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Catching-up with all the mobile industry news you missed last week…

Mobile Industry News

• No more Vodafone 360 handsets: Ewan McLeod from Mobile Industry Review revealed last Friday that Vodafone pulled the plug on Vodafone 360 handsets. The Samsung 360 H2’s launch has therefore been cancelled. Vodafone now want to focus and improve on the Vodafone 360 application. Some have already begun to link this cancellation with Microsoft’s KIN failure – http://bit.ly/8ZEocA
• Windows Mobile 7 for Microsoft’s employees: Microsoft – which has announced  a 22% increase in revenue for Q2 this year – are offering free Windows Mobile 7 phones to all their employees – http://is.gd/dBgEz
• Facebook’s mobile strategy: Eric Tseng – Head of Mobile at Facebook – revealed Facebook’s plan to win a greater share of mobile without launching their own OS: Facebook will soon allow mobile app developers to hook into Facebook’s APIs – http://bit.ly/cLkg4S
• Nokia’s continue with the bad times: Nokia published its 2010 Q2 financial results. Their revenue grew by 1% but their operating profit dropped by 15% to €775 million. As a comparison, Apple’s Q2 net profit reached $3.25 billion last week. – http://bit.ly/9LA3U0
  • Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said that Symbian^3 was the antidote to Nokia’s troubles – http://bit.ly/cTDTYA
  • The Wall Street Journal reported that Nokia was looking for a new CEO to replace Kallasvuo – http://bit.ly/acIpdQ
• …but OVI’s doing OK: Nokia shared figures around the OVI app store: the store is attracting 1.7 million downloads a day on average and there have been 17 million Ovi Maps downloaded to date. OVI store now has over 13,000 applications – http://bit.ly/9jk2XB
• iTunes vs. Android music store: Google’s music store –  that could become a direct competitor to Apple’s iTunes – could be live this winter according to The New York Post – http://bit.ly/bXa3dJ
• Apple’s iPhone news
  • US carrier AT&T said that 73% of iPhone 4 purchases were upgrades. AT&T also reported to have sold 3.2 million iPhones during this quarter – http://bit.ly/cm3u9z
  • The white version of the iPhone 4 won’t be available before the end of 2010, due to painting and manufacturing problems – http://bit.ly/9IgxJD
• BlackBerry’s new strategy: John Albright from Blackberry Partners Fund said that the next BlackBerry OS release won’t be solely focused on business tools , but also on media – here’s a preview of what BlackBerry 6 should look like – http://bit.ly/9a5e3y

Mobile statistics and reports

• Mobile Banking: A new KPMG survey says that mobile banking is becoming more and more popular in the US: 33% of 16-24 year old demographic have conducted banking activities on a mobile device – http://bit.ly/9tBq9s
• Mobile commerce case study: The InterContinental Hotels Group (InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza…) announced that its mobile commerce revenue has now exceeded $2.5 million per month. A good (and not overly obvious) mobile commerce success story! – http://bit.ly/d26m7W
• Paying content vs. Ad-suported content: Another one from KPMG – The “Consumers & Convergence” survey highlighted that British mobile and PC users are more likely to go for ad-supported content than a paying content. Only 19% of them are actually willing to fork over cash for content – http://bit.ly/aioRp5
• Mobile applications’ future: Juniper Research published a report which concludes that by 2015, mobile users will have downloaded 25 billion mobile applications to their smartphones – http://bit.ly/d2i3JY
• Rich-media on mobile: At last week IAB Mobile Marketing Conference in New York, JumpTap reported that the engagement rate for rich-media ads served on smartphones is three time higher than traditional banners – http://bit.ly/cZV0wT

For more news and insights about mobile industry, join the conversation on Twitter or on Facebook!

Last week, we were asked to inaugurate TED’s very first “partners” session on behalf of Orange. This was an absolutely awesome experience, as frankly, getting to present the thinking behind On at TED was a dream come true.

TED Global took place in Oxford, with some 800 attendees. After the gloom years, the focus was on the good news. The presentations on spreading education , in true TED style, were astounding, as were talks on decoding the brain, and applying video gaming (Tom Chatfield) behaviours to general motivation. Ralph Simons gave us an entertaining insight into My Sharona, while Annie Lennox got us all sweet dreaming again before reminding us of the topicality of the fight against AIDS. Naif Al-Mutuwa tought us the power of comics in fighting against stereo-typing Islam. Matt Ridley gave a compelling explanation of why progress accelerates. And I managed to miss (slight hangover) a brilliant appearance by Julian Assange on WikiLeaks.

