sorted by: recent | see :
popular
Content Tagged nok
2008, the Year the Mobile Market Gets Touch-y
Of all the technology subsectors out there right now, the one with the most promise is the mobile platform. This is true for many reasons, notably that:
- Your mobile phone is always on your person, making it a lucrative market for advertisers.
- Most cell-phone consumers are still carrying “dumb” phones but are starting to look at smartphones. This is especially true as the BlackBerry Pearl and $100 Palm Centro are making smartphones more accessible, price-wise.
- Here in the U.S., high-speed mobile broadband networks are becoming more pervasive.
- Web sites are increasingly being offered in impressive mobile versions.
One major barrier to adoption with smartphones is the clunky interface these devices offer. Small screens combined with cramped keyboards, inadequate mobile software, and awkward pointing devices make email writing, web browsing and other common tasks difficult.At this year’s Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile phone gathering, it was clear the major handset makers were well aware of the issues facing mobile phone users. The buzz from the conference centered on Nokia, Samsung and Sony trying to capture the user interface spirit of Apple’s iPhone. For example, most modern cell phones come with a camera phone, MMS features and the Java framework that allows for the use of a mobile platform. However, interaction with these advanced features is hindered by the complex user interfaces found on the phones.
Clearly a development was needed to engage customers.In June 2007, Apple showed the world how user-friendly and useful the touch interface could be. Now that the mobile handset market has had some time to react, two options are coming our way that are sure to heat up the market.Google’s Android platform will feature a touch capability. Imagine being able to zoom and move around with Google’s Street View or having access to your Google Talk contacts with the flick of a finger. For an interactive presentation, check out Android’s Andy Rubbin showcasing the device’s user experience:
Amazingly, the Android demo is running on a device that has a 300 Mhz processor — half of what the iPhone currently uses. With this type of efficient horsepower, it will be simply shocking to see the types of applications mobile developers can bring to the mobile userbase when Android hits the streets.
Mobile powerhouse Nokia isn’t sitting idle either, as the Symbian Touch UI will soon be making its way onto the Finnish handset maker’s devices. Unveiled at Mobile World Congress, the soon-to-be released mobile opeating system holds a high degree of promise. Like Android, Symbian’s touch UI will be open source. This should continue Symbian’s fantastic array of third-party application support.
Smartphone adoption in the U.S. has been hindered, especially when compared to Europe. Perhaps there is a cultural difference in that Americans seem to want to pull a phone out of the box and just start using the features. Europeans, on the other hand, seem more apt to read the manual and actually figure out complex features. Additionally, 3G GSM networks were available in a more timely fashion in European countries.
The Touch UI, with its speed, elegance and simplicity, might turn out to be just what the U.S. cell carriers have been hoping for, the catalyst that finally kickstarts the adoption of smartphones stateside — and cinches 2008 as the year the touch interface revolutionizes the mobile market.
Nokia Has Doubts About UMA
Nokia is uncertain about the future of UMA and may not develop any more dual-band handsets for the standard, according to George Fry, director of technology alignment for the Finnish company. “We’re not seeing use diminishing, but we are seeing deployments level off,” Fry said earlier this week at the Personal Computing and Communications Association meeting.
Fry said that in cases in which an operator such as T-Mobile is trying to fill holes in its coverage without spending more to build out the network, UMA makes sense. But he said he wasn’t aware of any new deployments in the last six months or so. Indeed UMA, a standard that allows for secure hand-off between a cellular and fixed network, has proved somewhat polarizing.
Meanwhile Steve Shaw, associate VP of marketing for Kineto Wireless, notes that UMA is also a key component of femtocells, which are currently en vogue in the telco world. Again, there’s no sense of how wide any sort of femtocell deployment might be, but Shaw, whose company bills itself as the UMA company, isn’t counting the standard out.
While admitting that current UMA deployments requiring dual-mode handsets are few, he points out that Orange does have plans to deploy a dual-band network in the UK, Spain and Poland to augment its program started in France. Maybe UMA will become a useful but limited standard, in a manner similar to the way Infiniband was hyped as a replacement for Fibre Channel and Ethernet, but instead was only adopted by the smaller market for high-performance computing.
Feb. 12, 2008; BlackBerry’s Jam and Android Angst
- Bloomberg: Yahoo Defense May Fail to Repel Hostile Microsoft Bid
- Apple Web site: Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update
- Reuters: Nokia Adds Google Search to Handsets
- Broadband Reports: Competition Still Not Lowering TV Prices
- Reuters: RIM May Offer Touchscreen BlackBerry
- NYTimes: Wide BlackBerry Outage Reported
- Forbes: A Challenger For Google’s Android
Are You Ready for Location-Based Advertising?
Google’s preeminence in Silicon Valley is largely due to its ability to offer advertisers a way to hawk their messages against contextually relevant keywords. The plain-text advertising messages, which aim to peddle everything from broadband connections to litigation services, have worked well enough to make Larry and Sergey mega-billionaires (the current nosebleed-inducing decline not withstanding) of the rarest kind.
If in the first eight years of the 21st century contextual text advertising has proven to be the magic potion, then it is safe to say that the next decade or so is going to be about location-relevant advertising and marketing messages. LBA (location-based advertising) has been talked about in hushed tones for so long that it’s hard not to roll one’s eyes. I have been skeptical for a while, but more recently my opinion has started to change.
Why? Because the mobile phones of today are getting increasingly sophisticated, and are coming to market fitted with geopositioning systems. Every single chip maker catering to the mobile market is rushing to add location-based functionality into their chipsets; it’s something I’ve written about on many occasions.
Sales of mobile devices with integrated GPS are forecast to grow to 720 million units in 2011 from 180 million units in 2007, according to research firm In-Stat. Even if those numbers are just 50 percent accurate, it’s clear that location-based advertising is becoming quite real.
While quite a few companies have started to dabble in this arena, it’s still not clear who is going to be the champion here. Google, for example, is pushing its mobile agenda via Android and deals with phone companies; Yahoo appears to have a coherent strategy (if not execution) as well (for once). And then there are the startups.
One of them, Loopt, has made its plans obvious by partnering with CBS Mobile. The two have embarked on what seems to be an interesting experiment in location-based advertising, according to the New York Times. The reason I call it an experiment is because Loopt is available on Sprint (and its affiliate carriers) and there is a limited number of handsets out in the market that are Loopt-capable. Consumers are likely to see a handful of location-relevant ads pop up on their screens, the Times explains.
However, the bigger story however went unnoticed yesterday. NAVTEQ, the Chicago-based digital map provider that’s in the process of being acquired by Nokia (NOK), has made an equity investment in Greenbelt, Md.-based startup Acuity Mobile, which specializes in mobile location-based advertising delivery. NAVTEQ, which licenses Acuity’s technologies, is pretty high on LBA.
Using Acuity’s EMAP technology, NAVTEQ will enable clients to target consumers with real-time and geographic precision. In turn, consumers will have advertising move with them, as their mobile mapping applications unobtrusively present ads, offers, coupons, or other promotions, based on their opted-in preferences. The ads might feature audio, rich graphics, or calls to action such as routing to the closest advertiser storefront.
With NAVTEQ likely to become part of Nokia, LBA could become part of millions of Nokia phones that ship every year. In other words, Nokia could become a big player in the LBA business going forward.
After all, no marketing message is more effective than subliminal location-based relevance. It’s like going to the movies and realizing that you need to eat candy and popcorn, even though normally you never touch the stuff. In my case, given my weakness for shirts, a coupon offering a 10 percent discount on Thomas Pink shirts while walking around Union Square in San Francisco is pretty likely to result in a sale.
Serving the Multicomputer Household
In 2001, just 1.8 percent of households had an Internet-attached handheld device, according to a report issued that year by the NTIA. By the time Ipsos conducted its 2005 Face of the Web survey, 26 percent of Americans had surfed the web on a wireless device. Fast-forward to 2007, when it could be done using both the Sony PSP and Nintendo Wii, along with a host of other gadgets. And the introduction of ultramobile PCs means even more Internet-capable machines per person. We’ve come a long way from the days of shared computing.
Our multiple-machine home life has snuck up on us. And it’s a consumer trend that has spawned many new products, and highly publicized launches, at this year’s CES.
