Google has announced the launch of an update for its YouTube mobile web site. The company aims to enhance users’ experience across devices with this step.
YouTube for mobile devices was launched in 2007 with about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site, but it had mobile Browser and hardware limitations. Hence, the company announced an update of the site which is meant to make YouTube faster and friendlier for touch devices, such as the Apple iPhone and handsets that run on Google’s own operating system Android. The App will incorporate features such as search query suggestions, the options to create playlists, the ability to favourite videos, and the ability to like or dislike videos directly from the handheld device. Also, improvements made to YouTube.com will be immediately updated on the mobile site as well.
The company stated that YouTube consumption on mobile devices has seen considerable growth with a 160 per cent increase in playbacks in 2009 over the previous year. YouTube mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day. This is roughly the number of daily playbacks that YouTube.com was streaming when it joined forces with Google in 2006.
Google updates YouTube for mobile devices
Motorola launches Android-based Charm in the USA; not expected in India soon
Motorola has announced the launch of its new Android handset Charm exclusively for T-Mobile customers in the USA.
The 2.8 inch touch screen phone, based on Android 2.1, comes with a combination of full QWERTY keyboard and an advanced version of Motoblur, which syncs contacts, posts, messages and photos from sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail, work and personal emails.
According to a company spokesperson, the phone is not expected to be launched in India very soon. The company declined to divulge any further details.
Affle to launch two new messaging applications
Affle, a mobile media company headquartered in Singapore, plans to launch two new applications to fuel its growth in India after the success of its App SMS 2.0. The two new applications, SMS Live and Pinch, are to be launched this quarter.
Talking about the applications, Anuj Kumar, executive director, South Asia, Affle, explains, “We are planning to launch two applications this quarter which we are very excited about.”
He added, “While the SMS Live application will create a paradigm shift in terms of how Messaging and social networking are used on mobiles, the other application, Pinch, aims at giving a value added experience to the users. Pinch will give them cost benefits and also create a lot of location based and other social gaming based services around it.”
Although these applications will be launched globally, Affle intends to focus especially on marketing to get more users in India.
The company is also evaluating the idea of building an R&D centre in India. The company plans to invest over $10 million globally for R&D with key focus on India, China and Indonesia, and will then look at Australia and other western European markets. Currently, its R&D and product development is headquartered in Singapore. It plans to centralise its global technology operations in India and hopes to be able to work on the same by the end of this year.
Affle had earlier set up office in Bangalore and Mumbai with an aim to service customers better. In India, they intend to invest in technologies which are specific to the country. Kumar shares that India contributes more than 50 per cent of the company’s total revenue, making it significant for their current positioning as well as growth.
The company is already present in markets such as Indonesia, Singapore, India, Thailand and Malaysia, and recently forayed into China and Australia as well. Kumar adds, “China and Australia are high potential markets. While China is huge in terms of scale and number of users, Australia is far less in numbers but has very high value users, given the amount of ARPU they contribute.”
Opera software update Mini 5 browser
Opera Software today launched the latest version of its popular mobile web Browser Opera Mini. The Opera Mini 5.1 is an update to the existing Opera Mini 5 browser.
The update includes a new optimised browser skin allowing for more pages to be open at the same time and more rapid scrolling through pages. The company believes that the updated version will improve the mobile web browsing experience with limited memory requirements. Hence, it will benefit users who have low phone memory, or need to reload open web pages while surfing with Opera Mini 5.
The updated version is recommended for use on Nokia S40 devices such as Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, Nokia 6300 and Nokia 2700. Opera Mini 5.1 will also benefit phones with a small screen size, such as the Sony Ericsson K550i and Sony Ericsson W810i. The update is not critical for Opera Mini users on smartphones or high end devices.
Opera Mini compresses data by up to 90 per cent before displaying content on the phone. This compression dramatically reduces data load, which translates to lower browsing costs when on a pay-per-MB data plan, especially while Roaming stated the press release.
