Will consumers pay to receive photographs? That seems to be the premise behind digital photo frames with a built-in 3G connection. If people are going to pay for pics anywhere, it will be in Japan, where photography is a national passion and people are accustomed to paying for value-added mobile services beyond flat-rate data tariffs.  read more »

Almost everyone agrees the biggest growth opportunity for the mobile industry is to go beyond handsets and laptops to connect cars, trucks, vans, utility meters, industrial sensors, healthcare machines, cameras and pretty much everything else to the Internet. But there isn't quite so much consensus on how large that growth opportunity is.

In this post, the first in a series on the so-called embedded mobile market, I'll take a closer look at some of the forecasts out there.  read more »

As the big incumbent telecoms companies seek ways to shore up revenues and differentiate themselves from upstart rivals, fixed-mobile convergence is once again rising up the executive agenda. But breakthrough services, which will persuade consumers and businesses to sign up to bundled mobile and fixed services, remain elusive. Today, the main draw for purchasing a fixed and mobile service from the same provider is still some kind of discount, which is hardly the way to expand the broader telecoms market.  read more »

Waiting for handsets with Near Field Communications (NFC) chips, can feel like waiting for Godot. Although 400 NFC handsets from Samsung were used in a trial at the Mobile World Congress last week and larger scale pilots are planned to begin in the spring, commercial NFC-enabled handsets are still few and far between.  read more »

News that AT&T plans to establish at least three "innovation centers" during 2010 highlights how the  incumbent telcos now realize their world is changing fast and they need to change with it. AT&T said that the centers will be designed to enable AT&T's scientists and engineers to work directly with device makers, network equipment providers and application developers, who will have access to "a full range of AT&T services and network capabilities" to help them develop new applications.  read more »

Scouring the halls of the Mobile World Congress this week, it was crystal clear that the long-promised revolution in display technology is now under way, transforming the mobile experience of watching video, playing games and reading text. A new generation of high-resolution handset displays is paving the way for the development of graphically-rich and highly-immersive applications that really draw the user in, rather than just killing their time.  read more »

Google’s charm offensive towards mobile developers seems to be intensifying. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Internet giant handed out free Nexus One handsets, which retail for more than $500, to several hundred developers attending presentations at the Android Development Lab.  read more »

Should start-ups try and break into the network infrastructure market or should they leave it to the big boys?  read more »

Like a once scruffy teenager smartening himself up to take on a professional job, mobile apps have matured from rough and ready Java games, coded in bedrooms or Starbucks, to professional software applications increasingly polished to perfection. Big business has moved in big time.

"The expansion in mobile apps is a lot like the growth 10 years ago of web sites," says Louis Gump, vice president of mobile at CNN, in an interview. "It is easy enough to create mobile apps, but they are still new enough to routinely have notable impact for consumers and publishers when they launch."  read more »

After a year of belt-tightening and, in some markets, highly congested cells, mobile operators appear to be splurging again on network upgrades.  If they spend enough, the mobile data revolution, driven by the iPhone, its smartphone rivals and dongles, could continue unabated, enabling the flowering of innovative apps and other cool new services to continue.  read more »