Apple iCloud Harmony ad launches
Apple has released a new commercial for its emerging cloud service and, in typical Apple fashion it features a whole bunch of videos of Apple products in different locations, showing a whole bunch of different screenshots showcasing the product in question. The ad, entitled iCloud Harmony, has no voice-over at all. That’s an interesting move considering the average consumer might need a bit of clarification on exactly what iCloud is.
The commercial features the typical Apple style of music, and among the features that are highlighted are music, photo, calendar, and contact screens from iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It also shows off apps and e-books, trying to convey the message to consumers that all this content can be automatically kept and stored in the cloud for access anywhere at any time.
The ad ends with the text “Automatic. Everywhere. iCloud.” Cloud services are likely to be one of the biggest emerging trends in 2012, with iCloud facing competition from Web-based services like Dropbox and Amazon. Another service, Box, seems to want to be the Android standard. It recently offered 50 GB of free storage space to all Android users, though the offer is only available for a limited time.
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Nokia,Sumsung,motorola,spice,LG,Sony Ericsson
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BARCELONA, SPAIN -- (Marketwire) -- 02/27/12 -- Mobile World Congress -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) -- Bell Mobility continues to build out its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile services with the Cisco® ASR 5000 Series mobile multimedia core platform. Bell Mobility now delivers 4G LTE services to its most populous markets in western Canada, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.
The Cisco ASR 5000 Series is the foundation of the packet core for Bell Mobility's LTE network, delivering higher bandwidth and greater intelligence for faster mobile Internet services and improved user experiences.
Highlights/Key Facts
Bell Mobility has completed the rollout of 4G LTE services to customers in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Yellowknife, London, Greater Toronto Area, Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, Belleville, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax-Dartmouth.
With capital expenditures of approximately $3 billion per year, Bell is rapidly expanding Canada's communications infrastructure with ongoing fibre and mobile broadband rollouts.
Designated as a 4G mobile specification, LTE is designed to provide multi-megabit bandwidth, more efficient use of the radio network, latency reduction and improved mobility. This combination aims to enhance the user's interaction with the network and further drive the demand for mobile multimedia services. With mobile broadband, users can more readily access Internet services such as online video, social networking, and interactive gaming -- all on the go.
The Cisco ASR 5000 Series is purpose-built for the complexities of the mobile network. It is a robust multimedia services platform that brings a new level of network and customer intelligence to the mobile network. Such intelligence is critical to delivering real-time, personalized mobile services.
Key components of the Cisco ASR 5000 Series include:
The Cisco Mobility Management Entity (MME), which manages multiple back-end functions, including authentication, paging, mobility with 3GPP, 2G and 3G nodes, roaming and other functions.
The Cisco Serving Gateway provides superior throughput and processing
Cisco Packet Data Network Gateway acts as policy enforcement and manages quality of service (QoS).
By combining multiple functions into a single carrier-class platform like the Cisco ASR 5000 Series, Bell can reduce signaling overhead, distribute session management, and take full advantage of the network's control and user plane capabilities.
According to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2010 to 2015 released in February 2012, worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 130 exabytes per year. By 2016 Cisco anticipates that global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times.
Supporting Quotes:
Stephen Howe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Bell
"4G LTE is the next step in ensuring Bell continues to deliver the best networks across Canada to consumers and business customers. The Cisco ASR 5000 Series helps us provide a superior wireless experience and offer new and unique mobile services, now and in the future."
Kelly Ahuja, senior vice president, general manager, Service Provider Mobility, Cisco
"We are pleased to partner with Bell Mobility as it deploys its LTE network. As the expectations of mobile users increase, the need for intelligent traffic management, scale, performance and accurate reporting increases. With the Cisco ASR 5000 Series, Bell has a market-leading packet core, built upon an intelligent platform that can integrate multiple functions and is uniquely equipped to accelerate Bell's ability to meet customer needs and grow its business."
Supporting Resources
Bell Mobility
Cisco Service Provider Solutions
Cisco ASR 5000 Series Mobile Multimedia Core Platform
Cisco Mobile Internet Solutions (MOVE)
Read more about Cisco's mobile Internet products and solutions
Cisco Visual Networking Index home page
Read the complete Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2010-2016
For more information about Cisco's service provider news and activities visit the SP360 Blog or follow us on Twitter @SP360
Tags/Keywords
Bell Canada, Bell Mobility, Cisco, ASR 5000 Series Aggregation Service Routers, ASR 5000, mobile Internet, Visual Networking Index Forecast, VNI
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Idea,Airtal,Vodafone,Smart,Huch,Aircel,Tata Docomo
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http://best-blackberry-mobile-
BlackBerry Bets on Europe to Gain Market Share from Rivals
Research In Motion, whose US sales plunged 45 percent last quarter, is counting on Europe to regain ground lost to Apple and Google as the BlackBerry maker races to introduce a new operating system.
