The best thing from MWC 2008 was Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1.  With an attractive user interface and hardware design, and build quality from HTC, it was sure to be a best seller before the end of the year, but now, perhaps, put back to 2009.

Unfortunately for SE someone forgot about the P990.  This handset was so late that many punters went to the competition.  Worse still, were the many bugs it launched with.

In the end the P990 was in my opinion the most rounded business handset in the market.

Hopefully 2008 will not be remembered as another SE false dawn.            

Vodafone are currently making much of their 3.5G offering with some great deals.  O2 on the other hand face considerable embarrassment as their 3G roll out hasn’t met Ofcom targets.

But look at what O2 has achieved.  Winning the iPhone has led to the role out of EDGE which will benefit many more users than just 3G.  The BlackBerry Pearl 8120 and new XDA’s have been launched on highly competitive tariffs.  O2’s 20Mbps broadband service through Be is the best network offering. Plus Nokia’s N82 and Prism 7900 handset appear to be an O2 exclusive.

Not too shabby at all. 

Certain senior corporate bods have been buying up the iPhone as the fashion icon of choice.  BlackBerry’s are no longer in, and the iPhone bought at the airport is being flung at IT with the powerful suggestion to get email on it or else.

Of course neither Apple nor O2 are selling it as a business handset, but a new toy can’t be suppressed.  So firewalls and security are weakened, and the boss is happy until the next PR disaster.

So rejoice next week if Apple announces push email support; but will it be BlackBerry, or Microsoft providing the solution?

The infamous intercepts of Royal family conversations was a warning for the first generation of mobile users.  Many subsequent conversations were preceded with a warning that they could be tapped or taped with impunity.

The second generation mobile networks, in particular GSM, provided a level of security that prevented casual eavesdropping. 

Now though there is good new for the paparazzi.  Researchers David Hulton and Steve Muller, with a degree of ingenuity and Moore’s law of processing power, have presented a method of how encrypted conversations can be intercepted, recorded and decrypted.

Celebrities had better be prepared.

Although mobile data has been available to businesses and some consumers from the 80’s, it wasn’t until the advent of WAP that mobile data went main stream.  There were of course data cards for laptops and PDA’s but they were slow, expensive and clumsy to use.

Many people remember the launch of the first UK mass market WAP service at the turn of the millennium, BT Cellnet’s Silver Surfer.  Unfortunately the mobile industry over promised the concept of the mobile web.  Even though home internet users were relying on low speed dial up the best mobile speeds offered by Orange could only reach a maximum of 14.4 kbps (28.8kbps if you were very lucky) and what could be displayed on a typical, buggy, handset amounted to a glorified, and monochrome, Ceefax.  This was also at a very high per minute price and using the service effectively blocked any incoming calls.  The other major turn off was the excruciatingly painful process of waiting minutes to get to the first ‘page’ and then many, many seconds for the next.  Once there the services provided were simplistic and invariably pointless.

In 2000 packet data GPRS (2.5G) provided a welcome boost of speed, around 43kbps, a reduction in latency (in simplistic terms the time it takes to send a request and get the answer back) and allow incoming calls.  Unfortunately GPRS used the spare bandwidth not being used for voice, so if a lot of people were talking near a base station the data speeds could actually be less than the old service.  Also content still depended on what the operators thought users should have (known as a walled garden) which a lot of the time wasn’t what users wanted.  Costs were still very high being priced on a per kilobyte basis with some people incurring massive hundred of pound bills.  The horror stories frightened off many potential users who instead relied on SMS services for most of their mobile data needs.  At least that was something they could understand the benefit of, and control the cost.  Other new data services failed such as MMS (Multimedia Messaging) because they were confusing and expensive.

Importantly there were however two services which really prospered, BlackBerry in the West and iMode in Japan.  This kept the idea of mobile data from disappearing entirely.

