Mobscope

Despite the rumors of last week, the 330 does exist, not as an internet tablet but an auto navigation device.The Nokia 330 Auto Navigation has an integrated GPS receiver to make sure you will get the best possible satellite coverage on your journey. The device contains a 2GB memory card for the preinstalled Europe-wide map data and detailed travel information.* Tailor the visual instructions to your preference with adjustable 2D/3D, day or night view, or alter the audio to your suitable language or volume, or simply request a repeat of the last instruction.

“Consumers are increasingly eager to use personal navigation devices while driving and we are delighted to introduce the Nokia 330 Auto Navigation device to meet this demand,” said Razvan Olosu, vice president, Multimedia Enhancements at Nokia. “Nokia 330 Auto Navigation complements the recently announced GPS and navigation solutions from Nokia. Finding your way across Europe is simple with this comprehensive navigation package, including an integrated GPS receiver and European maps.”

Nokia 330 Auto Navigation – Enjoy the Ride! [Nokia.com]

GSMA and Voxiva develop handset software to fight spread of pandemics

17^th October 2006 – Singapore: The GSM Association’s Development Fund and Voxiva, Inc. have joined forces to develop a mobile phone application that will make it much easier for health authorities and governments to track and manage the spread of HIV/AIDS, Avian Flu and other diseases.

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The E-Ten glofiish X500 smartphone comes in amid the smartphone jungle. A fantastic 400Mhz processing power drives this baby. With 64MB of main memory the X500 will handle a good number of tasks one would expect from a smartphone like this one. 128MB of Flash ROM handles external storage. The 2.0 MP camera and the video recording is quite impressive. The queue of multimedia file formats supported by the X500 includes AMR, AWB, MIDI, MMF, RMI, AAC, 3GP, AVI extensions. Ability to play online games and downloadable screens, ring tones and games make the X500 very flexible. The connectivity is not less impressive either. The X500 has a built-in quad band GSM module and GPRS (Class B), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as expected. Empowered by Windows Mobile 5.0, the X500 is only 0.6 inch thick making it the thinnest smartphones out there.

Thinnest E-TEN Pocket PC Phone Coming Soon – X500 [Mobility Site]

by Darla Mack

Softpedia has news of leaked sketches of the what appears to be the next communicator by Nokia.  Apparently the sketches of the E90 Communicator has been found in Nokia’s documents.

With NokiaWorld (Nokia Mobility Conference) coming up next month, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this, the rumored E80 and other devices announced.

The rumored specs of the E90 include:

HSPDA, UMTS, EDGE and Wi-Fi, 2 megapixel digital camera, mini USB connectivity support.

It could also be possible that the new rumored communicators or Eseries Business Devices will run on S60 instead of S80.

I was reading Modojo today and I found that they published some of Gameloft’s financial statistics.Gameloft announced that it has generated consolidated sales of 16.1M euros in the third quarter of 2006, up by 47% compared with 2005. Over the first nine months of 2006, sales reached 46.7 millions euros, showing an increase of 49%.
Mobile gaming generated 98% of the company’s sales during the first nine months of the year, an increase of 52% compared with the same period in 2005. Within the mobile games activity, the sale of downloadable games, which are the company’s core business and account for 91% sales, has increased by 85% over the first nine months of the financial year.

Go here to read more.

Mobileindustry.biz has posted some market research that we have all known was true but market research firm Compete has verified.
A new study by market research firm Compete has revealed that less than 10 per cent of mobile phone owners buy content through their handsets.More than 2000 consumers were interviewed for the study, which can be viewed as a PDF via the Compete website.

The availability of content, including games, music, video and ringtones, was found to be the sixth most important factor for consumers when it comes to choosing a service provider. Taking priority were network coverage, service plan pricing, promotional offers, family plan option and availability of a physical store, in that order.

The study also found that 13 per cent of consumers are interested in purchasing entertainment such as games, TV, video and music for their phones – but just 9 per cent already do.

Around 15 per cent of all-in market shoppers said they would be willing to receive a few adverts or commercials on their phone per day in exchange for a free game every month. The figure rose to 38 per cent for the on-demand segment.

The study concluded that, “The monthly ARPU gains provided by content services are helpful and growing, but the true value may lie in the stickiness created by delivering highly usable mobile content.

“To target the needs of the on-demand segment, messaging needs to be more clearly focused on anytime, anywhere accessibility of content, not just its availability.”

You can read the full study here.

Generally, videos shot by a cameraphone aren’t exactly Scorsese-worthy, though a company that designs digital-camera software wants to change that with a technology called Face Tracker. As you can probably guess, FotoNation’s new trick enables your phone’s camera to pick out faces in your shot and then finds the best settings for exposure, focus, and color balance — so the person you’re targeting stays bright and clear in spite of your shaky hands. Face Tracker used to be available only on still cams, but the new version can track someone’s mug while the your phone records video at 30 frames per second, keeping tabs on up to eight faces at the same time. Presumably if you have more than one face in the frame, Face Tracker finds the best compromise to keep each of them as in focus as possible. In that case, I hope it’s defeatable, since I would think you’d want to focus on just one person in most shoots. At least that’s what I hear the cool kids are doing. Anyway, if you’re really, really good and eat all your sprouts, some cell-phone manufacturers may license the technology in the coming months.

I encourage you to pop over to the MEX blog and read a recent entry by Marek Pawlowski on how value is slowly draining away from the operators and toward application and handset developers. He describes how the main brands he sees now are the providers of the useful third-party applications he uses to make his mobile do the things he wants, as he wants them – from syncing contacts to uploading images and beyond. In his case, Vodafone is just a carrier signal underneath, and even then only when he can’t pick up Wifi.

I can totally understand this feeling. I just got the Nokia N93, pictured here, and in the past five days have pretty much avoided Cingular, my operator, and loaded as many third-party apps as I needed on to the handset. The main brands I experience now? Nokia and Flickr. I run over Wifi every chance I get (though I still can’t make voice calls with it, but all data is now going over hotspots, not my carrier’s data service).

It is somewhat analogous to the early days of the Internet, where ISPs tried to control the user experience, and eventually the dominant services and brands became third parties like Google, or hardware providers who offer services, like Apple and .mac, or Microsoft and its online services. I almost forget that my bandwidth comes from Time Warner.

Operators will have to become application providers more and more if they are to stay in the game for more valuable users. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep playing with my toy.

A group of industry veterans from Activision and Gameloft, have banded together to create Massively Mobile, a new game development studio for mobile devices.Massively Mobile has created a proprietary engine for mobile devices, which will allow it to deliver single and multiplayer gaming experience, utilizing the “unique advantages” of the mobile platform so players can have experiences not possible on other platforms.

The details of the unique advantages spoken about were not mentioned in any way. “For too long, the mobile platform has been treated as the red-headed stepchild of ‘real’ gaming,” says founding member and Creative Director, Demetri Detsaridis.

We are anxious to see what they come up with.

A recent press release details the success of mobile game developer Digital Chocolate. Some of its successes include the 2006 Best Games Developer Award, steady growth and numerous mentions in the Fierce 15.

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