The Japanese government has approved local service provider Softbank to conduct an experiment with schoolchildren involving GPS-enabled phones. Basically, select kiddies will be designated as “carriers”, and their transmission of the disease will be tracked based on GPS proximity to other students. The goal of the study is to track how diseases move, and see…
Palm Pre Weekend Sales Ballparked at 100,000
Analysts from both ABI, Piper Jaffray, and RBC Capital Markets place initial sales of the Palm Pre in the 50 – 100,000 unit range. Yeah, everyone’s going to say “that sucks compared to the original iPhone’s half-million“, but I wonder how much their scarce supplies had to do with it. I would hope that the…
LG: U.S. teens and tweens use more than 2,000 unknown words in their text messages
LG along with the research firm Interpret have carried out a survey from April 8th to 13th among 1,000 US teens and tweens to determine text messaging habits of this population. Results revealed that teens and tweens are sending 20,209 texts every second, or more than 1.2 million texts every minute. The research also revealed…
GSM Association: Global recession doesn’t impact innovation
GSM Association has recently unveiled results of its survey of 200 senior executives working at mobile operators, venture capitalists and mobile innovators around the globe. And as you can guess from the article’s title – despite recession, companies keep investing in R&D. As a matter of fact, nearly 70% of respondents believe that the increased…
Apple and RIM – Why smartphone success isn’t just about market share
The iPhone’s initial successes in the smartphone market warrant at least a passing mention. In just a couple years’ time, Apple has managed to jump-start the touchscreen smartphone market and drive adoption into the mainstream. All the while, BlackBerry-maker RIM has been riding the smartphone wave all the way to the bank. Both Apple and…
Berg Insight: HSPA accounts for 11.6% of PC broadband connections in Europe
According to a new research report from Berg Insight, HSPA accounted for 11.6% of the total number of broadband connections in Europe at the end of 2008. The number grew by 74% year-on-year in 2008 to reach 14.6 million and is forecasted to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30%…
Opera Mobile overtakes iPhone Safari as top mobile browser!
It looks like the mighty iPhone has been felled by one of the best mobile browsers on the market. New stats from the aptly-named research firm StatCounter confirms that the iPhone is no longer king of the mobile-browser-hill. With a 24.6% share of the global mobile browser market, Opera Mobile has overtaken the iPhone as…
iPhone market share outpaces Android
Android smartphones are great in their own right. The capacitance-based touchscreens used in Android devices make for some down-right enjoyable finger-flicks. The speedy Android OS is fairly intuitive (not as intuitive as a certain fruit company’s wares, but still well intuitive) and packs a decent set of features. Unfortunately, the iPhone has taken hold of…
Juniper Research: Revenues from streamed mobile music services to approach $5.5 billion by 2013
Sure, there’s a recession out there, but that doesn’t mean some segments of the market won’t grow. As a matter of fact, Juniper Research argues that revenues from streamed mobile music services and full-track downloads are expected to exhibit strong growth over the next five years. To put this into numbers, combined revenues from these…
ABI Research: Mobile consumers ready to support green initiatives
ABI Research’s recently conducted study has found that nearly half of mobile consumers in North America are somewhat likely or very likely to be influenced by suppliers’ green credentials when purchasing services or devices. Respondents were asked whether they’d be more likely to purchase mobile services or devices from an operator that makes use of…