Mobile Phones Blog

The highly anticipated BlackBerry Storm 9500, developed by Research In Motion in tandem with Vodafone is set to open up an almighty downpour on the smartphone/PDA market upon its release here in the UK tomorrow.

The Storm marks a new venture for RIM, being as it is the first BlackBerry PDA to come with a touchscreen UI, and a rather nice one at that. The interface features a unique brand of haptic feedback which is as of yet unseen on any other touchscreen handset. Whilst other touchscreens will give you a neat little conformational buzz whenever you tap in a command, tapping and typing away on the interface of the Storm is a different proposition – the actual screen itself depresses slightly into the main body of the handset and satisfyingly clicks back out. Keystrokes are accompanied by a slight feedback buzz which is similar to, but altogether different from the type of haptic feedback were used to from the LG Viewty et al.

The BlackBerry Storm is RIM’s most media-friendly handset so far, designed to, er, rein in the typical hardcore Blackberry buyer who might have been swayed by the push email support available on some of the newer smartphones on offer from rival makers. Among its features is a 3.2 Megapixel camera, 3G internet access and sat-nav functionality. Up to 16GB of storage is available, enough space to store plenty of choice tunes downloaded from the Vodafone Music Store, direct access to which, is a fully integrated feature.

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O2 have officially announced that the current free/discounted MacBook/O2 Mobile Broadband rumour is just that. An O2 spokeswoman yesterday confirmed that there are “no such plans to launch an Apple MacBook laptop offer,” and that the rumours are “untrue”.

As we all know, O2, who along with Carphone Warehouse, hold exclusive carriage rights to the iPhone, were thought to have worked out a deal with Apple which would see them match the current slew of free laptop offers available from mobile broadband providers and network rivals T-Mobile, Vodafone, 3 Mobile and Orange.

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Apple has cut its planned production of iPhones in the second half of the year by up to 4m units, according to calculations by investment bank Pacific Crest Securities, in a move mainly geared to sustaining current pricing levels - but also perhaps indicative of lower than expected demand in certain markets, notably Japan.

In the squeeze on smartphone pricing, the iPhone’s operator partners are likely to carry some of the burden, with carriers like O2 UK battling to hit their targets for the phone, probably with increased subsidies. One way to cushion the impact will be to add new services to its bundles, some with less price sensitivity, and despite recent denials, O2 is still widely expected to become the first cellco in the world to offer a subsidized Apple Macbook with mobile broadband contracts, next year.

On the handset front, assuming the Pacific Crest intelligence is correct, the reduced figures would still put Apple in the position of turning out 14m to 15m handsets for the whole of 2008, down from the initial plan of 18m, but nevertheless making Apple a likely seventh or eighth in terms of handset sales for the full year, up from 29th place in 2007 (when the iPhone did not have a full year of sales, nor a 3G model). The bank actually expects Apple to sell more iPhones than it had previously predicted, with the reduced manufacturing bill contributing to better margins and pricing power, and to more efficient inventory levels. The firm raised its iPhone unit sales projection to 11m from 8m.

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There is talk abroad of a deal brewing between Apple and O2 that could see customers who sign up for either of O2’s mobile and home broadband offerings getting MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop throw into the bargain.

The two companies, apparently still cosy in their iPhone relationship will be offering free hardware to subscribers in a bid to match the current free laptop offers available to Carphone Warehouse customers who sign up with Orange, 3 Mobile, Vodafone, and T-Mobile.

It is as of yet unknown whether the Macs will be available free, we presume, given that Apple stuff generally costs a pretty penny that the MacBook will either be available as a free gift, or at a lower cost that the Pro version.

Last month, Sony Ericsson was vocally denying reports that its flagship launch this year, the Xperia X1 Windows handset, was delayed. Now, however, it admits that the product will be released as promised on September 30, but only through restricted channels in key markets like the UK. Nonetheless, the phonemaker is planning a major marketing initiative around the smartphone, as it fights for attention in the pre-Christmas buying period among other high profile new arrivals like the Nokia N96 and Samsung i850 Innov8 - even if some of its tactics look like copycats of Nokia’s N96 drive.

In the UK, O2 and Vodafone will offer the Xperia X1, which has been hotly anticipated since it was unveiled back in February, from the end of this month. Orange will also have the phone, but only through indirect channels, mainly Phones4U. T-Mobile and 3 will not have the product in Q4. Dave Hilton, marketing director for SE in the UK and Ireland, said in an interview: “As part of a plan to launch the Xperia X1 this year we had to limit the release. Come Q1, there will be resources to range it elsewhere. As it was a fairly late project, only limited networks could be involved, but it will be available to the large retailers and a small amount will go through distribution for other retailers.”

