iPhone – Platform for the Masses?

Conventional wisdom is that iPhone users are a gadget-loving, tech-savvy and well-off bunch. In fact, results from a quantitative study of US 2G iPhone US users conducted by Rubicon in March 2008 revealed that the former have a median annual household income of $67,000 which is roughly 40% greater than the US median. So when [...]

USB Dongle – Fashion Accessory?

You know USB dongles have become mainstream when operators start selling different color skins to go with them. H3G in Sweden (also called Tre) is positioning their mobile broadband as the “most stylish broadband” in addition to being the fastest!
 
“Sign up for 3 mobile broadband for 18 months and receive any skin at no extra [...]

Revisiting iPhone’s Browsing Market Share – Part Deux

Back in September, I reported that according to Admob, a mobile advertising marketplace, iPhone seemed to trail Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Palm handsets in both worldwide and US share of smartphone traffic. This was in direct contrast to other web browsing marketshare statistics where iPhone seemingly comes out on top. I also received hate-mail from [...]

Carnival of the Mobilists #146

If it is Monday, it must be COTM! Scoot over to Carnival of the Mobilists at Andrew Grill’s London Calling to get the latest news and insights in the mobile industry. I found Chetan Sharma’s report on the 3G Americas Analyst Summit – especially his comments on LTE vis-a-vis HSPA interesting:
I think given the current [...]

3G Routers – Will It Accelerate Fixed Broadband Replacement?

I have been commenting quite regularly in this blog about how mobile broadband (based on USB dongles and modems) is increasingly being used by mobile-only operators (those without fixed assets) to accelerate the replacement of fixed broadband, primarily in Europe. The spectacular growth in mobile broadband subscriptions is being driven by aggressive pricing from mobile operators, [...]

Telstra Announces HSPA+ Upgrade

Telstra announced that it is upgrading its HSPA network to HSPA+, which the company says will offer peak downlink speeds of 21Mbps by end of 2008. Looks like Telstra pipped the other operators to the post – Qualcomm had announced multiple HSPA+ trials early this year to be conducted with Hutchison 3G, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Telstra.  
Telstra [...]

Carnival of the Mobilists @ Xellular Identity

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is over at Xellular Identity which includes a fascinating post on the South Korean mobile market. There is also a post that discusses the US mobile internet penetration – I was surprised to learn that several off-deck US publishers such as The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Reuters, ESPN and others are all [...]