Risks of extended cellphone use

Cellular-News.com is reporting on a "new" Swedish study that claims "10 years of intense mobile phone use increases the risk for severe brain tumor."

The study, performed by the Swedish National Institute for Working Life and the University of Oerebro, show those who started using a mobile phone before the age of 20 are most at risk.

I gave a quick look for the article and saw some links to similar studies that were reported back in 2004 so I can't validate whether this is new information. Frankly, I'm not surprised - anything that is highly addictive (coffee, drugs, gambling, talking on the cellphone) will ultimately cause some type of serious problem.

Everything in moderation, people.

US Handest Sales - Report

Surprise, surprise - the RAZR continues to dominate handset sale across Cingular, Verizon & T-Mobile. Cellular-News reports on a Merrill Lynch industry report covering wireless subscriber addition estimates and handset sales.

Top handsets for Cingular and Sprint

Cingular

1. RAZR V3
2. Sony Ericsson Z520a
3. Motorola SLVR
4. Nokia 6102
5. LG C2000

Sprint
1. Samsung a900
2. Samsung a920
3. LG PM-225
4. Sanyo MM-8300
5. Samsung a840

Not much new here.

Broadband Bluetooth

The industry group behind Bluetooth announced that it would boost transfer speeds in the next few years by incorporating a new radio technology, known as ultra-wideband, or UWB.

Currently, Bluetooth works only for low-speed uses such as headsets and wireless keyboards. UWB claims to enable wireless transmissions at speeds equivalent to USB or FireWire cables at distances up to 10 feet.

Michael Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group mentioned that the first products with high-speed Bluetooth should show up in late 2007.

Latest Jupiter Reserach Report on Mobile Video

Jupiter Research released their latest report on the US Mobile Video market. Highlights of the press release:

- $501 million in revenues by 2010, up from $62 million in 2005
- 2% of mobile phone users subscribe to a mobile video service today
- 17% of subscribers polled are interested in watching TV on their phones

Nothing too new here - I think the 2% number is a bit aggressive - that would mean 4M subscribers? Considering that up until recently, Sprint & Verizon were the only two carriers that offered video services, and both of these services are pretty new, I would guess that the total number of phones capable of streaming video is in the 4M range, with subscriptions being a % of these.

In any event 17% of a big number (200M+ subs) is a big number.

Maybe not so Cool afterall...

Was checking out new phones on phonescoop when I came across this article. Sounds like the new MVNO Cool.Prepaid pissed somebody off at Motorola. As we used to say at work "this could be a career limiting move..."

Mobile Search Options

There has been lots of action in the Mobile Search arena over the last year or so and I recently spent some time researching the different options and reading commentary on the subject. I have not done a lot of searching from my phone but will try to do so over the coming days and weeks to try to understand the options, results and effectiveness. As I have spent more time away from my PC over the last few weeks, I have had moments where a kick-ass local search tool would be invaluable.

Specifically, I am often searching for the nearest Starbucks, Kinko's and free wi-fi access. Not sure which of the following companies do it the best, but as far as I can tell, there are three types of businesses competing in this space:

1) Existing search companies expanding to the mobile environment:

Google
Yahoo
AOL

Firms offering white-label technology solutions for Carriers:

Infospace
Jumptap
Medio Systems

and new entrants who are taking a totally different approach including 4info as well as companies trying to solve the problem with a voice activated solution including Promptu and V-Enable

MSN will be in the game soon as well as they acquired a French firm, Motionbridge, late last year that had a mobile search technology.

The payoffs to whoever solves this will be huge. Without a doubt, this is not a trivial task to accomplish effectively, due to all of the complexities involved in the mobile arena and with such limited screen space on the devices themselves.

Another heartbreaker

The Huskies of Washington lost another heartbreaker to the Huskies of Connecticut last night in the regional semifinals (Sweet 16) of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. It was an incredible game but once again, the Huskies came up a bit short. There were certainly a lot of questionable calls, and there will be lots of crabbing about this one but it won't change the outcome. They had a great run and accomplished a lot more this year than anyone expected - congrats to them and time for us fans to move on.

Slingbox Mobile

Sling Media launched a beta of SlingPlayer Mobile, which allows Slingbox owners to stream their live television feeds and recorded programs over their high-speed Internet connections to handsets running on Windows Mobile 5.0 and Pocket PC 2003 SE.