Thorsten Heins, who took the top job at RIM last month, heads to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress this week to convince carriers he has the products European consumers want. His challenge is to bolster market share in the region, where sales in Britain, for example, have begun to drop.
“In Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, BlackBerry is a very strong brand, a leading brand — we can really rely on that,” Heins, a 54-year-old German who spent more than two decades at Siemens before joining RIM in 2007, said in an interview at the RIM’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, before leaving for Barcelona. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have to earn this every day again. We have to do that.’’
BlackBerry demand has held up better in markets such as the Netherlands and Britain than in the United States, where sales tumbled as American consumers and businesses opted for Apple’s iPhone and touch-screen devices built on Google’s Android software. While RIM made its name by targeting Washington politicians and Wall Street bankers, Europe’s portion of its sales has increased to about a third, said Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities in Boston.
“The brand is still stronger in Europe than it is here,” Thornton said.
Still, a lack of new BlackBerry models is making Heins’s job tougher and threatens to undermine RIM’s position in Europe, Thornton said.
In Barcelona, Heins will show a new version of the PlayBook tablet and smartphones introduced six months ago, while seeking to build excitement about new BlackBerrys coming on the BB10 platform in the latter part of the year, Thornton said.
That leaves RIM vulnerable to attacks by rivals such as Nokia, Samsung Electronics and HTC, which are preparing to showcase newer models at the Barcelona event starting today.
Samsung and HTC’s latest models run Android and include larger screens than the BlackBerry, and Nokia is displaying handsets using Microsoft’s Windows software, marking the first time the Finnish company is showing new products at the trade show in three years.
While RIM says the BlackBerry is still the top-selling smartphone in Britain, its sales in the country fell to $588 million last quarter from $685 million a year earlier. The traction RIM is retaining in Europe is mostly due to cheaper devices such as the Curve, according to Thornton. “It’s not the high-end stuff that’s working for them there, it’s the Curve and lower-end phones,” he said.
In a speech to BlackBerry developers in Amsterdam last month, Heins opened his remarks by pointing out where BlackBerry is the top prepaid smartphone or top smartphone overall, reeling off the Netherlands, Britain, Spain as well as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa.
RIM had 8.5 million subscribers in Britain at the end of last year and a 26 percent share of phone sales in December, according to data from GfK released by RIM.
“In the UK, they’ve done really well and in the Netherlands, they’ve hit a home run; in Germany and France, not so much,” said Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Morgan Keegan Inc.
Getting the BlackBerry Messenger messaging software, or BBM, to catch on in Britain and Holland was key to that success, said McCourt, who is based in Nashville and rates RIM shares “market perform.”
Still, BBM wasn’t enough to keep users addicted to the BlackBerry in the United States as the larger screens and faster Web browsers of the iPhone and Android appealed to consumers. The competition is beating RIM on Web-browsing, Chavez says, even as she still plans to stick with her BlackBerry for messaging.
RIM’s US smartphone market share dropped to 16 percent in the three months through December from 19 percent in the previous quarter, according to ComScore. In that time Apple’s share rose to 30 percent from 27 percent and Android’s climbed to 47 percent from 45 percent.
Heins is counting on four new BlackBerry models introduced in September to catch on better in Europe than they have in the United States. He said last month that RIM needs to do a better job of marketing the BlackBerry 7 phones and their improved browsers and touch-screen navigation.
A PlayBook software upgrade, which delivers dedicated e-mail, calendar and contacts programs to the tablet, was pushed out to BlackBerry users last week after repeated delays under his predecessors’ management.
Heins’s bigger challenge is to get the next round of BlackBerry smartphones, using the new BB10 operating system, into stores before the year-end holiday shopping season. Lazaridis said in December the first BB10 device would come out “in the latter part” of 2012.
BB10 will position RIM to capitalize on the changing ways people are using smartphones in the United States and Europe, Heins said.
One thing playing for RIM’s advantage is the missteps of former market leader Nokia, which have left Apple and Android dominating the market. As long as Nokia is still struggling, executives from European carriers that Heins meets with in Barcelona will want him to succeed, McCourt said.
