Sony has announced its Video On Demand service which could be seen as a rival to iTunes. It may need a little more content, but all competition is good.

Today at the IFA 2010 show in Berlin, Sony announced that “Video On Demand powered by Qriocity™”, a premium streaming video service, will be available this fall in five European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.  With “Video On Demand powered by Qriocity,” customers can choose from hundreds of box office hits from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), NBC Universal International Television Distribution, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, as well as popular content from top local studios. Many movies are available in High Definition (HD) as well as Standard Definition (SD), and all can be rented at the touch of a button on Sony’s 2010 models of network-enabled BRAVIA® TVs and Blu-ray Disc™ players, and Blu-ray Home Theater systems.  “Video On Demand powered by Qriocity” has been available in the U.S. since April 2010.

“Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” brings together the features cited as most important by music enthusiasts. With access to a huge library of songs through the cloud, users can discover new music through channels personalized to their tastes on multiple devices and without the requirement to manage digital music files. The convenience resulting from this new consumer music experience will further enhance the value of music, thus creating new opportunities for the industry.  Details of the service plan will be announced in the future.

Orange has unveiled High Definition Voice which sounds awfully catchy. It will work on select phones and claims to offer louder, clearer, sharper mobile calls. I will be doing some research into this to see what is really behind the product…

Orange today announced the first major advancement in UK mobile voice calling for 20 years with the launch of mobile High Definition (HD) Voice. Providing crystal clear sound quality for calls, mobile users will see the service set a new consumer benchmark, with today’s move testament to Orange’s continuing focus on innovation.

Orange HD Voice is available at no extra cost to all Orange mobile customers who take a HD Voice enabled handset. From launch, new variants of the Nokia 5230, Nokia X6, Nokia E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro will be HD Voice enabled with further manufactures expected to offer HD handsets in the coming months. All HD Voice enabled handsets will be labelled with the Orange HD Voice logo, helping customers to easily recognise those devices that support the new Orange HD Voice service.  HD Voice demonstration units will also be available in Orange shops.

This is for those of you using Windows to access the internet- approximately 90% of you. Will update this once the Keynote starts. The Apple store is currently down which means that new products should be online imminently.

• Steve Jobs is on stage wearing completely different clothes than normal. Just kidding. Woz is there as well. ‘Really Cool’ already used once.
• Apple now has 300 retail stores in 10 countries. A new store in Spain will make it 11. On some days over 1 million people visit the stores. 80,000 1:1 classes taught per week. More than 50% of people buying Macs are buying their first.
• 120 million iOS devices shipped to date. Activating more than 230,000 iOS devices per day. 200 apps are being downloaded every seconds. Lots of annoying applause after each statement.
• iOS 4.1 being introduced today and is available next week as a free download. Proximity, Bluetooth and iPhone 3G performance bugs fixed. HDR photos added.

• HDR Photos enhances photos which can be affected by too much light on the device itself.
• Game Center is all about multi-player games. Auto matching, challenge friends, compare scores etc. Fair to say that the interface is very un-Apple and actually quite ugly.
• A game called Project Sword is being demonstrated- WOW! It’s not out yet, but it shows the potential.

• iOS 4.2 is all about iPad. It brings all that we have on iPhone to the iPad plus wireless printing. AirPlay is also being introduced which is, you guessed it, ‘really cool’.
• AirPlay is the new name for AirTunes; you can stream audio, videos and photos to other devices over Wi-Fi. iOS 4.2 demoed on the iPad. Basically offering what we know from iOS 4.1 on the iPhone. 4.2 will be released in November for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
• All new designs for every iPod model. The iPod Shuffle lives on. It is smaller, but the buttons return and voice functions remain. 15 hours (!) of music playback. Five colours and only $49.

• The new iPod Nano is 46% smaller. 24 hour music playback (!!), multi-touch touch screen and it looks like a tiny iPoad Touch. Actually looks usable despite the size. Built in FM Radio, has a clip and Steve is now demonstrating it. Impressed. It’s an iOS device and the screen can be rotated all the way around. 7 colours available including Project RED and is $149 for 8GB and $179 for 16GB.

• iPod Touch time! The iPod Touch is apparently the number one portable game player in the world- outsells Nintendo and Sony portable games devices combined; over 50% market share. 1.5 billion downloads to iPod Touch alone. Here we go-
• New iPod Touch is even thinner- has a retina display, powered by the Apple A4 chip, 3-axis Gyro and FaceTime. HD video recording included as well. 40 hours of music playback (!!!).

• Starting from $229 for 8GB Touch. You can pre-order today and they will be shipping next week.
• Onto iTunes. The next version is iTunes 10 and now has a new logo with no CD.

