After Migros and Coop now Universal offers it's own phone:
Universal Music to launch own handsets

Singletouch Interactive, the US-based MVNE (mobile virtual network enabler), has announced an agreement with Universal Music to provide the media company with customised handsets and a range of content and services. The deal includes handsets branded by Universal as ‘MoveU Mobile’, as well as devices designed to promote individual artists signed to the Universal label. Singletouch claims to have already sold 7,000 handsets branded by Hilary Duff, the US teen singer.

Image by Nokia

Nokia Introduces Phones For Converged Services

Nokia Corp. (NOK) plans to have phones that can switch between mobile and fixed networks available for consumers next year, as telecoms operators increasingly try to woo customers with converged services. The world's largest handset maker will start selling a dual-network phone targeted at corporate users this year, and one for consumers is due in the first half of 2006, Olli-Pekka Lintula, director of strategic marketing at the technology platforms division, told Dow Jones Newswires.

"All future phones for enterprises from Nokia will also be wi-fi equipped," Lintula said.

[...] By 2009 Nokia forecasts that there will be just over 100 million wi-fi enabled phones globally, up from a few million this year.

See also:
Nokia and Kineto Collaborating in UMA Technology for Fixed-Mobile Convergence

It's always funny to read Russell after having had the same thoughts;)

Unfortunately the term "mobcasting" is as problematic as the term "moblogging" and I really dislike both*. First because there is this "double entendre" of "mob" for common people and second because there is this "double entendre" for the techies.

Personally I can only support a technical definition of mobcasting, being something analogue to podcasting for mobile phones with a memory chip. And I really have some problems with the wikipedia definition as it is extravagantly blurry by mixing social and technical characteristics in a very loose way.

As for moblogging on the other hand, I try to keep the "historical" definition which is sending email (or MMS) to a website. Whereas I call a wap, i-mode, partnerML-capable weblog a "mobile blog".

For some this may sound gratuitous, but I think we really need some clearcut definitions to understand about what we are really talking.

* And even more "Phlogs", "Vlogs" and other "Flogs". Please, don't play it too simple.

Image: Swisscom

Kulturplatz (see Video) talked about the NATEL, the swiss name for mobile phone (still in usage today), which exists since 1975 and was launched by the PTT, today's Swiss Post then still together with Swisscom. The word NAtel stands for "Nationales Autotelefonnetz", meaning "national automobile telephone network". Even in 1985 a NATEL weighed still around 12 kilo, so it was only by car you could transport it.

Thomas Hengartner, Professor for Ethnology, talked about the cultural and social changes which came with the mass adoption of mobile phones.

A new way of bypassing the telcos comes from the BBC. If one thinks only a bit, «mobcasting» comes to mind. And interestingly a mobcasting blog already exists (see this post as well), even if I would define the term similarly (mobile + podcasting = mobcasting), with a totally different meaning. My idea just takes the BBC idea one step further: user generated content. Instead of podcasting your content on your iPod, download content on your small digital chip, insert it in your mobile phone and hear, see it anytime, anywhere without going on the network. This will make a lot of sense for all things which are not time-, location- or network-based - meaning prepackaged, "closed" content - be it user generated or coming from Universal.

Which brings us to the next thought. Where do telcos and wifi make sense? Yes, exactly - with open content, generated right at the moment. It's a radicalisation of Eco's Poetics of the Open Work which could - at that time - only discuss "closed" content".

Sci-fi turns science fact with BBC hits by mobile

Doctor Who and the cult sci-fi series Red Dwarf are being made available as full-length shows for mobile phones, following a landmark deal between the BBC and a UK technology company.

BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, is providing one episode of Doctor Who and three episodes of Red Dwarf to ROK Entertainment group. The technology company will then "burn" the programmes on to small digital chips which users will insert into a slot inside their mobile phone handset.

The system means that mobile phone users are not dependent on downloading video clips or network reception to watch the programmes.

Images from Yallo, Coop, Migros

Budget Mobile (SMS and Voice) gets some traction. Coop and Migros, the local Walmarts, enter the mobile business.

Coop und Migros steigen in den Mobilfunkmarkt ein. Ab September wollen die beiden Detailhändler Handys mit Prepaid-SIM-Karten anbieten. Coop arbeitet mit Orange zusammen, Migros mit Swisscom.

See also:
Der Standard: Migros und Swisscom starten Billig-Mobiltelefon-Angebot

Now Sunrise offers Yallo, Orange and Coop offer CoopMobile (with MMS) and Swisscom and Migros offer M-Budget-Mobile. And all offer only Voice calls and SMS (+MMS for CoopMobile) for a lower price. This looks a lot like "milking the cow till the last drop", as SMS and voice calls are both the most profit-yielding and rapidly declining. Businesswise it makes therefore a lot of sense to be in such a hurry and to seek allies like Migros and Coop: first, both SMS and voice are well-established and you don't have to explain these services to your customers and second Skype and mobile email are just around the corner.

The ceramic white PSP is soon coming out, but there is still time to get a etoy-themed leather deluxe case of PSP.

Mobile commerce over cell phones jumped 25 percent last fiscal year to around 971 billion yen ($8.8 billion) according to a survey on e-business just released by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry [.pdf in Japanese]. Covering all of fiscal 2004 (which in Japan ended March '05), the survey showed wireless purchases of books and music had grown by 85 percent from virtually nothing the previous year to 330 million yen ($3 million). Shopping for clothing and accessories over the smallest screen accelerated 79 percent, taking in 150 hundred million yen ($1.3 million).

Via Wireless Watch Japan

Interesting points by Simon Judge and Capgemini/INSEAD (see picture). Needless to say that I fully subscribe to them.


Image from Capgemini/INSEAD

Users Think They Don’t Want Advanced Mobile Services

First of all, as the report suggests, it opens up new opportunities for network operators to innovate with simpler pricing and services. However, we should not rule out new advanced service just because people don’t want them. People might not know what they want until they see it. People have responded to the survey in terms of the services offered now. As for new advanced services, they must be clearly priced and made as simple as possible.

Application Developer Perspective: Part 1: Payment

In summary, I believe existing and new solutions should…

• Be affordable compared to non-mobile alternatives
• Have transparent pricing
• Easily allow providers to accept payments
• Easily allow end users to pay

Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life

"Start with this book if you want to understand the broadest social and technological impacts of the mobile phone. Although focused on the keitai in Japanese society, the authors provide a conceptual toolkit for examining the effects of emerging communication practices across the boundaries of nationality and discipline. This is not just about a technology or the way it is used in one country. It's about understanding one of the most important ways that twenty-first century lives will differ from those of the twentieth century."
--Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

See the blogentry by Mizuko Ito and the introduction PDF.

Via Joi

See also:
Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Yugioh, Media Mixes, and Everyday Cultural Production