The GSMA announced the winners of the 17th Annual Global Mobile awards in a ceremony hosted by comedian and songwriter Tim Minchin. We don’t even want you to know his bad jokes, but we’ll rather go straight to the point. So the winners of the 2012 Global Mobile Awards are: Best Mobile App for Consumers:…
Orange Money customers in Africa and the Middle East to get Visa Mobile Prepaid accounts
Orange and Visa announced that Orange Money customers in Africa and the Middle East will soon have access to Visa prepaid account features inside their Orange Money accounts. This update to the service will be introduced in select markets by the end of 2012. By doing so, Orange is connecting existing mobile money subscribers to…
GSMA: Married women living on less than $2 a day don’t want a mobile phone because their husbands would not allow it
The GSMA released research into the opportunities that mobiles provide to underserved women in emerging markets. Entitled “Portraits: A Glimpse into the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid”, the report shows the wants, needs, aspirations and mobile uses of women living at the base of the pyramid (BoP), which are those living…
Fujitsu Mobile: We’re going for the global market
I had a chance to speak with Fujitsu’s representatives in Barcelona and they seem pretty bullish on the prospects of selling Fujitsu smartphones and tablets outside of Japan. Let’s face it, Japan used to be a very different market and their phones had little to do with those sold elsewhere, but that’s no longer the…
Nokia Ovi Store now has more than 13 million downloads per day
Even though Nokia has seen better days, there are still millions of users all around the world using phones made by the Finnish company. That was seemingly one of the points they wanted to share while in Barcelona, promptly displaying some key figures across parts of the booth (rather than issuing a press release). Here’s…
Mobile World Congress 2012: The winners and losers
We’re just about wrapped up with Mobile World Congress 2012 and the largest mobile-focused conference was filled with major announcements from nearly every company. Not everything was a home run though, so let’s take a look at who really stood out from the crowd. Winners Android Google’s Android was the star of Mobile World Congress,…
Windows 8 Consumer Preview press conference photo tour
While it’s not technically a part of Mobile World Congress 2012, Microsoft chose to co-locate its Consumer Preview of Windows 8 with the world’s largest mobile conference. Even though we’ve played with Windows 8 before, we just had to go to see what’s new in this version. Check out the photos below for an idea…
SwiftKey launches SDK, wins Most Innovative App at MWC
Guys from SwiftKey are having a time of their life at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They’re out with an SDK that will expand their reach to even more users, who in turn will be able to type faster on their touchscreen devices. The idea is simple – rather than offering it as an app,…
Huawei Ascend G300 announced at the MWC 2012; Heading to Vodafone UK
Aside from the new powerful Ascend D series devices, Huawei also launched another Android smartphone at Mobile World Congress – G300. It’s a mid-ranger with metal-clad casing and specs that include a 4-inch WVGA touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera on the back, HSPA and Wi-Fi connectivity, dual microphones for crystal-clear call quality, along with all of the…
Video: ZTE Mifavor UI
Not sure why every handset maker thinks it needs a custom Android UI, but hey – that’s the just the world works these days. Sure there were times when pure Android experience wasn’t good enough, but Ice cream Sandwich pretty much rocks even in its basic form. ZTE is joining this (crazy?) trend with its…