Roughly half a dozen new mobile operating systems will come to market over the next 6 to 12 months. Many of these look to be more sophisticated than the older ones controlled by Apple and Google, for whom serious competition could be just around the corner. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Carriers have built plenty of 4G networks, but they’re still not in agreement in how they use them. Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg believes the next few years are going to be a period of pricing and service experimentation. Read more »
Roku is adding wireless mirroring to its hardware: Broadcom’s Miracast technology could be part of Roku’s streaming stick, as well as the next-generation Roku boxes. Read more »
The OneAPI Exchange will get carriers into the identity verification business, but more significantly it’s the first carrier developer service designed to work universally across all carriers’ networks. Read more »
A report from the GSMA and PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that mobile health could save developed countries $400 billion in 2017. Here are four uses of mobile technology that could help make that happen. Read more »
The deal runs counter to bring-your-own-connectivity approach GM and the rest of the Detroit automakers have backed in recent years. Read more »
At Mobile World Congress, NSN announced plans to embed IBM application servers into its base stations. The radio and services networks have always been separate, but NSN is making a case to merge them. Read more »
At Mobile World Congress, Spotify debuted in its first cars appearing in Ford’s already music-loaded Sync AppLink platform. Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas also told us that its graduate its first apps from its developer program. Read more »
Ssangyong may not have the global name recognition of the Wireless Power Consortium’s first automotive partner Toyota, but adding the Korean automaker to Qi’s roster shows the technology is building momentum. Read more »
Fresh off portfolio company Intucell’s $475 million exit, Bessemer Venture Partners’ Bob Goodman is on the hunt for new mobile infrastructure startups. At the wireless industry’s biggest event, Mobile World Congress, he’ll find plenty to choose from. Read more »
PayPal’s Here mobile payments service is bound for Europe, launching first in the U.K. over the next few months. Instead of the card-swiper used in the U.S., Europe will get a new Chip & PIN device. Read more »
Qualcomm’s new RF360 radio chip cold be the answer to the problem of 4G fragmentation. It won’t produce a universal LTE phone just yet, but with 40 bands supported, it will get the industry close. Read more »
Altair Semiconductor may be the latest vendor to malign the term LTE-Advanced, but it does have an impressive new 4G chip. It’s new device silicon is the first we’ve seen that uses envelope tracking battery-sparing technology. Read more »
Nvidia has launched its first integrated smartphone chip that combines its GPU-based application processor and a modem. The new chip will give Nvidia a processor to compete against Qualcomm’s integrated chips. Read more »
First we had benchmarks for the elusive Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet and now there’s a report that a key Samsung exec has confirmed the slate’s debut at Mobile World Congress. Read more »
Mobile industry trade group CTIA hopes that replacing its two suffering conferences with a single fall event will halt its fall into trade show irrelevance. MWC and CES have been stealing CTIA’s thunder, but it might be too late to steal it back. Read more »
Nokia is launching its Reading app and e-bookstore for the Lumia Windows Phone in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK. In doing so, the company hopes to bring more local-language e-books to countries where e-readers haven’t yet taken off. Read more at paidContent »
With 1400 exhibitors, Mobile World Congress produced a lot of product and technology demos, most of the unmemorable. Three of those demos, though, really got my attention: iOnRoad’s augmented driving app, P2i’s water resistant nano-technology and Nokia’s 41-megapixel PureView camera phone sensor. Read more »
T-Mobile expects to be the first U.S. carrier to offer 4G phones with integrated LTE radios and antennas. T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray made the prediction, which is important because the LTE phones of today drain a device’s battery too quickly for a number of reasons. Read more »
If we build a world where 50 billion devices are connected, those devices will generate a lot of chatter, and that chatter could get very annoying. By telling us everything about our homes, cars and appliances the Internet of things may wind up telling nothing at all. Read more »
This week AT&T floated a plan to enable app developers to pay for the data that subscribers use in their apps. The model might resonate with some developers and subscribers, but it is likely to create more problems than it ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Location-based photo sharing app Color famously flamed out after raising millions of dollars in funding. Now, with them out of the picture, French service Sharypic wants to step into the gap and provide photo sharing for events. Can it compete in a crowded market? Read more »
