Richard Windsor's Mobile Predictions

I was following an interview that Richard Windsor, a leading mobile analyst over at Japanese bank Nomura, was giving recently to the CNBC network and jotted down some of his thoughts for what is ahead for the mobile sector. He was quoted heavily quite recently for his comments on Motorola's handset business, but had other insights to offer:

On Russia, he said to keep eyes peeled on a massive rollout of 3G infrastructure this year throughout the country, in what promises to be a key investment year over there.

On China, he expects a massive hike in 3G capital investment instead to take place in 2009, with key upgrades to infrastructure planned for that time

Unsurprisingly, Richard mentioned that 2008 is going to be tougher for operators, and he expected them to shave off Capex spend from their budgets as they brace themselves for potential consumer slowdown in spending

On HSDPA, he confirmed what is a general feeling out there, and that is that the technology, while in demand, is still patently too expensive for the average Joe and backed this up with lower shipment numbers of HSDPA-enabled handsets worldwide.He expected a pick-up in shipments for 2009.

Mobile World Congress 2008 -10 Days to Go

BARCELONA -Slowly but surely, Barcelona is coming alive with the buzz of mobilists from across the globe as anticipation for the Mobile World Congress heightens.

This year promises to be bigger and better than prior events, with around 70,000 participants expected to crowd the local scene and several billion of dollars worth of deals to be sealed during intense activity from the 11-14th February.

Plenty of great companies, personalities and seminars are expected, and I'll be casting my eye over the packed agenda to highlight some key events.

A couple of seminars have so far grabbed my attention :

On Tuesday 12th Feb, 16.15-17.45 in Hall 5 there is the Moving from Search to Discovery Seminar, with Dan Olschwang from JumpTap and Steve Boom from Yahoo, looking at " What's the Business Case for Mobile Search?" and "Taking Internet Search Mobile".

On Wednesday 13th Feb, 16.30-18.00 in Hall 5 there is the Social Networking Seminar, with Jed Stremel from Facebook, where they will be addressing juicy questions like:"What Will Be the Killer Mobile Social Networking Application" and "How Mobile Can Change the Social Networking Phenomena".

Next, I'll be taking a look at some of the innovative companies that will be at MWC so that you can add them to your watchlist...watch this space...

Google Launches 'New' Mobile Search Engine

Shortly before releasing their latest results showing a slowdown in advertising sales in the fourth quarter of 2007, Google announced the launch of their 'new' mobile search engine (or, should we say, the improved version of the previous one).

Google says that with the new search service, mobile phone users will get results that best fit what they're looking for, with search results combined from different bodies of information, so users don't need to sift through both mobile and regular web results, or specify their search type. Instead, Google will search through the whole web, mobile web, news articles, local business listings, and image index to get the information needed and then provide the most relevant results. A search for cats, for example, provides links to photos of cats as well as web pages.

Google's new mobile search also improves the local search experience. By remembering a user's recent search locations, the new service is said to provide relevant local results in subsequent searches-no need to retype the location every time. Once a user has entered a location, searches for weather or restaurants, for example, provide information tailored specifically to that user's location. The service is now available in the UK, France, Germany and Canada. It has been available in the US since March last year.

It is claimed that fewer clicks will now be necessary to access meaningful search results on mobile devices, which is a welcome improvement. The jury is still out as to how effective the new search engine is, but while we may not be there in terms of ultimate functionality, it is clearly a step in the right direction. Bizarrely, we still have to type in "http://mobile.google.com" instead of just "http://google.mobi" or "http://m.google.com", but that's a different story...