Even the launch of 3G in 2003 did not really help.  WCDMA (3G to most people) provided much faster data transmission providing services such as video clip streaming and downloading, and simultaneous voice calls and data surfing, (so you can check your bank balance whilst talking to a friend).  However the handsets were clumsy, had little battery life, content was of variable quality and most users could not see the point of video calls.  Since then 3 has predominately sold their network on cheap voice calls with some success, tempered with a high turnover in users (churn) for a variety of business reasons. 

Since 2005, users have become more aware of what the mobile internet can really do for them with the release of quality handsets from European manufacturers such as the Nokia’s 6630, 6680, N80, N95 and Sony Ericsson’s P990, K800 etc.  For business users the network branded HTC handsets have expanded the office computer systems to employees on the road.  Nurses, sales people, engineers are all benefiting from advances in web based technology that they can securely access through their mobile phones. 

Major usage problems remained.  The screens tend to be too small, the user interface too clumsy and usage costs far, far too high.   

2007 has seen a fundamental change.  With the advent of the iPhone, the concept of using the internet on the move has been given a phenomenal boost.  Although the iPhone relies on old 2¾G technology (EDGE), the usability of web services has been exponentially advanced.  Also with flat rate data being offered by all the mobile networks users can surf the internet confident that they can afford the monthly cost.

2006/7 also saw the launch of Web2 services for mobiles such as Skype, eBay, and Facebook.

The other major advance in 2007 saw the start of the evolution to 4G.  Unlike the jumps from 1G to 2G to 3G, this is being undertaken in small but significant stages.

The launch of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access 3.5G) is shifting users expectations.  They can now expect data speeds approaching, and some times exceeding, their home based ADSL broadband connections.  Vodafone and some other networks currently supports 7.2Mbps download and 1.4Mbps upload speeds in some areas.  This will be broadened out to cover more of the UK over the next few years.  Unlike previous network evolutions, the handsets and applications are in place to take advantage of these speeds, so in the instance of Nokia’s latest handsets, they come with native YouTube capabilities allowing the same users desktop experience on their handset. 

So far this has been good for the networks as some have seen phenomenal growth in HSPA data volumes, with Nokia Siemens reporting a 350% rise in data use in 6 months for one network.

Users now want to be connected to the internet all the time.  There is an expectation that friends and colleagues are available 24/7 and that the applications used at home or at work should also be with them on their mobile.  This will increasingly mean that developments on the web will happen regardless of the device, computer or mobile accessing it.  This will require more and more bandwidth and, importantly, speed of access will become paramount.  BlackBerry shows the mobile industry that users will not tolerate any more delays in receiving information.

To achieve the improvements in latency, speed and capacity a new system is being developed.  Often called 4G, it is known as LTE (Long Term Evolution) where the existing HSPA infrastructure is being reused to allow for download speeds of 173Mbps and upload speeds of 58Mbps; and potentially a lot higher.   Mobile TV would no longer require a separate infrastructure to be built, as being proposed at the moment.

Latency will also be reduced from the GPRS 600ms to around 10ms, which will allow mobile on line gaming to be a reality.   Multi location video conferencing in high definition will also be viable.  With pico projectors inbuilt into handsets, it may even be usable.

All of this is all being achieved by using existing frequencies to get around the ad hoc allocation of frequencies by governments. 

There are however big issue for the networks. 

Firstly, as data capacity to individual handsets increase, the backhaul from base station to network to internet will become increasingly saturated, and may not keep up with demand.   

Secondly, WiMAX will also cause a headache.  Even though it, and WiFi, can be integrated into a 4G service, this will require the networks to invest in the new WiMAX start ups.  If they don’t they could see their future revenue streams undermined in the profitable city centres. 

Thirdly, the mobile networks may not see a return on their investment.  As voice becomes just another data service, the mobile networks will become just another bit pipe for all sorts of peer 2 peer streaming services, be it voice, video or games.  The trick may be that as LTE also offers definable Quality of Service (QoS) the networks could charge a premium price for service consistency, something that is already being discussed for fixed broadband.