“Carriers around the globe, whether it’s Europe or the US, would love to see another successful platform,” he said. “They don’t want be just to be low-margin resellers of Apple and Android.”
Cisco ASR 5000 Series Mobile Multimedia Core Platform
Cisco Mobile Internet Solutions (MOVE)
Read more about Cisco's mobile Internet products and solutions
Cisco Visual Networking Index home page
Read the complete Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, 2010-2016
For more information about Cisco's service provider news and activities visit the SP360 Blog or follow us on Twitter @SP360
Raj Rajput [ MBA ]
Mobile Reviews Expert
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http://best-iphones-reviews.blogspot.in/
IPhone's Crutch of Subsidies
BARCELONA—For Google Inc., Europe's economic turmoil has had a silver lining: Smartphones that use the Internet giant's software are crushing the iPhone in countries hard hit by the continent's debt crisis.
Last year, despite Apple Inc.'s high-profile launch of the new iPhone 4S, only 5% of the smartphones sold in Greece and 9% of those sold in Portugal were iPhones, according to research firm IDC. Most of the rest were phones running Google's Android operating system, which the company is promoting heavily as it seeks a firmer foothold in the wireless industry.
Enlarge Image
SUBSIDY
SUBSIDY
The results point to a rare weak spot for Apple—its heavy reliance on subsidies from wireless carriers to make its iPhones affordable to a wider range of consumers. The practice has proved to be a big advantage for Apple, which posted a 73% jump in revenue in its latest quarter, at the expense of carriers such as Sprint Nextel Corp., which started carrying the iPhone last fall but doesn't expect to make a profit on the device until 2015.
In countries like the U.S. and the U.K., carrier subsidies helped the iPhone win more than 20% of the smartphone market last year. But its performance in parts of southern Europe where most consumers don't sign contracts and have to pay full freight for phones suggests Apple's position could suffer if carriers tire of underwriting most of the cost of the devices, as some are in countries such as Denmark and Spain.
"Smartphone penetration and adoption is being helped by the entry of lower-price devices, which basically are Android devices," said Carlos Alberto Silva, a spokesman for Portuguese carrier Optimus.
Android phones that cost less than $200 without a contract are widely available in Europe, helping Google undercut the much more expensive iPhone. In Portugal, at wireless carrier Vodafone Group PLC, the cheapest Apple phone—an eight-gigabyte version of the older-model iPhone 4—sells for $680, according to the carrier's website. Phones running Android can be had for as little as $106, and even Samsung Electronics Co.'s high-end Galaxy S II is cheaper than the cheapest iPhone.
In markets like the U.S., where consumers generally pay $200 or $300 for smartphones regardless of the brand, price isn't as much of a factor. The reverse is true in Greece, Portugal, and elsewhere, where carriers don't subsidize most smartphones.
At Greece's largest wireless carrier, Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA, the most popular smartphone sold last year was Samsung's Galaxy Mini, said Dimitris Koutsonas, head of mobile data and services. The price: $188 without a contract. "In this economic situation, we had to push the low-end smartphone," Mr. Koutsonas said.
As a result, more than 60% of the smartphones sold by Cosmote last year were Android phones, Mr. Koutsonas said.
The success of Android helps Google to ensure that its search engine—its most important source of revenue—as well as mapping and other services, are preloaded on mobile devices, through which consumers are spending more time online.
Google licenses Android to hardware manufacturers essentially free, doesn't get a cut of device sales and takes only a small share of revenue generated from app sales for Android devices.
The software company hopes the wider range of prices for Android phones boosts their adoption—and helps the operating system gain traction with carriers wary of subsidies and customers leery of contracts.
"Our competitors are much more dependent on such subsidies," said John Lagerling, Google's director of Android partnerships. "From a sustainability standpoint, if you have very expensive devices as the only ones available to access your ecosystem, then that can come with a pretty severe hangover in the long run."
In the U.S., carriers pay Apple an estimated $400 every time a customer buys an iPhone with a two-year contract, analysts say. Sprint has acknowledged that iPhone subsidies run 40% higher than they do for other smartphones on average. The goal is to make it easy to buy the phone then make the money back and a profit over time on service contracts. Contract-free "prepaid" carriers, on the other hand, leave consumers to pay the full price of a phone.
