Commandos sent to get the Mumbai terrorists were surprised to find BlackBerries in the bags of terrorists. After the authorities have cut the cable feeds to the hotels the terrorists followed the news and the world by going online from their handset. What’s surprising is that the officials were surprised to find smartphones with terrorists. And with all the technology available they were not capable of tracking down cell phone usage from inside the hotels before while they were negotiating?

It’s always sad to report such news but we shouldn’t be so amazed that more and more people are using advanced communication technologies, no matter what their intentions are.

via businesssheet

You must remember the “Wassup” commercials which Budweiser used quite a lot. We’ve seen various spin offs and now we have an election “Wassup 2008″ video. And there aren’t any cool phones in this version right here. It would be really weird to see one, as the commercial talks about unemployment, health care, the war, the environment and the current financial crisis which basically affects all the previous issues. Wassup 2008 talks about change and it hints at presidential candidate Obama. Who will Americans vote for? How will that influence the mobile industry?

via TechCrunch

AT&T has announced that it has a new division ready. The AT&T Emerging Devices lead by Glenn Lurie, the former president of National Distribution for AT&T Mobility, will introduce wireless capabilities into various devices besides handsets. Good! My coffee mug needs wireless pronto!

The commander-in-chief Lurie is the guy that got the iPhone from Apple. So I guess he knows what he’s doing when he’s looking for new devices to introduce to AT&T’s subscribers.

Do you have a phone with a really big touchscreen LCD? Do you have an unlimited data plan and some good 3G coverage? If you have mostly positive answers and you have a passion for TV shows then I’m sure you are going to appreciate the new YouTube service. Together with CBS it will offer full-length TV shows.

The full episodes will include non-skippable ads but I’m sure that’s not going to be a problem. CBS and YouTube will split the revenues and you will get the free shows. The only downside to all this is that the service will be available only in the USA for now.

China is the major market in the world for basically anything. With a good product and a good marketing campaign, your company can make lots of money of the Chinese market. In the cell phone business that appears to be the case. It looks like the total number of mobile subscribers in China has gone up significantly and it reached 616.02 million subscribers by the end of August. That’s twice the population of the USA. Even Europe doesn’t have as many cell phone users as China.
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Earth population is somewhere around 6.5-6.7 billion people and rising. The over number of mobile subscriber is estimated to be around 4 billion. That means pretty soon every person on Earth might have be paying for a cell phone plan. Sure there are lots of people who are paying for two or more plans but more and more people are discovering cell phones and signing up for various contracts.
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A new Samsung handset has just been approved by the Federal Communications Commision. It is going to be called the Samsung SGH-J808E. As of the moment, details for this is still very vague. I guess we all need to just wait for Samsung to provide us with more specs and details.

At this time, we only know that the phone will support Cellular/PCS GSM/EDGE and will come in with Bluetooth support.

If reading news on a tiny mobile phone screen does not appeal to you, you might want to check out Rocketron, a news service that you listen to on your phone. Launching today at DEMOfall 08, Rocketron allows you to navigate the news by voice command, and do things like skip a story that you don’t want. News sources include Reuters and The Washington Post.

All you need to do is dial (408) 907-2323 while in the USA and you get access to news from various categories including business, technology, sports and politics. The Rocketron mobile service allows you to further fine-tune the categories by supplying additional keywords on their website or simply speaking into the phone. It is a free service, but will be ad-supported.

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It’s not the first time we hear rumors about Sony thinking break up thoughts for Ericsson. The duo had one of their worst quarters and it appears that Sony is again considering a possible rupture from the European manufacturer.
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CCID Consulting from China is expecting a huge amount of cell phones to be manufactured in China by the end of 2008. 605 Million cell phones are expected to arrive from Chinese manufacturers this year. That’s a 55 million more handsets produced than last year.
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I think working for Psystar must be really thrilling. Imagine a roller coaster ride full of adventures, where the last stop has written Jail all over it. Or does it have Remarkable Success written all over it?

