Research news - Page 2

**nauriceprivat** · #11 (**permalink**) 01-11-2008, 08:13 PM

According to a new report from Juniper Research “Mobile Music Services: Ringtones, Ringback Tones and Original Recordings (4th edition),” subscription-based music rental services are expected to surge in popularity reaching $3.3 billion by 2012.
Report author Dr Windsor Holden suggests that once consumers have taken the time and effort to build up an extensive playlist, they will be increasingly reluctant to unsubscribe from that service and from the operator, thereby providing a significant boost to the ARPU levels.
However, the report also states that as 3G services are rolled out in emerging markets, then full-track download sales will mushroom, with the volume of downloads in India alone rising from less than 2 million in 2007 to nearly 480 million in 2012.
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**nauriceprivat** · #12 (**permalink**) 01-15-2008, 01:19 PM

According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global shipments of GPS-enabled handsets is expected to grow from 175 million units in 2007 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.% to reach 560 million units in 2012. Rapid adoption of GPS technology in mass-market GSM/WCDMA handsets will be the main driver. “Last year marked the breakthrough for GPS outside the CDMA-market with successful product launches by Nokia, HTC and others”, commented André Malm, telecom analyst, Berg Insight. “This year we expect to see an abundance of new models supporting GPS from all major brands. By 2009, GPS is going to be a must-have in all high-end handsets.”
Berg Insight believes that the increasing penetration for GPS in GSM/WCDMA handsets will trigger a wave of innovations in the field of location-based services. “The availability of accurate position data in mobile devices creates exciting new opportunities for developers of local search, navigation and social networking applications”, said Mr Malm. “Nokia and Google will be two of the foremost players in this arena but there is a good chance that the development will also give birth to the next Facebook or MySpace.”

**nauriceprivat** · #13 (**permalink**) 01-16-2008, 11:27 PM

While [Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...] and carriers are gearing up to offer mobile-music download services, in hopes that wireless subscribers will pay to download music onto their handsets, a new report from M:Metrics shows that most people are sideloading their music onto their mobile phones (tranferring music onto the device via data cable, WiFi, or Bluetooth connection - bypassing their carrier-sanctioned mobile download).
A full 83% of mobile music was sideloaded onto cellphones in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. M:Metrics also found that the second most common way of getting music onto mobile phones was to share it between friends. Over-the-air downloading of content straight to the music-capable phone was the least favored method in all regions, with the US and Spain excepted.
It seems that mobile music-listeners in the US were much more likely to download music directly onto their handsets - 18.3% in the US, compared with 10% in the UK and 8.6% in France
Here’s some other mobile-related data comparing the US and the EU:

– Accessed News/Info via Browser: US 12.6 percent, EU 9.1 percent

– Played, Downloaded Mobile Game: US 9.1 percent, EU 8.7 percent

– Watched video: US 4.2 percent, EU 5.1 percent

– Accessed Downloaded Application: US 4.2 percent, EU 2.6 percent

– Sent/Received Photos or Videos: US 20.5 percent, EU 27.5 percent

– Received SMS Ads: US 20.6 percent, EU 53.3 percent
So, it seems the US has finally set the curve in terms of mobile-usage - us Yanks sure love our over-the-air downloads and mobile-data access.
We sure don’t download music onto our mobile phones, we sideload it - aside from the occasional iPhone-destined iTunes download.
What do you prefer? Over-the-air downloading of music or sideloading (regardless of how you acquired said music - P2P much?)?

**nauriceprivat** · #14 (**permalink**) 01-17-2008, 12:36 PM

I guess all of us use SMS on a daily basis, but sending 200 text messages per day sounds almost impossible. Apparently, that’s like every day for the teenagers in the Philippines.
An analyst from Jupiter Research spent a couple of weeks with a family in the Philippines and discovered the “secrets of the trade.” The fast-typin’ sixteen-year-old girl was the “subject” of the experiment, who according to [Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...] is texting all the time — at the dinner table, while in the car, while walking, and even while talking to a person. Heck, the JR’s analyst seen her woke up, send an SMS, and then rollover to go back to sleep. Now that’s an addiction, don’t you think?
Finally, for all the Nokia fans out there - you’ll be glad (or not) to know she’s one of you folks. This “SMS maniac” used to have another brand, but the buttons were just not there. Nokia has higher quality buttons I guess…

**nauriceprivat** · #15 (**permalink**) 01-17-2008, 10:14 PM

Remember those days of yore when we’d “beam” data between our mobile gadgets via that little dark-red-plastic covered port known as an IR port? It was super-convenient to be able to transfer some contact information on the fly, but it was also super-annoying to have to make sure the ports were lined up correctly - and even then we weren’t assured that the transfer would go smoothly.