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Today, proposals were announced by the European Commission to further cut the costs of calling abroad within the EU for residents of member states, following what it calls a failure by the industry to self-regulate. “I have announced today that enough is enough,” said EU Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding, who is insisting that regulation “now must happen from top down from Brussels in the interests of consumers.” New proposals from the Commissioner could see the cost of sending a text fall from 23p to as little as 9p per message, with voice calls falling from 36p per minute down to 27p.

Several European holidaymakers, more often than not British ones, have experienced what is known as “bill shock”, upon return from a holiday abroad - you come home and get your next bill for your phone in the post only to find that you’ve unexpectedly racked up a three-figure debt just for making a few calls and sending some texts to friends and family back home.

The Commission set a deadline of July the 1st of this year for the mobile industry to take action; both T-Mobile and O2 promised to cut the rates of sending messages from abroad, and Orange slashed the cost of their data rates. In 2007, the networks were limited to charging a maximum of 34p per minute to make a call back home, and 17p to receive a call, limits which are still observed today.

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The 23rd of September, New York City - Google is all set to make its mobile handset debut in the Big Apple tomorrow night, with the whole world watching, and Taiwanese TouchDiamond manufacturers HTC on board along with exclusive network partner T-Mobile, who have secured carriage rights of the phone here in the UK, the US and in Deutsche Telekom’s homeland of Germany.

Dubbed the G1, the first ever ‘G-phone’ to come with Google’s Linux-based Android operating system built in, the handset is rumoured to feature an iPhone-esque touchscreen interface as well as a full QWERTY keyboard, located underneath the slide-out display. Also included onboard is a 3.2 Megapixel camera, a memory card slot and HSDPA support for fast mobile browsing.

Whilst there’s been absolutely nothing official on a release, we’ve heard from multiple sources that T-Mobile are planning on taking pre-orders from its online store from the 17th of October, putting an end to persisting rumours that tomorrow’s big day also sees the commercial launch of the G1 product.

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After a year of anticipation, hype and developer setbacks, Google’s Android system is finally set to debut on a commercial handset. As the company showed off the software platform for the first time in Europe - on an unbranded device - a launch date of September 23 was confirmed for the US, where T-Mobile will be the first to offer the HTC Dream handset.

In the demonstration in London, at Google’s Developer Day yesterday, the name of the handset was hidden, but was identifiable as the HTC Dream. HTC has scored significant points over its larger rivals by promising the first ever Android phone.

It has spend recent years transitioning from a low margin, mainly white label manufacturer to a branded vendor of midpriced smartphones, but has relied primarily on Windows Mobile, which has restricted some of its market appeal, especially outside the US. HTC says it expects to ship 600,000 to 700,000 Dream units this year, exceeding analysts’ estimates of 300,000 to 500,000.

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O2 is fighting hard to keep its exclusive deal for the iPhone in the UK, but this is raising questions over whether the UK carrier is sacrificing too much for the Apple handset. It has already rejected the Nokia N96, which is set to be one of the hottest smartphones of the pre-holiday buying season, and is set to turn down other devices and services such as Nokia Comes With Music. This is in addition to spending a huge portion of its customer acquisition budget on a single phone, at a time when consumer spending slowdown could hit margins anyway.

Although the small print of Apple’s exclusive deals with operators such as O2 UK and AT&T have never been revealed, the contract with O2 is understood to last until 2012, but with the option to renegotiate before then - possibly opening the UK market up to a second iPhone carrier as early as one year from now. The renegotiation is likely to be triggered if Apple is dissatisfied with O2’s sales, a situation that highlights the strong upper hand that the device maker gained in its early deals with operators. A spokesperson for O2 said: “We have a strong relationship with Apple and they are pleased with the sales of the iPhone to date.”

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Nokia’s new smartphone, the N96, may be an upgrade to the N95 rather than a whole new range, but it will still play a vital role in the fight to dominate high end handset sales in the holiday season. So O2 UK’s decision not to carry the product, in a market where the N95 was very successful, does not bode well for Nokia’s attempt to stay at the forefront of the European smartphone sector, amid growing competition and the threat of consumer spending slowdown. It’ll still be available SIM-free of course, so technically, it will be available on O2… just not at a very competitive price.

The N95 was Nokia’s UK bestseller last year, shifting over a million units, and the Finnish vendor has achieved the most difficult of tricks, sustaining high sales of the N95 almost right up to the launch of the replacement model - even though this has been detailed and anticipated since its was unveiled in February. The 8GB version of the N95, which shipped six months ago in Europe, provided a useful fillip to uptake, but the N96’s future nevertheless looks uncertain.

The main change is that there are just so many handsets that now offer the complete set of smartphone features including a large amount of memory, top-of-the-range camera, usable mobile web interface and applications, GPS for location services, and decent music player. The N95 was the first mainstream phone to provide this combination at a price that was affordable by midmarket customers as well as the elite of smartphone enthusiasts.

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