Belkin, which got its start in cabling, introduced a keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) switcher aimed at the small office/home office market. Traditionally the domain of data centers and enterprise IT, KVMs may now have a place in the home. With computer prices falling, high-end displays, keyboards and mice are an increasingly large part of a computer’s price tag. KVMs let people use a single set of interfaces across multiple physical computers, so they’re really about amortizing the cost of expensive interfaces across many machines.
Rather than using plugged-in KVM switches, however, many vendors expect consumers to stream media to a big-screen TV or home stereo system. Deloitte’s 2008 State of the Media Democracy survey shows that 58 percent of respondents want to share Internet and personal PC content with their home TV. Logitech, Cisco, D-Link and others have all launched or invested in this approach.
The rapid adoption of notebooks as the preferred home machine may also shorten the lifespan of KVMs; after all, home users are increasingly buying notebooks, and those notebooks come with their own keyboard, video and mouse.
While notebook computers were once the domain of coast-to-coast road warriors, today they’re as likely to be bought for residential use. In November 2006, the notebook hit a tipping point: Of the consumers Belkin surveyed, more said they never took their notebook out of their house than said they did. Belkin’s Jamie Elgie calls these buyers, who want to compute on the couch and view recipes in the kitchen, “zen home” users. Unexpectedly, however, Belkin’s studies also showed that rather than replacing a home desktop with a notebook upgrade, roughly 60 percent of consumers were keeping their old machines and using them as servers.
Microsoft is hoping to capitalize on this trend with the introduction of the Windows Home Server. Based on Windows Server 2003, the new product offers a greatly simplified version of server administration. It allows a relatively non-technical user to manage storage, permissions and backups, and works with up to 10 Windows machines.
Will the home server catch on? In enterprises, servers are a fact of life. They perform centralized processing and run large-scale applications, as well as handling messaging, backups and so on. But for most homes, a server handles two main functions: file storage and peripheral sharing. Both of these functions have compelling alternatives for consumers that mean servers aren’t as necessary. And notably:
- File storage is built into most popular operating systems, and in-the-cloud storage services aimed at consumers, such as box.net and xdrive, are springing up all over the Net.
- With the cost of built-in networking so low, peripherals like printers and scanners connect directly to the network, so the value of a server to share printers is diminished substantially.
It’s also unclear whether consumers will pay a Windows license for storage and peripheral services that can easily be powered by a free, open-source operating system.
Another enterprise trend that may find its way home, with a twist, is the virtual machine (VM). Companies like VMWare and Citrix Xen make software that lets one computer look like many — or many computers look like one. In the enterprise environment, where processing and applications run on servers, VMs are a great way to scale capacity and quickly provision new machines.
In the home, where content is what matters, a full-blown VM may be too much. Instead, consumers may adopt solutions that merge the media from all of their machines and distribute it within their homes or across the Internet. We’re already seeing the start of this trend, with companies like Avvenu (which Nokia recently agreed to acquire) and SoonR (which just closed an investment round led by Cisco) putting software on home machines that makes content available elsewhere.
There is still a great deal of uncertainty about how consumers will deal with the profusion of computers, and the content they contain. One thing is certain: There are lots of home computing bets being made in Vegas this year.
(Full disclosure: Alistair Croll has a consulting relationship with WeBot, a distributed media platform, which makes remote media access tools for consumers.)
India Finally Has a 3G Plan; WiMAX in the Mix, Too
After a long wait, the Indian government has decided that it will auction 3G spectrum, and will allow foreign players to participate in the bidding. The spectrum is going to be released in the 2100 MHz band, which would make it compatible with rest of the world, barring a few countries such as the U.S.
Here are some specifics:
- Winners will be required to pay 0.5 percent of total adjusted gross revenue to the state on an annual basis for the first three years of operation, rising to 1 percent thereafter.
- Winners will not be allowed to trade or resell the spectrum and they will not be allowed to merge in the first five years after the grant.
- About 30MHz of spectrum will be sold in total.
- India will also auction licenses for broadband wireless (WiMAX) services, with the reserve price fixed at 25 percent of the amount for 3G spectrum.
