Week in Review: 16th Febuary to 22th Febuary, 2004

Introduction
As the buildup to the 3GSM in Cannes nears, the continuation of new ideas intensifies. Maybe one of the more interesting ideas put forward by Intel this week is the capability of performing voice calls over notebook built-in cell phone functionality. Other good news for cell phone users was the announcement by T-Mobile that finally it is capable of 3G services on its UK network. Sadly, similar to many of its competitors, there is one minor drawback. That is the fact that T-Mobile has been unable to show any product portfolio that might see the company gain a competitive advantage and this is truly a disappointment. That been said the introduction of the Vodafone email based services last week over GPRS/3G wil not be a hard target to beat.

Events
The issues of being able to screen adult content on mobile phones has become ever more serious over the last few weeks. To this end ProQuent and Wireless Nanny launched their solutions to corner the problem. For the author (being a rugby fan) it was great to see that 3 announced availability of the 6-nations rugby games on their mobile network. O2 also announced the availability of pocket cinema on its XDA phones, however its unlikely that The Matrix will ever have the same impact on an XDA. Of a lesser note (and yet more likely to be successful) BlackDog announced availability of an SMS service to deliver sports results to your mobile in real-time based on your preferences. Now this looks like a true winner, as you wonder how the other semi-final is going while you attend your favourite teams game.


Technology
Outside of the major wireless players there have been many new and interesting solutions proposed this week. Real Networks is certainly becoming a prominent player in the development of streaming music and video solutions to the extent that Microsoft's Media Player seems to be a non-existent player. After last week where Microsoft's operating system was dumped in preference to Symbian it really does question the vision of the software giant.

Conclusion
This week has truly been a major disappointment to this author primarily for the reason that none of the major operators took advantage of the bundle of applications available for the celebration of Valentines Day. While this is such a simple and easy marketing win for the big operators, it seems that the day has passed them by. As these operators continue to ignore the advantage of many applications on offer, it is only a matter of time before the opportunities that they can offer to key enterprise accounts will aslo shrink. What is most noticable is the partnerships between many of the mobile and enterprise vendors to offer solutions directly to the business customers. What is also evident is the influx of portal solutions that completely bypass the operator. In time, maybe these giants will wake out of their snooze.

more...