There is real excitement in the mobile industry, and perhaps there should be some fear.  Technology, users and handset manufacturers may usurp the network operators’ control of the market they created.  4G has the potential to connect 5 billion people by 2015, so astute marketing will be even more important over the next few years. 

A recent urban report suggests that carrying two handsets could be regarded as a security threat. Doubtless this is an exaggeration as many people use two phones to split calls between office and home, especially as using the work mobile for personal calls is taxable.

Orange had an answer to this years ago with two numbers active on one SIM.  You could of course use a dual SIM holder, but only one line would function.  Perhaps a perfect solution is from WND Telecom who’s handsets allow two active SIM’s in one phone, though this may confuse the authorities!

Jump over to youtube and you’ll see a new, expensive and complicated way of ‘aving a laugh – drive by projecting. 

This involves strapping a laptop and projector into a car and pointing images on to buildings and people as you drive along.  Costly when bulbs blow or the projector damaged.

Fast forward to 2009, and we will see the first handsets with embedded projectors aimed at business people who want a lighter life.  However it’s not stretching the imagination to see the same mobiles used in schools, or in the street, projecting images of a questionable nature.   You’ve been warned!

With the soon to be released N-Gage platform, and research showing that the less than two year old N93 is still the graphic speedster, Nokia appears to have upset some customers.

Many still swear by their older handsets but in some cases Nokia has given up any pretence of support.  Devotees of the N93, once Nokia’s premiere handset, are especially upset as the number of faults still being suffered is causing huge ill will. 

Nokia’s firmware updater ensures that bugs in shipping handsets can be eradicated.  Since October 2006 Nokia’s fix for N93 users appears to be the N93i.  A costly solution!

It seems that some parents will have less to worry about in the near future.  Vodafone and Orange are to start sharing base stations reducing maintenance costs whilst improving coverage.  This comes hot on the heels of the union between 3 and T-Mobile to share their HSPA networks. 

But there could be a big problem in the future.  If the government has its way (they need the money) the 900MHz spectrum could be seized from Vodafone & O2 and resold.  Perversely this would lead them to rely on using the shorter range 1800MHz GSM frequencies requiring more base stations in the street!

It seems appropriate that the European mobile event of the year has renamed itself considering the on going evolution to 4G via WiMAX, LTE (3 ¾G?), 3.5G and now E2DGE (I made that one up).  3G is so last century. 

There were glimpses of what may be with us in 08, but no buzz or wow.  There will be more announcements through the year, but for the biggest mobile PR event of the year there was little to inspire customers to upgrade.  This can only be bad for the manufacturers.

In fact it was déjà vu 3GSM 2007.

A decade ago there seemed to be only two major PDA players battling for users’ hearts and minds.  Palm and Psion snaffled much of the business up, and the mobile handset companies like Nokia (9000) and Alcatel (One Touch Com) had little market share. 

Forward 10 years and the battlefield is quite different.  Palm OS has all but expired, Psion has transformed into Symbian, which is seeing a plethora of competition from Microsoft, BlackBerry, Apple, Google, other Linux offshoots, and Java.  Each have their own strengths despite the variety being inconvenient to the networks.  One unfortunate possibility is that Palm will disappear.

Since its announcement in November, Google and its partners are now demonstrating tangible hardware using the Android OS.  Apple’s iPhone has had paying customers for well under a year, and continues to advance its usability and feature set. 

Yet from the established players, Sony Ericsson seems to have taken the pragmatic view to ditch UIQ in preference to Microsoft’s OS for their high end handsets.  Whilst Nokia, with years of experience, resources and IPR in the bank, are merely showing an alpha mock up of their S60 Touch UI, and it’s not nice.

Will Nokia regret its tardiness?

Samsung and LG have both announced Symbian S60 handsets.  Nothing new about that, most non Nokia S60 handsets never make it to the UK anyway.  Although the LG can be disregarded, unfortunately for Nokia the Samsung G810 will directly compete with the N95/N96.

