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GONEOM, Good observation on the increase in number of partners. I also like the fact that they already have the major SP's embracing them. I can't wait until Neom completes the Mobot acquisition. It's going to be huge!
SS9173
DD Reiter's Camera Phone Report: Barcodes and Scanning Camera Phones
http://www.cameraphonereport.com/barcodes_and_scanning_camera_phones/
This is an older collection of articles, published May 2005, and most if not all of them relate to Neom or its business. I have read most of these before, but today I have re-read them and see them a little differently. Many of these articles have been posted on this board previously as individual articles; perhaps someone has even posted this link before, although I couldn't find it doing a search of this board.
As I reread this chain of articles, I am going to cut and paste some things that caught my interest today that didn't quite register with me previously:
Here they are:
1) ...Scanbuy, offers what he calls scancommerce software, which links any bar code to the Internet via camera phones. (The square code...is designed to be especially phone-friendly.)
2) Traditional barcodes (e.g., UPC codes) aren't designed for the optics of camera phones. Barcodes designed specifically for camera phones aren't standard.
3) Should the wireless industry use standard barcodes -- that offer limited information storage and weren't designed to work well with camera phones' optics -- or employ barcode technologies designed for camera phones.
4) ...uses QR barcodes (common in Japan) that can be recognized by a camera phone and then transmitted with a Java application.
5) In Japan, QC codes are being used for a variety of applications in conjunction with camera phones. For example, picturephoning.com has an entry from slashdot pointing to a translated article about how camera phone users in Japan can snap a photo of a book's barcode and get a price on Amazon Japan...U.S. cellular operators are still exploring the potential of barcodes. There is a lot of activity by companies in the U.S. and abroad developing camera phone scanning technologies.
6) There is a significant amount of development underway to develop software to turn camera phones into scanning devices for barcodes, text, graphics, etc.
7) Several companies, such as NeoMedia Technologies, Scanbuy and Nextcode, have software for scanning information from barcodes -- either traditional barcodes or proprietary images -- and are trying to stimlulate the market in the United States.
In Japan and, I think, South Korea, you can already purchase camera phones that can read barcodes on business cards that transfer the information into a handset. In the U.S., cellular operators are still trying to figure out the business case for barcode scanning camera phones.
8) Mobot describes its service this way, "Mobot is designed to allow brands and media partners to seamlessly introduce Mobot into the media mix and doesn't require any modifications to existing visual media -- no keywords, phone numbers, URLs, short codes, product codes, or bar codes are necessary.
"Mobot is easier to use than text messaging, and requires only a few 'clicks' to complete a transaction. To ensure the widest user adoption, Mobot is available today on all U.S. wireless carriers and works with all camera phones."
Several companies are actively marketing camera phone-based barcode e-commerce solutions, such as Scanbuy and NeoMedia Technologies. Although Mobot is a competitor, it's generating publicity about the concept that could perhaps help many wireless scanning companies.
9) ... Scanbuy is in the process of launching a new developer forum and will be providing more sample code for its Optical Intelligence software the enables applications to include barcode reading capabilities.
Scanbuy licenses its Optical Intelligence SDK for a variety of wireless operating systems, including Symbian, J2ME, Win32, Palm and Pocket PC. The most difficult aspect of creating the version for Symbian phones was learning Symbian C++ because it's so different from Windows C, says Ashish Muni, chief technology officer at Scanbuy.
10) Neomedia's barcode technology/service relies on camera phone users having its barcode reading software in their handsets (either embedded by handset vendors or operators or downloaded by users) so that subscribers can take a photo of a barcode, transmit the photo to a server and receive information about the product.
11) Jim Levinger of Nextcode Corporation explains that today’s widespread barcodes were never designed for end-user interaction. Nor were they designed for being read with camera mobile phones – far from it.
He believes new barcodes need to be developed for scanning by camera phones.
Both Simon Woodside (www.semacode.org), and Anil Madhavapeddy (www.highenergymagic.com) agree. The use of specific code for camera phone recognition allows for more efficient applications.
Olivier Attia of Scanbuy believes more in the Linux way of doing things. “Working together to achieve maximum interoperability, no matter what code standard,” Olivier says.
12) We’re seeing the emergence of two major schools of thought: The “lets design a new code standard” school and the “old code standards allows for easier acceptance of the application” school.
I think both schools have great points. New barcode technologies allow for more robust camphone-specific solutions. However, the new codes have to be introduced and marketed and end users have to be educated about them.
Old barcodes lack the potential robustness but make up for that with their widespread use and international acceptance by end users.
New code development, old code adoption, intellectual property rights, handset vendor and mobile carrier adoption. They’re but a few important aspects for the adoption of an interoperable standard.
It’s too early to tell where this interoperability issue might take us, through OP3 we’ve found out that all developers see it as a core issue and they are all open to discussion.
13) Thanks to Vanilla Gorilla I learned that Robert Scoble, Microsoft's Longhorn evangelist and blogger extraordinaire, got a demonstration from Neomedia Technologies of camera phones as barcode readers. He calls the application a "killer" for the handsets.
14) OP3, that stands for Optical 3G Scanning Technologies, was established in the summer of 2003 to develop its own barcode scanning technology. However, the company eventually decided to focus on selling third-party scanning products and offer systems integration services.
OP3's goal is to promote wireless e-commerce through camera phone barcode products and and services. The company is one of more than dozen firms -- including software developers and cellular operators -- that have entered a market that has... significant potential.
Camera phone barcode companies
Scanbuy and NeoMedia Technologies are among the software developers. NTT DoCoMo in Japan has been pioneering the use of barcode services for camera phones.
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Food for thought: What is the common theme of most of these statements? How might this common theme impact the timing of PC being commercially available?
SS9173
Thanks to all for posting highlights from the 10Q.
SS9173
Hangdog, Thanks for the Neom office update.
Does anyone know why the camera portion is not available yet? I can't help but wonder that the paperclick rollout is being delayed because of some technical issue.
Perhaps we are incorporating Mobot's image recognition software into a new Java version of Paperclick.
I have heard through the grapevine there are a few select demo versions of Paperclick out there that work flawlessly.
There has to be some good reason why Neom is holding back release of the camera portion.
SS9173
Koko, You are right. Sorry. My misinformation came as a result that this last PR is not on the Neom website.
http://www.neom.com/press_releases/pr_recent.jsp
You can delete my prior post if you would like. I don't want anyone to do anything based on incorrect information.
SS9173
Goneom, I said that. EOM
I wonder if paperclick.com was down to update the "devices" page. There appears to be more phones added from last time I looked.
http://www.paperclick.com/devices.jsp
SS9173
OT DD A Week In Wireless #205 - 18th November 2005 (weekly email from mobilecomms.com)
Let's get the serious stuff out of the way first: According to reports this week, Helsinki Water, which looks after sewage for over one million inhabitants of the Finnish capital, has revealed an alarming increase in the number of mobile phones that have been flushed down the toilet. Speculation as to motivation is understandably fevered. Are these accidental flushings, or those born of anger or frustration? The Informer recalls reporting a few months back on a desperate toilet paper shortage that was besieging the Finns and he wonders if the two stories are in any way related.
Or indeed if the growth of mobile TV services in Finland will augment or diminish the instances of phone flushing. On Monday this week, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications announced that it is ready to accept applications for the nation's - indeed Europe's - first commercial mobile TV licence. The service will run on DVB-H and the licence will be awarded early next year. Nokia will no doubt be planning to play its part on the technology supply side. Over the border in Sweden, mobile TV specialist Kamera announced this week that it is to launch a live streamed TV channel across that country's Vodafone 3G network.
In other mobile TV news, Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) has teamed with UK broadcaster ITV to launch what it describes as a 'groundbreaking package' of mobile services for the new series of I'm A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here. This show dumps a bunch of has-been and never-were-in-the-first-place 'personalities' in the Australian outback and humiliates them for treats while the programme makers pray for contestant fornication that can be captured on night-vision cameras. The package includes a round the clock video portal that will allow insomniac/crazed 3G users constant access to the jungle hi-jinks. There is also a video blog service that enables viewers to leave audio-visual messages for the show. Such services have recently sprung up in the UK on football programmes and the Informer suspects that this latest development will add further weight to the theory that many people in the UK lack the basic skills of self expression.
Text voting, of course, decides the fate of the desperate celebs and it is here that the money is made. MIG also provides the facility that will allow the no doubt millions of viewers to make their voices heard.
