Mobiles

Too good to be true? Cited Fortune’s Techland blog, in connecting with Vodafone’s recent announcement that they would fully subsidize the Blackberry Storm, Gizmodo reported that Verizon might be considering similar low cost options to compete against the iPhone.

While some inside sources claimed Verizon may go as far as to make the phone free with a two-year contract, other anonymous blabbermouths from the Verizon camp shot that notion down.

Most analysts believe the Storm will be equally priced to the 8 GB iPhone at the very least, but its realistic to see it at a $99 or $150 price point. The goal is to move some serious units during the holiday season, but for that to happen, Verizon needs to actually release the Storm

Let’s wait and see.

[via Gizmodo]

Asia has become a continent of ideas - in term of mobile technology innovation. Now, your cell-phone can be your style advisors, too. You can ask them anytime and get their recommendations on the go immediately.

An application, developed for Japanese second largest operator KDDI au, can help you decide the best suites or haircut to be applied. Named as EZ My Styling, this application is really useful, especially for those fashion people who would like to see whether he/she will be fit in to new trend.

[via 3Gweek]

The only PHS operator in Japan, Willcom, announced four new phones recently, effectively available this November. (PHS is, essentially, a cordless telephone like DECT, with the capability to handover from one cell to another with narrow cell).

The first, Willcom 03, is the the sliding and touchscreen phone that enable user to chat live by drawing or writing on the screen. Designed by Sharp, the phone is currently available only in black color.

The second phone is Willcom LU (WS023T), designed by Toshiba, the first W-SIM card. The phone has  2.4 inch screen, 240 x 320 pixels display, 2 megapixels camera that can read QR codes. Available in 3 colors, white, black, and pink. The price is about US$ 455.

The third phone is WX330J. The waterproof phone has 2 inch screen, Infrared for communication, and Java support. The price tag is about US$ 386 and be available this November.

The last phone is Honey Bee 2 or WX331KC.  The phone has 3.1 megapixels camera, IrDA, latest version of Opera, 14 MB memory and 4 MB dedicated space for email. The price is US$ 300 and be available this early November. Designed by Kyocera, this phone is available in various colour like eye candy, includes pink, blue, green, and black.

[via 3Gweek]

SMS advertising is becoming more popular now, particularly among European culinary and fashion fans. comScore reports that European users preferred receiving SMS advertisements for consumer goods such as food, fashion, restaurants, travel and financial services.

The fastest-growing category of SMS advertising since August 2007 is food, at a rate of 53 percent, followed by clothing/fashion at 38 percent and restaurants at 37 percent.

Overall, slightly fewer Europeans report receiving an SMS ad, with a decline from 112 million in August 2007 to 110 million in August 2008.

[via Cellular-News]

Kabira Technologies, Inc. announced that the UK mobile service provider, Hutchison 3G UK Limited (3 UK), has integrated its messaging infrastructure using the Kabira Transaction PlatformTM (KTPTM) software.

Kabira’s scalable transaction software platform will enable 3 UK to manage increasing demand for its messaging services including MMS, SMS and email for UK customers.

The platform-based services layer can process over 4,000 transactions a second, and enables H3G UK to process messaging transactions simultaneously while at the same time performing real-time charging for each messaging transaction.

Kabira has installed its products at over 100 customers in 40 countries.

Major brands such as Alcatel, AT&T Corp., Bank of America, E*Trade Information Services, France Telecom, NTT Data/CAFIS, Orange Poland, Veraz, VISA and Comdata rely on Kabira high-performance transaction processing to support core real-time product and service offerings.

NBC Universal has launched of its new mobile portal in Japan.  The portal goes live recently to coincide with the theatrical run, in Japan, of the major blockbuster movie ‘Wanted’ starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman.

Customers of the three operators — NTT Docomo, KDDI-au and SoftBank Mobile — will be able to download a variety of mobile content, including themes, tones, decoration emails, made-for mobile comics, flash and casual games.

NBC Universal will distribute and market its content and services under the ‘Universal Mobile’ brand. The service will allow access to content from a number of NBC Universal film and TV properties.

It’s the time to optimize mobile technology to help local organizations to deliver high efficiency-cost service. Many local authority organisations are already discovering the benefits of replacing paper with electronic devices for managing repairs to housing stock. It means that they achieve significant savings, greater productivity and more cost-effective use of resources.

Welsh Unitary Authority Powys Council leads the way in delivering mobile technology to operatives for lower costs and improved efficiency. Powys is quickly moving beyond this single valuable application to implement a mobile solution in areas as diverse as civic building repairs and inspections, legionella testing and clinical waste management.

At the same time Powys is providing web portal-based access to the information in its databases to the managers of all its buildings, from schools to leisure centres. For the first time, managers have complete view of the services and maintenance delivered to their specific building.

The solution is driven by forms technology provided by mobile technology company 1st Touch, integrated with back-office job costing software from ROCC. Based in Southampton, Hants, the company has enabled dozens of field workforce-based organisations to painlessly embrace new mobile technologies.

The SMS Chat feature, we reported yesterday was indeed available but was pulled later due to some bugs. Google product manager Leo Dirac has posted the info on Gmail blog, stating that the add-on will be back to the Gmail Labs list in 2 weeks time.

Here is a description of what it does

you chat from your computer and reach your friends no matter where they are. Your friends who are away from their computers get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards. It was pretty cool for a few minutes last night when we were sitting around texting each other.

Skyfire announced today that they are expanding availability of their PC Web experience mobile browser to Canada. Now Canadians can watch live sports like NHL hockey, NBA basketball, or use their favorite music and video services that they enjoy on their PCs, as a free download at www.skyfire.com. The Skyfire support full Flash, Ajax, Quicktime and more, it can be installed with either Windows Mobile or Symbian S60 smartphones. Some users who are not in US have already reported to successfully download the Skyfire by using random US mobile number.

“Skyfire users love being able to browse media rich sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and ESPN,” said CMO Adam Sexton, “Our users prove that with Skyfire, mobile web browsing is very similar to PC Web browsing. We are pleased to bring Skyfire to Canada so that users there can use their mobile phones to visit sites that take full advantage of everything Web 2.0 has to offer.”

Skyfire is currently in open beta on the Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile platforms and available as a free download at www.skyfire.com.