I do not own a Slingbox but apparently a lot of consumers do and these guys are advertising on the radio like crazy. The Wireless Carriers are sure to get their noses out of joint regarding this technology as it is a competitive TV offering to their own services. Frankly, they should be embracing these technologies because it drives data usage which should be their #1 concern - not worrying about making the $2 per month on TV subscriptions.

For those of you who are interested in learning more, David Pogue of the NY Times has a great write up here.

Top 10 Ringtone download sites

Stumbled across this list today. Interesting that Jamster gets ranked as the #1 ringtone site after all the bad press they received for misrepresenting fees associated with buying their products.

Add 1 more to the MVNO list

Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) Cool.Prepaid launched today. They use the Cingular network and offer what it's calling the lowest airtime rates for calling. Airtime runs 30 cents per day and a flat rate of 10 cents per minute for domestic calls. Text messages are 10 cents.

They are selling 3 Motorola phones: RAZR V3, V555 and V173.

Sweet 16

I know this is mobile phone blog but...

The Washington Huskies are going back to the Sweet 16 this year. They played a very tough Illinois team and came back from 11 points down in the second half to win. Awesome stuff.

We will play the winner of UConn-Kentucky next Friday in Washington DC. I'm hoping it's UConn so we can give them payback for one of the most gut-wrenching losses of all time.

This time, props

A few days ago I ripped Cingular for their slow response times with updating their Bracket manager site for the NCAA tourney.

Well, now that the tourney has kicked off, I have to give them credit for the integration work they've done with CBS Sportsline.

Every year I run a pool on Sportsline and this year Cingular subscribers can access their brackets from their phones.

I've been out and about the last two days and have not had my printed bracket in hand (spaz) but I haven't needed it. The site remembers your log-in info. so you don't have to re-type and on my new Samsung ZX-10 data speeds are terrific so I can check my picks in real-time.

Great job to Cingular and CBS!

Xero Mobile - MVNO

I know I'm late to report on this but since I mentioned other MVNO's recently, I thought I'd be remiss if I didn't mention another forthcoming MVNO - Xero Mobile.

According to reports, the company is started by three ex-Gizmondo execs from Europe. I don't know much about Gizmondo, but FT.com refered to it as "the failed handheld computer games company"

The start-up's pitch: offer mobile phone users free airtime if they'll put up with ads pushed to their cell phones.

Wireless Toyz

Sometime in the last year a new store opened up on my drive home - near Greenlake on Aurora. The name of the store is Wireless Toyz and anyone who drives North on Aurora would be familiar with it. When they first opened, they had a huge gorilla on top of the building and occassionally there was a giant cellphone (with human inside) in front of the store.

I have yet to go in, but have been meaning to. I figured it was a local outfit but just discovered that they are a huge and growing national chain. According to their website, at the end of 2005 there were 124 stores across 19 states. By the end of 2006, it expects to operate 250 stores and will enter new markets such as Denver, San Antonio, San Diego, Orange County Tampa and Toledo.

They sell wireless services across multiple carriers as well as satellite radio and Direct TV service. I'm going there this week and will report back on the experience.

Key Drivers to Mobile Media Downloads

Usable Products Company, the leading source of usability design and research for the global mobile and wireless industry, released results of its new study. You can read the full article here.

Price elasticity is one of the key messages - if iTunes charges $.99 per track, why would a consumer pay more for that same track on the phone? Well, time will tell - Sprint recently announced that they had sold over 1.5 million tracks at a much higher price point, and I have had numerous conversations on this subject with lots of different folks who have very strong opinions on the topic.

Minor rant

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Seattle. I spent the day working in the yard and playing at the park with the kids.

I was also very eager to find out where the University of Washington Huskies were going to end up in the NCAA Basketball Tourney. The selection show on CBS kicked off at 3pm PST so at about 3:30 I started checking the "Final Four March Madness" link on my MEdiaNet homepage.

You can probably guess where this is headed, but sure enough, even an hour+ after the selection show, there was still no update on the site. I finally quit checking and waited until I got home so I could check on the PC.

There is certainly a lot of progress being made with the wireless web and I know the carriers are working on improvements, but this was a poor performance to say the least.

For those who don't know, the NCAA Men's basketball tourney has become the biggest sports event. According to Casino Times betting on March Madness dwarfs even the Super Bowl.

In addition, consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimate that March Madness could cost employers up to $4B in lost productivity.