The spectrum is going to be plentiful; our sources say that it will be enough to accommodate six carriers. The carriers we expect will make it to the finish line include the current leader, Bharti Airtel; Idea Telecom; Reliance and Vodafone (VOD). The two international cell phone companies likely to win the spectrum bid include AT&T (T) and Sistema.
If the rollout of voice services over past decade is any indication, this is a big opportunity for equipment makers. Ericsson (ERICY) and Nokia (NOK) have done well in India, and there is little reason why the situation would change, though one suspects the Chinese equipment vendors are going to act as deflationary counterweights to their Western counterparts.
The 3G services in India will eventually have to compete with WiMAX, which is being seen as the wireless broadband technology of choice by lawmakers. More importantly, this auction is a way for the Indian government to keep the telecom sector specifically and the economy overall growing at a healthy clip. India’s economy was catalyzed by telecom and call center businesses, then spread to other sectors.
Review: The Sweet Agony That Is Nokia N81
It has been nearly 65 days since I went without a phone set change, leading to snide remarks from my co-workers about my fidelity to Apple’s iPhone. Despite getting frustrated with iPhone’s email application (I carry a Blackberry to get some serenity) and poky Edge connections, I avoided the hassle of switching to another phone.
That was up until yesterday evening, when I came back home to find the new Nokia N81 8GB music phone, the cornerstone of the company’s big push into music-related services. Nokia (NOK) had sent me a review unit, and when I opened the elegantly packaged box, I knew I had to try it out. It is a handsome device — very sleek and elegant — thanks to its brushed metal-black lacquer finish, rounded edges and crisp screen.
And even before it was fully powered up, I was betting this device was going to exceed my expectations. Did it?
Nokia N81, which is going to set you back about $550, is a slider phone with ample storage capacity to let you play back music for a long, long time. The keypad, which slides out smoothly, has recessed keys and still is good enough for blind dialing — that is, dialing without looking at the phone.
Being a music phone, all the music-playback functionality is built into the top half, so you don’t have slide out the keypad to control the phone. It is a quad band GSM phone that comes with a 2-megapixel camera, which can also be controlled without sliding out the keypad.
The keys on this phone are too crammed together, but I can understand that engineering a complex multifunction device isn’t easy. Still, the dial and stop buttons are pushed to the side and are tough to use. The navigation pad that dominates the faceplate is good way to navigate through many functions on the phone, and I appreciate the special music-navigation key that was added by Nokia.
Nokia N81 easily connected to my home network, making it ready for Voice-over-WiFi calls via Truphone. A special download from the Nokia Europe web site made syncing the address book and calendar on my Mac a snap. The Nokia multimedia transfer utility (in beta for now) was simple enough to use and is a pretty decent music manager.
Plugging in a special USB cable (different connector compared to your typical cable) and attaching to my Macbook allowed me to easily transfer music purchased from Amazon Music Store and other MP3 files to the device. It took about four hours to fill it up, but I managed to get all my favorite tracks on the flash drive. I was all set to rock the casbah when reality set in.
The device behaved like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. Unless this is an especially buggy device, N81 has to be one of the worst Nokia phones I have ever used and would be loathe to recommend it to anyone.
It is underpowered and the Symbian S60 OS behaves like Windows ME. Remember that piece of junk? Well this is worse. It takes more than 10 seconds to open a text message. Switching between applications is akin to me running — out of breath. One has to constantly reboot the phone to even make phone calls.
Sure, the music playback quality was flawless and even at full volume didn’t distort a bit. The regular stereo-headset jack worked with all sorts of headphones — Bose, Nokia, Shure and Ultimate Ears. And the tunes were crystal clear.
However, getting the music app (or any app for that matter) to open was a torture test. It was frustrating enough for me to not even test any of the other features, such as the video camera or Lifeblog or NGage gaming.
In comparison to the Nokia N95, or even the older N71 and N73 phones, N81 is pokey, and a major disappointment. It is going to be packed up and shipped back, pronto. Nokia, which often delivers phones that I love, has flubbed this one.
Tellabs CEO Resignation Reflects the Sad State of the Telecom Industry
Earlier this morning, Krish Prabhu, chief executive officer of Naperville, Ill.-based telecom equipment maker Tellabs (TLAB), resigned from the job. The company announced his departure along with a decision to embark on a $600 million stock buyback program. The news is a sad reflection on the true state of the telecom industry: Carrier consolidation has left equipment makers with little or no leverage.