And in all of this, what did we do?  Well, basically, we carried on our crusade for more human, more subtle, more pertinent communications with our mobiles.

Giles presenting at TED Global 2010 – © All Rights Reserved – James Duncan Davidson / TED

One of the points we made is that as social networking behaviours move into mainstream mobile conversations, there are a whole bunch of opportunities, but also of risks around identity, privacy and data ownership. We explored the importance of allowing people to be inconsistent (i.e. present multiple facets of their personalities to different groups), to forget (i.e. find ways to make sure that things do not move in an uncontrolled way into the social ether) and lastly the right to lie (or tell things to one group that you may not wish to share with others).

Lastly, we pointed out that as we carry on working on this, we are going to get lots wrong. So please join the conversation on this blog (or on Facebook and Twitter) and help us get it right.

The slide show and notes are visible below. Hopefully, one day, TED will release the video of the presentation on the prestigious TED.com website.  If and when this happens, we will let you know!

ON: Giles Corbett’s presentation at TED Global 2010 (see the PowerPoint version without the comments here).

Thanks to Addy Dugdale for her article about ON on Fast Company and to Michael May for choosing Giles as one of his TED favorite speakers!

You can follow Giles on Twitter at @GiCorb.

Find out the hottest mobile industry news in ON’s weekly mobile mash-up #8!

Mobile Industry News

• Sony Ericsson’s back in the game: Sony Ericsson announced a €12 million profit for Q2. That must be a relief for the company as it has not been profitable since 2008. These good figures are partly due to their new devices’ successes, such as the Android-based Xperia X10 – http://bit.ly/9elpYX
• But Apple does better: On a different scale, Apple announced its biggest revenue ever for Q2: $15 billion. Net profit reaches $3.25 billion mostly thanks to the iPad and iPhone – http://bit.ly/97KRnb
• This news was big enough to forget Apple’s antennagate: Apple organised a press conference last Friday about the iPhone 4′s antenna problem. Their solution: provide free bumpers and cases to iPhone 4 owners and propose replacements.
  • Apple also stated that this antenna issue was common to all manufacturers. Industry giants responded to Apple accusations on Monday, saying they didn’t have any problem with their devices’ antennas – http://bit.ly/a74NYs
• End of Nexus One: We already talked about it last week but it’s now official: Google has decided to stop selling its Nexus One online in the U.S. It will however still be available in stores in Europe and in Asia. Nexus One was a success but Google’s online distribution strategy hastened the removal of the handset from the market -  http://bit.ly/aQ1oe4
• But Android is still going well:
  • According to Android applications catalogue Androlib, more than 1 billion applications have been downloaded since the launch of Android Market. That’s good, but still less than iPhone’s app store (2 billion last September) – http://bit.ly/cVYp8c
  • Google announced that Android market now has 70,000 apps available. In April, only 30,000 apps were available – http://bit.ly/8ZQuEM
  • Google claimed that that Android search traffic increased by 300% in the first semester of this year – http://bit.ly/devF6q
• Windows Mobile 7, not that cool: Galen Gruman from Mobilize had though words toward Windows Phone 7 last week, saying that it will certainly be a failure – http://bit.ly/d6e7oS
  • Bloomberg unveiled that Microsoft is giving away financial incentives to developers to build apps for Windows Mobile 7 – http://bit.ly/aCi8Ao
• Palm and the rest of the industry: Dan Frommer from Business Insider unveiled that before HP won the deal, Apple and Google were interested in buying Palm. And RIM completely ruined the deal – http://bit.ly/bCz4SB
• iPhone and Android users brought together: the popular iPhone gaming app Skies of Glory is now available on Android devices. Android users can now play with or against iPhone users. Let’s rejoice! – http://bit.ly/aKwpv7
• VoIP on phone: O2 Germany announced that they are enabling VoIP calls on their network, thanks to Telefonica’s service Jajah, that they bought a few months ago – http://bit.ly/98ZPoW
• Social networks on phones: NewBay’s LifeCache Social Networking Gateway will provide LG Android devices’ users with real mobile social networking and social address book experiences – http://bit.ly/bZrAyv

Mobile statistics and reports

• Symbian has the best click-through ads rate in the U.S.: Smaato’s latest mobile ad metrics report shows that Android users click-through ads more often than iPhone users. But the real news is that Symbian has the best click-through ads rate in spite of really small U.S. market shares  – http://bit.ly/cvE3CH