• Ping is new in iTunes 10 which is dubbed a social network for music. Apparently it is ‘really cool’. You can check what the artists are doing and also share information with friends. You get a customised Top 10 based on the people you follow. Lady GaGa mentioned a lot so far- so where is she Steve?
• Ping looks like a cross between Facebook, Twitter and everything else- can see where this is going. For a start it is a great way to get people buying more music from iTunes. Lots of talk about privacy as well including how you can limit it to your circle of friends. Open to 160 million iTunes users straight away.
• Demonstrated Ping and played a tune plus a video from GaGa telling everyone what she is doing, concerts etc. Nice bit of promotion there…
• Ping also works on the iPhone and iPod Touch- could be HUGE! iTunes 10 is available today!
• One more thing… AppleTV. Not a big hit so far. Fair to say that the new Apple TV is small- you can hold it in your hand.

• All rentals, no purchases- you store nothing. Content can be streamed from a computer- photos etc. $0.99 to rent HD TV shows, $4.99 for HD films. ABC and Fox signed up already- waiting for the rest. You can stream from Netflix as well to the new Apple TV plus YouTube, flickr and mobileme. Apple TV interface looks quite simple and clean.
• Now demonstrating Glee on AppleTV. My daughter is happy with that one… The system plays streamed content from a PC really well- looks like an iPod for photo slideshows.
• Back to AirPlay. You can stream content from an iPad or iPhone to the new AppleTV. US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Australia supported at launch. Price is now $99. I might buy one of those. Then again, my iPhone 4 is pretty good for films and TV episodes already- what a price though- available within 4 weeks.
• To sum up- ‘Really Cool’.
• The guitar is now on screen again. Steve is introducing Coldplay. Noooooo! Anyone, but Coldplay… or U2. Oh well, the products were impressive anyway.

Samsung has announced that it has shipped 1 million Galaxys in the US which is a pretty impressive figure. It is currently available on AT&T and T-Mobile with Sprint availability coming this week.

The FTC has ruled against a company accused of getting it’s employees to write fake iTunes user reviews. These reviews will now have to be removed.

How often do you read iTunes, or other ESD, user reviews and think that something is not quite right? Happens a lot to me.



From the BBC- “Reverb Communications employees posed as ordinary reviewers in a ploy that the FTC called “deceptive advertising”.

The firm must now remove all of the reviews posted by its employees.

The ruling is the first under new FTC guidelines, introduced last year, that cover bloggers and celebrity endorsements as well as online reviews.

Those guidelines were the first change to the FTC’s views on testimonials in nearly 30 years.”

A woman in Philadelphia has had surgery for ‘BlackBerry Thumb’ after using her iPhone too much. Firstly, the name of the condition obviously needs a change and secondly, how long before the lawsuits start to arrive?

The problem here is that this will happen if you use a small keyboard too much, just like RSI happens if you type too much, just like a bad back happens if you lift too much too often. We are not built to use these things and I am fairly sure that whoever created humans didn’t build the thumb for smartphones. Then again…

From WTSP- “The mortgage banker spends 12 hours a day texting clients on her iPhone.

Doctors say if you start feeling pain during texting, stop. Don’t try to power through it.”

Cody Willard has pronounced RIM as being ‘dead’. The reasoning for having big concerns about the company are completely valid, but the whole ‘dead’ thing is pure link baiting.

From MarketWatch- “In other words, the virtuous cycles that critical mass brings to a tech company, has recently ended for RIMM. RIMM had critical mass for the enterprise email solutionns for a decade, but the technology has been creatively destructed by the very similar and more flexible (though still slightly less reliable) email/message/social-networking capabilities of the iPhone and Android…which, as I wrote yesterday, are just starting to see the virtuous cycles that come from critical mass.”

In a recent poll by Nokia Conversations 38% of respondents said that battery life was the most important function of a mobile phone for them. Data connectivity came in at 25% and multimedia at 17%. Screen size and overall size followed.

Let’s remember, however, that this poll was carried out by ‘Nokia’ Conversations so the majority of respondents would be using a Nokia. It also flies in the face of industry trends where phones with suspect batteries are doing so well. Nice to see that 38% of people are with me though:) Full details of the poll are here.

asymco has written a fascinating account of how the mobile industry has moved over the past 3 years, with a focus on the financials. The two pie charts below say a lot about the movement of Apple and RIM in particular. The fact that Nokia has dropped from 63% to 22% is shocking.

The total available profits in the industry dipped to a bit under $4 billion at the trough of the recession, and have recovered to nearly $6 billion in the holiday quarter last year. However, not all vendors are profitable. As you might expect from looking at the operating margins, Motorola and Sony Ericsson have been generating losses for most of this time period. They have both reached profitability in the last quarter, though at very low levels and after having lost a large part of their sales. LG has turned negative this past quarter after being a modest earner for some time. Samsung has maintained a fairly even consistency in its profit capture, though with its expanding market share, it seems to have come at the cost of pricing.