It was less than a month ago when I spoke with Prabhu. The conversation had veered towards the power of the carriers and how they were getting the most out of their kingmaker status. Prabhu was pretty candid during our chat; he made it clear that he felt the only way Tellabs could grow its revenue was by going after independents and international players.
The problem is that everyone is thinking along those lines. My sources in the telecom business say the sniping amongst the bigger players — Ericsson (ERICY), Nokia Siemens Networks (NOK) and Alcatel-Lucent (ALA) — is reaching new levels, and as a result, profits are being slowly sucked from the system. The deflationary presence of Chinese vendors such as Huawei and ZTE Corp. is only adding to the pressure on the entire equipment ecosystem.
Prabhu said mid-sized companies such as Tellabs were bearing the brunt of “carrier consolidation.” In other words, there is little or no room for error. Even though Tellabs is a tightly run ship, when one of its larger customers, such as Cingular nee AT&T Wireless (T), scales back on its equipment purchases, its greatest nightmare becomes a reality.
Cuban’s Theory & Internet Infrastructure Problems
The telecom industry as we know it is rotting from the inside, and the carriers will continue to put pressure on vendors in order to keep their businesses running. And the vendors will have to play ball — at least for now. But the rot is deep-seated, as reflected by Deutsche Telekom’s (DT) mounting line losses. How long can they mask it by laying off thousands of people , as BT did today? The virtuous spinning of wheels is one of the reasons why not many VCs are willing to wager on network telecom-related startups. They realize the futility of it all.
As for Prabhu, I suspect that when his time is up next March he will go back to either being a VC or just helping a startup. Of course, there is a job opening at Sprint Nextel (S).
Google Launches Mobile Phone Platform, Android: What it Means, What Experts Think
Updated post press conference, read My Take #2: Google (GOOG) has just announced its much talked about Google mobile phone platform, Android, and has announced a large list of partners who are working with the company. The company said it’s worked with T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm (QCOM), Motorola (MOT) and others on the development of Android through the Open Handset Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders.
Andy Rubin, who spearheaded the project, writes on the Google blog:
It’s important to recognize that the Open Handset Alliance and Android have the potential to be major changes from the status quo — one which will take patience and much investment by the various players before you’ll see the first benefits. But we feel the potential gains for mobile customers around the world are worth the effort.
The first handsets are likely to be available in the second half of 2008, the company said. Other partners in the alliance include Sprint Nextel (S), Telecom Italia, NTT DoCoMo, Broadcom (BRCM), and a slew of other technology companies.
What is Android? A fully integrated mobile “software stack” that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications. It will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week, the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.
Who is missing? Quite a few large carriers, including Vodafone (VOD), Orange, SK Telecom, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ). Nokia (NOK), Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are among the handset makers not part of this alliance.
My Take: This is one massive PR move, with nothing to show for it right now, and it seems like there are other unknown reasons (Facebook ad platform launch perhaps) for the motivation here. No phones till second half of 2008 — in our ADD culture that is a lifetime. The partners — with the exception of HTC and T-Mobile — are companies who are, in cricketing parlance, on the backfoot. Motorola, for instance is not exactly a bastion of handset excellence. Sprint — we know how well they are doing.
MyTake #2: Following the press call, I actually have more questions than answers. They completely dodged my question about how does it reconcile with other mobile linux efforts which are backed by none other than partners like Motorola. Andy Rubin replied that all the software is available for the developers in a week, which is non-answer if there is any. Funny - no phones till second half of 2008 and they want developers to shift their attention from iPhone, Symbian, other Mobile Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Even more convinced that this is a PR move. Not clear how this helps Google from a fiscal sense and its business implications for the company. Oh well, time to hound their press department.
What Others Say:
Chetan Sharma of Chetan Sharma Consulting: Google definitely assembled an impressive list of partners for this initiative. On a fundamental level, it still remains to be seen if this move is going to be transform the industry. Of course, everyone wants to be seen supporting openness, proof will be in the implementation and the business models that support this vision, otherwise this is just yet another initiative.
