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.
Nokia's Mark Ollila, one of their Games executives, is to give a speech at the Game Developers Conference China 2007, which will presumably mention their upcoming Next Gen N-Gage Games Platform that's due to open its doors to various S60 3rd Edition devices this September. GDC China takes place from 27th to 29th August in Shanghai, so it's possibly just a few days before the launch of the new platform.
Martin Sauter is hosting this week's Carnival of the Mobilists, plenty of good reading, as always, especially Michael Mace's piece on Nokia's plans to reinvent itself (and some of the comments).
It's great to see DVB-H finally making an official (as opposed to 'trial') appearance in the mainstream, in this case major cities in Finland. Jukka from the S60 blogs has offered to show it off on the Nokia N77 in the upcoming Helsinki meet.
Krisse takes similarly-pitched Nokia S60 and Series 40 phones through a round-by-round battle to the death - is 'smart' better? - what are the downsides of S60? And what does Krisse think the future holds? As ever, battery life is a key differentiator - as Scotty used to say in Star Trek: 'Ye cannae change the laws of physics!"