• Mobile Video: ABI Research says that mobile video services’ revenues should hit $2 billion by 2013 helped by the 3G democratisation and the launch of the 4G. Revenues should reach $121 million this year – http://bit.ly/amy3im
• Mobile Commerce: Forrester’s analyst Thomas Husson worked on The State of mobile commerce in Europe report and concluded that:
  • “Buying products from a mobile phone hasn’t taken off, as a mere 2% of respondents reported purchasing products from their mobile phone and only 5% are actually interested in doing so.
  • Only 16% of online buyers have used their mobile phone for a shopping-related activity such as researching products, checking on the status of an order, or locating a nearby store to buy a specific product.
  • Italian, Swedish, and UK online buyers have warmed up the most to mobile commerce”
• Mobile technologies’ role in changing the world: Gregory Ferenstein published a really interesting article on Mashable about how Mobile technologies are impacting on African countries’ development, especially on the three following topics: health, instant education and agricultural education and equality. A must read! – http://bit.ly/95msg3

For more news and insights about mobile industry, join the conversation on Twitter or on Facebook!

Get all the latest mobile industry related information with ON’s weekly mobile mash-up #7!

Mobile Industry News

• ON at TED: TED Global 2010 has kicked off this week in Oxford, UK. Yesterday, our very own Giles Corbett – head of ON – gave a speech to present the concept behind ON. Have a look to all people who mentioned us on Twitter in this article.
• Android – buzz world of the week:
  • Android by everyone: Google has just launched Google App Inventor, a tool that let anyone – even without developer’s skills – build an Android app for Android OS – http://bit.ly/c7CRjB
  • Android is a gold mine for HTC: HTC Q2 revenue grew by 32.8% reaching $1.88 billion. And according to CitiGroup, it should even get better this quarter! – http://bit.ly/ajRkCx
  • Mobile Network Operators and Android: After T-Mobile and Vodafone, Orange UK is about to launch its own Android handset. It should be named Boston and appears to be based on a HTC handset – http://bit.ly/co5Xlm
• KIN RIP: After Microsoft’s announcement of giving-up the KIN, fans started blaming Microsoft’s decision on the  KIN’s Fan Page and created an online memorial for the KIN – called KIN RIP
  • Steve Ballmer admitted during Microsoft’s World Partner Conference that on the phone side, the company “missed a generation with Windows Mobile”. Good of him to admit it – http://bit.ly/aLyVg6
• Backup your BlackBerry data: RIM will launch a back-up service in Autumn, enabling BlackBerry’s users to protect and restore data if their device crashes or get stolen. The product is in private beta at the moment – http://bit.ly/appt0D
• Augmented reality: AR application provider Layar announced yesterday that they’ve just reached the 1,000^th published  layer  (application) – http://bit.ly/9CPlT4
• iPad’s sales forecast: Analysts say that Apple could sell 25 million iPads in 2011 – http://bit.ly/bKqsvd

Mobile statistics and reports

• Mobile content usage: the two surveys
  • 76% of mobile users take pictures with their phones, 34% send/receive emails and 33% play music according to a Pew Internet survey – http://bit.ly/9ZtTXH
  • comScore MobiLens’ report said that 65% of U.S. mobile users are sending SMS with their phones, 32% are browsing the mobile web, 30% are using downloaded apps, and 22.5% play games – http://bit.ly/9qutJ6
• Mobile Data
  • Huge: Global mobile connections now surpass 5 billion milestones according to Wireless Intelligence – http://bit.ly/dubAEh
  • According to Pew Internet’s May study Blacks and Hispanics are more willing to use mobile data – http://bit.ly/daDTnd
  • A recent piece of research by Berg Insight reported that in Europe, mobile connections account for 17% of all data connections – http://bit.ly/cJV1tK
• Mobile commerce and mobile shopping
  • InsightExpress’s June 2010 Digital Consumer Portrait study concludes that the typical mobile shopper is not the typical shopper as most of them are males: four out of five people say they are using their mobile phone while shopping – http://bit.ly/91h6N6
  • Brandbank’s Mcommerce Content report said that m-commerce is not that popular and effective in the UK: only 4% of UK consumers claim they find making purchases via their mobile device easy, while just 12% say they don’t find anything irritating about their m-browsing experience – http://bit.ly/bTShVM
• Mobile Advertising: BuzzCity showed a 61% growth of mobile ads displayed in the second quarter of 2010 compared to the first one – http://bit.ly/cYJcaS
• Manufacturers ranking in the US:
  • comScore’s MobiLens’s May report found that Samsung is the top feature phone manufacturer in the U.S. with 22.4% of the market share, followed by LG and Motorola (21.5% and 21.2%). Nokia’s is the 5^th with only 8.1% of the shares.
  • For smartphones, RIM is first (41.7%) followed by Microsoft (24.4%), Apple’s iPhone (13.2%) and Google’s Android (13%, the only one growing) – http://bit.ly/9qutJ6
• The ON team spotted this really interesting infographic about “How are mobile phones changing social media”, made by Mark Donovan, VP of Mobile at comScore Continue reading >>

