In AAS podcast 26, Rafe takes a look at the announcement of the Sony Ericsson W960 Walkman device, with comparisons to the upcoming iPhone, Steve decides that discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to casing a smartphone, while Ewan brings up the latest scam on the streets as people seek to get more money out of mobile phone theft. If you want to subscribe regularly, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia is set to reorganise its corporate structure from January 2008 as part its move towards becoming an 'Internet company'. Nokia's current structure of business groups and horizontal group will change to three main units: devices, software and services and markets. Currently S60 devices are produced by the Multimedia group (Nseries), Enterprise group (Eseries) and Mobile Phones group. The new structure sees a greater emphasis on software and services a main stay of which will presumably be the S60 Platform.
According to a report on Gamesindustry.biz, Nokia has now confirmed it will sponsor the Leipzig GCDC game development conference for the third year in a row. Nokia will give a keynote speech, games for the upcoming next gen N-Gage platform will be on show, and there will be N95 phones up for grabs (although as yet no particular phones have actually been confirmed as platform-compatible).
The Bluetooth SIG and Nokia yesterday announced that Wibree, the ultra low power wireless technology developed by Nokia, would be merged into the Bluetooth specification as Ultra Low Power Bluetooth. The first devices using the technology are expected on the market in 2008.
UIQ Technology announced the addition of Esmertec, Penrillian and Scalado to its UIQ Alliance program. The UIQ Alliance program provides pre-approved and pre-integrated services and programs to potential UIQ licensees enabling UIQ Technology to offer a more complete platform offering.
With surprisingly interesting interviews with Vodafone, 160characters and ShoZu, AAS audio podcast 25 is a bit of a must-listen. It's a full half an hour though, so store this one away for your journey home!
Just announced by Vodafone UK, a brand new Vodafone Live web-squeezing portal (rebranded Google Mobile?), better access to popular webmail accounts and much cheaper data charges for all, effectively including £1 for up to 15MB(!) for prepay customers and £7.50 for 120MB per month for contract customers. The full press release follows...
"So here I am in Monaco, and reading the tea leaves..." Ewan muses below on the 'next big thing' for the mobile industry. On the one hand, messaging stalwarts are already doing it and without the networks help. On the other, new users face a confusion on all sides due to the many types of IM. Read on...
Symbian has announced their 2007 Smartphone Show, at the usual ExceL centre, on Oct 16/17th, along with a new web site for the event. All About Symbian will be there in force, of course, with an extra gathering, details to be announced.
Scottish Games Biz is reporting the purchase of casual games studio I-Play by Oberon Media for an undisclosed sum. Good news for the industry all round, as the casual gaming market is probably the best place for regular sales; with users happy to spend £10-£20 a month on a new game when they take their fancy. And congrats to I-Play as well.
It seems that smartphone maker Sony Ericsson has joined the hundreds of other companies already in the WiMAX forum. Looks like this high speed data technology could finally take off in the next few years. And it certainly beats wandering cities in search of temporary Wi-Fi hotspots 8-) (Via IM)
Over at the New Yorker, they have a video presentation made at their conference "2012: Stories From The Near Future." It's from Nokia's Insight and Innovation team; in it Younghee Jung talks about what we can expect from Nokia's future phones. A nice talk for your next coffee break.
Krisse 
