As the holiday season approaches, the industry’s mobile-phone players are working to gear up for a quarter most predict will be gangbusters.
First up is Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which announced it will sell its SGH-x426 through AT&T Wireless Services Inc. The phone features a color screen and one-button access to AT&T Wireless’ mMode wireless data service. The device is Samsung’s 13th GSM handset for the U.S. market.
Separately, Audiovox Communications Corp. announced it will sell three new mobile handsets, including a camera phone, through Western Wireless Corp., operator of Cellular One. The phones, the CDM-8900, CDM-8600 and CDM-8410, will be available for the holiday season.
“Our new CDM-8900, CDM-8410 and CDM-8600 wireless handsets provide Cellular One customers choices in wireless communications with phones that feature the latest technology in mobile communications,” said Philip Christopher, Audiovox’s president and chief executive officer. “Features such as full-color screens and camera-equipped phones offer Cellular One customers the opportunity to experience the latest and greatest features and capabilities.”
As the mobile-phone industry continues to accelerate, players are looking to introduce the latest and greatest technology. Motorola Inc. and Sharp Corp. announced deals to improve their phone offerings.
Motorola said it will use technology from Espial in its next-generation mobile phones. Espial’s technology provides a run-time framework for Java applications, Java interfaces for managing product life cycles, and functions allowing software to be installed or uninstalled on demand from the network.
For its part, Sharp announced a new deal with technology company BitFlash to offer phone technology that will allow users to view and zoom in and out of word processing files, spreadsheets and presentations. Sharp said it will use the technology in its V601SH mobile phone for Vodafone in Japan.
With activity in the mobile-phone industry increasing, two new studies show the market’s progress and potential.
According to new research from Canalys, more than 10 million imaging phones have shipped in Europe, the Middle East and Africa so far this year. The firm found Sony Ericsson and Samsung are the market winners so far, but that Nokia is maintaining its 40-percent market-share lead. Canalys expects the final imaging phone total for the year to exceed 16 million units and for the market to more than double next year.
Separately, a study from research firm Analysys found that video telephony will become a mass-market service in five years. Despite the limitations of mobile video telephony, Analysys forecasts consumer spending of more than $1.8 billion on the technology by 2007.