Speaking of meaningless decision making, original mobile content will now be eligible for Emmy nomination in the US. The awards ceremony will no doubt be a glittering occasion and, if the Oscars monologues are anything to go by, could lead to a bemusing situation where the acceptance speeches are longer than the programmes that won the gongs.
Back to Finland, though, and that country's most famous corporation; Nokia. The tech giant has been busying itself around the world this week, claiming successful tests of HSDPA with T-Mobile in its native Germany, as well as the UK and the Netherlands. Sometimes it worries the Informer that companies should bother to announce such things. After all, HSDPA has been under discussion for ages, orders have been taken and its deployment is underway. It's even been launched in the US and UK. Shouldn't it be a given that the thing works? The announcement gave no indication of speeds achieved, choosing instead the age-old fall back of quoting the theoretical limits of the technology. Yawn. Down under, Nokia was all smiles as carrier Optus switched on its 3G network this week, a network that had been a turnkey supply contract for the Finnish vendor.
The Informer's phone was ringing off its hook this week, which makes a change from his inbox being clogged up, but it just goes to prove that when people really want to get the message across they pick up the phone. The irony, however, was that the message they were trying to get across was that Nokia's $430m acquisition of mobile email specialist Intellisync was a trifle misplaced. This deal follows Nokia's agreement with Microsoft to support ActiveSync, the rolling out of its own business email platform and delivering Blackberry support on its own phones. Perhaps not surprisingly, the bearers of the ill-tidings regarding the Intellisync acquisition were PR representatives of some Intellisync's mobile email rivals - naming no names - is it the green-eyed monster or genuine concern for the future of mobile email?
The daddy of mobile email, Research in Motion, was not among the snipers. Perhaps because RIM was too busy saying positive things regarding the shipping of a software update that, it says, will free it from the threat of an injunction banning the sale of its Blackberry email devices in the US. The upgrade was announced in June as a way of ridding RIM's software of code that infringes the patents held by NTP and over the use of which it was successfully sued in 2003.
More good news for RIM is that the US Justice Department has been throwing its considerable weight about by stepping into the ongoing patent infringement scrap. It's asked the court to ensure that any injunction on the use of US Blackberrys will not affect government workers. If the court demands an immediate lockdown on Blackberrys, the Justice Department wants to be exempted from any service cut-off. They're not above the law, they are the law.
Meanwhile, in the UK, T-Mobile has launched Blackberry for the consumer wannabe, the Sidekick II - the device formerly known as Danger's Hiptop. The operator is bundling it with its new Web'n'Walk GPRS tariff. The UK is late to the Hiptop party, its already been launched in the US, Germany and Austria. The Informer is meeting T-Mobile next week, and plans to try and blag one of the funky looking terminals, so watch this space.
In a week when operators were posting their six month results, Azure Solutions, a revenue assurance outfit was out to drum up trade with some scaremongering. In a press release that ran: "survey highlights increasing magnitude of loses and the need for better revenue assurance", the firm revealed its estimates (compiled with the help of Analysys) that global telecoms operators are losing $170bn a year, which represents 11.6 per cent of turnover, an increase from 10.7 per cent in 2004, through fraud and other revenue leakage. The mobile carriers are worse hit than their fixed line forebears, the firm claimed.
Indeed, Vodafone's half-yearly results this week caused a burst of panic selling on the London Stock Exchange as the City struggled to digest the news that the carrier had made a profit of £4.1bn on revenue of £18.3bn, with £3.7bn in free cash flow. Oh, and it cranked up the dividend by 15 per cent with a target for next year of paying out 50 per cent of profits.
Clearly a "sell", then. The markets were worried by a number of things that those optimistic numbers conceal more than they reveal, specifically a potential tax bill of five billion quid. CFO Andy Halford put it thus: "the resolution of a number of longstanding tax issues may lead to cash payments of up to £5bn over the next few years". Not just that, but some of the giant carrier's businesses had grim operational figures. Vodafone Japan, for example, saw its EBITDA margin drop six per cent on an EBITDA figure cut by 20.4 per cent-without the Japanese division, Voda's EBITDA would have grown by seven per cent as against 4.2 per cent in actual fact.
The reason isn't hard to spot. Although the Japanese business began adding subscribers again in the last three months, it's still down 0.3 per cent on the half-year, and Vodafone globally is throwing money at the problem…or "reinvesting in customer acquisition" as it's called in polite society. In the core European businesses, there was a better but mixed picture, with margins, revenues and subscribers all up in Germany and spectacularly in Spain (24 per cent in revenue growth and three per cent in margins), but a serious hit in other markets from the regulatory cuts in termination fees.
In the UK, for example, revenues grew 1.5 per cent, but according to Halford it "would have been five per cent" without the termination cut. To put it another way, Vodafone's revenue growth in the UK took a 3.5 per cent hit from that alone. What with a "peak year" in capital investment, lower dividends from Verizon Wireless and SFR, and higher tax bills, you could see why Traders Monthly readers were spooked.
On the good side, though, Vodafone claimed to have achieved £1bn in data revenue excluding SMS. Although the figure is actually £989m, it's still a milestone of sorts. And the price Voda pays for fones, it seems, fell by 30 per cent. CTO Thomas Geitner said this was due to buying power and also to the arrival of mid-market 3G phones. Geitner, interestingly, also suggested that the carrier was looking at WiMax for backhaul as it converts to an all-IP network.
Vodafone's long time competitor O2, meanwhile, gave its prospective parent Telefonica cause for a smile when it announced increased customer numbers, turnover and profits. The firm now boasts 25.7 million customers, a 17 per cent jump across the board year on year. The increase was double this - 34 per cent - in the German market. Revenues meanwhile, were up 12 per cent to £3.6bn, with pretax profits hitting £357m.
Telekom Austria, fresh from the purchase of Bulgarian mobile player Mobiltel, showed healthier numbers for its wireless operations than for its fixed. Wireless revenues increased by 28.1 per cent to Euro722.2m, a leap that is largely attributable to the Mobiltel purchase. Group EBITDA was up 22.2 per cent to Euro543m, while wireless EBITDA, excluding Mobiltel, was up 9.5 per cent to Euro245.3m.
In Russia, meanwhile, number two operator VimpelCom reported that net income for the three months to end-September increased a massive 92.9 per cent year on year to US$194.8m. Operating revenues for the quarter increased 50.5 per cent year on year to US$890.3m. The operator attributed its strong results to rapid subscriber growth and lower acquisition costs per subscriber.
Leading MVNO Virgin Mobile also turned in some cheery half-year numbers, reporting EBITDA of £54m, up from £43.8m last year. This was ahead of analyst forecasts and gave the firm's share price a wee boost of almost four per cent.
Fellow MVNO easyMobile was Orange baiting again this week, launching a campaign - more sneer than smear - against the France Telecom owned operator, which is pursuing legal action to stop Stelios from using the colour Orange (his corporate colour) in the mobile market. The ad features a capsized Orange-sponsored sailing boat and the Informer can't help but wonder if Stelios, a one time shipping magnate and no stranger to sinking ships, is entirely wise to point his finger this way. Never mind that his organisation has used disproportionate legal might to squash small companies with the word 'easy' in their name on a number of occasions.
Finally, it was good news for Motorola this week as US retailer Wirefly released its ten top-selling handsets for the last month. The US vendor had eight in the top ten with the V3 taking the top spot. Not everyone's happy though and, if a job's worth doing, they say, do it yourself. This wisdom, it seems, has been taken literally by a number of propeller heads who have started building their own mobile phones. Dissatisfied with the closed nature of many handset operating systems and inflexibility from vendor to vendor some skilled US users have taken matters into their own hands. It will be interesting to see how far they get, and how quickly vendors and operators move to block them.
The Informer
Send your feedback to: theinformer@mobilecomms.com
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SS9173
OT DD The Google Story by David A. Vise
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/055380457X/103-7993624-5999851?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance
I heard a segment about this book while listening to CNBC on my XM Satellite Radio driving to work this morning. It was very interesting, and I am going to order the book.
Did anyone else hear or see that segment on CNBC? Thoughts?
I just can't imagine how Google and Neom wouldn't find a way to work together in some way...hopefully sooner than later.
SS9173
OT DD StarHub to roll out i-mode in Singapore
Telecoms.com News
18 November 2005
http://www.telecoms.com/marlin/30000000461/ARTICLEVIEW/mp_channelid/30000000378/Marlinsource/V2autoM...
Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo announced today that Singaporean operator StarHub will launch its i-mode service tomorrow. StarHub's launch of the service marks the 15th market for i-mode following Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Australia, Israel, Russia, England and Ireland, in that order.