The initiative does help lower the cost of the handset due to cheap licenses for the stack and if this proves successful, some device manufacturers might give up their own efforts to minimize cost and focus more on hardware features that integrate well with Android. This is more an answer to Microsoft than to the carrier fragmentation Google has talked about. Is this going to be a successful Trojan horse strategy for Google remains to be seen.
Forrester Research wireless analyst Charles Golvin: The impact is broad across all players in the mobile environment, driving innovative developers to craft new applications that leverage both the mobile networks and the Internet, and helping to change the way consumers behave when on the go. Google is far from the only beneficiary, as competitors like Yahoo (YHOO) and even Microsoft (MSFT) stand to benefit should they embrace this approach; the impact will build slowly over time as initially the devices using this platform will form a very small percentage of the market.
The Google Phone: The Story So Far, Some Launch Details & What’s Next
The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on Google’s mobile phone efforts and how it is beginning to draw some interest from carriers, especially in the United States. Sprint (S) and Verizon (VZ) are in talks with Google (GOOG), according to the Journal, and an announcement by the company is expected sometime in November. Here is what I have been able to gather from my sources:
- An announcement will likely be made Nov. 13th or Nov. 18th.
- Handset makers will use a Google Mobile OS platform.
- Google Mobile OS uses a highly optimized Mobile Linux; developers will be able to use a Java Development Kit. Google is said to have developed a highly optimized Java running on top of the OS. (Read our previous post, Five Facts about Google Phone.)
- Most major handset makers, with the exception of Nokia (NOK), have devices with Google Mobile OS under development; Samsung and Motorola (MOT) are being linked to it as well. (as are HTC and LG Electronics, according to the Journal.)
- The operators who are likely to be part of the big announcement will be T-Mobile’s USA division and Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest cellular carriers.
The increased interest on the part of mobile carriers is summed up best by Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile International and CTO of Deutsche Telecom (DT). In a chat with Russell Reynolds Associates he said:
These companies have recognized that it is not an easy game to penetrate the wireless market without the help of the operators, which has led to collaborative relationships…The biggest challenge is to adapt our market perspective and business model to one based on partnerships, content and applications. Historically, wireless carriers had a relatively simple business model — end-to-end voice service — with correspondingly simple billing. That is no longer the case.
Carriers are grappling with this question, and this business model conflict is something that needs to be resolved quickly by Google. Akhavan points out…
When AT&T and Apple partner on the iPhone or T-Mobile partners with Google on mobile advertising, these new arrangements force the question: “Who pays whom and when?” Billing, payment and content management for broadcast, advertising, search and music all are significantly different. Carriers are having to develop new business models that are compatible with the changing business models of the other key players in the ecosystem. The business models have to be as interoperable as the technologies.
After talking extensively to the mobile industry insiders, I believe Google Mobile OS is going to become part of the new mobile ecosystem. More on that later tonight, once I get a chance to sit and write.
Related Posts:
- Who’s afraid of Apple and Google? Not Symbian
- Five Facts about Google Phone
- Forget iPhone, think Google Phone
Location, Location, Location: Deal Volume Proxy for Interest in Location-Based Services
Location-based services (LBS) are one of our favorite topics here at GigaOM. We have covered the business extensively, including the recent mega-billion-dollar acquisitions made by Nokia (NOK) and Tom Tom. In other deals, Google (GOOG) bought Jaiku and last week, Platial acquired Frappr. All of this activity indicates that “location” is becoming increasingly important in the mobile world.
Folks at the most excellent Maperture blog have put together a list of deals that encompass location-based and mapping services. We took their deal information and put it in a graph to show you, at a glance, just how important location really is.
CTIA 2007: How far behind is the U.S. vs. Europe?
This week, San Francisco will play host to the CTIA’s Wireless I.T. & Entertainment convention, an annual gathering of those intimately involved with the U.S. mobile industry — from tiny startups to corporate giants such as Verizon (VZ), Qualcomm (QCOM), Nokia (NOK) and AT&T (T).
Many will talk about their vision of the future, and at some point will undoubtedly lament over how far we lag behind Europe. With the help of analyst Chetan Sharma, I decided to pull together a small comparison chart that gives you a sense of what’s fact and what’s fiction.