As you can see I am yet to decide who will win the Apple vs Psystar court friendly battle. Sure Apple has a strong case but Psystar’s attorneys will not be easily defeated. Oh come now, you must remember Psystar! The guys which conveniently started to ship out cheap Mac clones to lots of people? You know, the cheap PCs with a Mac OS running at full speed? The kind of a deal that would piss off a certain Steve Jobs?
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Vodafone has just reached a deal with the Government of Ghana. Vodafone will buy 70% of Ghana Telecom which is a top three carrier in Ghana. The price for that huge chunk? $900 million which isn’t that much at all. Vodafone can surly afford that right?
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If I was a cell phone manufacturer I would spend a great deal of my free time thinking about how I could efficiently enter the Chinese market. With 592 million people owning a cell phone, China might just be one of the most profitable markets out there. That means at least another 592 million Chinese, but probably more, do not own a cell phone yet.
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Not that this is breaking news to anyone but Apple is going to make lots of money off the 3G iPhone. And I say this a millionth time (ok I might have said it ten times so far), they will make money because it’s an Apple iPhone, with a great Apple long term marketing plan. The Samsung iPhone will not sell as many handsets. Nor will the HTC iPhones. I’d dare RIM to make as much money from their future Thunder which might be so much better than the second generation iPhone.
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Sprint will launch the Palm Treo 800w earlier than expected. We’ve heard that before but it appears it has just been confirmed (check out the picture). Although rumored to arrive on July 22nd, this Palm is going to arrive prematurely. Corporate version will be available even sooner than that, on July 9th. Is Sprint trying to get some attention around the July 11th day? You know, the day the iPhone will be out in stores?
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LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and by now most of us have gotten used to it. It’s what 3G wants to be when it will grow up. According to a study, in five years from now, in 2013, 32 million people will get an LTE device and plan. How does that sound?
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Here’s another Airline company that is adapting to our technology world. We’ve seen recently how United Airlines have started to offer iPod and iPhone support for their top transatlantic customers. Delta is taking one more step into the future as they are going to allow domestic air travelers departing from New York La Guardia airport to board using their virtual boarding passes stored in their smartphones instead of regular paper boarding passes.

Isn’t that cool? All you need is a digital boarding pass downloaded from Delta and stored in your phone’s memory, an ID to match the person you took the cell phone from and you’re going to be scanned in. All aboard! Oh my, but is it safe? Seriously speaking, with all the safety that’s in place when it comes to flying in the USA, I am sure safety measures will be in place to prevent any hacking or misuse of this new system. After all Continental Airlines and Northwest have started using similar procedures earlier this year.

And this system might just save some trees as we will not be printing that many paper boarding passes. Although pollution from manufacturing those smartphones needed would eventually kill some of the trees we saved before. Well eventually this way of boarding planes will be available in more and more airports around the world in the future.

Good for them. I should end this post here. I mean if I had all the money in the world and then some I still wouldn’t choose any expensive phone just because others like me do. But in all fairness to the mobile world I feel I have to show you Mobiado phones too. Maybe it will put things in perspective for you and you will realize that a smartphone for $299 might just be worth it.
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Here’s Nokia’s last E series phone, the E71. It will be available in the USA somewhere later this year, Q3 to be more specific. Not only does it look that good (and yeah, it is really that slim) but it also promises a lot!

Here are some of Nokia E71 specs:
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If you don’t like how AT&T is going about the whole 3G iPhone business then ask someone in Europe to get one for you! T-Mobile is offering it in Germany for only 1 Euro. That’s about $1.53 more than what O2 is charging in the UK for the same handset.

What’s the catch? If you choose to buy one you will also have to opt in for T-Mobile’s most expensive plan which comes to 89 Euro or $136. That comes to 2136 Euro, or $3 277 for a two year plan. Should you choose the cheapest monthly plan, which comes to 29 Euro or $44, you will pay 169 Euro or $259 for the iPhone itself. T-Mobile haven’t change their plans for the iPhone and they are offering exactly the same things they did for the first iPhone.
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