DoCoMo formalized an agreement with StarHub in January of this year to provide the operator with the technology and patents to launch i-mode.
---------------------------------------------------------------
More about I-mode:
http://www.nttdocomo.com/corebiz/services/imode/
Japan's cellular phone market has grown faster than many of other markets of its kind in the world. By September 2005, Japan had 89 million subscribers — more than half its entire population. The history of this remarkable achievement represents an unprecedented breakthrough in mobile communications, as well as an unmatched expansion in communications capabilities available to consumers.
Soon after the shift from analog to digital technology in the early 1990s, NTT DoCoMo pioneered the development of non-voice mobile communications with DoPa, Japan's first mobile "packet" communications service introduced in 1997. Anticipating that the cellular phone market would soon become saturated, and seeing that DoPa was a success, the company stepped up its efforts to build on to the evolution of non-voice mobile communications and develop new, innovative, mobile internet platform for the customers.
NTT DoCoMo had the foresight to create i-mode at a time when the Japanese market for mobile phones was reaching maturity and users were in need of new services. Accordingly, we introduced i-mode in 1999, and it rapidly achieved an unparalleled level of acceptance. Rather than simply generating new revenue for our company in a saturated marketplace, i-mode was a resounding success with customers, redefining the meaning of mobile communications.
The first of its kind, this remarkably convenient new form of mobile service has attracted millions of customers since its debut in February 1999. With i-mode, mobile phone users get easy access to more than 94,000 Internet sites, as well as specialized services such as e-mail, online shopping and banking, ticket reservations, and restaurant advice. Users can access sites from anywhere in Japan, and at unusually low rates, because their charges are based on the volume of data transmitted, not the amount of time spent connected. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode network structure not only provides access to i-mode and i-mode-compatible content through the Internet, but also provides access through a dedicated leased-line circuit for added security.
i-mode is the platform for mobile communications that has revolutionized the way more than one-fourth of the people in Japan live and work. Six years after its launch, i-mode continues to grow dramatically in popularity, boosted by expanding offerings, and low fees and charges. By September 2005, i-mode was an integral part of the business and personal lives of 45 million NTT DoCoMo customers.
----------------------------------------------------------------
About I-mode FeliCa
http://www.nttdocomo.com/corebiz/services/imode/felica.html
-mode FeliCa is a new service made possible by the synergy of two platform technologies: NTT DoCoMo's mobile Internet service, i-mode, and Sony's contactless IC chip technology, FeliCa. FeliCa's speedy and secure data transmission technology was combined with i-mode, which enables communication wherever the user may be. As a result, a handset becomes a mobile tool for convenient new uses, serving as e-money, credit card, ticket, or even house or office key.
Details on i-mode FeliCa are available at the Interconnected World.
How i-mode FeliCa works
In the i-mode FeliCa handset, an IC chip featuring FeliCa technology is integrated with an internal antenna. This IC chip operates by detecting weak electronic signals emitted by a reader/writer (external device), and can even function when the handset is turned off.
Note: Have the battery pack attached when using the IC card function. When the power is switched off, the IC card functions will be available by waving the FeliCa-marked side of the handset up to the reader / writer (external device), though FeliCa compatible i-appli cannot be activated. Please note that you must charge the battery when the IC card function is not available, because the battery pack has not been used for a long time or has been left uncharged after the battery alert is activated.
i-mode FeliCa features
By i-mode and FeliCa coming together, the various ways FeliCa can be used is extended beyond what was available until now.
The following are three distinct i-mode FeliCa characteristics.
(1) Network function
With i-mode's network, users can enjoy online services like charging or paying with electronic money or buying tickets.
(2) Viewer function
Using i-mode's display, users can check on FeliCa-related information such as purchase history using i-mode FeliCa and remaining balance.
(3) Multi-application function
Users can enjoy the convenience of several services on a single mobile phone.
Expanding array of applications
i-mode FeliCa will make your wallet more slim. It can be your cash, credit card, membership ID, and even your house key.
It has made the mobile phone handset more convenient and capable. It's no longer just a handset — it has become a way of life.
Note: FeliCa is a contactless IC chip technology developed by Sony Corporation. FeliCa is a registered trademark of Sony Corporation.
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SS9173
Drmyke, My intent was to just show that Virgin Mobile is having financial success and because of the close ties between Virgin and Neom, perhaps some day we will enjoy licensing revenues with the Virgin Mobile unit.
From your statement, it appears you were looking at this from a different angle. Please elaborate.
TIA
SS9173
OT DD Second chance for Japan's handset makers
By Martin Fackler
The New York Times
Published: November 17, 2005, 6:14 AM PST
http://news.com.com/Second+chance+for+Japans+handset+makers/2100-1039_3-5958020.html?part=rss&ta...
TOKYO--Cell phones here have cash chips that let shoppers swipe them at the register like debit cards. They have crisp color screens for watching television shows and music videos.
They have full-fledged Web browsers, and they even have fingerprint readers and cameras with face-recognition software that lock up a phone if a stranger tries to use it.
Interested in getting one? Good luck. You cannot buy one outside Japan.
And that is a problem, not just for consumers in the rest of the world but for Japanese companies, which have flooded the world with sophisticated consumer electronics from flat-panel televisions to digital cameras--but not cell phones.
For years, companies here were slow to look abroad while sales in Japan soared. Moreover, the Japanese government and cell phone carriers had adopted a technology different from that used in most countries, which would make it difficult to break into overseas markets.
So, when growth in handset sales in Japan started slowing in 2001, many other opportunities had passed: Nokia in Finland, Motorola in the United States and Samsung in South Korea had already sewn up many of the world's biggest markets. Japanese companies were left kicking themselves for missing out on potentially billions of dollars in sales.
"We were thinking only about Japan," Atsutoshi Nishida, the president of Toshiba, one of Japan's largest electronics makers, said in an interview in August. "We really missed our chance."
But now, Toshiba and other Japanese cell phone makers say they think they see a second chance to compensate for past mistakes and catch up in the global marketplace.
Their opportunity is the coming spread of so-called third-generation, or 3G, high-speed wireless networks. Four years ago, Japan led the world in completing a fully 3G network. Now, the technology is finally taking off in the rest of the world, most rapidly in Europe and Asia but also in the United States. Japanese companies hope their longer experience with 3G will enable them to break into leading world markets, where demand for more sophisticated handsets is growing.
Analysts caution that many consumers may find Japanese handsets too complex and too expensive--prices average about $400--to be appealing. But they also say the world's move to 3G could give Japanese companies a window to increase their global market share, which in the three months through June was less than 13 percent, according to Gartner, a research company in Stamford, Conn.
"There is a whole set of technologies that Japanese firms are way ahead on," said Jeffrey Funk, a business professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. "3G gives newcomers a chance to break in."
With data transmission speeds 40 times those of existing second-generation networks, 3G makes it possible to download short movies and transmit live video from cell phones. But the high cost of installing the technology, which requires a new network of computers, routers and antennas, has made it slow to catch on.
It is only doing so now in the United States, where Verizon has installed the first 3G network in 50 cities. Cingular and Sprint are rushing to complete similar networks.
Analysts say 3G promises to be the hottest corner of the world cell phone market, which will total an estimated 820 million handsets this year, according to the European-based investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Of that, sales of 3G sets are expected to reach 58 million units by the end of this year and could double next year, the bank said.
So far, one of the few real global players from Japan has been Sony- Ericsson, which held 6.2 percent of the world market in the second quarter, according to Gartner. About the only Japanese company that has had noticeable success in the American market is Sanyo, which provides phones to Sprint.
Japan's absence overseas is an odd predicament, given the technological level of its handsets. A typical phone here can surf the Internet by sizing Web pages to fit a credit-card-size screen, play television programs and short movies downloaded from the Web. Their digital cameras are often as powerful as many standalone models.
Newer models have telephoto lenses, can store more than 100 digital songs like an iPod and even serve as digital camcorders, filming moving images and then replaying them on a full-size television via a cable hookup.
Compared with these futuristic devices, other phones look downright primitive. When Vodafone added Motorola and Nokia phones to its lineup in Japan earlier this year, most of the models had dismal sales because Japanese consumers rejected them as too clumsy, according to Vodafone.
Despite their woes in Japan, the world's biggest phone makers expect to be able to defend their dominance elsewhere even as the Japanese try to regain ground.
"You can't take any company lightly," Peter Skarzynski, who runs Samsung's mobile phone division in the United States, said of Japanese challengers. But he said established makers like Samsung--which has more than 20 percent of the American market--have a head start because "carriers will defer to people they know."
