Weekly Mobile Mash-up #8

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

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