In February, McDonald’s launched an online shop on Alibaba’s Taobao, China’s top online auction site, to promote its Super Value meal. The fast-food giant wasn’t selling burgers. Instead, for two months it sold popular and fashionable products such as mobile phones, digital cameras and MP3 players on its virtual store, along with the more-predictable gift vouchers.
Most Americans now have mobile phones, and a Nielsen Mobile report last year found that nearly one in five of us have cut the cord, abandoning our landline service entirely.
The strategies of companies ranging from Google to Microsoft and from Apple to Yahoo suggest they believe the future of the internet lies in mobile phones – but many in the industry believe the mobile web is still a long way from realising its potential.
Nokia shares are headed sharply higher this morning after the company indicated the worst may be over for the mobile phone business.
For the first quarter, the company posted revenue of 9.276 billion Euros, down 26.7 percent year over year, and 26.8 percent sequentially. Revenues from the device business were down 33.4 percent year over year, and 24.2 percent from Q4.
Five major U.K. carriers are banding together to pool customer data so that it can be put into a giant database and then be used to sell advertising, The Register reports today. How long do you think it will take before this “database” idea lands on American shores?
The footage is shaky and low quality, with chaotic shouts and protests from onlookers at a subway station in San Francisco’s East Bay. But it clearly shows three policeman roughly handling a group of young men–including one who is pinned to the ground by two officers and shot in the back.
Yes, this may be the worst recession America has seen since World War II. But the people who are bringing us the Consumer Electronics Show would like to point out that sales of tech products are actually faring pretty well when compared to what happened during previous recessions.
Tokyo is currently the largest city of origin of Twitter messages in the world, more than twice that of second place San Francisco and New York in the U.S. as of this summer. (Incidentally, while the Japanese Kanji language Twitter service, which only launched in April of this year, contains advertising, the rest of the planet’s Twitter service currently does not).
Worldwide mobile phone sales grew only five percent in the third quarter–a disappointing performance in the sector, and the lowest since 2002. Only Apple and Samsung stood out from the pack. It makes perfect sense that large screen TV sales would slump heading into a recession, but mobile phones? Maybe consumers are bored. Sales are expected to jump slightly during the holiday season.
The market for mobile phones, especially for 3G smartphones, is alive and well, says a report this morning from First Global chief strategist Devina Mehra, who writes that mobile phones “continued to record a solid growth and were up 15.3 percent, year over year” in the second quarter “despite challenging economic conditions across the world.”
Ericsson (ERIC) shares are down sharply in early trading after the company reported disappointing Q2 results. As Marketwatch notes, profits of 1.9 billion Swedish kronor came in below the Street consensus of 2.94 billion, while revenue of 48.5 billion kronor were about in line.
So, this isn’t a huge revelation, but it does confirm what you probably already suspected: Apple (AAPL) dominates the U.S. market for touch-screen mobile phones.
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple will sell 6.3 million iPhones in the U.S. in 2008, or about 35 percent of the touch-screen phone market.
In the mobile phone business, the big news this week is Friday’s arrival of Apple’s (AAPL) 3G iPhone. But Palm (PALM) apparently has some ideas on how to take advantage of the extra traffic the new iPhone will generate in AT&T (T) stores.
Things keep getting worse for Motorola (MOT) and its unraveling handset business. Yesterday, the stock was pressured by comments from contract manufacturer Foxconn suggesting that weak demand for Motorola’s phone continues.
The stock today has extended its losses, pressured in part from a flurry of negative research from the Street.
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