The biggest shortcoming of Japanese handsets is their price, which is about twice the average price of cell phones for sale in the United States and Europe, analysts say. Japanese makers say success may depend on getting enough sales volume to drive down prices, though their products will probably remain at the high end.
Japanese makers say they are trying to improve sales by linking up with foreign service providers and tapping into their broad sales networks. Two of Japan's biggest cell phone makers, Toshiba and Sharp, have allied themselves with Vodafone of Britain. NEC builds four 3G phones for Hutchison 3G, a mobile operator in Europe and Asia.
In the United States, Sanyo is already supplying Sony with phones that have mobile TV and push-to-talk functions. Ryan Watson, a Sanyo spokesman, said his company had also started selling 3G phones in Europe with the British carrier Orange and in Hong Kong with SmarTone. Japanese makers are also trying to develop their own knowledge about overseas markets. Last month, Toshiba sent a team of engineers to London to study European designs, and in June it rolled out its first 3G phone in Europe via Vodafone. Sharp had an earlier start, buying a mobile software development company in Britain four years ago.
"3G levels the playing field because Japan's ahead in a lot of 3G technologies," said Masafumi Matsumoto, a senior executive director in charge of Sharp's cell phone business.
The seeds of the failure by Japanese manufacturers to emerge earlier on the global stage go back more than a decade, when the Japanese mobile service companies chose a different technical standard from much of the rest of the world. With the advent of 3G, handset makers say, they pressed the government to ensure that Japan did not make the same mistake twice. Japanese companies joined in the development of global technical standards. Then Japan, along with South Korea, rushed to build 3G networks first, partly to create new demand in its saturated home market.
Japanese makers enjoy a technological advantage in crucial components like liquid-crystal displays and high-resolution cameras. The Japanese makers, most of them huge electronics conglomerates, make these components themselves, unlike Nokia and other rivals, which buy them from others--often these same Japanese companies.
But analysts caution that the complexity of Japanese-made handsets, and their hefty price tags, will limit their sales. The 3G technology has been slow to take off outside Japan, in part because many consumers balked at the cost of acquiring features they considered excessive. European and American phone designs have also proved simpler and more elegant for the vast majority of mobile phone users.
"You'll probably get a situation," said Kirk Boodry, an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Tokyo, "where Japan gets the high end of the world handset market."
Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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SS9173
OT DD Virgin Mobile Reports Rise in Net Profit
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051117/ap_on_bi_ge/earns_britain_virgin_mobile;_ylt=AlRuMXRFPoxi3KutGmm...
LONDON - Virgin Mobile Holdings PLC reported a 40 percent increase in half-yearly net profit Thursday and painted a rosy picture for future growth despite strong competition in the heavily saturated British cell-phone market.
ADVERTISEMENT
Virgin said its net profit rose to 27.5 million pounds ($47.2 million) in the six months to Sept. 30, compared to 19.6 million pounds in the first half of 2004.
Revenue rose 7 percent to 274.6 million pounds ($471.7 million) as it picked up new customers and focused on its new contract mobile services.
The strong results were supported by the company's reaffirmation of a target of mid-teens percentage revenue growth for the year to the end of March 2006, and double-digit percentage service revenue growth in the next financial year.
"The past six months have been operationally very productive with the launch and expansion of our contract proposition and establishing a new platform for our next phase of growth," said Chief Executive Tom Alexander.
Shares in Virgin, which is majority-owned by entrepreneur Richard Branson, rose 4.8 percent to close at 309 pence ($5.31) on the London Stock Exchange.
Alexander also doused market speculation that Virgin Mobile was a takeover target, saying the company has not received any approaches. But he acknowledged that Virgin's strong brand and growth momentum could attract attention.
"Profitable growth is attractive to other players ... we are a very interesting piece of the jigsaw puzzle going forward," he said.
Virgin shares had moved higher over recent weeks after the 18 billion pound ($31.5 million) tie-up of Spain's Telefonica SA with O2 PLC left it as the most obvious acquisition target.
Alexander said he believed there would be consolidation among the mobile networks. Virgin is not a network operator, instead leasing capacity from T-Mobile International AG.
The company became the only purely British mobile-phone business on the London Stock Exchange when it listed last year, with Branson's Virgin Group holding around 73 percent of the 750 million pound ($1.3 billion) company.
Virgin entered the contract market during 2005, having previously only sold services on a prepay basis.
The company said it will ramp up investment in its retail distribution network and improve its customer service after it added 44,000 net new users in the second quarter — well below the more than 100,000 expected by the market.
Chief Financial Officer Alan Gow said he expects the volume of new customers to be "significantly higher" in the second half as the Christmas sales period kicks in.
The company had 4.2 million customers at the end of the first half, compared to 3.6 million a year earlier.
It is counting on the expansion of its contract offer and new products like the pink-colored Motorola Inc. Razr handset and its Lobster flip phones aimed at the 16- to 30-year-old market to drive further growth.
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SS9173
Beacon, I didn't see the Neil Cavuto segment...but I did educate him on Neom and Paperclick on his blog
See my post: http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=6720414&txt2find=cuban
SS9173
(Edited) Personalizit, I tend to agree as well that the length of this quiet period while legally is tied to the BSDS and Cornell filings, there is some strategic reason for the lack of meaningful material news. I tend to agree with WilliamFl's and Wooger's recent posts:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8508753
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8516880
I hope the lack of material news is because a "big gorilla" has a deal in the making (not signed) that they aren't ready to go public yet. That's just a theory and I have no basis for making that statement other than the rumors that TS started.
Again, my recent email correspondence with Chas and phone conversation with Chuck gave me very positive vibes.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8362253
The DD by Koko today "fits" with what I thought would occur, and while before I was questioning Neom's involvement with micropaint, I now believe that NMPR will soon be helping our profitability in a very significant way. That should help the pps as well as make it more attractive for a spinoff to the Dupont's of the world.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8522303
Although I am just as frustrated as you and others with the meandering and slowly declining pps, lack of news, the slow progress on outstanding LOI's, delayed rollout of PC, etc., I remain convicted to seeing how this plays out over the next 12 months. We have connected a lot of dots on this board. I continue to believe that we are on the cusp of many important announcements:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8186927
Based on my conversation with Chuck, I truly believe that Neom intends to have the quiet period ended before the December 16th shareholder meeting. I know that it really is in the hands of the SEC and there is no guarantee that it will end by then. Chuck said it would be useless to have a shareholder meeting during the quiet period. Therefore, I believe they scheduled the meeting based on high probability that the quiet period would end prior to that event.
So, in conclusion, when I combine the potential of those connected dots with the knowledge that there has been no recent insider selling and the enthusiasm and commitment to building shareholder value expressed to me by Chas and Chuck, my gut tells me 2006 will be a very good year for Neom.
SS9173
Koko, 3 points! Great DD!!! EOM
SS9173
Kokonutguy, Thanks EOM
The TS quiet period continues. No update on Neom again this week.
SS9173
I looked up JP's report from last year's shareholder meeting. Here it is (post #3468):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4499295
SS9173
P.S. There have been nearly 41,000 posts since JP's post (link above)
Re: PP article on Nextcode today. Does anyone know the status of our LOI PR from Dec 6, 2004? Is Nextcode using Paperclick?
http://www.neom.com/press_releases/2004/20041206.jsp
SS9173
Booner, See my prior post #42946
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8362253
What I said then is influencing what I am saying now. I can't elaborate further, but perhaps you can "read between the lines."
SS9173
Personalizit, You are absolutely right. My list wasn't necessarily meant to be all-inclusive...your list of additional items are all possibilities as well. I believe once the quiet period is over, we will see an orchestrated release of PR's covering a range of items in the pipeline over a span of 2 to 3 months. Chuck Jensen as CEO will be the conductor.
SS9173
Wooger, we will definitely see the 10Q from Neom, and 10K by BSDS by Tuesday, November 15th. Hopefully, we will see revenues continuing to increase by some degree. There are a number of potential PR's that could be released next week including:
- BSDS merger completion
- Mobot merger completion
- Something relating to prior discussions with Company X in Germany
- Something relating to this week's China trip
If we get one or more of these PR's next week along with a favorable 10Q report, I will be happy.
SS9173
Clawmann, Exactly...The advantage of Paperclick. ScoutPal is just further evidence that there is a perceived market for using your cellphone as a tool to save when shopping. Paperclick will enable easy connection of the physical world to the internet - anywhere, anytime.
SS9173
DD Japanese mobile phone culture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_cell_phone_culture
In Japan, mobile phones have become ubiquitous. In Japanese, mobile phones are called keitai denwa (携帯電話), literally "portable telephones," and are often known simply as keitai.
Much of the Japanese population own keitai, most of which are equipped with enhancements such as video and camera capabilities. This pervasiveness and the particularities of their usage lead to the development of a mobile phone culture, or "keitai culture."
Features and common uses
Most keitai sold in the last three years have integrated cameras; some more up to date models have high quality digital cameras. Many of the cameras are capable of taking both still and video images. Images can usually be sent to other mobile phones and embedded in messages.
Many keitai have a range of additional capabilities, such as configurable databases, phone and address books, alarm clocks and stopwatches, games, daytimers, and varying degrees of image enhancement capabilities, such as the option to create borders, to create animations, and more.
Some newer models allow the user to watch movies and/or television. Most keitai can be connected to the Internet through services such as i-mode. Japan was also the first to launch 3G services on a large scale. Users can browse text-only Internet sites, and many Japanese sites have sub-sites designed especially for keitai users. One of the most popular services allows users to check train schedules and plan trips on public transit.
Talking on a keitai while riding a bus or train is frowned upon, and messages asking passengers not to make calls and to switch their phones to silent mode ("manner mode" in Japanese) are played frequently. This, combined with the low per-message price, the ability to enhance messages with special characters, emoticons, pictures, and small animations, and to write in English or Japanese, has made text messaging extremely popular among people of all ages.
Many people send and receive a large number of text messages daily; teenagers are especially fond of this simple, fast, and private method of communication, and many schools ban the use of keitai on campus.
Keitai text messages are also a popular way to communicate with potential friends or lovers. Many internet sites maintain keitai-accessible portals via which users can search for and contact others with similar interests.
Japanese mobile phones have the capability to use very large sets of characters and icons based on JIS standards that define characters for industrial appliances. More than one thousand characters including all of the Latin alphabet, hiragana, katakana, kanji and special characters like cm (centimeter), arrows, musical notes and more can be used to compose messages. Japanese use also emoticons differently from the Western (see Japanese emoticons).
These character sets are used extensively, and often in a way that do not use their original meaning by relying more on the information based on the shape each character has. For example, '\' may be attached at the end of a sentence to show that they are not happy about the event described. A sentence like "I have a test today\" (translated) might mean that he or she didn't study enough, or that the test itself is depressing. Some of these usages disappeared as suitable icons were made but these newly made icons also acquired a usage not originally intended. Another example deals with the astrological symbol for Libra (♎). It resembles a cooked and puffed mochi, and is sometimes used in a happy new year's message as mochi are often eaten then. The symbol for Aquarius (♒) resembles waves, so this would be used to mean 'sea'. The number of icons gradually increased and they are now colored on most cell phones, to make them more distinct. ASCII art is also used widely and many of them are faces with expression. (see also Shift-JIS art)
Gyaru-moji
One very distinct form of writing is called 'gyaru-moji' ('girls' characters'). For example Lt wouldn't correspond to the Latin characters 'L' and 't' but instead it would correspond to the hiragana け ('ke'). Notice that it looks very similar when written. Many hiragana, katakana and kanji are taken apart and reassembled using different characters including alphabet characters. It is unclear why this usage is now seen. Some believe that this started as a way of making secret messages that a quick peek wouldn't reveal, while others claim that it was just for fun. This can be related to the way the English language hacking culture uses l33t language to hide the meaning of the words typed.
Teenagers and keitai
Paging devices used in the late 1980s to early 1990s predate mobile phones and paved the way for the popularity of keitai among teenagers. Pagers could only display numbers and were intended to alert the owner that he or she had received a call from a certain phone number, but teens quickly began using numeric messages to communicate everything from greetings to everyday emotions. Most were based on various ways numbers could be read in Japanese. Examples are
4-6-4-9 -- yo-ro-shi-ku ("hello," "best regards")
3-3-4-1 -- sa-mi-shi-i ("I feel lonely")
8-8-9-1-9 -- ha-ya-ku-i-ko ("hurry up, let's go")
With the rapidly falling prices of cell phones in the mid 1990s, young people began experimenting with the short message service that the mobile phone companies started offering. When the i-mode service became available, the mobile phone culture began flourishing in earnest as this service offered an E-mail application. Magazines and television regularly make specials focusing on the current trend of how mobile phones are used by young people.
Forefront of consumer technology
There is a popular trend in Japan to use the mobile phone handset to read information from special barcodes. The current technology is based on something called 'QR codes' which are a form of 2D barcode that is written out in a square shape. The phone handset can scan the barcode and decode the information and then take actions based on the type of content. The most popular usage of these QR codes is in advertising. All over Japan there are posters with the codes on and they are found extensively in magazines and even on some people’s business cards. The QR code usually has links to a web site address that the phone can visit or it might contain address and telephone numbers.
Sony, working with NTT DoCoMo has been spearheading the mobile phone wallet technology, or as it’s commonly known 'FeliCa'. This technology makes use of a RFID chip inside the handset which can communicate with special readers when the phone is placed near them. The technology is relatively new, however, there are lots of convenience stores which allow you to pay for goods using your phone and there are even some vending machines which accept phone payments. You have to 'charge up' your account with credits before you can pay using your phone and the security is pretty minimal but the system is proving popular with the public and now other manufactures are starting to make compatible phones.
Negative aspects
Radio waves are believed to cause interference with heart pacemakers and other medical devices. Public etiquette is often violated by people answering their phones in certain public places, and due to the Internet connectivity, spam has become a problem. In Japanese culture, it is now recommended that talking using a cell phone on a train should be avoided and announcements recommend passengers to turn their ringers off. Signs declare that people should turn off their mobile phones when around seats reserved for the elderly and handicapped, or when on a crowded train. In hospitals, it is expected that one should turn it off entirely. Talking on the phone while driving is prohibited, although extremely common.
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SS9173
DD ScoutPal
http://www.scoutpal.com/sp/
Use ScoutPal with any web-enabled cell phone or wireless PDA and find out the Amazon Marketplace value of books, CD’s, DVD’s, Video Tapes, or any other Amazon Marketplace Merchandise, while you are out bookscouting. ScoutPal also optionally reports marketplace prices from abebooks.com, as well as PriceGrabber.com.
How many times have you come back from bookscouting with essentially worthless books? How many times have you passed over a book, only to find out later, when you look it up again on Amazon, that it was valuable and in high demand?
Bookscouting with ScoutPal is like hunting with Radar
You can quickly comb through stacks of books, zero in on the gems, and find the treasure!
ScoutPal is simple and easy to use. Just enter the ISBNs or UPCs, and ScoutPal will "Fetch" the information you need, and quickly present it to you in a concise form. Results include a summary of market prices and quantities, sales rank, editions and availability, and used/new/collectible details. You can customize the content and format of your results, and switch formats at anytime. You can also be alerted if there are Buyers Waiting.
You can use ScoutPal with nearly any modern cell-phone or wireless PDA. In fact, the cell phone that you have now is likely fully capable of using ScoutPal! If you have an older phone that cannot use web services, but it can send and receive SMS email, you can use the ScoutPal SMS service.
ScoutPal maintains two separate and geographically isolated servers in order to provide redundant 24x7 wireless bookscouting access to ScoutPal subscribers worldwide.
ScoutPal is a subscription-based service. Choose either a Monthly ($9.95) or Quarterly ($29.85) Subscription. You can also sign up for a 1 Week Free Trial subscription, with absolutely no obligation, and no credit card needed. We can offer this because we are certain that once you have used ScoutPal, you will never bookscout without it again.
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SS9173
DD Webby Awards
http://www.webbyawards.com/Webby_Trends_2005.pdf
SS9173
OT DD A Week in Wireless #204 (weekly email I receive from mobilecomms.com)
11th November 2005
In the week when the Commonwealth remembers the victims of armed conflict, there was a grim reminder of man's continuing inhumanity to man as the Qualcomm/EU patent row escalated when Qualcomm took the step of suing Nokia for alleged patent violations. Why can't we all just get along? Interestingly, this suit concerns technology found in GSM/GPRS and EDGE systems rather than (W)CDMA. Nokia, predictably, rejects the charges, and took its mind off the problem in the way it does best–by launching another bunch of gadgets at its Mobility Conference. There was a new, miniature version of the Flexi WCDMA base station and some new phones, including one with Universal Plug and Play capability, allowing it to act as a remote control for all kinds of other gadgets.
Hong Kong operator CSL launched the world's first commercial video-sharing service this week, using a Nokia IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) implementation to do the dishes and Nokia N70 geekophones at the glam end of the service. Also IMS-ing will be British operator O2, or more specifically its Isle of Man subsidiary Manx Telecom, which is shifting to the new architecture early next year.