I would like to point out that the above numbers are subscriptions and not the actual number of subscribers — often a point of contention. It’s also worth nothing that a lot of folks in Europe are pre-paid customers and that people have a habit of carrying more than one SIM card. Lastly, the comparison between the U.S. and Western Europe is going to get more interesting once we have complete information for 2007.
Update: As many of you have noted in comments, subscribers in Europe do not pay for incoming calls. However, the carriers do collect incoming calls revenue form other carriers through settlement procedure. The ARPU calculations include total revenue (subs + settlement) divided by subs. The US settlement regime is based on bill and keep (subs pays for both) and no carrier settlements for incoming calls. Hope this helps!
Nokia Buys Navteq For $8 Billion, Bets Big On Location-Based Services
Nokia (NOK), the Finnish mobile phone giant with nearly a third of the global handset market, has decided to bet big on location-based services (LBS), and is buying Chicago-based digital map company NAVTEQ (NVT) for $8.1 billion. That works out to about $78 a share. This is one of Nokia’s largest purchases to date — the Finnish mobile giant has a mixed track record when it comes to acquisitions.
This is also the second megabillion dollar buyout in the maps (LBS) space. Earlier this year, Dutch GPS device maker TomTom bought Tele Atlas for $2.8 billion.
Nokia is paying 32 times EBITDA while TomTom paid around 27 times EBITDA. Since the deal for Tele Atlas hasn’t closed, TomTom might have to pay a little more. The deal may have some negative ramifications for guys like Garmin, a NAVTEQ customer, but it is too early to say what Nokia’s strategy will be. Nokia had also released Nokia 330, a GPS-based navigation device targeting the European market, and so could find itself competing with Garmin.
One thing is clear: the company wants to diversify its reliance on the handset business and move into software and services, where its brand positioning can really help. (Related: Nokia goes web 2.0) NAVTEQ is Nokia’s second purchase in the LBS space; last year it acquired gate5, a small German startup, for an undisclosed amount. Nokia also has a deal with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Trimble.
“Location-based services are one of the cornerstones of Nokia’s Internet services strategy,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokai’s president and CEO. “By joining forces with NAVTEQ, we will be able to bring context and geographical information to a number of our Internet services with accelerated time to market.”
According to iSuppli, there will be 250 million GPS-enabled phones shipping per annum by 2010. According to some estimates, the number of mobile users accessing maps and related information on their mobile phones is going to grow to about 43 million in 2012 from 4 million in 2007.
Maps on Mobile is apparently something people want. In a recent chat, Google (GOOG) vice president Marissa Mayer told us that Google Maps usage soared after the introduction of the iPhone.
And VoIP Comes To IPhone
We wrote about the Skype for iPhone web service earlier this summer, and now two more VoIP startups are trying to bring their magic to the popular phone from Apple (AAPL).
Truphone, a UK-based maker of software that allows you to send and receive phone calls over Wi-Fi on Nokia (NOK) mobile phones, has started showing off an iPhone-version of its offering at the DEMOfall conference. (Watch the video to see how it works.)
Truphone is also giving a demo of its service on other devices, such as the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the new HP Smartphone and DASH. In other words, Truphone now works on a version of OS X, Mobile Linux and Windows Mobile, along with Symbian S60 platforms.
I spoke with Truphone CEO James Tagg earlier this morning, and he said that the software will be available for download later this year — perhaps by December. You need the third-party application installers to install the Truphone for the Phone application. I am going to meet with folks from Truphone next week in London and will try and get a copy of the software to muck around with.
Like Truphone, Israel’s Flat Planet Phone has come up with a rudimentary service for the iPhone called the iPhone PBX Manager. Moshe Maier, founder of Flat World Phone, emailed us and gave us the skinny on the service, which works via the browser and comes with five international landline numbers (though you can add up to 30). However, since I have not used the service, I cannot vouch for it.
The system identifies where the person is calling you from and sends the call to the relevant number. Folks can send you faxes and leave voice mail by following the menu commands they hear. Faxes are emailed to your email address. For outbound calls, the “PBX manager on the phone” uses a Jajah like-interface — enter the number you want to call and the PBX will connect up both of you. Jajah has also made its callback service available on the iPhone.