The Samsung has it faults, single band HSDPA , relies on memory card for storage, reduced colour palette, but it excels in other areas.  With a 3x optical zoom, Xenon flash, and a GPS chip usable with 3^rd party applications, available in March, plus a decent battery, why wait for the N96?

Day 1 at Barcelona and Nokia launch 4 new handsets that hardly set the world alight.  The leaked N96 ticks most of the right boxes and competes with the latest iPhone with 16GB of internal memory.  The other handsets too have solid specifications all with good cameras, GPS and Symbian OS.

But with release dates in H2, the N96 especially looks distinctly underpowered against the anticipated 3G iPhone (possible launch May?).  If Nokia don’t pull something better out of their hat later this week, the Apple tortoise will overtake the Nokia hare by the critical Christmas season.

So day minus 1 at Barcelona (Sunday to you and I) and Sony Ericsson have announced a cluster of handsets. 

Though there is no direct replacement for the P990i/P1i, yet, there are two decent mid-range Symbian handsets aimed at the mid market.  This at least reaffirms their commitment to UIQ and offers smartphones to a wider audience.

The intrigue comes with the new XPERIA range.  The X1 is an extremely good looking handset with top end touch screen, connectivity and keyboard.  But why base it on the Microsoft OS?  Does this mean UIQ development has stalled for high end mobiles?

BT has great ideas but seemingly don’t do their market research before launching some of them; and when they do have a disaster they try very hard to have another one.

In 1999 BT’s Onephone launched, based on an Ericsson GSM/DECT design, providing one phone for home and away.  It failed disastrously leaving some distributors with unsaleable bricks.

Having woefully overestimated the market once, BT gave the concept another shot with Bluephone / Fusion based on UMA technology.  Although more popular, BT are closing the service so expect loads of new Nokia, Motorola and Samsung handsets going cheap on eBay.

Spirits are high for the Barcelona mobile fest next/this week.  With Apple laying down the benchmark for touch user interfaces in 2007, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Microsoft are going to have show the industry what hardware a decade’s worth of prevarication, concepts, videos and PowerPoint, can be brought to market.

I’m sure more zoom mega pixel cameras with Xenon flash, nano projectors, high res screens and a glimpse of LTE, will be there.  But with the 3G iPhone presumably near by,   Apple’s competitors must get to market soon, or else users will dump brand loyalty for the urbane newcomer.

Apple appear to be blurring the edges of next weeks panoply of new product launches at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, especially Nokia’s new S60 touch handset(s).

The 16GB iPhone and revised O2 tariffs will keep some customers from holding off their purchasing decisions, but not all.  It does seem however that AT&T’s unreliable EDGE network is due for an injection of new 3.5G tech this year, which may suggest that they are preparing the track for Apple’s 3G handset. 

It’s like waiting for an old steam train, you can hear its whistle, but it’s too foggy to know when it will arrive.

Like any potential couples, before you make the fateful decision to move in together you go through a long period of dating and generally getting to know each other’s bad habits.

It looks like Microsoft has taken the fancy of Nokia’s good looks and prospects.  With a massive market lead with Symbian, and Microsoft’s own non touch platform the unattractive sibling, Microsoft seems to want to start dating Nokia. 

Nokia occasionally plays away, think UIQ & Linux, but never strays too far.  Nokia may also consider the ex-file.  Sendo had a brief passionate relationship with Microsoft, only to be left heart broken and poor.

Compare this 3120 with the previous one and we can see where Nokia are heading. Could the 3120 Classic be the phone that turns pre-pay users to 3G, and are the networks ready?

It seems that rapid rise of niche MVNO’s may fall back to earth with a splat. 

Voce, a premium MVNO based in Beverly Hills, has abruptly shut up shop leaving customers with no mobile connection and staff unpaid.  Trying to be the cream of the mobile world may have seemed a tasty idea, Nokia’s Vertu is an outstanding success, so why not an MVNO.  Well it seems they just did not have the cash to support the business model.

Could the same happen here?  Allegedly some Blyk users are disabling MMS adverts, but still receiving free air time.  Time for a rethink?