A new study of 2,000 UK adults, commissioned by T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) UK and compiled by YouGov, examined how consumer habits were affected by lack of Internet access in Britain. The results were somewhat interesting — apparently some Brits (15% of respondents) use mobile phones in toilets to bypass office Internet restrictions. Over 25% of UK’s workforce, still deprived of web access, are now turning to the Internet on their mobile phones.

Key findings:

• 25% of consumers were aware that they had an Internet service on their phone, but were unsure how to use it
• 23% of employees were subject to company policies that banned them from accessing social networking websites
• 11% were banned from using web mail
• 48% of respondents use their mobile phone to access the Internet at work
• some employees were not even allowed to use Google (NSDQ: GOOG)

Read the full article »

According to Informa’s World Cellular Information Service quarterly subscriber reports, with 117 million subscribers UMTS/HSDPA is commercially available through twice as many operators as other 3G technologies -– 167 operators in 69 countries, compared to 71 operators in 44 countries offering CDMA EV-DO. In other words – of the 172 million mobile broadband 3G subscribers worldwide as of Q1 2007, 68% use UMTS/HSDPA. Read the full article »

Recent report from NPD Group indicates that U.S. handset market grew 12% from a year earlier to 39 million units. The biggest winner is Motorola (NYSE: MOT), which despite struggling on the global market, succeeded to grow in the States, reaching 35% of the market share — up from the last year’s 30%. On the other hand, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) saw its U.S. market share plunging to 10% from 19% in the same period of last year. With 17% of the market share, Samsung is now the country’s No. 2 cell phone maker, followed by LG which holds the third position with 15%. (via: crain)

A Channel Checkers survey reveals that the official AT&T (NYSE: T) policy on prohibiting Apple iPhone pre-orders is not being upheld by AT&T (Cingular) stores. Out of 36 stores surveyed, approximately 64% of store representatives are quietly taking down a waiting list for the upcoming Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone. It should be noted that 36% of stores reported that they will be pushing the iPhone on a “first come, first serve” basis. Stores with waiting lists reported an average of 25 people in the queue.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that most AT&T stores are now taking down pre-orders against oficial company policy – this is the hottest launch in recent memory, and as such, we can expect a flood of demand. Still, if the iPod mini can teach us anything, the Apple Store may be the best and easiest bet to find the Apple iPhone in-stock on launch day.

via: arstechnica

A new study by marketing-research firm, Anderson Analytics, shows that a mobile phone manufacturer’s country of origin has little affect on college students’ perception of the brands’ phones. Among polled college students, 47% thought Motorola (NYSE: MOT) was a Japanese brand (come on people, doesn’t anyone remember the US Army radios made by Motorola?), but ranked Motorola as equally impressive regardless of what they thought was the brand’s country of origin (Japan or America).

More than half of college sudents thought Nokia (NYSE: NOK) was a Japanese company, with only 4.4% correctly identifying the Finnish company’s origin. The study was conducted by Anderson Analytics’ youth market analysis firm GenX2Z.com and included 1,000 students from over 375 colleges and universities throughout the US.

via: rcrwireless

Talking about numbers. There are 487 million mobile phone and 371 million landline phone users in China, according to the country’s Ministry of Information Industry.

Impressed? Wait to see the rate of growth. Since the start of 2006, the number of mobile phone users increased by 6 million, and the number of landline phone users increased by 1 million. The SMS usage also increased 38.1% from the previous year to reach 182.6 billion of text messages sent. Damn wow! (via: chinaknowledge)

What else are they going to come up with? Nokia (NYSE: NOK) must really be running out of ideas for features to pack into mobile phones. In what must be more marketing than practicality, the n handset manufacturer has started development on software that will allow their handsets to warn the user of incoming lightning. We can’t imagine that the system is designed to warn of an impending direct-hit, but rather that there will be lightning activity in the vicinity of the user. The patent application with the USPTO outlines plans for software that would detect the radio signal given off by lightning (typically in the 5Ghz to 10Ghz range). Joggers, golfers, and anyone else looking to avoid lightning strikes will be able to use their handset’s built-in radio receiver to detect these frequencies and warn them accordingly.

via: yahoo

Recently, Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab evaluated the mobile portal experience of leading U.S. carriers (T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) was not on the list?) and concluded that Sprint (NYSE: S) has the best in class US operator portal, marginally ahead of Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless. Still, carriers have much to learn, as users still have a hard time browsing around the carriers’ portal sites.

Read the full article »

A recent Celent’s report on mobile banking indicates that 35% of U.S. households will access their banking accounts using mobile phones by 2010. Benefits such as quick direct (seamless) payments with a cell phone will drive the growth of the mobile banking services. According to Celent, the so called “mobile contactless payments” will make up to 10% of the contactless market by 2010. Furthermore, the report says that while at the moment mobile banking is being used by less than 1% of population in the States, the growth is set to come especially from the Generation Y, consisting of 18- to 25-year-olds… Read the full release here.

A recently conducted federal survey indicates that more than a quarter of young adults have only cell phones, making them the leading edge of a strengthening move away from traditional landline telephones.

The data from the survey were based on interviews with people in 13,056 households from June through December last year. Here are some highlights:

• 15% of Hispanic adults, 13% of black adults, 12% of Asians and 11% of whites had only cell phones
• 22% of the poorest adults had only cell phones, double the rate for those who are not poor
• 13% of males and 11% of females had cell phones only
• Nearly 2% of adults had no phone at all.

More information is available on Cellular-News.com.