Weekly Mobile Mash-up #6

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

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