More headline-grabbingly, though, O2 chose this week to launch Europe's first HSDPA 3G network on the island famed as a telecoms guinea pig. It's not well known, but the famous Manx cats originate in a disastrous experiment by the old GPO Dollis Hill Labs back in the 1950s in using a giant Tesla coil to transmit data through the earth itself. When the boffins switched on, the whole island briefly became invisible, and when it returned everything seemed normal except for the cat population, whose tails were missing. This being the era of cold-war secrecy, Sellafield fires and such, the Ministry Men decided to keep the whole thing quiet. But the incident turned out to have permanently affected the cats' DNA..
So good a guinea pig is the island that a little bird told the Informer that Lucent Technologies gave O2 (whose other networks mainly use Siemens and Nokia equipment) "adjusted terms" (ed – we think that means "cheap") on the HSDPA and IMS gear just in order to try it out on the Manx. The system is currently producing data rates of around 1.3Mbps in the downlink, with the usual caveats. 300Kbps video streaming worked without problems.
As apparently did Skype. Despite several senior O2-ers making very sceptical comments regarding Voice over IP, a video clip prepared by a visiting BBC TV team who Manx Telecom helped out with the use of the new system when its satellite uplink conked out showed a BBC engineer proudly demonstrating as follows: "Let's try an application...this one's called Skype.." O2 CTO Dave Williams confirmed that, however sceptical the firm is, no port-blocking, packet inspection, or other anti-VoIP enforcement was being implemented.
At the moment, though, uplink speeds are still only 128Kbps, although 384Kbps should be achieved by January. Base stations are provisioned with 8Mbps of backhaul, with a view to supporting some 70 simultaneous users. The extra backhaul comes in the form of DSL lines for the moment, but O2 is apparently thinking in terms of Gigabit Ethernet lines for the future. The system should land in the UK early next year, which could nearly have been said about the plane that brought the Lucent executives to the island – it needed four attempts to land as storms lashed Ronaldsway airport. They were, it seems, absolutely fascinated by the experience.
Lucent had more IMS news this week, having secured the contract to supply BellSouth's forthcoming VoIP service with the system.
Motorola announced some HSDPA test results this week, reporting that a major cause of poor latency on the new system was its heavy demand on the device's processing capacity when shifting from the low-speed, bandwidth-saving mode to the all-out speed mode. Ericsson has also been testing HSDPA, on the inhabitants of Tokyo.
xMax, the ultra-low power, ultra-wide band radio technology pitched by Florida firm xG Technologies, was demonstrated to a group of European journos at the firm's HQ this week. xG claims truly spectacular results, some of which the press were able to verify (honourable mention to ZDNet UK's Rupert Goodwins with his radio-ham gadgetry). But serious questions remain–after all, no one outside the firm has ever seen the secret chip that makes it all possible. Data rates of 4Mbps at a point 18 miles from the transmitter were substantiated, but the key question is power (isn't it always?). The whole point of xMax is the signal-to-noise advantage of low power, and the firm claimed this one was running at only 50mW–but no one was in a position to check what went into the 260 metre tall tower. Patents are pending, which could explain a degree of caginess, but one has to worry given the backstory involved.
Several of the people around xMax were also involved in a dot.com boom project with many similarities to the system that collapsed messily in 2000 amid accusations of sharp financial practice and allegations that a demonstration of the technology in Iceland had been rigged. According to the Southwest Florida Herald Tribune's investigation, the downloads that were supposedly over-the-air were in fact playing back from a local hard disk. However, the people who have seen the device include respected engineering professors from MIT.
Without more access to the technology, it would seem no one really knows. The Informer will just have to say, in the hushed tones of a 50s British sci-fi film, "Genius–or Charlatan?" and leave it at that.
If xMax fails you, though, satellite access is still an option. British satellite operator Inclarity announced major investment to expand its services into Africa. It currently boasts that it carries traffic for 1.3 million mobile users in nowhere else than Iraq, which presumably makes the Dark Continent look a positively unchallenging proposition. At least Vodafone thinks so. The monster carrier this week upped the ante in South Africa, cranking up its stake in Vodacom to some 50 per cent from its existing 35 per cent. It's not hard to see why–Vodacom saw 39 per cent subscriber growth in the year to the 30th of June. So jaded Voda execs can party like it's 1999 once more.
T-Mobile had third-quarter numbers out this week. Revenues came in at Euro7.6bn, up 10.6 per cent on the corresponding period last year, with spectacular growth of 26.4 per cent in the US. The Stateside success contrasted with slippage in Germany, where revenues declined 2.2 per cent. However, almost one third of 350,000 new German subscribers were contract customers, promising higher ARPU in future. Parent company Deutsche Telekom, meanwhile, got into a string of rows, alleging that Telefonica had benefited unfairly from a peculiarity in Spanish tax law in taking over O2, and also falling out with its competitors about access to its planned fibre network in Germany. DT apparently wants to take action in the European Court of Justice but admits that it's too late to resuscitate the O2 deal. However, DT's net profits exceeded expectations, at Euro2.415bn on EBIT up 3.7 per cent at Euro5.5bn for the third quarter.
There were also new gadgets at T-Mobile. Specifically, the carrier will be launching smartphone specialist HTC's Wizard, which offers quadband GSM with EDGE, WiFi, Windows Mobile 5.0, a Qwerty keyboard and 128MB of expandable memory. T-Mobile are also supplying ALK Tech's Copilot navigation software and a GPS receiver with the gadget. The Wizard is now available in the UK under three different names–for T-Mobile it's an MDA Vario, for Orange it's an SPV M3000, and for i-Mate it's a K-jam. Stop the insanity.
HTC will further cement its position atop the smartphone market when Palm's new line of low-cost Treos, announced this week, hit the market. It is "believed" HTC is the manufacturer for the gadgets, which will have either Windows Mobile 5 or PalmOS and also 3G capability for around $200.
Samsung also had new gadgets on offer for the US market. Sprint Nextel customers are getting two different EV-DO clamshells, the SPH-A900 and SPH-A920. The first is an ultra-thin fashion gadget, the second more feature-stuffed and presumably fatter. T-Mobile USA subscribers are threatened with an EDGE-plus-WiFi thinster, the SGH-T709, and Cingular are getting a GSM clam with Push To Talk, the SGH-D537, and a UMTS 3G clamshell, the SGH-ZX100. (Isn't that actually a motorbike?)
Samsung also announced new gadget fuel cells this week.
The chances of there being anything interesting to do with the phones and the networks took a jag higher this week, as browserco Openwave Systems launched its MIDAS software development toolkit. The plan is to make it possible to develop new phone applications using simple markup language and scripting tools rather than embedded C++, in a species of the AJAX and Web 2.0 approach currently fascinating the PC-world geeks.
As always in this business, though, there's a problem. Openwave is apparently looking into the possibility of making the software open-source (appropriately enough), but it won't open anything if the networks–their biggest customers' biggest customers–don't like it. Given most MNOs' sensitivity to the needs of the developer community, that's probably another good idea ruined. It's probably the right spot to mention that txtmsg spclst Reach2Mobile.net this week launched software tools to allow Microsoft Visual Studio developers to integrate messaging easily.
Still, whilst waiting for another good idea to turn up, it's time to check one's email. Aaah...Visto! The mobile email specialists this week announced a $70m fundraising to finance the further development of their not-Blackberry push email software. Sadly, the fundraising was the venture capital sort, not a jumble sale or stint shaking tins in the high street.
Alternatively, we could just not bother. According to consultabots Roland Berger Strategy, a survey of seven European countries shows that customers are finding mobile data services "just too complicated and expensive" and that "handling mobile data service and, especially, navigating multilayered menus ... ask too much of the average user." There was, however, an answer to this in this week's news. Chuck out the 3G, and the 2G for that matter–Mobitex is the wave of the future!
If you've ever wondered what's in the 450MHz band in the UK, it's this delightfully old-fashioned datanet, which operates at rocketship speeds of up to 8Kbps carrying (mostly) status codes and information about lorries stuck in traffic. The Merseyside Police this week signed up to use the system for mobile lookups of the Police National Computer from 135 of their cars. BT Transcomm is the lucky owner. (By the way–Mobitex's USP when it launched was that it had international roaming, at least between the UK and the Benelux countries. Can anyone confirm if the service still exists? Answers on a kilobit to the usual email address.)
