Mobile Planet

How things in the mobile industry have been changing lately. I can still remember how Microsoft and Nokia would go at it in the mobile space but now Nokia has been supporting Microsoft Exchange software in it’s Nokia phones. It looks like that Nokia and Microsoft are slowly forming an alliance in response to the growing competition from the likes of Apple, Google and Blackberry.

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Apple, the iPhone and AT&T has been in the news a lot lately and most of the news aren’t good at all. The recent pull out of Google Voice (a great service that I hope I’d see getting available in the Philippines) from the Apple App Store has finally put a nail in the coffin for Michael Arrington to dump his iPhone/AT&T service. He’s not the first of the web’s popular figures to do so. For instance, GigaOM’s Om Malik has also decided to stop using his iPhone . Continue reading …

Nokia and Accenture has announced that an agreement has been reached for Accenture to acquire Nokia’s Symbian Professional Services unit. The unit provides engineering consulting and product development services on a global basis to mobile phone manufacturers, as well as chip manufacturers and mobile operators.

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I’ve just read a very interesting article over at ComputerWorld (via Engadget) about a trademark issue that Apple may be having once it starts selling the iPhone in China. As the story goes, it seems that another company, Hanwang, owns a trademark for the term ‘i-phone’ on mobile phones. While Apple owns an “iphone” trademark that only covers computer hardware and software.

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It looks like the mobile sector is poised for a continued growth in spite of the global economic downturn. Gameloft, a major developer and publisher of mobile games has posted an increase in its consolidated sales — up by 22% compared to last year. Gameloft’s 1st quarter sales amounted to 30.8 million € compared to only 25.3 million last year.

Mobile games accounted for 94% of the company’s annual sales and console games covered the remaining 6%. Europe accounted for 35% of sales for the first quarter, North America 37%, and 29% for the rest of the world. The strongest growth took place in North America, up 57% over the period — thanks to the Apple iPhone platform

Gameloft has also announced a licensing agreement with Warner Bros to create a mobile game for the upcoming movie Sherlock Holmes.

I read this interesting article about the current shift in the OLED market for mobile phones from DisplaySearch. According to the article, a shift to active matrix OLED displays on mobile phones are now being shipped more than the passive matrix OLEDs. The trend will continue and is expected to grow to $5.5 billion by 2015 compared to just $0.6 billion in 2008.

If this continues, we will soon be seeing connected phones as a norm rather than as a high end device soon. The thought of everyone having a permanently connected phone is exciting for the world market as we see more applications for mobile phones evolve — especially location based applications and games.

Mobile phones are changing the way we communication and use computers. With the vast improvements in computer miniaturization, we are now experiencing a drift in the way we define a phone. I have witness it changed from a simple device that allows me to communicate via voice to another person.

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