part in), it might have gone unnoticed that the company also announced new details about its new N-Gage service last week. Instead of a dedicated games phone like the original N-Gage and N-Gage QD, it's now a platform running on various Nokia Nseries handsets, offering advanced 3D games.

The temptation is to portray the all-new N-Gage as a competitor to fully-fledged gaming devices like Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS. However, that's not something Nokia is keen to encourage, as its N-Gage chief Jaakko Kaidesoja explained in an interview with Pocket Gamer.

"We don't want to compare it with DS and PSP," he said. "They're doing a great job on their turf, and our turf is the mobile gaming market."

Mobile hotlinks: 3 September 2007

There's loads going on in the world of mobile phones at the moment Here's just five stories to read:

Cinema, fast food and drinking top mobile search chart (MobHappy)
Mobilised mobile social bookmarking service relaunches (MobileCrunch)
GooglePhone prototype is "simple" and "less flashy" (Textually)
Apple to sell ringtones through iTunes? (Cellular News)
Good opinion piece on Nokia's new Ovi internet services (M-trends)

Five reasons why the Nokia Music Store CAN take on iTunes

Last week, Nokia finally announced its long-rumoured music downloads store, called logically enough the Nokia Music Store. You can read all the details over on the Mobile Choice website. Nokia was keen to portray the store as a competitor to Apple's iTunes Store. However, that's an ambitious claim, given Apple's dominance in the music downloads market.

We've put together five reasons why Nokia's ambitions aren't just bluster. Even if iTunes' position as top dog isn't under threat yet, Apple should be looking over its shoulder a bit nervously at its new mobile-focused competitor. Starting with...

1. The rise of mobile music. Nokia already claims that it's the world's biggest manufacturer of MP3 players, thanks to the tens of millions of music-capable handsets it shipped last year. Although it's a bit early to write iPods off as dead dodos, there's a definite shift towards people listening to music on their phones, which the Nokia Music Store aims to capitalise on.

Why unlocking your iPhone could prove an explosive mistake

The buzz right now among online hackers is how to unlock Apple's iPhone, and make it usable on operators other than the current exclusive operator, AT&T Wireless. There's clearly a big potential market too: one US teenager who managed to unlock his iPhone subsequently traded it for three more 8GB iPhones AND a $30,000 sports car.

But before you get your soldering iron out, beware. You could get a nasty surprise. One iPhone owner who followed unlocking instructions from a website managed to blow their handset up. Ouch.

(via Engadget Mobile)

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Video tutorial on how to hack the iPhone

That's not hack in a dodgy way, but in an 'install custom applications and ringtones' way. It's a slightly frightening thing to do though, as it involves messing about with the iPhone firmware. Thankfully, this tutorial from Gearlive makes it simple and accessible.

Now, if only we could actually BUY an iPhone on this side of the Atlantic...

Want to diet to lose weight? Your mobile phone can help...

We're not sure whether we're impressed or scared by the Wirefile V-Clinic. It's a mobile 'personal dietician' application that promises personalised diet and fitness services on your phone. Used by personal trainers and dieticians, it's an application that downloads your meal and fitness plan every day, created by whoever you're paying to turn you into a buff adonis / beauty.

You tap in details of your eating and exercise, and they get sent back to your trainer, who can then shout at you if you've been lazy and/or greedy. "If I eat too much pizza over the weekend, I get an SMS or call putting me back on track," says happy user Jenny McKay.

We're sure that's very useful, but we're not sure we like the idea of our phone being a pocket snitch when three Mars Bars accidentally fall into our mouth. However, you are able to text your personal dietician from within the application, if you disagree with their 'motivational' messages. In all seriousness, it's an innovative example of how phones are finding yet more ways to help in our daily routines.

Wirefile V-Clinic website

Phones sucking usage time from other gadgets, says Ofcom

Proof, if you needed it, that the humble mobile phone is becoming a jack-of-all-gadgets. UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom has released its annual Communications Market Report, in which it examines what impact owning a mobile phone has on your use of other gadgets.

Apparently, 55% of mobile users now use an alarm clock less, 51% use a portable radio/tape/disc player less, 38% use a camera less, 34% use an MP3 player less, 22% use radio less, and 15% play fewer console games.

That last stat seems a bit strange, as nobody would suggest mobile games are a substitute for the latest PS3, Wii or Xbox 360 games. However, Ofcom's research found that 51% of mobile gamers play at home, so it could show a trend that people have less time to play on their consoles, but are partially filling that gap with mobile games that don't tie up the TV.