Vodafone UK and Warner Launch New Madonna Mobile Content

Vodafone and Warner Music International have completed an agreement allowing new music and mobile content from Madonna’s highly anticipated new “Hard Candy” album to be distributed and promoted exclusively to Vodafone customers around the world, prior to the April 28th global release of Madonna’s 11th studio album for Warner Bros. Records.

Starting on April 21st, a total of seven tracks from “Hard Candy”, with songs by the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and video visionary, will be released at a rate of one a day counting down the week before the album is available. Each track will remain live for 24 hours for download before being replaced by the next one.

In addition, Vodafone customers in selected markets including Spain, Portugal, Germany and Belgium will get exclusive mobile access to the newly released single “4 Minutes”, effective immediately.

As part of this unique music experience, Vodafone customers in all participating territories will have access to Madonna’s mini site on Vodafone live! which will include one week of exclusive, associated mobile content, including ringtones, ringback tones and SMS tones.

“As the number one digital music service provider in the mobile telecommunications industry in Europe, Vodafone has revolutionised the way people experience music on their mobiles and the collaboration with Warner Music builds on this heritage,” said Frank Rovekamp, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Vodafone Group. “Through our unique insight into what our customers want and how they prefer to listen to music this is yet another example of delivering superior music experience to customers.”

John Reid, Vice Chairman WMI and President, Warner Music Europe, said, “We are delighted to be able to debut such a rich menu of content from ‘Hard Candy’ through Vodafone live! This is an innovative way to reach millions of Madonna fans around the world, building anticipation and excitement around this landmark release and helping to create a real event for Vodafone customers.”

Vodafone is the number one digital music service provider in the mobile telecommunications industry in Europe and number two digital music service provider overall in Europe. Leading the mobile music industry the company uses music to build the Vodafone brand and awareness of products and services across its 250 million+ customer base globally.

Madonna, the multi-Grammy-award-winning singer, songwriter, producer, cultural icon, world renowned stage performer, video visionary, children's book author, director and documentary film maker has sold over 200 million albums in the course of her unprecedented two decade plus career and has just been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

source : http://www.3g.co.uk/

Nokia N82 in Black

As a matter of principle, we very rarely carry stories about handsets being launched in a different colour from the original. A new coat of paint does not make a new phone, but in the case of the Nokia N82 in Black (or "Nokia N82 in black" as Nokia like to call it in lowercase) there's a little more to this variant than just a different colour.

Most features are identical to the original Nokia N82, but the Black version now supports geotagging, a feature that was all the rage at last month's big Mobile World Congress event. Put simply, this version of the N82 will record the GPS position of your photograph, so its exact location is recorded. This is useful for sorting photos, but certain filesharing sites can also read the GPS location data for easy identification.

Although it's a fairly normal looking phone, the Nokia N82 comes with A-GPS (assisted GPS), a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, WiFi, HSDPA high-speed data, 3G UMTS / WCDMA, a stereo FM radio and microSD expandable memory. This is basically the same package as on the original N82 - so it's a pretty formidable handset underneath.

In addition, the black N82 comes with a free trial of Nokia's navigation package, support for N-Gage gaming and on top of that, this is a Symbian S60 smartphone - so users can add more applications later.

This is really just a software upgrade of the original platform, so presumably owners of the original silver N82 will be able to upgrade their handsets to support geotagging. It would be nice if this was enable for N95, N95 8GB and E90 customers too.

source : http://www.mobilegazette.com/

Google sees surge in Web use on hot mobile phones

Google Inc has seen an acceleration of Internet activity among mobile phone users in recent months since the company has introduced faster Web services on selected phone models, fueling confidence the mobile Internet era is at hand, the company said on Tuesday.

Early evidence showing sharp increases in Internet usage on phones, not just computers, has emerged from services Google has begun offering in recent months on Blackberry e-mail phones, Nokia devices for multimedia picture and video creators and business professionals and the Apple iPhone, the world's top Web search company said.

"We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage," Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. "We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.

