I was on holiday in Italy last week, trying out the sat nav on my mobile phone (and avoiding a €140 bill to rent a navigation device from the car hire company, but that’s a tale for another blog posting). While I was away, I missed the news that US electronics retailer Best Buy had [...]

Over the past year, we’ve seen an explosion in SIM-only deals for contract and prepaid customers in Europe. Such deals offer just a SIM (and some minutes for contract subscribers), but come without the subsidised — or free — phone that’s attached to other plans. I’ve read that SIM-only deals now account for over 15 [...]

LG’s KS360 hits the high street in the UK this month with a price tag that I think will ignite sales of qwerty phones to consumers. The phone (pictured on the left) comes in a choice of three finishes — blue, pink and black — that will appeal to younger users. The phone packs in [...]

Watching market developments over recent weeks I can’t help thinking that the prepaid segment will be the one that makes or breaks the fortunes of mobile device manufacturers and network operators in Western Europe in 2008.

We saw a similar turn of events last year, with the prepaid market seeing renewed impetus as growth in the [...]

There’s been a lot of talk recently about a “credit crunch” and even an impending meltdown of the economy. Things are certainly getting tougher: the German economy shrank for the first time in four years last quarter, and in the UK, the Bank of England recently warned that up to 2 million people could be [...]

On 2 September Nokia announced it will launch its first Comes With Music phone in the UK. Carphone Warehouse has secured an exclusive deal to offer the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone on a prepaid tariff some time in the fourth quarter.
If I’m honest, I was disappointed when I read Nokia’s press release this morning. Comes [...]

Last week I went to the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. A major theme that grabbed my attention was the focus on a new product category — the mobile Internet device, or MID. Intel believes MIDs are the next big thing in connected mobile devices. Personally, I’m not so sure.
Intel cited a wide variety [...]