As the NYT reports, even simple mobile phone imay be able to do all this and more, depending on its built-in features and the available add-on software.

Cellphone manufacturers, carriers and independent application providers are now offering lots of programs and services that can be used on a wide number of phones. Not all services work on all phones. Some are carrier-specific, and some work only on certain phones.

Flurry, a free service that works with several carriers, is both an e-mail application and an R.S.S. (for Really Simple Syndication) news reader, which you can use to subscribe to frequently updated content. You start by visiting www.flurry.com from your PC and entering your cellphone number, carrier name, e-mail address and password, and any R.S.S. feeds you wish to subscribe to. The service then sends a text message to your phone with a link for
downloading the program.

Source: New York Times

The latest trend in mobile technology is an integrated FM transmitter which allows for wireless broadcasting of music stored on the phone through a radio. Pioneered by LG on its new Fusic phone, the feature eliminates the need for adapter kits designed to get your phone music pumping through your car or home stereo system.

Source:  Robert Cribb

AT&T took full control of  Cingular with its $86 billion purchase of BellSouth last month.  In the marketing campaigns first stage, which launches on this Monday, Cingular’s orange logo of a bouncing jack will co-exist with the AT&T globe logo on everything from television ads to sales uniforms and monthly bills.

“We did not enter that decision lightly,” Wendy Clark, vice president of advertising at AT&T, said in an interview. “We came to understand that consumer customers and business customers alike are looking for a single provider. We heard it so consistently across the marketplace.”

AT&T ’s name and logo will eventually completely replace Cingular in a process expected to take several months  The exact timing will be determined as more customer feedback comes in, Clark said.  Cingular built up a reputation among younger customers who may not easily associate with the AT&T brand. 

Although, AT&T had indicated that the re-branding was a part of its strategy, as reported by Adweek, the announcement still appears strange given the recent announcement of Apple’s iPhone device which is exclusively linked to Cingular through a multi-year exclusive deal.

Source: CNET

Until we see more flat rate data plants, it’s unlikely that Skype will release any kind of mobile verssion of its software. Eric Lagier, the company’s hardware and software business development chief, indicated that the decision is partly based on ensuring customers do not run up high data bills.

“We don’t want to be in a situation where we say: ‘Skype is free’ and then at the end of the month the user gets this huge broadband bill,” he told the news service.

Despite its reservations, Skype may be forced to act by its competitors. UK-based Truphone, has already released software that allows users to place VOIP calls on WI-FI enabled Nokia mobile phones. The Nokia phones act as a normal mobiles, using a service providers cell network, until the encounter a WI-FI hotspot. Nokia recently announced new WI-FI phones at the CES show in Las Vegas.

The agreement builds on two previous projects: “Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States,” an animated series originally produced for Amp’d Mobile and now being adapted for Comedy Central later this year; and mtvU’s “Sucks Less, With Kevin Smith,” which appears on Amp’d and features filmmaker Kevin Smith teaching the first-ever mobile media production class at UCLA.

Other details of the deal, including how many mobile series the companies will create or what their subject matter will be, remain unclear.

Programming being developed through the new partnership may appear on any of MTV’s channels on Amp’d including MTV, mtvU, VH1, Comedy Central, Spike and Logo. The original mobile shows are not expected to carry any advertising, according to an MTV spokesman.

Source:  MediaPost

“It is quite an interesting product but it is lacking a few essential features, such as 3G, which would enable fast data connections,” Vanjoki, whose multimedia unit is a direct rival to Apple, was quoted as saying by Finnish business daily Taloussanomat.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs indicated that the company’s goal was 1% of the mobile phone market by 2008, or approximately 10 million iPhonesout of a market total of close to 1 billions sold in 2008.

Mr. Vanjoki was quoted as saying that “Apple’s objective is not at a very high level,” but that the iPhone’s entry would give an additional boost to the multimedia phone market, proving Nokia’s multimedia strategy was correct.

“This is another piece of evidence that we have been on the right track from the beginning,” he said.

Nokia indicated that it has sold close to 70 million phones with integrated MP3 players in 2006.

Source:  Reuters.com

Cisco is asking the court to forbid Apple from using the name “iPhone,” which Cisco has held a trademark on since 2000 and used to brand a line of its own Internet-enabled phones that began shipping last spring and officially launched three weeks ago.

Cisco indicated that Apple approached the company several years ago in an attempt to negotiate a license agreement to use the name.  Talks evidently broke down mere hours before Steve Job’s MacWorld Keynote address announcing the new device.

Source:  Yahoo! News

“From this day forward we’re going to be known as Apple, Inc. We’ve dropped the computer from our name.” And then he quoted ice skating legend Wayne Gretzky. “‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.’ That’s what we try to do at Apple.”

Could the corporate name change reflect a belief that the PC centric era has passed?  Om Malik speculates that Apple’s rebranding as consumer electronics company reflects a future where WIFI enabled devices can exist without any dependence on a PC desktop. 

“While I am not suggesting that this replaces our notebooks or desktops
for crucial productivity tasks, the iPhone (if it lives up to its hype)
is at least going to decrease our dependence on it.”

Devices may benefit from a link to the desktop, but Apple’s iPhone does everything a computer can do: email, chat, surf the internet, consume multimedia, while running Mac OS X. 

The question remains whether Apple’s multiyear exclusive deal with Cingular may hobble the device and limit consumer choice.  In my opinion, Apple would have done better if they would have launched the device in two forms:  1) unlocked, non-subsidized, free to use on any GSM network; 2) subsidized and locked to a specific provider.

But what do we still not know about the iPhone? Even though Jobs spent the good part of two hours going over it’s every feature in loving detail, a few questions still remain.

1. Will you be able to buy and download songs and movies over the air, or do you need to download them to your computer first and then sync them to your iPhone like with any iPod? If you will be able to, will songs cost the same or will Cingular insist that people pay for the convenience of wireless delivery over its network? (After all, a ringtone can easily cost $3).

2. The iPhone has WiFi and Bluetooth, but will it be possible to beam songs between iPhones like you can with the Zune?

3. Will the device drain power from one single battery or two? (Earlier rumors had suggested there would be a separate battery for the phone and one for the iPod, but Jobs didn’t say anything about that, only that there would be 5 hours of talk time/video ipod use, and 16 hours of music-listening capability).

4. What about an iPhone with a hard drive to carry all your music? (What Jobs really announced was an iPhone Nano, which will come with either 4 GB or 8 GB of flash memory. How many movies will that hold?)

5. Exactly how long will Cingular have exclusivity in the U.S.? (All we know is that it is a “multiyear” deal). And what happens when spotty network coverage mars the experience?

6. How long will the touch-screen last? (Even in Jobs’ keynote, you could see the smudges on the screen).

Source: The Next Net: Business 2.0