Lars Boilesen, chief executive officer, Opera Software, said in a company statement, “The goal with Opera Mini is to make the web available to anyone, anywhere, regardless of where they come from or the handset they have. More than 61 million people on over 3,000 devices have chosen to surf the web with Opera Mini for fast and easy internet access at a considerably lower cost.”
Zen launches phone with 72 days battery back up
Zen Mobiles, a rapidly growing Indian handset manufacturer, announced the latest addition to their handset portfolio – the Zen M25. This device comes with a 2500 mAh battery offering up to 16 hours of talk time and 72 days (1,728 hours) of battery back up on standby mode.
M25 is a dual SIM device supporting two GSM connections. Other features include 1.3 megapixel, Bluetooth, FM radio and expandable memory of up to 4 GB. The phone is priced at Rs 3,400.
The phone is targeted at rural areas where electricity and power connections are not easily available. To market this product, Zen will focus on regional dailies and below the line advertising such as road shows, informed Deepesh Gupta, managing director, Zen Mobile.
Gupta further added that the company’s new ad campaigns featuring brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan are to go live this August.
The company currently occupies between 2 per cent and 2.5 per cent of the Indian handset market and eyes a seven to eight per cent market share by the end of this financial year. It also hopes to scale up its service centers to 600 from the current 325 situated across the country, informed Gupta. The manufacturer sells about 2.25 to 2.5 lakh handsets per month and aims to launch two to three handsets every month.
Delhi Government plans health services on mobile phones
Department of health and family welfare, government of Delhi, plans to bring health related services on mobile handsets to address the health related issues of Delhi citizens.
Dr Jayadev Sarangi, special secretary, health and family welfare, government of Delhi, said, “I want to explore the possibility of offering health services on mobile handsets for making life of common man easy and trouble free.”
He further added that, since he is an administrator, he can only talk about the concept and to realise that concept he would need the support of telecom players, and that he would like to talk to telecom and VAS companies to turn this concept to reality.
He said, “My dream is to map all the government hospitals of Delhi and the facilities provided by them on mobile handset devices, so that if anyone in Delhi, for example, wants to know about the availability of maternity facility in a particular hospital and the charges, he can find in out on his mobile, and apart from that he will (get to) know about the availability and fee in other hospitals also.”
BSNL launches push mail service in Karnataka
BSNL has launched a push mail service, dubbed BlacMail, in the Karnataka circle. For the service, BSNL is using technology provided by a VAS company called Fifth C, which is a technology startup based in Bangalore.
A BSNL spokesperson said, “BlacMail push mail platform is unique in spanning the requirements of the broad customer segments that comprise the BSNL base – from owners of inexpensive phones such as students in metros and small businesses in tier 2 and 3 cities, to consumers on our 3G network. Our customers can enjoy the benefits of this service that thus far was only affordable for a niche high-end segment like the BlackBerry.”
The service doesn’t require GPRS connectivity, which makes it affordable as well as ensures that the quality of service doesn’t suffer due to erratic GPRS connectivity. The user also does not have to incur unnecessary GPRS charges because the external server (Blacmail server in this case) communicates with the mail server over the web and does not use the GPRS connection of the phone.
This new service works on almost all Java and Symbian based phone models and does not need a GPRS connection to function. The technology is agnostic of all service providers and incorporates domains like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and corporate accounts, along with updates from Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and job sites such as Monster, Naukri and TimesJobs.
The service will be provided using Messaging server based technology. The unique feature of this service is the ability to provide it on almost all handsets including the low cost models.
K Krishnamohan, founder and chief executive officer, Fifth C, said, “We developed BlacMail with the objective of crashing the cost and performance barriers to enable true push mail experience for all mobile users in India from its current standing as an elitist service reserved only for a privileged few. Fifth C is happy to partner with BSNL in enabling this key capability for its customer base, thus leveraging the breadth of its Network coverage in 2G and 3G and geographic reach across India.”
