Orange has started publicly talking about Bubbletop, an AJAX web home page. It is a competitor to sites like Netvibes and Pageflakes. The closed alpha of Bubbletop is now open for possible sign up. Bubbletop will join a number of other Orange Web 2.0 services including Pikeo (images and photographs) and SoundTribes (music).
As mentioned in Symbian's Q1 figures more than 20 million phones running on Symbian OS have now been shipped in Japan (that's around 16% of total Symbian shipments). There's an amusing, 'Boo Hoo for You', cartoon available on YouTube (embedded in the full story) celebrating this milestone. Two cartoon characters remind us that Japan remains the cutting edge market - smellphones, biometrics and mobile wallets are all the rage!
Symbian have released their Q1 2007 figures, highlights include a total of 15.9 million phones shipped in the first 3 months of the year, cumulative shipments of 126.4 million and cumulative shipments in Japan of 20 million Symbian OS phones.
ABI Research has an interesting article (via Tom Hume and The Mobile Weblog) on Nokia's future, and four areas the Finnish company could stumble on, including their slow reaction to the rise of the clamshell design; Linux powered devices and Espoo's reliance on Symbian; and the long term corporate effect of the Nokia Siemens joint venture.
Rafe'll be along shortly with his own official coverage no doubt, but in the meantime you could do worse than browse through Mobile Review's two photo-filled pages covering the main keynotes and exhibition hall. Memo to self: sell family and get to the Summit 2008...
The last few weeks have seen rumours and reportsaplenty (backed up by insider info) on the gradual transition of the UK and European networks to cheaper or flat rate ('unlimited') mobile data. This will all have a big impact on how people use smartphones. Watch this space.
Rafe was at the S60 Summit last week, of course. Here, in the first part of our S60 Summit coverage, he presents a compehensive roundup of Samsung's plans for S60 smartphones, including a look at the new i400, plus a general media gallery of photos and comments from the Summit.