Staying in Holland, KPN vigorously denied it could be the next big telecoms deal. CEO Ad Scheepbouwer told the FT that "we can take care of ourselves very well, thank you." Which sounds very much like tempting fate. Even so, the numbers were good. Ish. EBITDA had been forecast to fall by something between five and ten per cent, but turned out to be on track to hold up better, with a possible fall of less than five per cent. Free cash flow, though, was up 13 per cent at Euro1.94bn on revenues of Euro2.93bn and net profits of Euro334m, down from Euro367m a year ago.
KPN's German division, E-Plus, pushed over the ten million subscriber mark with a gain of 327,000 new customers, two-thirds on contracts. EBITDA fell by five per cent as monthly ARPU fell by one euro to Euro21 amid raging price war. Danish telco and frequent takeover candidate TDC this week launched its 3G network commercially.
In the UK, numbers were out for Cable & Wireless and BT. The first is (just) a mobile operator, the second used to be and may be again with its interest in WiMax. C&W reported lower profits for the first half of 2005, down 29 per cent from £178m to £126m, despite revenues rising by one per cent. This was slightly ahead of expectations. The firm blamed the drop on the continuing shift to IP service, the costs of further IP backbone rollouts, and losses at its consumer ADSL operation, Bulldog.
BT, meanwhile, posted pre-tax profits of £489m for the three months to the end of September, down from £571m a year before. Interim full-year profits were raised by £6m to £988m. Although revenues grew by five per cent, margins were hit by the move to flat-rate pricing.
Former Vodafone target SFR reported revenues of Euro6.4bn for the nine months to the end of September, up 21.2 per cent year-on-year. Annual ARPU rose one per cent to Euro433, with data ARPU of Euro58. The operator put on 640,000 subscribers to reach a total of 16.45 million.
In Singapore, there was even more network operator news as SingTel reported subscriber numbers. 74.05 million people use the firm's services, up 2.91 million since the end of June, making it the biggest telco in Asia outside China by subs as well as by market capitalisation. The Australian unit, Optus, gained 59,000 new subscribers from June to September despite "intense" competition.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Thai government announced a change in the law permitting foreigners to own up to 49 per cent of a network as opposed to 25 per cent previously, and Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo bought a 42 per cent chunk of Tower Records Japan, Japan's biggest retailer of music and software, for some Y12.8bn. The plan is to sell music through the carrier's mobile payment system.
Aussie incumbent Telstra waded into a trans-Tasman dispute with Telecom New Zealand over access to their local loop, which has not been unbundled like the Australian one. TNZ last week announced it was thinking of breaking off negotiations with Telstra over the price its Aussie business AAPT pays for the use of the Telstra local loop. Telstra accused them of hypocrisy.
On the other side of the Pacific, rumours were rife that either Yahoo!, Google, or perhaps both were to launch an MVNO with a new Nokia phone and synchronisation with My Yahoo!, or perhaps a client version of Google's Local Search. Apple, meanwhile, saw its iTunes software turn up on another Motorola phone, this time a RAZR. It's still shackled, though, being locked to a maximum 100 songs. And, apparently, amongst those waggish bloggers out in cyber space the ROKR is now more commonly known as the CROCKR.
Fans of similar puns will be delighted by the news that LG Electronics has launched the first phone with the SavaJE (ftang!) operating system. The OS is based on a lethal open source cocktail of Linux and Java, and is intended to be a featureful standard for ordinary phones rather than smartsters.
Oh yes, and "colourful telecoms entrepreneur" John Caudwell put his Phones4U retail chain up for sale with a £2bn price tag. It was a very full week, in wireless.
Take care
The Informer
Send your feedback to: theinformer@mobilecomms.com
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SS9173
OT DD Digital Media Broadcast handsets to be "as widespread as camera phones"
http://www.imodestrategy.com/2005/11/digital_media_b.html
Finance Asia reports from Korea on fascinating trends in two specialised handsets - DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcast) phones and game phones.
These are observed to be moving in the opposite directions, with the former experiencing robust sales while the latter seems to demonstrate a slowing down.
Samsung Electronics' S-DMB phones are reported to be selling well, with its four models selling over a total of 250,000 units. SK Teletech also sold 150,000 of its IMB1000 model, while LG Electronics registered a growth in its DMP phone sales, with 50,000 units sold. Samsung has decided to have DMB as a standard function in all of its new phones next year.
It is estimated that DMB/DVB will soon be as widespread as the camera function.
LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel as expected to reflect this market trend by releasing different models of DMB phones.
This is quite a remarkable development, technically because the core mobile TV/DMB platform requires a low-power IC core which can act as the host CPU, audio DSP, and the video decoder, with optional video hardware accelerator available (for example the Vigo Mobile TV IP Platform from Imagination Technologies of the UK). Market-wise it means a revolutionary new content channel and telcos will battle with media content suppliers e.g. radio and TV networks, for control of this channel.
Early movers are already acquiring Korean companies who have advanced technology and experience in digital multimedia to mobile services, such as Vidiator acquiring the "assets and engineering assets" of the Platform Division of Nextreaming.
A thorn in the side of DMB is that it is proprietary to South Korea - derived from the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) standard that enjoys wide use in Europe for radio broadcasts. Japan uses DAB for satellite broadcasts, too, but has its own standard for terrestrial broadcasts. Outside Korea the standard being promoted is DVB-H - with Nokia running over 40 trials with carriers and broadcasters.
Both LG and Samsung have major investments in DMB and hope that it will be adopted throughout Europe as a standard.
- Here is a clear and easy to read analysis of the current state of DVB/DMB in The Business Online.
The slowing down of sales of game phones are seen as the reason for the delay in the release of game phones. The weak game phone sales are expected to have a negative impact on telecom operators and game providers, with game phones necessary for the growth of advanced game contents.
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SS9173
Unfortunately my work schedule will prohibit me from attending the shareholder's meeting. :>(
I will appreciate the usual great reporting from those that can attend.
Thanks in advance.
SS9173
I think we should assume new posters are "innocent" before labeling them as "potential bashers". I would like to see moderators give them the "benefit of the doubt" first. If there is a pattern with their subsequent postings that suggests that they are a basher, then I am OK with moderators intervening as appropriate.
In the interim, if a new poster posts a message that has incorrect information, lets correct them first in a polite way.
Remember - we were all new posters once upon a time, and as such there is always a learning curve - new posters generally do not have the level of knowledge and experience of us that have been here for a long time.
JMHO.
SS9173
James, Good job with the comparison of S4A changes. Thank you. EOM
SS9173
Vines, Are you referring to the S4A or S3? My question was on the S3? TIA
SS9173
Any thoughts on the S3 filed this morning? I am sorry I haven't had time to read and analyze it yet. Are we looking at more dilution? What is the real purpose behind it?
SS9173
Perhaps my email to CNBC on September 21 regarding the Virgin NYC Grand Opening has helped them to learn and understand about Neomedia. See my prior post below:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?Message_id=7823074&txt2find=cnbc
SS9173
JP, I won't have time to read and analyze the S3 and S4A this morning because of my work schedule. I am a little surprised this S4A was released prior to Neom's 10Q and BSDS 10K. I thought it would be done after all the financials of both companies were up-to-date.
That's about all I will have time for this AM...will check back later this afternoon to see everyone's thoughts.
SS9173
Pimps,
First of all, only you can decide if it is wise to buy more Neom shares based on your financial situation, risk tolerance, time horizon, etc.
However, I won't dodge your question completely. I would suggest you review my posting of 10/20/05:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8186927
I believe that everything I stated in that 10/20/05 post is as true today as it was then with one exception: the quiet period will end soon upon SEC approval of the BSDS / Global Triton merger (i.e., Neom is still pursuing BSDS).
Now "soon" is a relative term. My worst case scenario for end of the quiet period is year end; best case scenario is Nov. 15th; and highest probability is sometime during the month of December.
Once the quiet period is over, I believe we will see an orchestrated release of several PR's. Now what none of us truly know is how significant will those PR's be, and what will be their impact on the pps in the short-term.
If you buy now, I do believe that the ROI will be significant over the long term.
Again, please make your decision based on your own situation...not mine or what I believe. Nothing is a "sure thing"...especially investing in microcaps.
Hope that helps.
Regards,
SS9173
Koko, Great job! Thanks EOM
SS9173
Mobile Application Platforms and OS Conference
Usability & Customisation: From high-end to Mass Market Devices
8-10 November 2005 - Crowne Plaza Vienna
http://www.informatm.com/marlin/30000000861/MARKT_EFFORT/marketingid/20001273011?proceed=true&Ma...