The hottest news and links of the industry selected by the ON team

Mobile Industry News

• Microsoft gives up the KIN:
  • A few weeks after a heavily-publicised launch, Microsoft has suddenly decided to pull the plug on its social network focused phone; the KIN.
    Rumours are that only 500 devices were sold in the US. The phone was due to become available in Europe in the next few weeks however that will now not be happening.
    Analysts say that this failure was due to the expensive contracts that came with the phone: $70 per month is a bit steep for KIN’s teenage target market – http://bit.ly/9Qb5EV
  • KIN’s key advantage was its ‘over the air’ social network synchronisation (as pointed out in this Engadget article: http://bit.ly/cWAZw8). KIN’s user interface is somewhat similar to ON, in that it enables you to have all your social networks and updates in one place.
• Do not expect a Google Nexus 2: Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt announced that there wouldn’t be a Nexus Two. He doesn’t consider Nexus One to have been a failure, but now that Android has been widely adopted, there’s no point in launching a new Google phone – http://bit.ly/aNaF01
• But here’s what you can expect from Android 3: Rumours have come out about Android 3.0 Gingerbread – due to be launched around Christmas. See the new features (not yet confirmed by Google) here: http://bit.ly/9OrJLa
• iPhone4’s antenna problem: Apple published a letter to its customers to explain and apologise about the much discussed antenna problems. According to the company it’s down to a software problem and the way they’ve been measuring reception – http://bit.ly/cY3eT3.
  This explanation understandably left some bloggers sceptical.
• Good news for European globetrotters: the European Commission wants to delete international data roaming costs in Europe. But you’ll probably have to wait a few years for that – http://bit.ly/9qPOc6
• More bad news for Nokia: Ricky Cadden – well known under his blogger name Symbian Guru – decided to shut down his Symbian blog, saying that he didn’t understand Nokia and Symbian’s strategies anymore and that Android seemed much better to him – http://bit.ly/9c4w2s
  • Nokia announced yesterday that they’re selling their wireless modem operations to the Japanese company Renesas Electronics for $200 million. They said they want to focus on mobiles and services - http://bit.ly/bxYfPG
• HP and Palm as one: Announced in April, HP’s acquisition of Palm is now complete – http://bit.ly/byUwZ7

Mobile statistics and reports

• Number of mobiles in the world:
  • The global mobile penetration rate will reach 73% during 2010’s second quarter, says a study by The Mobile World –  http://bit.ly/bVrGjJ
    In comparison, the Internet penetration rate will only reach 26% (that’s data from the end of 2009)
  • According to Frost & Sullivan’s The Race of Smartphones, What Next? study, 442.9 million smartphones will be in use by 2014. At the end of 2008, 147.8 million smartphones were shipped in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America – http://bit.ly/cPRGuz
• Number of Froyo users: Google published the latest Android’s version breakdown graph, and Android Froyo appeared to already have 1.8% of the share, just a few weeks after its release – http://bit.ly/bVO86S
• Mobile in France:
  • GfK Retail and Technology France published a report about phones in France: 3,6 million smartphones were sold in 2009, that’s to say one phone out of four sold in France – http://bit.ly/ahQVKp
  • A French study revealed that 41% of French people are not happy with their 3G connection, judging it too slow and not reliable - http://bit.ly/csNSiL
• Apps’ price: A Distimo study showed that 57% of Android apps are free, compared to 28% of iPhone and 26% of BlackBerry apps – http://bit.ly/9Mo7Ru

• Text messaging statistics: DeeHust shared some interesting statistics about text messages: 97% of all SMS are read; 83 % within the hour after they’ve been sent but more commonly within 4 minutes – http://bit.ly/cZYlhI
• Data on growth: US smartphone data usage grew by 230% in Q2 compared to Q1 2009 says Nielsen. It reached 298MB a month, and half of it comes from 6% of users – http://bit.ly/9Fomu3
• iPhone and Android account for (only) 42% of AdMob’s ad requests – http://bit.ly/bKOdZj

For more news and insights about mobile industry, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook!