Toilet Seats are better off than Mobile phones

Does it come as a surprise to you! Yes its true, our phones have more muck on them as compared to average door handle, keyboard, and bottom of a shoe or even a toilet seat.

Research done by Dial-a-Phone reveals that there's actually more filth on our phones than the average toilet seat cover. The phones contains more skin bacteria than the any other object; this could be due to the fact that this type of bacteria increases in high temperatures and our phones are perfect for breeding these germs as they're kept warm and cozy in our pockets, handbags and brief cases.

Source: Cellular News

China’s mobile user Search stats

mInfo, the Chinese mobile search provider, has released some key search statistics on real user behavior in the world's largest wireless phone market. Data published by mInfo are based on actual usage information over the last year across its SMS, WAP, kJava and IM mobile search systems.

• SMS has over 90% adoption. WAP is currently actively used by only 30-40 million of the 450 million mobile users in the country
• Mobile searchers are looking for answers surrounding their daily lives
  Local Search (as bars, hotels and ATMs )- 41%
  Informational Search (stock quotes, sports scores and flight schedules )- 31%
  Rich Content Search (ring tones, pictures, mp3, games etc.)- 28%
• Fridays and Saturdays are the most heavily trafficked days for mobile search services
• The five leading search categories in 2006 were:
  Dining/Recreation, Jokes/Riddles, Ring tones/Pictures, News/Stock, Weather forecast
• Mobile searchers tend to use longer query strings (5-6 words/query) vs. web searchers who average about two words per query.
• Web users- Young people age 24 or under
  Mobile searchers- 25 and over
• 19-24 year old group seemed most interested in ring tones and pictures
  25-29 year old group was more heavily weighted towards local search
  The 30-34 year old group tended to spend more time on travel and news related searches
  

Source: Cellular News

Another touch screen handset!!

After Apple's iPhone, its LG now. LG announced its touch-screen mobile phone co-branded with the fashion house, Prada. The Prada Phone by LG introduces the world's first advanced touch interface which eliminates the conventional keypad making the overall usage experience a highly tactile one. An extra wide LCD screen maximizes visual impact, allowing the user to benefit from several key features of the phone, including the 2 megapixel camera featuring Schneider-Kreuznach lens, video player and document viewer capacity.

Glowing icons on the face of the phone disappear when not in use to reveal a pure, un-adulterated black exterior. The phone is ultra thin (just 12 mm), nonetheless it hosts an array of additional multimedia functions, including an MP3 player and a music multitasking function for messaging. It also boasts an external memory slot, allowing the user to increase memory capacity for images, music and film clips.

Prada's involvement extends beyond exterior aesthetics to the key elements of the user experience such as the advanced touch interface, ring tones, pre-loaded content, mobile phone accessories and the exclusive leather case, inspired by the classic Italian craftsmen tradition.


Source: Cellular News

Yahoo IM for JAVA, BREW & WAP phones

Reliance Communications and Yahoo India have finalised an alliance to offer Yahoo Instant Messenger for Reliance Mobile customers across the country. RCOM will be the first telecom service provider in the world to offer MIM across Java, BREW and WAP phones on a mobile operator network.

Reliance Mobile customers can now chat live not only among themselves but also with any Yahoo IM user in the world using PCs. When a Reliance subscriber is not online on his mobile, he is notified by messages in his SMS inbox about new IMs received.

The Mobile Instant Messenger offering on Reliance mobiles is Yahoo’s first Wireless Village compliant implementation in Asia. The service has been developed by ACL Wireless for Reliance and Yahoo.

Source: DNA

India Mobile Subs Soar in 2006

India's mobile operators added 6.2 million new subscribers in December, capping a year of rapid expansion that saw the country become the fastest growing telecom market in the world.According to the latest figures from the Cellular Operators Association of India, the country's nine GSM-based carriers added 47 million subscribers in 2006, almost doubling their subscriber base to 105.4 million in December 2006 from 58.5 million in December 2005.

The Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI) , which collates figures from the four CDMA-based operators, reports 25 million new subscribers were added during the year. The CDMA customer base tripled from 12 million at the end of December 2005 to 36.7 million last month. India has been reporting higher monthly additions than China, previously the world’s fastest growing mobile market, since August, although its 142.1 million subscribers are still a long way off from China's 500 million-plus users.

Source: Unstrung.com

Chatting goes mobile

Mobile Instant Messaging, another platform for teenagers to expand their online chat groups and stay connected 24/7. Now you needn’t be in front of a computer to get onto Yahoo chat or Messenger or GTalk. A mobile handset is all you need.

The GSM industry announced the soft launch of its mobile instant messaging initiative at a seminar organised by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) here on Monday. Though MIM will by and large provide the same service that wireline services of Internet messengers (IM) currently provide, MIM will go a step ahead in that it will offer a link to IM users that would permit MIM users to chat with friends who are on laptops or PCs. To access instant messaging, a customer needs to have a GPRS (web enabled handset) and the normal GPRS charges will be applicable depending on the usage.

Operators like BSNL, MTNL, Bharti Airtel, Hutch-Essar, Idea, Aircel, Reliance Telecom, Spice and BPL are expected to commercially launch this service in the next 3-4 weeks.

Source: The Economic Times

After Vodafone, its VIRGIN!

When the entire nation is engrossed in the unfolding Hutch drama, another landmark deal is in the works. Two of the world's most admired business leaders — Ratan Tata of the Tata Group and Richard Branson of the Virgin empire- are coming together for an alliance in India's telecom landscape. Virgin Group is in talks with Tata Teleservices to introduce Virgin Mobile brand in India.

Globally, Virgin Mobile's business strategy is to act as a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) which buys bulk space from an existing wireless company and resell it under the Virgin brand.

Source: iSource updates

Europeans are smarter than Americans:)

European consumers have been faster to adopt ‘smart’ mobile phones than their American counterparts, according to Telephia, a provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets.

In Q3 2006, smartphone penetration-

• Western Europe- 8.80%
• Italy- 19.20%
• Spain- 9.50%
• UK- 7.50%
• Sweden- 3.60%
• Germany- 4.90%
• France- 3.50%
• USA- 3.80%

Italy has been at the forefront of driving mobile development and penetration in Europe and is also leading the adoption of smartphones by far. More than 95 percent of all Italians own a mobile phone and almost one in five buyers of new phones in the last six months (19.2%) bought smartphones.

Source: Mobilemonday

40% mobile traffic users in China are Series 60 users

Recent survey conducted by Nokia in China shows Third-party applications account for fully 40 percent of all mobile network traffic from S60 device users.

The most popular types of third-party applications-

• Info-tainment
• Messaging
• Multimedia

Nokia’s China study, conducted between March and November 2006, included more than 1,000 users of Nokia S60 devices. These users played more than 400 games during the survey period, including Snake, RallyPro Contest, Bounce, and Agent V.

When S60 users send mobile multimedia messages with attachments, nearly 85 percent of those attachments are photographs.And 55 percent of those surveyed added third-party applications to their S60 devices during the survey period, primarily games, multimedia, and utilities.

Source: Mobilemonday

Cisco sues Apple

Cisco sued Apple for using it trademark iPhone. The Cisco iPhone went on sale last year. Based on VoIP technology they can be bought for as little as USD 12, though with the right software installed they usually cost the user around USD 70 in total.

Cisco is demanding that Apple relinquish all profits eventually made on the iPhone and pay Cisco’s legal bills. The company also wants Apple to destroy all labels, signs, packaging and other promotional material that include the word “iPhone.”Linksys, a WLAN company that now is Cisco’s fully owned subsidiary, first registered iPhone in 1996.

Source: Mobile monday