The growing availability of flat-rate data plans from phone carriers instead of per-minute charges that previously discouraged Internet use, along with improved Web browsers on mobile phones as well as better-designed services from companies like Google are fueling the growth, Waddell argued.

Google made the pronouncement as it introduced a new software download for mobile phones running Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile software that conveniently positions a Google Web search window on the home screen of such phones.

Similar versions of the search software which Google introduced for Blackberry users in December and certain Nokia phones in February have sped up the time users take to perform Web searches by 40 percent and, in turn, driven usage.

The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform Web searches on Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a Web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access, and getting to Google.com. By making a Google search box more convenient, mobile phone users have begun using the Internet more, the company said.

"We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people," Waddell said.

Google's mobile plug-in software lets users customize their phones to feature Google mobile services instead of relying solely on software features network carriers have pre-installed on the devices.

"Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow," Waddell said. "Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage."

Microsoft expects to have sold 20 million Windows Mobile devices by the end of its fiscal year in June, which together with Blackberry and Symbian-based phones represent upward of 85 percent of the Internet-ready smartphones sold in the world.

Users of phones based on software from Research in Motion, Nokia's Symbian-based phones and now Microsoft Windows Mobile can download the software at mobile.google.com/.

Google officials said in August that they had seen a similar surge in usage of Google.com via mobile devices following the launch of the Apple iPhone last year. The iPhone offers a full-featured Internet browser unlike many phones.

Waddell said Google had seen iPhone users perform as many as 50 times more Web searches on these computer-phone devices as users of standard mobile feature phones typically do.

source : http://www.reuters.com/

Text warning to mobile phone companies

Europe’s top telecoms official has warned mobile telephone companies she is ready to cut prices customers pay to send text messages while abroad, unless the industry lowers fees swiftly.

Viviane Reding, who last year forced operators to slash “roaming” call charges, said: “I have full confidence that the industry this time will manage to solve the problem. In the meantime, I’m preparing a regulation, so if the industry will not be ready, I will be ready ... to bring down prices.”

Her warning is the latest salvo in her battle to cut the cost of cross-border mobile phone use in the European Union.

The EU telecoms commissioner last month enraged many operators by calling for the industry to cut charges for sending text messages and accessing the internet while in another European country.

The industry claims regulation, especially of retail prices, is inappropriate for a competitive, fast-evolving market. Operators including Vodafone, Telefonica, KPN and 3, however, have cut prices.

Mrs Reding told the FT on Tuesday her deadline for industry action was July 1. “Some [operators] are moving in the right direction. Others make announcements and promises. Some have done very concrete things. I will see how the industry goes, not only in promises, but in facts.”

The pro-consumer commissioner says that the prices should not be substantially more expensive than domestic charges, arguing that “this is the logic of the borderless, single market”.

She seeks a retail limit of of €0.12 (9p, $0.18) on cross-border text messages, against an average price of €0.29 now, and wants wholesale charges for data downloading to fall to €0.35 per megabyte.

Mrs Reding, who releases an annual health report on the EU’s €300bn-a-year electronic communications market on Wednesday, is on a collision course with the industry over lucrative connection charges.

She plans legislative action to lower “mobile termination rates” – wholesale fees that companies can charge other operators for connecting calls to their networks. In the UK, the fees represent 15 per cent of mobile operators’ revenues

Wednesday’s report will show MTRs fell last year but vary widely across the EU. The lowest charge was €0.019 a minute, in Cyprus, while the highest was €0.224 a minute in Estonia. Mrs Reding argues that the charges can act as industry subsidies and wants prices to fall to between €0.01 and €0.015 a minute in the long term.

She says the true cost of the service is €0.01. “We need a level playing field. Big differences lead to market distortions.”

source : http://www.ft.com/

Sony Ericsson sees moderating growth of mobile phone units with related effects on sales and profit in the first quarter 2008

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB ("Sony Ericsson") today announces that moderating sales growth of mobile phone units is expected to negatively impact net sales and net income before tax ("NIBT") for the first quarter of 2008. Slowing market growth of mid-to-high end phones in markets where Sony Ericsson has a strong presence is affecting sales. In addition, certain component shortages for popular mid-priced phones have contributed to modest unit sales growth in the first quarter.

