The Philippines are considering a tax on SMS messages reports the Manila Standard although this may be linited to text based gaming and surveys.
This is on an estimated 165 million text messages sent each day by the 33 million mobile phone subscribers.
Tech Digest report on Sky’s plans to offer live football and cricket via Vodaphone 3G, starting with League playoffs on 6 May 2006.
With 15 live football matches and three live Test matches, over 100 hours of live coverage is planned for the first month alone, with cricket coverage continung through to the final Test against Pakistan.
If there is a game that would seem perfect for a portable device, and by default, a mobile phone, then Civilization would be it.
And so it is good news that it is now released for the N-Gage, even though it is by now a very old game (over ten years since it was first released), the game play fits neatly onto the small screen. And as a strategy game you can pick it up and put it down as and when you have the time, without being confined to a PC or console.
The age of the original may make it more attractive to current game playing consumers who did not experience the original first time around, but like many ports to mobile phones, there is little, if anything new in this version.
Pocket Gamer is offering a free mobile game, skipping stone, if you sign up to a range of up to their news service. The game retails for £5, but they have up to the minute news on a wide range of portable games machines, including mobile phones.
And while you’re at it, check out this link, also featured on pocketgamer, to get free sonic goodies for your mobile phone.
Nokia have anounced their plans for their next generation mobile gaming platform. This includes both the developer tools and the consumer interfaces that will alow the purchase and management of mobile phone games, although new handsets are not expected until 2007.
in Nokias eyes this will help:
Strengthening Nokia’s games developer support within a common
framework for Nokia’s next generation mobile gaming will add impetus
to the growth of mobile gaming development, increase business
opportunities … and attract new developers to
Nokia’s mobile gaming ecosystem.
All in all it may lead to new games and new gaming features in handset, although these details are some way off.
Catching up on some recent news, Sony Ericsson and Google have announces (28 February 2006) that new Sony Ericsson phones will incorporate Google search as a default, as well as Blogger computability.
The first phones expected to have this technology will be the K610 UMTS phone and new flagship imaging handsets, the K800 and K790, expected Q2 2006.
There will be Google icons in the phone software taking users straight to Google Web Search.
The integration of blog capabilities and photo blogging at that, sounds more interesting, but limiting the provider to Google’s Blogger application would seem to offer more to Google than it does to users.
In a not unrelated story, Google are also trumpeting their new phone friendly search service which removes parts of the web page they (Google that is) feel is less relevant.
Is this the start of Search Engine Censorship or is a better user experience offered?
Following on the results of the Mobile TV pilot in the UK, Mokia have reported on trials in Spain and France, where 55% and 68% respectively said they would pay for services.
Given that this trial group was probably predisposed to the service (otherwise why would they participate in the trial), these figures seem low. Almost 75% of the participants in the Spanish trial said they would reccomend the service to friends.
The price point seems to besomewhere between €7 and €10 per month.
Many users in the trials watched mobile TV within their homes, with almost half of those taking part in the French and Spanish pilots claiming to mainly watch mobile TV at home.
That will possibly reassure employers, worried that not only will employees be texting, and calling on their paid time, but now they can watch TV as well.
The Nokia N92, together with their Mobile Broadcast Solution 3.0 will be available in the summer 2006, but with estimates from Informa that there will be 50.97 million DVB-H devices sold globally by 2010, there is still some way to go.
BenQ-Siemens was formally launched yesterday 17 January 2006, with possibly the most annoying website they could have conceived.
That aside, BenQ are continuing their aggressive push to dominate the telecomms market with a goal that this new mobile handset division should be financially stable by the end of 2006.
The merger sees BenQ taking the dominant position merging the “ex-handset” business of Siemens and looking to expand the 3G and multimedia mobile phone offerings.
Studies show appetite for mobile phone TV but show that the technology still has a way to go. 16 TV channels were made available to 375 02 users who demoed the service on modified Nokia 7710 phones.
These tests were ‘overwhelmingly favourable’ but suggest that users would only be willing to £8 per month and not the £10 monthly charge Vodafone, 3 and orange are currently charging.
Different modes of delivery are also being explored, to get around the problem of using up bandwidth on the mobile networks, including a more traditional TV receiver and IP internet technology.
The O2 system, based on the Nokia DVB-H protocol, should not be expected any time soon however, as it uses a radio spectrum that will not be available until analogue TV is switched off - in 2012.
The Myth about Mobile Gaming report on a survey from Glu Mobile that phone games are most popular in the 16 -24 age group.
Actuallly this does not surprise me at all. Games (other than snake) are relitively new on cell phones - early adopters of mobiles will now be more into the PDA ./ camera type applications and if they are hard core gamers will have (and be able to afford) a dedicate game device.
The 16 - 24 age group have less disposable income so phone games are affordable and the latest phone is becoming more and more a status symbol, so they are not lookng for the dedicated portable console.