Page 1 2 3 Page 1 2 3 | FRIDAY - MAY 26, 2006 - ISSUE NO. 214 |
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| Wireless Messaging Newsletter | ||
| WIRELESS  MESSAGING | |
| EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION |
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| EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION |
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First Impressions: Motorola Q Smartphone
Posted by Melissa Perenson
Tuesday, May 23, 2006, 05:31 PM (PST)
My colleague, Erik Larkin, met with Motorola earlier today and hand-carried our evaluation unit back to PC World's offices—where several of us have been eager to get our hands on the much-anticipated Motorola Q (follow the link for more details on the Q and Verizon's service offerings). I snagged it first, and have a few initial thoughts to share about its industrial design.
Like the Razr before it, the Q clearly aims to make a fashion--as well as technophile—statement. Slim and stylish, the silver-hued Q is just 11.5mm thick—less than the Razr, and significantly more compact than competing smartphones from Palm, T-Mobile, HP, and Research in Motion. It would easily slide into a shirt or jacket pocket, and at 4.1 ounces, it won't even leave a dent.
Based on its design, the Windows Mobile 5-based Q is trying to create a new hybrid that draws upon the best elements of the latest smartphones from Palm (maker of the Treo 700 series) and RIM (maker of the BlackBerry 8700 series). It has a BlackBerry-like click wheel to scroll through content, at the upper right corner of the phone. And it has five-way navigational control, plus a QWERTY keyboard and six menu navigation buttons in the center, just like the Palm Treo series has. The menu navigation buttons here are pressure-sensitive and soft, though—a design point that's reminiscent, though not identical to, the flat buttons on the Razr.
As appealing as I found the overall look of the Q--and as impressed as I am with what this phones packs inside its streamlined chassis—I was disappointed by its design in several aspects. The keyboard's lack of a backspace button among the QWERTY keys proved problematic for me. I also found the click-wheel a bit stiff, and the soft key panel surprisingly tough on my fingers to navigate—in part because of the width of the unit (as compared with the more palm-friendly Palm Treo 700), and in part because I found it annoying to move over the deep rim surrounding the five-way nav control to the two upper soft keys. Those soft keys, to the right and left of the five-way nav control are integral for navigation. And given the unit's lack of a touchscreen, how your hand responds to the feel of the buttons will determine how much you enjoy using the Q.
Another gripe: The position of the mini-USB port. I know I've often used a cell phone while it's tethered to an outlet, getting its necessary juice. However, the mini-USB port—which doubles as the power port—is awkwardly situated on the lower left of the Q. This is inconvenient if you try to use the device in your hands—either for reading content, or putting it up to your ear.
Some things I really liked: I found the keyboard, with its slanted, oblong keys, roomy as compared to the Treo, and easier to handle than the much-wider BlackBerry 8700 series. Other strengths: The Q has a bright, clear QVGA 320 by 240 resolution display, and its 1.3 megapixel digital camera has a reasonably effective 6X zoom.
Stay tuned: We'll post further reports on the Q's design, usability, and performance as we have them.
Source: PCWORLD
Mobile IM held back by 'traditional' operators
It could be the new SMS, say analysts - so telcos take note...
By David Meyer
Published: Thursday 25 May 2006
Analysts have warned that mobile operators may fail to capitalise on the full benefits of instant messaging, which has the potential to overtake text messaging in popularity in the mobile space.
Ovum's John Delaney said on Wednesday: "The main replacement for SMS will be mobile IM."
Citing a "faltering of growth" in the SMS market - outside the UK, at least - Delaney told delegates at the Global Messaging Congress in London that mobile IM "does it better but if operators price it right it doesn't do it any cheaper".
He later told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK he believes "IM will gradually take over from SMS in the next five years in Europe".
Delaney's views were echoed by Paolo Simoes of Portuguese carrier TMN, who said: "IMS-enabled IM/SIP messaging on convergent devices will be the predominant mobile messaging technology of the future, replacing all others."
But James Enck, an analyst with Daiwa Securities, believes operators could lose out in mobile IM because of their traditional approach to interoperability.
He said on Thursday: "If it's implemented in the way that carriers typically do - which is to pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist - then it'll be a big failure."
Enck also pointed to IM's capacity for showing other users' online status as one of several discouraging factors for telcos.
He said: "Presence in IM is certainly very compelling to the end user but, if you think about the revenue model for cellular operators, a lot of their money is made from a lack of transparency," highlighting the revenues gained through roaming and voicemail. He added that the likelihood of widespread flat data rates in the near future would also make the proposition unattractive, as "SMS is the most profitable product in the history of telecoms".
The main efforts towards interoperability were being made by "IM giants", and "independent players who have a solution on the software side", said Enck.
The last year has seen IM interoperability agreements between MSN and Yahoo!, and - through Google's recent investment in AOL - between Google Talk and AOL's client.
Handset vendors were also an "important wildcard", said Enck, who suggested Nokia's decision to open up its new series of mobiles to third-party softphone client developers indicated it had lost patience with carriers' ability to take the initiative.
Nokia also teamed up with Google on its recent 770 wi-fi tablet, which has no GSM capability but now supports VoIP (it comes pre-installed with Google Talk) and Jabber-based IM.
Operators such as Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone did agree earlier this year to work towards interoperability for any proprietary IM clients but observers have suggested browser-based clients could prove more popular because of their large existing communities.
More competition to own-brand clients could come from social networking operations such as MySpace, which recently soft-launched its IM client and earlier this year went mobile in partnership with new US phone brand Helio.
Enck said: "It's not just the major usual suspects [such as MSN] but community interests and social networks who've got a major lead on the carriers in this space."
David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK
Source: silicon.com
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| WIRELESS MESSAGING NEWS |
Motorola and Good Technology announced that GoodLink wireless messaging is available immediately on the Moto Q.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
GoodLink running on the Moto Q combines an uncompromising phone experience with a stylishly thin form factor and assuredly secure solution for enterprise mobility.
Powered by Verizon Wireless’s high-speed EVDO network, the Moto Q and GoodLink enable mobile professionals to take care of business while on the go by staying connected to—and easily multitasking between—their email with attachments, folders, calendar, contacts, global address look-up, notes, tasks and other critical business applications. Using GoodLink’s Secure Over-The-Air setup, mobile professionals can get up and running in minutes, without ever having to part with their smartphone. GoodLink on the Moto Q is available for Microsoft Exchange users today, and will be available for IBM Domino/Lotus Notes users this summer.
GoodLink on the Moto Q provides business customers with:
“With GoodLink on the Moto Q, users get a great phone and industry-leading mobile messaging solution, and IT gets the peace of mind of end-to-end security and control—all in the world’s thinnest smartphone,” said Mark Shockley, vice president of Seamless Mobility Devices, Motorola Mobile Devices.
Source: PhoneMag
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400m internet users. But how to reach them?
By Richard Waters
Published: May 25 2006 18:44 | Last updated: May 25 2006 18:44
A new web of strategic alliances between the US internet giants started to take shape on Thursday as Yahoo!, the biggest online portal, and Ebay, the world’s leading e-commerce company, announced plans to tap into each other’s large online audiences.
For now, it seems, full mergers are not on the cards. But as the internet companies grapple with tying their services more closely together and learning more about each others’ user bases, the impetus towards deeper links could accelerate, according to analysts.
In the early days of the internet, alliances between big online firms took the form of traffic deals with e-commerce or media companies typically paying portals like AOL for the privilege of advertising their brands and linking to their sites.
Those links generally proved ineffective in driving traffic. AOL’s inability to renew the partnerships was a big reason for the drop-off in its revenues after the dotcom bust. Now a new network of more coherent commercial relationships has started to form, as the internet companies look to profit from each others’ traffic without the disruption and potential loss of momentum big mergers would entail.
The most fundamental driving force has been the rise of search advertising, a form of advertising that is expected to generate $10bn for Google alone this year.
As the largest supplier of graphical, or “branded”, advertising, Yahoo is also looking to extend the reach of its advertising network more broadly across the web. Along with Microsoft, which has just entered the business, Google and Yahoo are rushing to sign up the remaining big untapped audiences on the web while forging ties to new users coming online.
Ebay’s audience remains one of the most attractive under-utilised communities on the internet.
To power its sites, which let buyers trawl for goods to buy from millions of different sellers, it has built a search engine to compare with those of the big web search firms, at least in terms of scale.
According to Ebay executives, the 350m searches a day carried out on its sites rivals the number of searches on Google.
However, for Ebay, “monetising” those searches by placing ads in front of shoppers raises some difficult questions.
Sellers pay listing fees for the privilege of having their goods displayed on Ebay and included in its internal search results. Putting ads on these pages could frighten buyers away, creating a form of competition that would weaken the value of an Ebay listing.
Executives of both Ebay and AOL made clear yesterday that they would tread carefully. While Yahoo will supply graphical, or “branded”, advertising to all Ebay sites, the search ads will be limited.
Meanwhile, new audiences are quickly emerging online, such as those created by MySpace and other social networking sites.
It will not be easy to build an advertising business around these new audiences, which are converging around communications services like email and instant messaging, as well as user-generated content like personal blogs and photographs.
As Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, pointed out this month, MSN has one of the biggest user bases online, thanks largely to its role as the world’s largest instant messaging service.
Yet it has yet to find a way to serve up ads to these people.
Also, many advertisers may hesitate before linking their brands to the burgeoning user-generated content on the web – a point made by Yahoo, which questions how much of the traffic on a site like MySpace is susceptible to advertising.
While search advertising has been the most significant factor, other chances to cash in on their mutual audiences are also driving the new online alliances.
Through its ownership of the PayPal online payments system and the Skype internet voice service, Ebay owns two of the Web’s best-known brands. Linking with Yahoo may give it the chance to extend the reach of those services to a community of users that now numbers more than 400m people.
Wall Street has turned a skeptical eye of late on Ebay’s claims for the broader potential in these services, making the Yahoo alliance the first potential validation of its strategy.
Source: Financial Times
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