According to the Register Ericsson is not happy with the poor performance of the Sony/Ericsson joint venture with sales dropping 30% :(. They are threatening to stop their funding unless it performs better. It looks like the P800 could be crucial to their future, though I'm not sure if the P800 will have a big enough mass market appeal to offset the poor sales of its everyday phones. However as the Register mentions its unlikely that Sony would drop the venture even if Ericsson did drop out.
Hot on the heels (okay 24 hours later) Orange have annonced their intentions in the mobile games market. They are planning to release some "Massive Multiplayer Games" onto the market over the next 12 months.Information is sketchy, but more information can be found here.
Samsung is the latest phone manufacturer to sign up to Nokia's Symbian based 'Series 60' software for smartphones. This will further increase Symbian's dominant position in the Smartphone market. More details can found here and here.
O2 (the mobile telephone company formerly known as BT Cellnet) are launching a Java Games Service - approx £1.50 will get you a Java game for your phone for a month's unlimited play. Septemeber has a hefty discount to 30p per game. More details at The Register.
An article on the Wireless Development Network looks at the fascinating history behind Ximplify. It examines Ximplify's past performance and the lessons learned by decisions.
As Rafe would say: "SwitchBlade's been reading news on other websites and gone off on one again." This time an article at The Register indicates the final straw...
The rumours about a possible Siemens Symbian OS based phone have begun to circulate again with speculation being that the launch is very close. The phone (some say the S55 - I'm not so sure) is based on Series 60 and shares a lot of common ground with the Nokia 7650.
There is an interesting article on 3g.co.uk, regarding software called Face Player which is designed to have messages spoken to you by a lip synced face. The software is operational on the 7650 and testing is already underway. That said who would want David Beckham reading their football results to them?
Palmtop magazine have relaunched with a new magazine that is cross PDA device in scope (replacing the previous Palm and Symbian centric offerings). Palmtop is one of the few PDA dedicated publicatios available in the offline world.
Orange UK have announced the roll out of MMS services for the UK Orange network. Basic charges are 40p to send a message (free to recieve) and 25p to recieve special messages from Orange.
SwitchBlade is on a rant - this time it is about the decline of shareware and rise of low quality shareware and freeware. Remember the days of the Atari and Amiga? So does SwitchBlade and the comparison with today is not favourable.
Sony Ericsson are reported to have hired 'attractive young actors and actresses' to go around various towns and cities, posing as normal young folk, asking ordinary members of the public to take their photgraohs with a SontEricsson T68i mobile phone....
Motorola has (according to the Register) licensed the UIQ interface for its Symbian based Paragon 3G Smartphone This is the same interface as the upcoming SE P800.
Symantec has become a Symbian Platinum Partner, which means that it will be working closer with Symbian in developing more integrated security solutuions for future SymbianOS phones.
