Buongiorno has revealed plans to roll out it’s Mobile Social Networking service (called ‘Bing’) in several countries, including Australia, New Zealand, India, and Indonesia. This is after successful trials in South Africa and Austria, where 380,000 users were sending over 5m messages/week, and registering over 850,000 downloads - impressive numbers!

The Java app apparently combines the best of SMS and IM together, providing an open platform for Mobile chat. Because it’s Java it will run on pretty much most handsets, on most networks in the world - quite an advantage when you consider the limitations other services have.The target user group is 16-18 yr olds, however users up to the age of 28 are being targeted (I would imagine less accurately).

Oddly enough I was having a conversation about Mobile IM the other day with one of my colleagues, and we agreed our thinking was that we just want a service that we can use on Mobile, but that we already registered with (some years ago) on the interweb - you can probably guess which one

But what say you - new app, interweb app adapted for Moby, or “No app thanks, I’ll just use SMS” ?!

[Via: Mobile Marketing Magazine]

Sprint and Clearwire barely started talking to eachother again and it looks like they’re rearin’ to tie the knot. After calling off negotiations, then getting back together again, Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff has announced that Clearwire and Sprint (NYSE: S) have come to terms on how the two companies will handle roaming customers between their WiMAX networks.

Reuters is reporting that the WiMAX duo has “agreed on common network architecture in order to make it possible for their customers to roam between both networks.” This deal would presumably allow Sprint and WiMAX to essentially break up the US into WiMAX market-halves, with each company serving their own subscriber-base in their respective areas. WiMAX customers from either side would then be allowed to roam between networks as they travel, effectively creating a nationwide WiMAX blanket.

Sweet, this deal marks a breakthrough for Sprint’s prospects as one of the premier mobile-broadband providers in the US. We can’t wait for some commercial service-launches.

[Via: MocoNews]

In some news that aroused my interest (yes, my ears pricked up), US phone companies are going to relax their stiff regulation of adult material on mobile. In Europe, things are already quite loose, with a fairly erect market of £390m! Previously those regulations bound up tightly companies looking to release their material, but now the floodgates appear to be opening.

Obviously given that porn was what led the internet to grow so quickly, the same will now most likely happen in the Mobile world, with a veritable explosion of juicy content - and with 200 million US users to potentially deliver to, that may or may not be a hard task!

Will porn monetise well on mobile in the US - or is the market going to go limp before it takes off? Thoughts (clean ones), please

(And yes, that was an attempt to see how many big innuendos could be stuffed in a story that was far too small - oops, there’s another one!)

[Via: Tech.co.uk]

When Nokia (NYSE: NOK) published a press release talking about how they plan to purchase Trolltech and how doing so will strengthen both S60 and S40, it immediately dawned on me that I heard this somewhere before. I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, until now that is. During Nokia World there was an event called “Capital Market Days.” I couldn’t attend since I’m not an analyst, but I wish I could have sat in since it was packed with an insane amount of content; minus the fluff usually layered on top for us press folk. What went on during that day has been archived and you can listen to all the webcasts here, but I want to pay attention to what Niklas Savander, Head of Nokia’s new Services and Software unit, had to say.

He talks about why Nokia didn’t have “a” thin product, but a “platform” of thin products. He mentions how Nokia plans to go even thinner. The software strategy is talked about at length, how Nokia is trying to make the mobile phone space like the PC space where you can just slap an OS on any piece of hardware, and at the end he talks about touch and how touch will be just like thinness. There will not be “a” touch product, but a platform of Nokia hardware that is touch enabled. Certainly more information than we get in the press releases or the people standing at the booths.

In retrospect the Trolltech purchase makes his talk much more digestible since we now know a little bit more about Nokia’s software strategy. I edited the MP3 to include both his talk and the Q&A session. It is 58 minutes 45 seconds and can be downloaded here. The accompanying slides can be found here, start on page 15 please.

For added fun listen to the Q&A session with Anssi Vanjoki and pay attention to his rant on the context aware internet, he essentially tears a snarky analyst a new asshole.

We all hate Early Termination Fees (ETF), that much is undisputed. What is disputed is just how legal it was to charge 70 million of its former customers an ETF.

Well, former Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless subscribers that got burned with an ETF will be happy to hear that an arbitrator has cleared the way for a class-action lawsuit to go to trial. The potential damages to Verizon Wireless’s accounting-books could amount to $1 billion - much of which will be used to refund unfairly charged former-customers.

The question at hand is “whether the $175 early termination fee imposed by respondents Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless … is based upon an unenforceable liquidated damage clause.” In other words, the Plaintiffs are betting that Verizon Wireless had no legal grounds to charge them an Early Termination Fee.