Finally, looking at the pure smartphone vendors RIM and Apple, the picture is nothing short of astonishing. This before-and-after share-of-available-profit chart shows that the two entrants went from about 7% profit share to 65% in three years.

The Australian government is looking to start charging classification fees for apps and games amid concerns that Apple, Google and others are avoiding millions of dollars in classification fees. These fees range from $470 to $2040 and if brought into force it is likely that these fees would have to be passed onto the developers.

In reality it would not make sense to start charging at these levels because it would kill off the industry and likely see a rebuttal from the big manufacturers which would only do harm to the economy. One to keep an eye on though. Thanks to Joel.

From Theaustralian- “THE Labor Party has flagged it will shut down a major loophole in the mobile phone industry.

At a conservative estimate, one-third of them are games, suggesting compliance costs would be in the millions.”

If the subject of touch screens and their shipment volumes float your boat read on. We won’t judge you…

From DisplaySearch- “After only 4% growth in 2009, the mobile phone display market is set to grow by 14% in 2010, with shipments forecast to reach 1.68B units, according to the latest DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile Phone Shipment and Forecast Report. In Q1’10, mobile phone display shipments fell 9% Q/Q due to seasonality, but increased 34% Y/Y, reaching 370.5M units (Figure 1).

“With an average worldwide market penetration of mobile phones at 70%, manufacturers are eager to introduce new features, applications and user interface improvements, such as touch screens, to ensure continued growth for this segment this year,” noted Calvin Hsieh, research director at DisplaySearch. “The migration of various display panel technologies and increasing average display sizes reflects these trends.”

The fall in shipments, combined with a 4% Q/Q decline in average selling price, produced a 13% Q/Q revenue decline. Active matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays were the only technology for which revenues increased Q/Q, as both unit shipments and average prices increased Q/Q. This reflects the success AMOLED is finding in high-end smart phones. These phones are demanding larger display sizes, and in Q1, the average screen size for AMOLED passed 3”, larger than TFT LCDs.

Vodafone has made available its Mobile Wi-Fi product. It is available on various plans and allows the connection of up to 5 wireless devices. I expect to have one of these soon and will post my thoughts.

“Get up to five devices – such as laptops and netbooks – connected to the web with our handy Mobile Wi-Fi. There’s no wires, and no software to install. Just switch it on and enjoy our award-winning, dependable mobile broadband.

Choose from a range of price plans. Don’t want a long-term tie-in? Go for our simple 30-day plan. Or get a generous 5GB data allowance and our Mobile Wi-Fi device for free with our £25 18-month plan.

What else will impress you about our Mobile Wi-Fi? Its long battery life – get up to four hours from a single charge. You’ll also love that you can share documents easily with anyone who’s using your Mobile Wi-Fi.”

Sales of handheld gaming consoles have started to stall according to new data from iSuppli. It seems that the threat of smartphones such as the iPhone is starting to have an effect, but we should not discount the possibility of saturation in the market.

On a personal level I cannot see how a Nintendo DS or Sony PSP will compete long term with the iPhone and the high-end Android devices. Of course dedicated gaming consoles offer a superior experience, but is it superior enough to beat off the pricing of the smartphone games and the proliferation of the smartphone market which enables multi-player to a level we have never seen before? No it isn’t…

The latest figures from Gartner highlight some impressive movement for the Android platform and some not so impressive trends for the likes of Nokia.

Android is up a full 15.4% market share from only 1.8% last year and almost every other mobile OS has taken a hit because of it. iOS is up 1.2% at 14.2%, but the iPhone 4 would not have had any impact on these figures.

Symbian is down from 51% to 41.2% which must be a concern for Nokia and it is the first time that its percentage has dropped so markedly. RIM is down 0.8% at 18.2% which may, or may not, be a cause for concern and Windows Mobile has taken another expected drop from 9.3% to 5%. webOS is sadly nowhere to be seen.

From Gartner- “In the second quarter of 2010, Nokia’s mobile device sales to end users reached 111.5 million units and a share of 34.2 percent. Nokia’s economies of sales and excellent distribution enabled it to hold onto the top spot in the mobile device market. But good quality, well-priced products were not enough to maintain Nokia’s leadership in the high-end sector. This caused Nokia to lose 2.6 percentage points year-on-year. Nokia’s senior executives need to do more to attract developers and other ecosystem members by revising its platform strategy and improving its communications.

Smartphone sales to end users totaled 61.6 million units in the second quarter of 2010, a 50.5 percent increase from the same period in 2009. The top four smartphone OS vendors exhibited growth in the second quarter of 2010, and accounted for 91 percent of the worldwide smartphone OS market, up 6 percent year-on-year.”

Smartphone Essentials Issue 104 is now available to buy in all good bookshops. This month it includes a look at the Word’s Best Smartphone, how to supercharge your phone, 20 top apps for the iPhone 4 and a long look at the Dell Streak.