Following on from Nokia and Sony Ericsson's agreement on DVB-H (digital mobile TV), Philips have announced a new DVB-H solution on (incredibly) a 7 by 7mm chip. If this isn't in an awful lot of smartphones within a couple of years then I'll eat my hat.
Symbian have announced some interesting 2005 and Q4, 2005 figures. Almost 34 million smartphones running Symbian OS shipped in 2005, the fourth consecutive year in which shipments have grown by more than 100%. Over 10 million shipments were in Q4. Here's the full press release, which goes into a lot more detail.
On the heels of the launch of the Yahoo! Go! client, Yahoo! have signed up to the Symbian Platinum Program, which gives members access to technical support, commercial services, and marketing opportunites from Symbian.
Via Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia have invested four million Euros in graphics hardware designers Bitboys Oy. The sum hands Nokia 14% of the company, and values Bitboys at a tasty 28.5 million Euros. It's a nice investment given that back in November the N-Gage team were talking about dedicated 3D hardware appearing in 'the next generation of mobile gaming.'
Nokia and Sanyo have announced they are working together to form a new company that will leverage Sanyo's mid to high end CDMA phones with Nokia's low to mid range CDMA phones. With the CDMA markets offering different challenges to hardware manufacturers, this is a good move, and is reminiscent of how Sony and Ericsson sat down to work together. Operations of Sanyo/Nokia scheduled to commence in Q3 2006.
Guy Kewney, over at NewsWireless.net has found a fascinating piece of technology at 3GSM. An organic led screen (oled) which offers low power consuming, flicker free video at an incredibly large pixel densisty. Impessive pics are over on his site.
Sky By Mobile is a rich media applicaiton for Symban OS ownered who use Sky Bet or Sky Digital services. Alongside the electronic program guide with a look and feel that Sky owners will be familiar with, it also offers the latest news and sports from the respective Sky channels. It's freely available to users subscribed to two or more premium channels (or the Sky Bet service) at www.skybymobile.com.
There's always been a huge fragmentation problem with mobile games having to be tested against every possible device configuration, even with the promise of write once run anywhere of Java. So to see Symbian and Microsoft stand alongside Activision, Digital Chocolate, EA, Ideaworks, Konami, Nokia, Montavista, Samsung, SK Telecome, Square Enix, Tau Group and Texas Instruments to define and support an open gaming architecture is promising, but of course it's results that count. Lets see what happens.
Nokia are debuting their own brand of Bluetooth GPS, the LD-3W, at 110 Euros. Availability is Q1, i.e. soon, although don't most sat-nav suites comes with a bundled GPS these days?
Interoperability on mobile TV is already fun, with DVB-H being championed by many. With Nokia and Sony Ericsson now both agreeing to work together on DVB-H, it looks like the de-facto standard may be here. Read on for the press release....
Symbian's David Wood talks up Symbian's prospects (with good reason) and seems positive about the Sony Ericsson M600i ('wider appeal', although without a camera, some would disagree), in his latest Insight article.
There's a curious new title from Symbian press. 'How smartphones work' appears to be mainly aimed at people already in the industry, or on the fringes of it. If you're just a casual user, see my prototype Smartphones for Dummies instead...
Yes, we know Psion is now consigned to Symbian's history, but this recent Series 7 review puts their sub-notebook up against the best of today. A testament to Psion's hardware design and Symbian's (nee Psion Software) operating system.
