Reports suggest that Benq mobile will freeze operations as attempts to find a buyer have failed.It had applied for Bankruptcy protection sometime back.Mounting losses and lack of market share are blamed for the move. Benq had acquired the mobile division from Siemens about 2 years back.
Dunno if there was a market for these phones. I have never seen one here in India atleast.
Benq Mobile R.I.P
I had attended the Cell Show 2006 which is taking place at Rani Meyyammai Hall, Chennai between 22nd and 25th December.
This is the 3rd time the event is being held in Chennai. There was a good turnout for the show despite the Rs.30 entry fee. This is just an indication of the mobile madness in this city.
Airtel had a huge stall at the entrance with their red balloons. They were giving away Free Prepaid SIM cards if you had an ID proof. They were also displaying the new Blackberry Handsets. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and BlackBerry 8700g . It was just a demo piece and could not see them in action.
Univercell was to be seen with their stalls at every each and every corner. They had a stall for each of the popular brands.
I got my hands on the The Motorola Fone F3 which was launched recently.Its called the ” Unbreakable Handset ” Its priced at around Rs.1500. Its appears like a low price market winner from Motorola. The handset is interestingly manufactured in India by Flextronics in Chennai.
I tried the Motorola Ming A1200 – the Linux PDA. The Handwriting recognition is not the best one.But its a phone which has got a unique combination of features.
Wizdom.in who are the pioneers in mobile learning in India were showcasing their Mobile Application. A free demo app was available to the visitors on request.
Pictures will be available soon.
The rumors have started again. Reports suggest that the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa group is believed to be considering a sale of its telecom business. The sale might include Hutchison Essar as well. Hutch has postponed its IPO in India so many times.
Vodafone has shown interest in taking over Hutchison Essar. Its willing to offer upto 13.5 Billion Dollars for the deal. Reliance is reported to have teamed up with Blackstone Ventures and is willing to offer upto 15 Billion Dollars.
Its interesting to note that Vodafone has an 10% stake in Bharti Airtel which is valued at close to 1.4 Billion pounds. But there is a no compete attached to this deal.
We still need to wait and see the turn of events.
Google and Orange might be in the middle of a multi billion dollar deal to bring out a device which might be the Google Phone. Google apps will be mostly preloaded on the phone. Gmail Mobile app is already a big hit. A Gtalk Java client is also under development some folks say. Google has been embracing the Mobile ecosytem recently.Google mobile Maps and Google Mobile Local are also there. Google has always shown some interest in Location based services.
Google is already offering SMS alerts in India for its Calendar service.
This phone is expected to be launched in 2008.
Lets wait and see.
Via [GigaOM]
We are pleased to announce that we have added a new consolidated price list page where you can find the latest prices of all phone available in India as on date.
Please update your bookmarks to point to
http://www.fonearena.com/mobile_phone_pricelist.html
This is a great time of the year to shop for a new phone.
You might have seen so so many phones with dual displays. Like a normal internal display and a smaller external display. But an article throws insight on a recent innovation by a Korean inventor. Its a Dual Lcd for the internal display as you can see in the image below.
It also looks like a fold able display. Would be exciting to watch if any of the mobile manufacturers entice this idea.
via [Aving]
This is a great website I have come accross recently.Texas-based technology-enabled business value services provider, Trilogy, has developed a portal YourBillBuddy.com. Its currently in Beta and free for use. If you are an Airtel subscriber like me, or have an ebill available from your operator head straight to YourBillBuddy.com and upload the same. Even if your Ebill pdf is password protected , the service is smart enough to validate the same.
Once you upload the bill, within seconds the site analyses your bill and gives you a break up of your usage viz. Local Voice,STD Voice , SMS, Data and Roaming
The Current Networks supported are : Airtel , Reliance, Hutch, Spice, Bsnl and Tata Indicom
The service is certainly a laudable one.
Nokia today announced 4 new mobile phones at the Nokia’s annual Capital Market Days at Amsterdam.The list includes 3 mid-range models – 6300,6290,6086 and an entry level model- 2626.All four models are expected to begin shipping in the first quarter of 2007.
Nokia 6290
�Nokia 6086
Nokia and Lamborghini have teamed up for a a limited edition Nokia 8800 Sirocco phone.
The phone features special Lamborghini themes and ring tones as well as a video documentary.
Mostly software and cosmetic changes can be seen in this phone. It also sports Lamborghini made ball bearings in the slider mechanism.
Only 500 of the phones will be made and will only be available from Lamborghini dealerships.
Shozhu
Shozu is a free app to upload photos and videos from your mobile phone.
Its supports Flickr, WordPress, Blogger,Youtube , TypePad and a variety of services.
It also offers Contact backups
Its assisted by timely SMS alerts when the transfers fail or when you move out on roaming.
Gmail Mobile
Google’s J2ME client for its free Gmail service is one of the best mobile email clients out there.
Just goto http://gmail.com/app on your mobile browser to download the client which is about 130KB in size
The Yahoo photo-sharing site Flickr has got its mobile version back in place.
http://m.flickr.com/ now works from any smartphone with internet access.
The pages are optimized for mobile access so that you can save your bandwidth costs.
Really worth a visit.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Apple’s iPod like phone which was rumoured sometime ago will be available for purchase in early 2007.
Apple has recently placed an order for over 12 million iPhones.
It might have a 3.0 Megapixel camera and iTunes integration.
In a recent statement Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt indicated that he sees a future where mobile phones are free to consumers who accept watching targeted forms of advertising.
This is interesting because the consumer gets to use the handset for free atleast, but there will be strings attached to it ofcourse. You will be expected to view ads on the mobile.
But one good thing is that the future will see the phone prices falling.
Vertu, Mobiado and Bang & Olufsen seem to be getting competion. A new company named Gresso, based out of Russia has entered the luxury phone market.The Gresso Luxury Phone is made of gold and African Blackwood.
The case of the phone is made from Gold and African Blackwood, which age is more than 200 years. Every Gresso phone is unique and singular. Two identical phones do not exist, as well as in the nature there are no two identical trees.
Initially, phones will be on sale only in Russia.
We are glad to inform you that this site is going to get a major facelift in the coming months. Its going to be the most major upgrade since the launch of the site around 2 years ago.
Hope to hear from users like please vote for the features you expect.
Do post any feature suggestion and it would be appreciated.
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