Popular Web 2.0 ‘microblogging’ site Twitter has put in place SMS usage limits for UK users . Each month you’ll only be able to receive a maximum of 250 SMS messages to your handset (although there are no limits on using it over IM or the Web). The change is likely due to the cost of SMS traffic on the parent company; unlike America, UK customers do not pay to receive text, so there’s no opportunity to do a revenue share with the outbound messages.
Nokia Beta Labs is currently running a beta on an advertising supported version of Nokia Download! (UK market only). Nokia Download! is an application that acts as a 'shop window' and offers a variety of software, services and content for download. It is testing the concept of using advertising to subsidise some on the content available in the Download! application. Read on for some example screenshots.
Nokia Ad Business today announced an agreement with Handmark to provide a mobile advertising solution for its Pocket Express mobile data application. Nokia Ad Business is a marketplace for mobile advertising, it was formed out of the fusion of Nokia's recent Enpocket acquisition together with the existing Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Connector. We expect to see further such announcements in the future as more services move to an advertising funded model.
In one of the most significant announcements of the year Nokia and Vodafone today stated their intention to launch a range of Nokia handsets with both Nokia's Ovi services and Vodafone's own integrated suite of service. Nokia's Ovi services include Nokia Maps, Nokia Music (including the Music store), Nokia Photos and the N-Gage gaming platform. Additional web based services are also likely to emerge over the next 6 months.
Mobility blogger Russell Beattie often comes up with really insightful articles and this one is a must-read. Coming to the Nokia N95 8GB as someone who's technically literate but not a hardened S60 fanboy, he comes up with some very apposite and constructive criticisms of the modern S60 interface. Plenty there that I'm in total agreement with, too.
Symbian today announced its latest set of figures. In Q3 2007 20.4 million Symbian OS handsets were shipped representing 56% year on year growth (13 million in Q3 2006). The total number of Symbian OS handset shipped has now reached 165 million. The average royalty per handset is now $4.80 (down from $5.20 last year following license fee reductions).
Perhaps overshadowed by some of the announcements and devices at the Smartphone Show, Symbian also quietly released a lot of interesting numbers and stats. Read on for the headline figures that I've been able to dig up and comments on the Symbian world and the industry in general. Includes the latest Canalys numbers from Symbian's own licensed reports.
You'll remember that Symbian launched two major new technologies at their Smartphone Show? Both have now gotten Flash video explanations on the Symbian web site. Here are the links to the pages for ScreenPlay and FreeWay. Good stuff and both technologies are now a whole lot clearer.
Although not a specific Symbian OS item, many people use GMail. And they just added IMAP support, giving you another way to access your GMail on your smartphone with even more options. Just enable it in (On the GMail site) 'Settings|Forwarding and POP/IMAP'.
More from the Smartphone Show last week. In AAS podcast 39, Ewan talks to Scott Lowe from eLeader about the ways they can help businesses keep their sales forces equipped and communicating through the use of special add-on S60 applications.