So, what’s up with KDDI R&D Laboratories’ reviving the technology from the almost-grave? Well, it seems that they’ve [Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...] (Warning: Japanese PDF link) that is capable of 1Gbps data transfers - which completely trounces the old theoretical limit of 4Mbps.
Now, besting a theoretical limit by even ten-fold would be an incredible feat, but how did KDDI manage to beat the limit over 250 times? Well, KDDI swapped out the low-performance LED diode for a super-performance semiconductor laser. The laser can blink on and off fast enough to transfer a full CD worth of music in under a second. A good dose of buffer memory is needed to make all this high-speed data transferring go smoothly.
KDDI says this new IR tech could be used in PCs and mobile devices alike, which bodes well for the future of high-speed data transfers to our mobile phone. Imagine transferring your entire music library to your cellphone in mere seconds. Hell, we’d settle for transferring our entire collection to our handset in under a minute. Of course, you’ll still probably have to ensure that the laser-toting IR port is lined up correctly.

**nauriceprivat** · #16 (**permalink**) 01-20-2008, 01:37 PM

According to Nielsen, 46.1 mobile data users in the U.S. used mobile search functions in the third quarter of 2007. Out of that number, Nielsen estimates that:
The most popular form of mobile search among data users in Q3 2007 was 411 (18.1 million users), followed closely by SMS-based searching, which was used by 14.1 million users during the same period.

Local listings were the leading search objective in terms of users (27.1 million), while 14.8 million said they searched for information such as sports scores, news or weather. Finally, nearly a quarter (11.3 million) said they searched for mobile content.

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**nauriceprivat** · #17 (**permalink**) 01-20-2008, 04:31 PM

Usability and accessibility consultants [Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...] conducted a survey among 1010 mobile phone users to identify which service they would use the most “if speed and quality weren’t an issue.” And the results are:
Email - 335 votes (33%)

Social networks - 254 votes (25%)

Local information/whats around you - 199 votes (20%)

Travel information/planning - 135 votes (13%)

Online shopping - 87 votes (9%)

Just to give you a better picture why we’re seeing a growing number of mobile social networks and why Google, Nokia and others crave for the piece of the local search market… Full release after the break.
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**nauriceprivat** · #18 (**permalink**) 01-20-2008, 05:32 PM

We were pretty much on the money when we speculated that France’s move to w[Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...] would prompt other countries to do the same.
Experts in the US are urging Yankee researchers to look into the possible effects of cellphone use on children and their development. Youngsters are more prone to any type of radiation because they’re still developing and growing. And it seems that some vague links between mobile phone use and brain tumors has prompted the The U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ask the National Research Council to recommend some future lines of study.
The National Research Council advises Congress and other federal government agencies on what areas of science warrants more research. The convened a meeting of experts and has released a new report that indicates that more research needs to be done to determine the link between mobile phones and children.
The Council stated that “measuring the amount of RF energy received by juveniles, children, pregnant women, and fetuses from wireless devices and RF base station antennas could help define exposure ranges for various populations,” adding that, “although it is unknown whether children are more susceptible to RF exposure, they may be at increased risk because of their developing organ and tissue systems.”
Hopefully this new report will prompt some serious study into the effects of cellphone radiation on children.

**nauriceprivat** · #19 (**permalink**) 01-20-2008, 06:34 PM

Over the last year, almost a dozen airlines have announced plans to allow passengers to send SMS from their own mobile phones. Passengers in Australia, France, Turkey, Ireland, Malaysia, India, and other countries are now using mobile devices in flight, or will be able to do so sometime in 2008. However, passengers in the United States, constrained by the FCC ban, will have to wait bit more in order to start using their mobile devices while flying.
According to Freesky Research, the ability to send data to the ground is allowing Middle Eastern, Asian, and European business travelers greater chances to be productive on commercial jets than U.S. fliers…
Yes, we do agree some mobile services like SMS and data services should be available for in flight usage. Hopefully, the FCC folks will rethink their decision and we’ll hear more from them on the subject later in the year. In the meantime, you may want to learn more from Freesky Research’s full report titled “In Flight Text Messaging.”

**nauriceprivat** · #20 (**permalink**) 01-20-2008, 06:37 PM

According to SMS experts Acision, mobile phone users sent 43 billion text messages to wish their loved ones a happy New Year - of which more than 23 billion were successfully processed through Acision’s systems.

To put numbers in a perspective, Acision [Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...] that global SMS traffic over the 2007/2008 New Year period increased by 30% compared to the same period last year.

As expected, the growth was particularly strong in India, where people sent over a billion text messages. The Philippines retained its title as the SMS capital of the world, though. 50 million strong subscribers managed to send 1.39 billion text messages! Suddenly that “[Only Registered and Activated Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register...]” article doesn’t sound that weird, does it?