Mobile phone companies have long offered free handsets to customers to encourage them to sign up for contracts, but now they have a new lure to persuade people to part with their hard-earned money – free laptop computers.

In doing so, they are threatening to spark a boom in the laptop market and to generate a return on the fortunes they invested on bidding for 3G bandwidths in 2000.

Carphone Warehouse led the way when it started giving away laptops with its home broadband package last September. Now the mobile operators have followed suit. Last month Orange became the first operator to offer laptops in its shops and last week Phones4U said that it would sell laptops and in time may offer them free with mobile broadband contracts.

All are chasing the increasing demand for data to be transmitted to mobile devices as income from voice services in a saturated and increasingly competitive market declines. Last month, Vodafone revealed that service revenues for its first quarter were up 2.1 per cent in the UK thanks to data and messaging, but revenues from phone calls had fallen by 4.4 per cent... More at The Times.

A report commissioned by Vodafone claims that some 40 million Europeans would ditch their mobile phone if US-style billing comes to the EU where a mobile phone user has to pay to receive phone calls. The submission to the European Commission, seen by the Financial Times is in response to proposals from the European Commissioner for Telecoms, Viviane Reding.

Ms Reding has lead a long standing campaign against roaming charges imposed by the operators when customers travel around Europe.

The Commission warned in June that price regulation of termination markets across Europe lacks consistency. It said that gaps between fixed and mobile termination rates and between mobile termination rates imposed by national regulators cannot be altogether justified by differences in the underlying costs, networks or national characteristics.

Her current proposal is to slash the termination rates charged by the mobile operators - which it has been feared could lead to the operators having to charge recipients for incoming phone calls.

The move could position Europe closer to the model followed in the USA - which while it has some of the lowest calling rates around, but also has a much lower population penetration level. Mexico introduced Caller Party Pays (as the current European model is called) in 1998 and saw a ten percent jump in mobile usage within the first month. Technically, CPP is available within the USA, although practically no one offers the service. More at cellular-news.

The Wait Was Worth It, StyleTap Rocks My World has been posted at Symbian-Guru.com. I must say that it is more difficult to use on a non touchscreen device, but it is nice to have some old Palm favourites on my E71.

It’s been 10 months since I first wrote about it in October 2007. At the time, I was so excited that StyleTap was going to work on an S60 client for their application that I almost had a heart attack. But through the 10 months (and a few days) of wait, my anticipation and eagerness diminished until 2 days ago, when I received an email telling me I’m now in the close Beta for StyleTap. And a whole new world opened for me!

So what is StyleTap I hear you wonder?

StyleTap is a sort of emulator that allows you to run Palm OS applications on different handsets and operating systems. They already have a client for Windows Mobile, which I tested when I had my old Qtek 9100, but they are now expanding to support S60 3rd Edition and UIQ3. They are also working on an iPhone application, but are very limited by Apple’s software strategy.

Palm OS you say?! Who needs THAT when you have S60?

Everyone knows that Palm OS is … outdated and so last century. The interface is yucky, and hasn’t been updated for ages now. But we can’t deny that Palm were a great player in what was once known as PDAs and that hundreds if not thousands of developers were (and many still are) on board with them. Up until now, you can still find tons of free applications for Palm, that are mostly related to organization and PIM, because of the PDA background. But for that reason too..."

Today's question comes from Bob. Do you enter text with your finger on a WinMo device? How? e.g. Typing email text, web site URLs, etc. without using a stylus or keyboard.

Let's expand it a little- how do you enter text on your device, with what and how effective is it?

The Treo Pro has caused a small ripple of excitement in the PDA community and there are some good reasons for this. It has the following specification-

400Mhz Processor
128MB RAM / 256MB Storage (100MB user available)
320x320 screen
HSDPA / Quad Band GSM / Tri-band UMTS
Wi-Fi
Built in GPS
2MP Camera
Price: £386

It’s a good feature list and one that is particularly good for Palm. Of course you could spend £60 less and get a Samsung i780 which shares almost the exact same specification yet has a front camera, is thinner and lighter and which has been proven to be ultra reliable by many people. The screen on the i780 is the main issue outdoors, but this is a comparison that is hard to ignore.  As you look further around this price point a crowd of smartphones running Windows Mobile Professional pop up; iPAQ 914c, MWg Zinc II, Glofiish M810, Toshiba Portege G910 and the list goes on. There is really not a lot to differentiate the Treo Pro from any of the other smartphones in this area of the market.

The fact that it is a ‘Treo’ means that the keyboard should be good and that the screen will hopefully also work well in most conditions, but the i780 keyboard is brilliant and I am struggling to see why the Treo Pro is generating so much fuss. On the Symbian side the Nokia E71 is the obvious competitor and the build quality is second to none in this unit- the fact that HTC make the Treo Pro helps with regards to consumer confidence and I am still confident that it will be a good workhorse that does most of what the user will require.

I think the fuss has grown over the Treo Pro because Palm has recently not released anything of note and the Treo Pro does at last represent a Palm product that can compete in this market. Will it have anything over it’s rivals? Probably not, but like many of you I still have a soft spot for Palm and want to see it do well in this industry. The Treo Pro does not offer much innovation, but it is a step forward. Palm needs to think smarter though to grab more of the market than just the Palm die-hards.

P.S. Is the Treo Pro even a Palm? It is made by HTC and runs Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Besides the keyboard, the only Palm related part is the brand name.