On the one hand, ETFs prevent massive customer defections, helps curb a network operator’s volatility in subscriber-base counts, and allows the subscriber to deeply subsidize new handset purchases (like when you get a phone for free after signing a two-year contract). This keeps costs down and works to the benefit of all cutomers involved. On the other hand, ETFs, until recently, required subscribers to pay the full penalty regardless of the remaining contract length. If you canceled your contract just a week before it was expired, Verizon Wireless would make you pay the full amount - and it seems that is the issue at hand here.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one, folks. This could set a precedent that could turn ugly.

[Via: RCRNews]

We’ve seen some simple demonstrations of Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s S60 Touch interface before, but Nokia’s going to really kick things up into high gear with their full-on S60 Touch demo at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona (MWC). According to the official Symbian Series 60 blog, Nokia will be showing off some added Touch UI features at the expo next month.

We can’t wait to see how development of the S60 Touch UI is going, especially with features like vibration (haptic) feedback. And, there’s a new development toolkit for S60, the UI Accelerator Toolkit, that will allow Nokia and third-party developers to make use of dazzling visual features. The Finnish company will also be demonstrating the S60 UI’s much-improved web-browsing experience, which makes use of Adobe’s Flash Lite technology.

We gotta assume that the enhancements in the S60 interface will make its way to the Touch UI, and with the benefit of Adobe’s Flash Lite plug-in, web-browsing in S60 Touch should surpass the iPhone’s  web-browsing experience - we’re talking about Flash-animations, embedded videos, the whole shebang. If Nokia’s Touch UI is as good as the hype, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) engineers will be working some late nights to make sure the second-gen iPhone shines.

Nokia hasn’t announced any new devices, per se, at MWC, but they will be showcasing the “latest S60 devices.” We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of fancy new features those crazy Finns are going to drop on us in a couple weeks.

[Via: blogs.S60]

O2 has teamed up with Endemol to create a 20-Episode TV series called ‘Cell’, which has been made exclusively for Mobile. It starts off tomorrow, with 3 episodes coming per week at 50p each, or a package deal for £3.50.You have to be an O2 (NYSE: TEF) sub, and from NOW, you can text ‘cell’ to 2020 to get a link to the microsite for the series.

Well, being an O2 sub, and liking my video content, I just did send the text, got the link, and have now seen the Trailer - and it looks spectacular! The production value really does look up there, not like some of the previous “Made for Mobile” content that has appeared on our screens

So, here’s how it is going to break down - I’ll get busy from tomorrow, when the series starts, clue-ing you all in on how this series goes down, but for right now it’s a big THUMBS UP to O2 for innovation!

[Via: Techdigest.tv]

Motorola (NYSE: MOT), which made the one hit wonder RAZR and has been in slump ever since, has admitted that they’re considering splitting the company up to separate the bleeding phones division from the rest of the company. According to Reuters Motorla is said to be considering:

“structural and strategic realignment of its businesses to better equip its mobile devices business to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value.“

It has been a long time coming. I hope they sell the mobile phones unit instead of just creating a bastard red headed child that will be ignored and left hungry and in the cold.

[Via: Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Phone Scoop]

Update: Official press release on Motorola’s site; via Unwired View.

“We are exploring ways in which our Mobile Devices Business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise.”

Translation: The ship is going down Captain! I’m giving her all shes got, but it isn’t enough!

MTV today announced that it is using Flixwagon’s mobile broadcasting technology to equip an army of street team citizen journalists with the capability to deliver the first-ever live “mobile-to-Web” video broadcasts from polling stations, caucuses, candidate rallies and everywhere young voters will congregate on during February 5th’s Super Tuesday event. You can find the press release here.

Street teams and citizen journalists will utilize Flixwagon’s application on Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N95 mobile phones to deliver on-the-street reports from the participating states directly to the Web.

IntoMobile will no doubt take a closer look at this interesting Mobile-2-Web software - of particular interest is the whole ‘brodcasting yourself from a mobile’ concept - what say you, readership?

[Via: Springboard PR]

It’s been a long-time coming, but the sleek HP iPAQ 210 Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional handset has finally hit the market. This WinMo jobby from HP has seen delays that would make Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) cry, so it’s good to see that it’s available.

With a glorious 4-inch 480 x 640 touchscreen display, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, WiFi b/g, SDIO and CD card slots, and 128MB RAM / 256MB ROM - all powered by a Marvell PXA310 624MHz CPU - the HP iPAQ 210 definitely isn’t a slouch in the performance department. Dare we say that it was worth the wait?

And at a $449 price-point, the HP iPAQ 210 is a fairly good deal. Especially with that 4-inch touchscreen. Grab yours here.
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