SS9173
OT DD A Week in Wireless #203 (from email from fiercewireless.com)
4th November 2005
This week the industry's favourite long-running takeover story was finally wound up as British network operator O2 sold out to Telefonica for a thick £17bn. This takes the merged group to second place in the world market by revenue behind Vodafone and makes the O2 top management who took on the operator back in 2001 when it was generally perceived as the smelly bit that fell off BT all obscenely rich. Since then, though, the operator has done well, appealing strongly to text-addicted youngsters, launching i-Mode and HSDPA, and becoming the operator of choice to the British emergency services.
The London Stock Exchange has been obsessed all year with the idea of O2 being taken over by Deutsche Telekom, perhaps in some sort of folk-unconscious memory of the second world war, but no one seems to have predicted that the Spanish incumbent telco would be the winner. After all, Spain is where common people go on summer holidays, right? Deutsche would always have faced serious trouble in trying to absorb O2 for the simple reason that it is already its own best competitor in the UK and Germany, which would probably have triggered a whole succession of anti-trust investigations. In the summer, DT was forced to tell the LSE that its efforts to get round this through a side deal with KPN had failed. Deutsche was then prevented from bidding for six months by Stock Exchange rules, but such simple considerations didn't stop the rumours.
Even after the deal was tied up, they still hoped for a German bid until Karl-Gerhard Eick, Deutsche's finance director, explicitly told them there would be none. The obsession didn't stop, though-it just moved to Virgin Mobile, whose shares soared on rumours that "as the last remaining independent mobile operator" it would soon attract a German bid. Of course, Virgin is no such thing, being an MVNO perched atop T-Mobile's network. Why Deutsche would want to spend millions to buy revenue it already gets is a mystery comprehensible only to readers of Traders' Monthly, the new London-based publication aimed only at those earning over £250,000 a year according to its publisher.
There was real news about Virgin this week, though, as it agreed to start selling Emblaze Mobile's new Sting 6 gadgets in time for Christmas. Christmas already! My heart bleeds with joy. The device will be aimed at the 16-24 year old age group, and includes a 1.3 megapixel cam with up to 16x zoom. Apparently it's "for the confident, sociable fashion-conscious consumers for whom their mobile phone is the key to their lives," so users had better hope its engineering is better than its English.
The earth shook menacingly, meanwhile, as two mighty beasts confronted each other: Qualcomm and the European Commission. The EU has wapped the CDMA titan with an anti-trust charge after a brief who's who of telecoms manufacturing complained that the San Diego giant was operating a monopoly through its patents on standardised CDMA2K and WCDMA kit, alleging that it was deliberately jacking up the royalties on WCDMA chips despite less of its technology being involved. Predictably, Qualcomm denied it strenuously, bashing the case as "factually inaccurate and legally meritless." Well, it would say that, wouldn't it? Equally, the GSM Association weighed in with a broadside of its own in support of the case. But, well, It would say that, wouldn't it?
The imbroglio didn't seem to affect Qualcomm's fourth-quarter results, though. The kitco saw profits up from $393m a year ago to $582m, or 32 cents a share, and predicted revenue growth of between 18 and 25 per cent next year as against 40 per cent this year.
Trying to put a spoke on their wheel, though, are Motorola and Intel, who this week announced yet more collaboration on WiMax technology. This time, as well as working together at the WiMax Forum to get the specifications sorted, the monster manufacturers intend to test interoperability between Moto infrastructure kit and Intel data cards.
There was a minor WiMax outbreak in Australia, meanwhile, as Austar announced its aim to deliver wireless internet service to the outback using Navini Networks's not-quite-WiMax solution. The plan is to do larger towns in inland Australia first and move on from there, according to CEO John Porter, kicking off with maximum speeds of 1Mbps.
One well-known early adopter of WiMax is of course Sprint Nextel, what with its commitment to roll out national wireless broadband or lose its 2.5GHz spectrum. The firm is known to have been out testing Samsung equipment, and Samsung is confident enough to have publicly predicted a roll-out in 2006. But the carrier would seem to be hedging its bets-or why else would it have joined the Global TDD Alliance? Apparently UMTS-TDD kit is also being tested out in Washington in a project Sprint acquired with the rest of Nextel.
The FCC, meanwhile, signed off the mergers of (deep breath) SBC, AT&T, Verizon, and MCI. Under the terms of the mergers, they must maintain their current internet peering policy for at least two years and make the policy public.
Vodafone, for its part, rang the changes this week, selling its Swedish network to Telenor for around Euro1bn and buying more shares in South African operator Vodacom for "up to" £1.35bn, taking its holding to 50 per cent of the firm. Coming a week after Vodafone bought into Bharti Tele-Ventures of India, it looks as if Vodafone is engaged in a dash for fast-growth assets.
In Pakistan, on the contrary, the privatisation of Pakistan Telecommunications Ltd. has run into trouble. 26 per cent of the firm and the rights to take management control were sold back in June to Etisalat of the UAE for $2.34bn in a deal which involved hundreds of striking PTCL workers being dragged away by the army. However, it appears that Etisalat can't pay. In July, it fronted up ten per cent of the price, but the rest has apparently failed to appear, and according to the Privatisation Commission, "this deal seems to be over." An Etisalat spokesman told the Financial Times that "we will come out with a statement in a couple of days."
Nokia had a mixed week; on one hand, there was a wave of new phones in the top-end N-series. The one attracting most attention was the N92, which includes support for DVB-H mobile TV (does that make it a tellyphone?) and a curious hybrid clamshell/fliptop design. On the other hand, there were catastrophic sales figures for the N-Gage games gadget. Apparently, the Finnish firm was hoping to flog some six million of the things in three years, but so far only two million have gone. Full disclosure: one of the faceless, nameless entities behind the Informer has received a review gadget. He hasn't been seen since he took it home to "try it out", occasionally sending emails to the office demanding pizza.
Fancy phones are the business of Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, who had results out this week. Sales and profits for the third quarter broke the firm's records despite the seasonal slowdown, with revenues of TW$16.56bn, up seven per cent on the previous quarter and 134 per cent on the corresponding period a year ago. Net income after tax was TW$2.64 bn, up 251 per cent year-on-year. More gadgets, including a new 3G handset with Wi-Fi and 4GB of Flash storage, are expected soon. (Even fuller disclosure: another faceless, nameless entity has received an HTC review gadget that accepts his email. He was last seen stamping around importantly and kicking beggars on Waterloo station.)
Low-cost airline supreme Stelios Haji-Ianniou's MVNO, EasyMobile, just launched in Germany this week after its triumph in signing up a whole 15,000 UK subscribers. As in Britain, the network supplier is T-Mobile. MVNO target-turned owner and Danish telco TDC, which is supporting EasyMobile's operations in Britain and Germany, had figures out this week: net income was up 20 per cent at DKr1.3bn, on revenues up 10.9 per cent at DKr12.2bn. Forecasts for the year were revised upwards by DKr 500m to DKr 46.1bn. They would, however, say nothing about the swarm of bidders circling blackly and vulturelike over the firm…
One of those, Swisscom, was this week linked with a possible bid for Eircom in conjunction with an Australian investment fund. The Irish ex-state telco is valued at Euro4.4bn and has just bought out mobile operator Meteor. Swisscom's acquisition policy is confined to European ex-incumbents. Meanwhile in Ireland, Palm opened an R&D centre for 3G smartphone development in Swords, County Dublin.
In the exciting world of mobile media content, a whole gaggle of trendy young London mediacos have been commissioned by the BBC to develop a series of Java games based on their spy series Spooks, including a set of missions to download via GPRS and actual locations on a map of the UK. It's the first time a mobile game has used a live map of the whole UK. The guilty parties are Kudos Film and Television, Magic Lantern, and YDreams Entertainment.
Another BBC hit, Mr. Bean, will be coming to mobile phones in cartoon form thanks to a deal between producers Tiger Aspect and videoco Mobile Streams. Is it me, or do these media types have really silly company names?
After all this, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed. Don't worry, it's not AWIW. According to SmartTrust's Mobile Trends Guide, you've just got a dose of Mobile Service Fatigue, a condition characterised by an inability to keep pace with proliferating features, services, and complex pricing structures. One man who's certainly got the acute form of MSF is businessman Roger Steare, who travelled to France on holiday and then went on to Germany on business, taking his laptop and an Orange 3G-GPRS datacard with him. He was more than a little shocked to receive a bill for £769 worth of data transfer charges at £8 a megabyte. The same amount of data would have cost him less than £10 in the UK.
Take care
The Informer
Send your feedback to: theinformer@mobilecomms.com
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SS9173