Years have gone by since Microsoft launched a version of Windows that made the general public stand up and take notice. On Wednesday, the company will allow tech enthusiasts to start poking around Windows 8, a product that could help Microsoft get its groove back. Read more »
At MWC executives of two prominent operators said the industry has significant challenges in the form of over the top providers commoditizing their revenue streams without those companies putting any significant investment of their own into the network. Here’s what operators should do. Read more »
Google chairman Eric Schmidt is a passionate advocate for technology, and he laid on the charm in an hour-long appearance at Mobile World Congress that was part Chrome commercial, part techno-utopian vision, and part high-brow version of Reddit’s Ask Me Anything. Here’s what he said. Read more »
Ford envisions a future of 4 billion cars that communicate with one another as peers, sharing information such as their speed, direction and the moment they brake with all of the other vehicles on the road. It’s a revolutionary vision, but it’s also a very scary one. Read more »
Gaming on desktop PCs and consoles is a big business, but one that generally requires participants to be locked down to a location. In today’s growing mobile world, that’s less than ideal. That’s partly why mobile device chips are gaining capabilities for immersive, multi-player 3-D gaming. Read more »
Last week, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Broadband Alliance announced significant progress in their shared goal of making your phone connect seamlessly with Wi-Fi networks. Now at Mobile World Congress, Cisco is proffering up the first equipment that supports those Next Generation Hotspot and Hotspot 2.0 standards. Read more »
European politicians have just voted up proposals to slash roaming charges for mobile users who stray across the continent’s borders. But it’s drawn a violent response from Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao who thinks it could create “hell” for operators. Read more »
Last year, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop declared war on Google and invited developers, mobile operators and handset makers to join Nokia and Microsofts’ ranks in preparation for the coming smartphone armageddon. At MWC, Elop gave us an update on how Nokia’s war and recruitment efforts are going. Read more »
New Research in Motion boss Thorsten Heins says that Europe — where the BlackBerry’s market share remains higher than in the U.S. — can save it from the brink of disaster. But he’s wrong: the reality is that the only thing that can save it is itself. Read more »
In Barcelona, telecom vendors, carriers and other companies are showing off devices, boxes and new industry standards. But amid the latest phones is a burgeoning class of services that show that participants understand how the connected world will play out and how they will profit from it. Read more »
One year after it dramatically altered the course of its history by signing a landmark deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to use Windows Phone… Read more at paidContent »
Nine months after purchasing Skype for $8.5 billion, Microsoft Windows Phone handsets have a beta version of the audio and video chat service. There are some notable limitations in this first release, but as the software gets refined and integrated, Microsoft’s platform could gain more momentum. Read more »
As Dropbox launches a new photo upload capability to make it easier to move digital photos from smartphones to the cloud, the debate as to whether Dropbox itself is the next big disruptor or just a feature to be acquired or co-opted flares anew. Read more »
Searching for a new lease of life, Mozilla is joining forces with Spanish operator Telefónica to build handsets that have web technologies at their heart. But can Mozilla succeed where Palm failed? And is there room in a difficult market for more players? Read more »
Nokia kicked off its Mobile World Congress festivities with new Lumia Windows Phone devices, but also made sure to highlight new Symbian devices that appeal to lower-cost smartphone markets. China is now also in the company’s short-term plans. Read more »
Broadcom claims that all of that hardware and functionality found in high-end devices smartphones like the the Galaxy Nexus can be had for half of the cost. On Monday at Mobile World Congress it’s unveiling the silicon component of that low-cost equation. Read more »
Freescale Semiconductor has succeeded in cramming an entire cellular base station onto a single chip. That’s not only an impressive feat of miniaturization, it could kick off the next-generation of LTE deployments, lower the costs of building mobile networks and cut the energy required to run them. Read more »
