ArchiveOctober, 2007

By all accounts, this week’s CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Show in San Francisco was bereft of any earth-shattering buzz. Information Week reports that even the parties were a little dull.

Given that, it’s clear that the biggest story to emerge from this week’s convention came from Microsoft. The software giant formally announced its new plan to challenge BlackBerry in the “mobile enterprise smartphone� business. Or, more simply, Windows Mobile devices will soon share many of the same features that have helped BlackBerry dominate the corporate market.

System Center Mobile Device Manager is the unwieldy name of the program; it essentially allows smartphones running Windows Mobile to be managed and deployed as a PC, from a remote source. Mobile professionals will, for example, be able to connect to corporate networks and access company email via cell phone.

Smartphones currently make up 10% of the total cell phone market worldwide, according to ABI Research, but companies like RIM, Nokia, and Microsoft are targeting the expanding corporate niche. As more applications migrate from desktop to cell phone, the demand for such phones is expected to grow.

The annual CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Show opened on Tuesday in San Francisco, with a sort of “State of the Industry� address courtesy of CTIA president Steve Largent (yes, that Steve Largent).

According to Largent, the number of U.S. wireless consumers passed 243 million in June of this year, a number equal to nearly 81% of the general population. American subscribers now average 1 billion text messages a day, a trend that’s helped contribute to huge growth in wireless data revenue – that figure rose 63% from 2006 to 2007, and now makes up 15.5% of all wireless revenue.

And here’s one more mind-boggling number: U.S. cell phone users consumed more than 1.1 trillion minutes in the first half of this year. That’s up 18% over 2006.

Other news from the CTIA show:

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Earlier this week, AT&T announced a partnership with Napster geared towards making the most of the rapidly growing mobile entertainment business. The arrangement brings the nation’s biggest cellular carrier together with one of the best known distributors of digital content to – according to hopeful executives – complement traditional song downloads and generate a new stream of revenue.

The service allows AT&T customers to download songs directly, and wirelessly, to a cell phone. Napster’s catalog of over 5 million songs is the big consumer draw here; in addition, the company has experience managing music distribution, and will presumably provide an attractive user interface. Pricing is already established: $1.99 per individual song, or $7.49 for a month-long subscription good for five songs.

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Disney Mobile — which offered specialty cell phones for kids, as well as parental controls — shut down its MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) services last month. Since we still have a number of customers asking about Disney Mobile or looking for Disney cell phones on our site, we’d like to answer whatever lingering questions you might still have.

Q: Where can I buy Disney Mobile cell phones for my kids?

Disney Mobile service is no longer on sale. Disney announced in September that they are ceasing MVNO operations. Customers will continue to have access to their wireless service until December 31, 2007, at which point they’ll need to switch to a different carrier.

Q: Are there other cell phones designed specifically for kids?

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If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, make sure you pay attention to your incoming text messages over the next month or two – one of them is likely to provide a firmware update for your cell phone.

Verizon announced its new program – Firmware Over-the-Air – today, a wireless solution designed to make it easier for users to update and upgrade the software that helps your phone run smoothly. Firmware, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, in this context essentially describes the operating system your cell phone utilizes. Every once and a while, carriers release an update – similar to the Windows Updates often distributed by Microsoft – intended to optimize performance and call quality.

With this new delivery system, Verizon Wireless is sidestepping the laborious portion of the software-upgrade process; customers will now be able to download updates directly over the Verizon network, rather than trekking to their closest brick-and-mortar Verizon store.

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With the new television season underway, Sprint TV has added the ability to watch new network shows including Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI: NY and Numbers on Sprint TV. Always curious, the Wirefly team decided to test the service out and see how it worked.

Since I have a Motorola Red RAZR, one of the Sprint phones compatible with the service, and a data plan, I decided to watch the first episode of Numbers. The show is broken up into six segments – I assume what is normally between commercial breaks. Each segment buffers and begins playing. The sound quality was good – both through the speaker phone and my headphones. The screen refresh was occasionally a little rough and the image pixilated or split the screen. I wasn’t a big fan of loading each segment individually, although I realize that it’s necessary in order to optimize load times. I guess it’s better than sitting through a two-minute commercial break, in any case.

I also tested the continuous streaming content from CNN Mobile and the Weather Channel available from Sprint TV. The quality was fine and I didn’t have the same buffering issues that occurred during Numbers.

I thought the text in that type of content was too small to read on the RAZR screen, but on a bigger screen – like those found on the Palm Treo 755p and the HTC Mogul 6800 – I can’t imagine that being a problem.

Motorola announced several new cell phone models to be released this year, including the hot new RAZR2 v8 “Luxury Edition”.

Among them is a luxury version of the RAZR2, which is being marketed as potential holiday gift. The special edition luxury RAZR 2 has 18k and 24k gold-plated accents on a slick black slate, vacuum metal finish.

The designers overlooked no details and included elegant pin stripes on the CLI lens, an engraved diamond-cut pattern on the sideband and a linear etching on the navigation wheel; with a soft-touch back, embossed with a snakeskin effect, the device even feels luxurious in the hand. It also stores up to 1,000 songs.

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