However, the service will be available only in Karnataka for now, and subsequently will be launched nationwide.
Charge your mobile phone using heat from your feet
Orange has launched the Orange Power Wellies, an innovative eco mobile phone charging prototype. The Orange Power Wellies, created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind, use a unique ‘power generating sole’ that converts heat from your feet into an electrical current.
Although the system needs to be improved as right now twelve hours of walking will give you enough power to charge a mobile phone for just one hour.
Dave Pain, Managing Director at GotWind said, “GotWind are excited to be working with Orange for a fourth year to create an invaluable charging prototype for festival goers. Wellies are now the staple festival footwear, the Orange Power Wellies not only keep you dry but they also provide a crucial eco electricity source.”
“Orange remain loyal to the green ethos and are committed to researching exciting new energy sources that can be used on site to ensure people can stay in touch with their nearest and dearest. The Orange Power Wellies use clean and renewable energy to create valuable electricity ensuring festival goers can text and phone their mates for the duration of the weekend,” Andrew Pearcey, Head of Sponsorship at Orange UK said.
The Orange Power Wellies are the latest innovation in Orange’s bid to find alternative sustainable and eco friendly mobile phone charging technologies that can be used at the Glastonbury Festival.
Previous projects have included the Recharge Pod powered by wind and solar energy, Dance Charger which drew upon kinetic energy created by dancing and the Orange Power Pump which uses the energy created from a traditional foot pump and converted it into electricity.
The power collected in the ‘power generating sole’ is collected via a process known as the ‘Seebeck’ effect. Inside the power generating sole there are thermoelectric modules constructed of pairs of p-type and n-type semiconductor materials forming a thermocouple.
These thermocouples are connected electrically forming an array of multiple thermocouples (thermopile). They are then sandwiched between two thin ceramic wafers. When the heat from the foot is applied on the top side of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the opposite side, from the cold of the ground, electricity is generated. This electricity can then be used to charge the phone.
iPhone4 to hit Indian market in September
Two of the largest pan India operators in India, Airtel and Vodafone, plan to launch Apple iPhone 4 by the end of September, state media reports. Although the price for the device has not yet been revealed, industry people estimate it to be priced at Rs 35,500 and 41,500 for 16GB and 32GB model, respectively.
The device was first unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco and will be available from June 24 in the USA, France, Germany, Japan and UK. It is priced at $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32 GB in the US.
Apple had announced on June 26 that it has sold over 1.7 million iPhone4 handsets within three days of its launch.
The new iPhone features FaceTime, which allows two iPhone 4 users to do video calling over WiFi. This feature was not present in previous iPhone models, including iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The company claims that the Retina display technology on iPhone 4 is said to be the sharpest and highest-resolution phone screen ever, with four times the pixel count of previous iPhone models. Apart from these features, it comes with high definition video recording and editing and a 5 Megapixel camera with LED.
Oscar forays into mobile handset market; to invest Rs 100 cr
Consumer goods manufacturer Oscar today forayed into the highly-competitive mobile handset market with 10 devices and will invest Rs 100 crore on marketing this year.
“We will invest Rs 100 crore this year on our product and marketing. By the end of first year, we hope to sell one lakh mobiles per month in North and East India with a turnover of Rs 250 crores,” Oscar Group Executive Director Suresh Wadhwani said.
Oscar has priced its products between Rs 1,700 to Rs 4,500.
Initially, Oscar will work with manufacturers in China and source its products from there but will set up a unit in the country once it achieves 1 lakh units per month in sales.
Oscar, which manufacturers colour televisions, home theatre systems, DVDs, and multi-media speaker systems is the latest entrant in the Rs 70,000-crore handset market in India.
Of the overall handset market, about 50 per cent is cornered by the ultra-low cost handsets.
The segment has witnessed at least one new mobile vendor every month.
These new home grown entrants such as Micromax, Lava, Wynn Telecom, Lemon, Zen, Olive telecom are giving tough competition to well entrenched players ? Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.