"As discussed during our fourth quarter 2007 Media and Analyst Call, the market is proving to be challenging. This has been more pronounced in the mid-to-high end replacement sector of the market in Europe, where Sony Ericsson has stronger than average market share," says Dick Komiyama, President of Sony Ericsson. "For the last year, Sony Ericsson has been focused on expanding the breadth of its portfolio and developing its presence in new markets to lessen its historic reliance on the European high-end sector for growth. This strategy will continue, and our objective remains to become a top three player globally by 2011. As part of this strategy, we have announced fifteen new phones and introduced a new platform to the portfolio, Windows Mobile®, this year. We expect to start seeing a positive effect from these announcements during the second half of 2008."

Although final results may differ, Sony Ericsson now plans to ship approximately 22 million phones during the first quarter of 2008 with an estimated ASP (Average Selling Price) of EUR 120. This is expected to generate net sales lower than the first quarter of 2007, and NIBT is estimated to be in the range of EUR 150 - 200 million due to increased R&D expenses as a percentage of sales. The increased investments in R&D are in line with the company's strategy to meet future growth ambitions. In addition, Sony Ericsson currently expects gross margin to remain relatively stable for the first quarter of 2008 compared with the first quarter of 2007. Sony Ericsson plans to announce first quarter 2008 results on April 23rd.

Microsoft, Windows, PowerPoint, Windows Media, Windows Mobile, Office, ActiveSync and Internet Explorer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications was established as a 50:50 joint venture by Sony and Ericsson in October 2001, with global corporate functions located in London. The company serves the worldwide communications market with innovative and feature-rich mobile phones, accessories and PC-cards, and it has R&D sites in Europe, Japan, China, India and America. Sony Ericsson is the title sponsor of the Women's Tennis Association, and works with the Association to promote the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in over 80 cities during the year.

source : http://money.cnn.com/

Sony Ericsson W890i Review

Sony Ericsson W890i

Look and feel
While light to hold, the W890i despite its svelte appearance feels as though it could withstand the odd knock, thanks in part to its metal casing. Available in three different colours, this is a handset to be proud of.

Features
The most powerful handset to date from Sony Ericsson's Walkman range, the W890i packs in HSDPA internet capabilities, a 3.15-megapixel camera, Google Maps, RSS feeds and a bundled in 2GB memory card.

Ease of use
The large screen means menu icons are clearly displayed, while the numeric keys, despite being a tad fiddly, are long enough that you should be able to differentiate between them.

Performance
The 3.6Mbps HSDPA, makes surfing the web and downloads an electric experience, while the improved 3.15-megapixel camera is another standout improvement. As the fulcrum of the device, thankfully the built-in walkman player doesn't disappoint.
Battery life

An incredible 570 minutes of talktime and 360 hours standby time, means the Sony Ericsson W890i packs a ton of juice in its slim body.

source : http://www.mobilechoiceuk.com/

The world’s most expensive iPhone

Austrian luxury designer and jeweler Peter Aloisson has something more to add to his kitty – ladies and gentlemen, presenting to you the Aloisson designed iPhone – the world’s most expensive iPhone. The phone derives its name from the Princess cut used on 138 of the 318 diamonds on its surface. The rest of the 180 diamonds on the phone are brilliant cut and it has 17.75 carats of diamonds set in 18k white gold around its rim. All diamonds used are of the best quality.

This iPhone Princess Plus has a price tag of €120,000 ($176,400 USD) its first customer is a Russian businessman who had pre-ordered it way back in October 2007 for January 2008 delivery. And if you can’t afford this, the poorer lot can buy the iPhone set only with brilliant-cut diamonds. This can be purchased for the more “modest sum” of €45,000 ($66,150 USD).

source : http://www.feelphones.com/