Wall Street has grilled Apple on its strategy for prepaid carriers, even as the company sold a record 37 million iPhones in its most recent quarter, more than double the year-earlier tally. The company has kept a nearly three-year-old model, the iPhone 3GS, on the market to appeal to budget-minded buyers, including prepaid users. But the 3GS still sells for $535 without a contract at Greece's Cosmote.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told analysts in January that it "was too early to tell" how the lower-priced versions would perform in the prepaid market over time but that the company was "thrilled" with iPhones sales as a whole.
At an investor conference this month, Mr. Cook added that emerging markets, which often use the prepaid model, are "critical" for the company, but that each country is different and some may evolve over time. "I don't really subscribe to the premise that a prepaid market is a prepaid market is a prepaid market," he said. Apple, he said, had persuaded China Unicom to try a contract and subsidies approach in addition to its prepaid one, and that it had performed well.
"You can bet that we are into details in every single country in the world trying to learn what we can to adjust, maybe to do better into the future," Mr. Cook said.
The debate over device subsidies is part of a tug of war between mobile operators, Internet companies and phone makers seeking control and profits in the wireless industry. All three camps are gathering in Barcelona this week for an annual industry conference.
Carriers around the world are having second thoughts about subsidizing phones, presenting a risk for all phone makers—not just Apple. That became clear in Denmark last year after several leading wireless carriers stopped subsidizing phones and lowered their monthly rates to keep up with lower-priced competitors. "We saw that the customers valued lower prices on calling plans, and simpler calling plans, higher than the subsidy on the phone," said Jon Erik Haug, CEO of the Denmark unit of Oslo-based wireless operator Telenor ASA.
In the second half of last year, after Danish carriers stopped offering subsidies, phone sales declined about 10% from the second half of 2010, according to IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo. Smartphone sales continued to grow, but at a much lower rate than in 2010.
In Spain, telecom giant Telefónica SA also is having doubts. "We can't keep subsidies at these levels," José Miguel Gilpérez, CEO of Telefónica Spain, recently told Spanish newspaper El País. "When you buy a TV or any other consumer good, you pay for it. It is healthier that users pay for their devices and operators invest in networks and services."
For phone makers, any change by carriers could have an impact on the sales of high-end devices.
In the U.S., where contract plans and phone subsidies dominate, IDC says that around 90% of smartphone shipments over the past four years were for devices that cost more than $300—despite the recession and uncertain recovery. In Italy, where prepaid plans dominate, that proportion was 67% last year, and in crisis-hit Greece and Portugal, only about 40% of the smartphones shipped in 2011 cost more than $300.
IPhone's Crutch of Subsidies
BARCELONA—For Google Inc., Europe's economic turmoil has had a silver lining: Smartphones that use the Internet giant's software are crushing the iPhone in countries hard hit by the continent's debt crisis.
Last year, despite Apple Inc.'s high-profile launch of the new iPhone 4S, only 5% of the smartphones sold in Greece and 9% of those sold in Portugal were iPhones, according to research firm IDC. Most of the rest were phones running Google's Android operating system, which the company is promoting heavily as it seeks a firmer foothold in the wireless industry.
Enlarge Image
SUBSIDY
SUBSIDY
The results point to a rare weak spot for Apple—its heavy reliance on subsidies from wireless carriers to make its iPhones affordable to a wider range of consumers. The practice has proved to be a big advantage for Apple, which posted a 73% jump in revenue in its latest quarter, at the expense of carriers such as Sprint Nextel Corp., which started carrying the iPhone last fall but doesn't expect to make a profit on the device until 2015.
In countries like the U.S. and the U.K., carrier subsidies helped the iPhone win more than 20% of the smartphone market last year. But its performance in parts of southern Europe where most consumers don't sign contracts and have to pay full freight for phones suggests Apple's position could suffer if carriers tire of underwriting most of the cost of the devices, as some are in countries such as Denmark and Spain.
"Smartphone penetration and adoption is being helped by the entry of lower-price devices, which basically are Android devices," said Carlos Alberto Silva, a spokesman for Portuguese carrier Optimus.
Android phones that cost less than $200 without a contract are widely available in Europe, helping Google undercut the much more expensive iPhone. In Portugal, at wireless carrier Vodafone Group PLC, the cheapest Apple phone—an eight-gigabyte version of the older-model iPhone 4—sells for $680, according to the carrier's website. Phones running Android can be had for as little as $106, and even Samsung Electronics Co.'s high-end Galaxy S II is cheaper than the cheapest iPhone.
In markets like the U.S., where consumers generally pay $200 or $300 for smartphones regardless of the brand, price isn't as much of a factor. The reverse is true in Greece, Portugal, and elsewhere, where carriers don't subsidize most smartphones.