Hopefully the coverage during the tourney improves.

RAZR problems

Geez - here I am touting how great the RAZR is and then I read that Cingular & T-Mobile have temporarily stopped selling it due to some technical problems.

According to the news report, there is an issue with a limited number of RAZR phones purchased by carriers after February 1st. The affected handsets apparently drop calls and the screen goes white and the phone reboots.

You'd think that a phone that has been out for a year and has sold many millions of units would be rock solid by now.

On a similar note, I attended a meeting last night for entrepreneurs to learn about how to engage with local Angel investors. At the beginning of the meeting, there were three people staring at a PC trying to get powerpoint to come up on the projector. Windows has been around for ~15 years and it still doesn't work as advertised.

Mobile-Phone Premium Content Market

"The global market for mobile-phone premium content, including music, gaming and video, is expected to expand to more than $43 billion by 2010, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 42.5 percent from $5.2 billion in 2004, iSuppli Corp. predicts."

Click on the title for the full article including some interesting stats on the growth of Mobile Games and Mobile Video.

New M:Metrics report

M:Metrics issued a press release yesterday focused on the Mobile Games market. You can click on the Title to read the complete release.

Highlights of the release:

1. Between 5 and 6 million mobile subscribers downloaded at least one mobile game in January

2. Although national carriers have added about 59 titles to storefronts on leading devices since September 2005, consumption has not increased

3. Males younger than 25 are the predominant consumers of mobile games, accounting for 29.9 percent of the market

4. The RAZR is the most popular gaming handset, with 305,588 mobile gamers reporting they downloaded a game onto the device in the quarter ended January, 2006

5. 3.3% of US Mobile subscribers downloaded a mobile game in January, 2006 which is a drop of nearly 1% since M:Metrics last benchmark

This is not the first I've heard of the slowdown in the Mobile Games business. Clearly, additional inventory doesn't translate into additional sales and this is primarily a result of the shopping experience on the devices. The average number of games on the large carrier decks was over 350 games. No one in their right mind is going to spend the time browsing on their phone through 350 titles. Until there is an improved discovery process, M:metrics game benchmarks won't show much improvement.

Cingular's 3G phones

Well, as of today, you can buy the two new Cingular 3G phones at the Cingular online store. As I mentioned previously, I've already purchased the Samsung SGH-ZX10 and they also released the LG CU320.

You can buy the LG here, and the Samsung here.

Billboard Top Ringtones

I'm sure most people know about this site, but figured I should re-post so you can bookmark it.

New phone purchase

Well, I bought a new phone last week. I finally had enough with the crapped out speaker on my Mot V551 and went into my local Cingular store.

They had the new Samsung SGH-zx10 which is Cingular's first 3G devic, so I stepped up.

It comes with the new Cingular Video (CV) application which is Cingular's response to Sprint TV and Verizon's VCast. The phone was $149 with a 2 year plan and I'm paying $60 per month for voice (900 minutes) and $20 a month for Media Net unlimited data.

I haven't played around with the phone too much over the past few days but my initial response is extremely favorable. The video service looks exceptional and although 3G coverage is still limited, it has worked fine for me around town the past few days.

The salesperson said that the marketing blitz should kick in this week.

RAZR keeps going...

Last week, at a Merrill Lynch conference, Ron Garriques, President of Mobile Devices Division at Motorola, said that the company is still having trouble meeting demand for the RAZR.

I know I've mentioned this before, but this story just keeps getting better. Before the RAZR was initially launched by Cingular, most phones that sold in high volume were very inexpensive (<$100 post subsidy). When the RAZR was first launched, it was selling for >$300 and I heard that the initial volume estimates were under 500K units. Well, Cingular blew through that allotment in no time and now it seems everyone has one.

I was in the Cingular store on Thursday (more on that in a minute) and the sales person said it was still the #1 phone.

Calls from the sky

Apparently, researchers from Carnegie Mellon have released data from a new study that concludes that passengers using cellphones or wireless laptops on a flight are more than likely to disrupt cockpit operations.

Most calls are made on takeoff and landing which is when systems are most vulnerable. Therefore, the study concludes that the use of devices should be restricted on flights.

Many years ago I worked on the Connexion project with Boeing, which promised broadband in the sky. We were working on a way to deliver video streaming on the planes. According to their site, the service is now up & running. Wouldn't VOIP from your laptop on a Connexion plane circumvent this problem?