Things didn’t slow down during the holidays, what with the move into our new digs here, travelling and so on, and the mobile industry didn’t stop, either. Here’s a recap of some noteworthy and interesting stories I’ve seen over the last few weeks. I’ll skip the big stuff you’ve doubtless already seen and focus on some you might have missed:
– An interesting MMS campaign from Norway’s NETCOM (pic above). Sort of a mobile take on those cutouts you stick your face through, but with perhaps slightly more interesting backdrops..
– Google gets a patent for speeding up CDMA data traffic. Throw in its purchase of Reqwireless and its linkup with Motorola, and Google’s mobile moves are picking up pace. Remember the Goog bought mobile software startup Android during the summer, too. For a lesson in what can come of these acquisitions, look at Yahoo Go, a product of Y’s buyot of Verdisoft last year.
– 30.4% of phones sold in Sweden in December were 3G phones, an increase of 28.4 percent from November. That’s quite a jump, and it sounds like maybe Sweden had that “3G Christmas” we’ve been promised by analysts for a few years.
– Breaking down the revenue share of mastertones: Artists get about 18 percent; carriers take home 45%. No wonder they want to keep stuff on-portal.
– Real-time texting for deaf people: the UK’s Royal National Institute for the Deaf has developed some Symbian software to let deaf people carry on real-time conversations with anybody via a text-to-voice relay service from mobile operators (though apparently only Vodafone has the relay just yet). Previously, video calls were said to be quite popular with deaf people, as they allowed them to communicate via sign language.
– This one’s been kicking around for a while: Details on freetext in the UK.
—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo