Thinking of successful products that aren’t in Europe, what ever happened to Push To Talk?

Unlike i-mode that had little support from handset manufacturers, Push to Talk can be found in many recent handsets from Nokia and Motorola.  To be launched in 2004 and marketed as a premium product to the business community, Orange thought they had a lead on their competitors.  Unfortunately for Orange it rapidly faded as it was more expensive and proprietary than the successful US model. 

So will another network oblige?  At this rate I don’t believe Nokia customers will be popping the champagne anytime soon.

It must have seemed a sure fire gamble introducing i-mode into the UK, unfortunately O2’s punt resulted in a snake eye throw of the dice. 

In spite of the effort in bringing content providers on-board with the expectations of a successful repeat of the Japanese i-mode service, it seems that the handset manufacturers were not about to play the game.  Presumably O2 was too small a player for Nokia and others to put any effort behind another sort of WAP, in spite of millions of O2 customers around Europe.

Customers want the real internet not a busted one.

After months of disappointing sales and worse still, activations, O2 has finally responded to customers’ grouses.

The O2 iPhone tariffs were dreadful costing £120 a year more than their normal rates.  Customers obviously thought twice and bought the almost free high end Nokia’s and Samsung’s instead.  Great for O2, but not for Apple.

The tariffs, plus data allowance, now look like good value, and the £269 up front cost not too high when compared to the iPod Touch.  Now all O2 needs is an iPhone with 3G, a 5mpx camera, A2DP and push email.  Drat there is always something more.

Another study into mobile health reveals that insomnia may be caused by using a mobile phone late in the evening. 

A sample size of 71 would be ok for an A-level project but not one that tries to offer the holy grail of news by finding a real link to health, or lack of it.  There are many other stresses in life and receiving a call at snooze time just adds to the load.  

Calls between 10pm and 9am used to be bad news, but with mobile email interfering with down time there is little time to rest for any of us.

Don’t write Motorola off quite yet. 

I remember the days of the £1,000 StarTac, the must have phone of the 90’s especially imported from China.  Then there was the T260, BT Cellnet’s (O2) launch GPRS handset, followed by a wave of desirable clam shells that shook Nokia up, and ultimately the RAZR range.

Problem was that Motorola could never hold their market share; it is always boom or bust.  Great voice and network quality, and a footballer, doesn’t make up for a tired user interface and little of their old innovative ways. 

This has the whiff of another Siemens fiasco.

It’s been almost three weeks since “Boy Genius” broke Vodafone’s new business handsets for H1 2008.  The manufacturers are no doubt apoplectic about this release especially with the World Mobile Congress only weeks away. 

Palm’s range appears technically old hat, but the Nokia E71, E66 and BlackBerry 8xxx are attractive new devices that will hit the corporate sweet spot. 

Surprisingly a resurgent HP has a strong line up of devices in mid to late 08. 

But Vodafone does leave some unanswered questions.  Will Sony Ericsson launch a replacement to their P1i/P990 and what will the successor to the E90 be like?

Every year one of the networks tries to stifle handset choice in the name of efficiency.  Great mobiles launched with some fanfare by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and others, never make it to the catalogues.  The latest example of this is the Nokia N82 and Nokia 6267.

No doubt a limited exclusive deal was negotiated between O2 and Nokia for the N82, but it is frustrating that Vodafone ignore it in their “Coming Soon” section of their website.  Even more troublesome are the operators totally ignoring the 3G Nokia 6267.  Choose the colour of your dream because that’s what it will remain.

The release of a firmware update for the Nokia N82 is in itself is not of any great interest.  It offers no new features, just correcting some bugs.  However it does provide proof of a key technology working with real users.

Although users have had the opportunity of updating their own handsets without returning them to a service centre, remember the horror of the 7110, flash updates deletes all their personal information.  This is no longer the case for the N82 as the blogs are reporting successful updates without having to backup, though I still would.  A real step forward. 

Of course the network operators are creaming income from their customers. 

Why has SMS pricing been so high for so long?  Capital costs were written down years ago and there has been a distinct lack of support for newer innovative messaging services. 

The same is true for data.  There is massive misunderstanding of data costs, particular session orientated services when overseas, whether on or off a preferred network.  Charging minimum data amounts per use has caused many users great financial hardship.

If the EU wish to be seen as acting for the consumer it should not rely on bad press before instigating investigations.

A couple of years ago other handsets from Nokia, HTC and Sony Ericsson started to leave BlackBerry devices behind with their WiFi, GPS, big colour screens and cameras.

RIM listened to their critics and over 2007 released mobiles that matched their major competitors in all major hardware areas.  Now they have done the same for their software.

Along with HTML emails, remote email search and secure attachment handling, the ability to edit documents is the highlight.  This is a long time coming perhaps, but one that their competitors sewed up years ago.  Seems RIM is back to its dominant best.

After Benq broke the hearts of German workers, Nokia has now done the same. 

The town of Bochum in Germany, depends on Nokia and provided significant funding to boot.  It is obvious that Germany’s wages and social costs will make it an expensive place to manufacture, especially in comparison with Romania. 

But if BMW can still afford to manufacturer cars in Germany, why can’t Nokia do the same for mobiles?

Nokia now faces the wrath of the German population that feels betrayed and is already publicly demonstrating their anger on the streets, on YouTube and, worryingly for Nokia, in the shops.

Fifty years ago personal and valuable information was held on paper.  Little if any was stored on magnetic media, and that that was could be easily controlled by physical barriers.  Yet banks worked well, taxes collected, medical records retained, and the only information thefts were a relatively few individuals’ details through corrupt employees or break in.   Life is pretty much the same but the wider use of information and subsequent advances in technology mean that instead of a few copied or stolen notes, almost half the UK population’s bank details have gone missing on a few pieces of plastic.

It is not as if the technology does not exist to protect digital information.  Encryption of many sorts have been with us for centuries, and has steadily improved as the means of breaking encryption became cheaper and faster.  So it is difficult to understand how and why sensitive information under government control is not secured by multiple layers of encryption and authentication.  Or perhaps it isn’t. 

Cost, complexity and perfection are hindrances to widely deployed security.  Take the case of the personal pin.  It is widely known that with simple tricks pin numbers and card details can be discovered through ATM machines or corrupt retailers.  There are systems that will generate rolling unique pins which change in minutes and provide individual transaction security.  The cost for mass deployment is less that £10 a user; however the banks wanted a cheaper system that would not, presumably, burden their profits.  Yet the banks will be the first point of call for anyone who loses money through the loss of government data.

As systems, and data, becomes increasingly interweaved, and the technology for accessing it more capable and mobile, we have seen that ever more organisations are declaring loss or theft of personal information.  A simple mobile phone now has the capability of storing millions of highly detailed records with no obvious control.  Data can be transferred simply using a cable or Bluetooth connection from the PC ‘terminal’ and taken home.  Who would see anything suspicious in having a mobile phone plugged into, or near to, a laptop?  For instance a Nationwide employee downloaded a data base of customers to work on, but the laptop was stolen from their home.  It could have just as easily been a USB memory stick, mobile phone or PDA, and who hasn’t lost one or more of those?

Of course any organisation holding sensitive information has or is looking at security.  The issue is that a perfect solution is desired yet immediate problems are not tackled.  It often takes many years to approve and purchase systems.  But the threat is here now.  Stables are being bolted too many times after a theft or loss has occurred, yet systems are widely available to provide practical everyday security. 

There is a mature range of products which can centrally control, report, encrypt and lock down access to information.   Such systems can operate over any fixed or wireless bearer and protect PC’s, laptops, terminals, mobile phones, USB connections, Bluetooth & WiFi and encrypt to the highest levels any information on a device. 

For example it is a simple matter to steal a mobile phone and remove the SIM.  No SMS command to lock the handset remotely will get through.  If the user, or organisation, has not specified a default lock, installing a deactivated SIM will allow access to the content of the handset.  Thousand’s of personal details then become available through the phone’s memory.  Even worse, the memory cards in the handsets can be flipped out and analysed for interesting information.

Due to the complex nature of the security threat and information leakage a mesh of products are required to provide end point security.  By For instance Pointsec (encryption), Condico (mobile device management and consultancy), fSecure (mobile anti virus), SecureWave/PatchLink (access and application control) and Citrix for virtual data access.

Instead of announcing that a stolen laptop had password security, would it not be better to say that it was encrypted and traceable?  Or is the loss of information just another sign of penny pinching by organisations that seemingly no longer care about their customers?

MacBook Air was the highlight for me from Macworld 2008.  Ultra slim, stylish, fantastic screen and with superb specifications it could not fail to impress. 

But something bugs me.  OQO, Sony and other purveyors of super light weight laptops have been able to fit HSPA & WiMAX technology for truly work anywhere abilities.  Yet Apple users will have to rely on an unwieldy dongle or a Bluetooth connection to their, non iPhone, mobile. 

Yet could Apple be right?  3G technology is evolving so rapidly at least Apple users will only have to buy a new dongle, not replace their whole laptop.

I was really hoping that Apple would amaze me with a new 3G iPhone at Macworld 2008, but all I see are new features that the iPhone should have had when it first launched.  Yes it all looks very stylish but some of these are fundamental, and other manufacturers have had them since the late 90’s.  Delete a message, reset your iPhone, assign a ringtone, set a passcode, send an SMS to multiple contacts!!!  Nokia is lambasted when it launches firmware updates, yet Apple gets praised. Every year other manufacturers push technical boundaries, yet Apple did not inspire this time.

Tom Alexander has a tough year in front of him.  How does he bring the flare of Hans Snook, Orange’s original chief, into a company now mired in France Telecom’s Jurassic management style?

Under Alexander’s direction Virgin Mobile built a solid customer base and some innovative services.  Orange went the other way by losing key technologies such as Wildfire, confusing customers with its ‘animal’ tariffs and becoming just another bland mobile operator.

 Alexander has to regain Orange’s quirkiness that endeared it to its customers and rediscover the innovation and style it sadly lost.  Perhaps a management buyout beckons?

With Mark Squires, the face of Nokia UK, moving to Finland and the break up of the happy crowd in Godmanchester what does Nokia have in store for the UK? 

It seems a strange decision to alienate the very people that created Nokia’s UK presence, and to strip the tight family team apart from its base near half of it’s biggest customers (Orange and T-Mobile). Nokia will face some extremely tough challenges this year from Apple’s iPhone(2), BlackBerry, let alone from Samsung and Microsoft. 

Let’s hope that the late opening of Nokia’s flagship store in London is not a presage of future problems.

Although the glamour of the iPhone has ensured it’s initial “must have” gadget status, many more canny buyers are taking one look at the outrageously expensive O2 contract and walking away.  Brit’s know a good deal when they see one, unfortunately, combined with the lowly spec, the O2 iPhone package isn’t it. 

This could all change with version 2 though.  If Apple’s iPhone 2 wraps up the technical feature set of the Nokia N82, and basic software omissions corrected, we will surely see customer resistance crumble and wallets opening faster than ticket sales for the Take That reunion concerts.   

Yet more acronyms dazzled the mobile consumer in 2007, and for once they do seem to care.  In the short time the iPhone has been available, it’s comparatively few users are accessing more web sites than any other mobile browser (although Opera Mini is an excellent alternative). 

HSPA can bring us the speed of a home broadband connection almost anywhere in the UK.  WiMAX will be great as a ‘portable fixed line wherever the like of Pipex’s FREEDOM4 service is rolled out, especially in the rental and small business market.  However low cost HSPA services will dominate mobile broadband in 2008.

It seems that the handset manufacturers are now the brand of choice for people upgrading, not the networks.  With Apple insisting on revenue share, and Nokia launching their content and application platform, Ovi, there seems to be something of a power shift happening.  The confidence of the manufacturers is steadily increasing reducing the power of the networks to dictate handset user interfaces, colour schemes and access to content. 

Carphone Warehouse offer interim 9 month upgrades as they see the folly of 18 month contracts.  In this industry, the rate of change is accelerating and customers do not want to be seen with last year’s fashion.

I have always had a nagging respect for the Siemens Mobile.  It’s a great pity for their dedicated and talented employees that the company could not be rescued.  They pioneered a number of innovative handsets such as the 1999 S25 with its colour screen and WAP over SMS, the quirky Xelibri range, through to their 2006 swan song with Benq, the nearly launched SL91; still one of the smallest, best looking 3G handset ever.  

There comes a point when no amount of money could rescue the slide in sales, and their innovative new products came just too late.  Such a shame.

The blogs buzzing about a Google phone were nearly right.  One could almost feel the iPhone hype returning.  What Google did announce though played to their strengths as an innovative software company, taking a fresh look at the mobile world with their Open Handset Alliance to provide a unifying mobile operating system. 

Unsurprisingly Nokia had something similar way back in 2001 with their open mobile architecture initiative.  Before that in 1999 Palm and Nokia/Symbian were working together on a pen orientated phone interfaces.   So yes, as Symbian suggest, Android is just another technology initiative, but it may be one that could actually work. 

It’s a good play by Google as we can almost hear the cries of “unfair” by the mass of developers who want to freely develop applications for the iPhone but have been, seemingly, deliberately stymied, at least until February!  This then leaves four major mobile smart phone operating systems from Symbian, Microsoft, RIM and now Google.   What gives Android credence is that HTC, one of the more dynamic mobile manufacturers, are behind it, plus the blue chip mobile brands are also taking a look. 

So could we imagine that by 2009 there will be Nokia, Samsung and HTC products with Android.  Well possibly.  Symbian was in the same position a few years ago, and after a number of attempts, have created an operating system that leads the world with the big 4 manufacturers.  However Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung also have devices  using competing operating systems.  So why not use Android?

Security could be an issue.  Millions of smartphones using an open operating system will be tempting proposition for data theft, especially as the mobile phone ‘wallet’ becomes a reality.  Google will have to take great care to learn from the early Symbian hacking and virus attempts.

The handset manufacturers are a pragmatic bunch.  They will ultimately provide the handsets and user experience demanded by the majority.  If that means Google’s (or the ‘Alliance’ )Android is what the consumer wants, the consumer will get.  Mobile has just got a lot more interesting.

The UK government is being pressed to reduce the paperwork overload experienced by the Police whilst keeping a detailed audit trail required by government targets.  The idea is a response to the demand for more trained police officers on the street rather than pushing a pen back in the office.  {Insert BBC/Daily Mail Quote}

One idea is the extensive use of mobile technology to record key crime information at the scene and automate the backend system.  This should make the process of reporting much quicker and less burdensome for all concerned.

There are however many potential problems.  Firstly the systems have to be created, devices selected, rolled out and commissioned.  Secondly they have to be maintained.  Thirdly they have to be secured.  Mobile Device Management enables this whole process.

Let’s assume that arrests are recorded via a mobile phone device that communicates directly back to HQ and the local station. 

Many police officers, and managers {is that the correct term?} out of the 140 thousand plus employed, will have to be provided with a device fitting the nature of their duties. 

These devices will be from a number of sources and have a range of capabilities from touch screens, high resolution cameras, high speed data connections, Bluetooth, push email, WiFi, GPS  and much else in varying combinations. 

All these devices will be linked in some secure way, VPN/encryption/authentication, back to the police data centres. 

Each device will have several software applications tailored to that specific device and/or operating system that will need to be periodically updated, or added to; such as encryption, anti virus, crime recording, reporting, push email services etc.

Of course, each device will need to be backed upped and secured locally and remotely when lost , stolen, or retired.

To do all of this from one central area location is a absolute necessity, but without the presence of the device or the officer. 

It is illogical to expect a police officer to understand how to install and update software on a device, set up a VPN or to remember to back the device up.  It is impossible for the officer not to occasionally lose a device in the heat of an arrest or by accident.  This leaves the loss of information from the police service as a serious concern especially when it falls into a third parties hands.  From there it can be used against the police by organised criminal gangs, terrorists or blackmailers, and cause a considerable loss of confidence in the police force. 

MDM allows for all these issues to be handled as smoothly as possible without having to touch the device.  From cradle to grave, the devices are automatically configured, updated, monitored, secured and backed up.   This is inspite of the great variety of devices deployed.

In the event of theft, even if the SIM is swapped (such as with ebay sales), the device will report back to the police servers what number is being used, in some cases where the device is located, and provide an automated and secure method of eliminating all information from the device so protecting security and abiding by the information protection laws.

An additional interesting feature is the remote control of devices so that various hardware elements can be activated and controlled, such as Bluetooth discovery which if set on will allow criminal elements to locate and steal a mobile phone.  Another interesting idea is the remote control of a handset’s microphone, video camera and GPS to allow the police to monitor and record highly stressed situations without an officer having to switch them on.  This can then be used as part of the evidence gathering  when considering charging or prosecuting an individual or gang.

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