by John Murrell, Blogger, Good Morning Silicon Valley
The backlash is slowly building. The public disapproval is getting more vocal. Governments are starting to step in, imposing regulation and segregation. Soon the targeted demographic will be pushed out of public spaces, quarantined in restricted areas with others of their kind who insist on keeping up their disgusting habit. Freedoms taken for granted will be constrained. All this because of the outcry over second-hand conversation. We need only to look across the pond for fresh evidence that the tide is turning against those who hold their private phone calls in the middle of a crowd, especially a crowd confined on public transportation.
Microsoft’s touch-sensitive tabletop is about to get a spherical makeover. Microsoft officials have been talking up the company’s plans to introduce more consumer-focused form factors of its Surface multi-touch tabletop. They’ve said future iterations of Microsoft’s Surface multi-touch technology will be available as part of next-generation PCs, cellphones, desks, kitchen counters and even walls in consumers’ homes over the next five to 10 years.
Encamped along the aisles of the massive Zhongguancun Kemao Electronics Market in Beijing are many people like Li Zhongxin, of the Beijing Xinyu Lianhe Telecom Equipment Co. Li sits atop a plastic stool in front of his open-air stall on the third floor, scanning the throngs of shoppers for would-be customers. There’s no sign of Apple’s iPhone among the thicket of cellphones, handset covers, and other accessories hung on shelves and inside the waist-high glass display case, but he’ll be glad to show you one.
An online directory that claims to provide 90 million mobile telephone numbers is raising concerns among cellphone users and privacy advocates about unwanted callers who rack up the minutes on their calling plans and the difficulty of opting out of the list.
All of the entertainment options that are hot on the PC–social networking, Web video, user-generated content–are downright torrid on the smallest of screens, the cellphone. New research from Deloitte & Touche finds that 47% of 25- to 41-year-olds use their cellphones for entertainment, a massive surge from the 29% who said they did so only eight short months ago. And where the eyeballs go, there go both the ad dollars and the aspirations of many businessmen.
Remember when phone companies just made phones? That strategy no longer works in today’s Internet-accessing, mobile-gaming and MP3-playing world–and it definitely won’t work in 2008. That’s why Nokia (NOK), the world’s largest phone manufacturer, is in the midst of a reorganization it says will help the company grow beyond phones and cellular equipment. The new corporate structure, which takes effect tomorrow, will divide the Finland-based company into three main units: Devices, services and software and markets. It’s the services and software part that stands out for a phone manufacturer–typically more concerned with churning out devices than with providing services.
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