At Greece's largest wireless carrier, Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA, the most popular smartphone sold last year was Samsung's Galaxy Mini, said Dimitris Koutsonas, head of mobile data and services. The price: $188 without a contract. "In this economic situation, we had to push the low-end smartphone," Mr. Koutsonas said.
As a result, more than 60% of the smartphones sold by Cosmote last year were Android phones, Mr. Koutsonas said.
The success of Android helps Google to ensure that its search engine—its most important source of revenue—as well as mapping and other services, are preloaded on mobile devices, through which consumers are spending more time online.
Google licenses Android to hardware manufacturers essentially free, doesn't get a cut of device sales and takes only a small share of revenue generated from app sales for Android devices.
The software company hopes the wider range of prices for Android phones boosts their adoption—and helps the operating system gain traction with carriers wary of subsidies and customers leery of contracts.
"Our competitors are much more dependent on such subsidies," said John Lagerling, Google's director of Android partnerships. "From a sustainability standpoint, if you have very expensive devices as the only ones available to access your ecosystem, then that can come with a pretty severe hangover in the long run."
In the U.S., carriers pay Apple an estimated $400 every time a customer buys an iPhone with a two-year contract, analysts say. Sprint has acknowledged that iPhone subsidies run 40% higher than they do for other smartphones on average. The goal is to make it easy to buy the phone then make the money back and a profit over time on service contracts. Contract-free "prepaid" carriers, on the other hand, leave consumers to pay the full price of a phone.
Wall Street has grilled Apple on its strategy for prepaid carriers, even as the company sold a record 37 million iPhones in its most recent quarter, more than double the year-earlier tally. The company has kept a nearly three-year-old model, the iPhone 3GS, on the market to appeal to budget-minded buyers, including prepaid users. But the 3GS still sells for $535 without a contract at Greece's Cosmote.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told analysts in January that it "was too early to tell" how the lower-priced versions would perform in the prepaid market over time but that the company was "thrilled" with iPhones sales as a whole.
At an investor conference this month, Mr. Cook added that emerging markets, which often use the prepaid model, are "critical" for the company, but that each country is different and some may evolve over time. "I don't really subscribe to the premise that a prepaid market is a prepaid market is a prepaid market," he said. Apple, he said, had persuaded China Unicom to try a contract and subsidies approach in addition to its prepaid one, and that it had performed well.
"You can bet that we are into details in every single country in the world trying to learn what we can to adjust, maybe to do better into the future," Mr. Cook said.
The debate over device subsidies is part of a tug of war between mobile operators, Internet companies and phone makers seeking control and profits in the wireless industry. All three camps are gathering in Barcelona this week for an annual industry conference.
Carriers around the world are having second thoughts about subsidizing phones, presenting a risk for all phone makers—not just Apple. That became clear in Denmark last year after several leading wireless carriers stopped subsidizing phones and lowered their monthly rates to keep up with lower-priced competitors. "We saw that the customers valued lower prices on calling plans, and simpler calling plans, higher than the subsidy on the phone," said Jon Erik Haug, CEO of the Denmark unit of Oslo-based wireless operator Telenor ASA.
In the second half of last year, after Danish carriers stopped offering subsidies, phone sales declined about 10% from the second half of 2010, according to IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo. Smartphone sales continued to grow, but at a much lower rate than in 2010.
In Spain, telecom giant Telefónica SA also is having doubts. "We can't keep subsidies at these levels," José Miguel Gilpérez, CEO of Telefónica Spain, recently told Spanish newspaper El País. "When you buy a TV or any other consumer good, you pay for it. It is healthier that users pay for their devices and operators invest in networks and services."
For phone makers, any change by carriers could have an impact on the sales of high-end devices.
In the U.S., where contract plans and phone subsidies dominate, IDC says that around 90% of smartphone shipments over the past four years were for devices that cost more than $300—despite the recession and uncertain recovery. In Italy, where prepaid plans dominate, that proportion was 67% last year, and in crisis-hit Greece and Portugal, only about 40% of the smartphones shipped in 2011 cost more than $300.
Raj Rajput [ MBA ]
Mobile Reviews Expert
On Line Assistence :
Gtalk : aerosoft.Raj@gmail.com
Y! Messenger : Raj.AeroSoft@yahoo.com
Rediff Bol : Raj.AeroSoft@rediffmail.com
MSN : Raj.AeroSoft@hotmail.com
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