I had a chat with Maarten van Engeland, chief honcho of the Bite Group. He made some predictions for 2007:
1) Mobile internet (meaning HSDPA) is going to get a lot faster, beyond the 3.6 Mbps currently offered by Bite (and possibly achievable on the Latvian Mobile Telephone/LMT network).
2) This means that the possibilities for propagating mobile content will expand, especially for mobile TV. With higher quality and a larger audience, mobile TV (in the Baltics) will start to attract advertisers, opening the possibility for services that cost little or are free. Maarten doesn't exclude the possibility that some (virtual) operators will offer very low cost or free voice to those who agree to watch ad-sponsored mobile TV. Gadgets will appear in the course of the year that will have iPod quality video (Maarten says he has watched films on his).
3) WiMax is not a threat to mobile voice and won't be for a while, until technical and standards issues are solved. However, there may be some challenge to HSDPA for nomadic applications, such as internet access at various sites.
4) Skype will find its way into the mobile internet and possibly push operators toward fixed rate voice or some other solution.
5. The integration of GPS into mobile handsets (Berg Insight in Sweden has done a study of this and predicts rapid market growth in Western Europe) has the potential for creating a location-based services market, but this is happening because of pressure from consumers in the US (where are my kids services and the like). In Latvia, the government wants operators to locate where calls are coming from for emergency services and police.
1 comment:
I just got a data plan on my mobile. I pretty much do not need my computer anymore since I do so much with my mobile phone. The neatest thing is that I can even watch naughty movies:) It is pretty neat, it's called Mobile TV. All I do is point my phone to sexoncell.com and they have adult mobile movies in different formats like 3gp movies, symbian, pda or whatever. If you have any other cool sites, please let me know! This one, though, even has a free daily mobile movie.
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