The Nokia social networking site Mosh will now carry advertising from the Nokia Media Network, the handset giant said this week. This will mean that advertisers can reach over 100 million consumers through Nokia portals and partners. The Mosh audience makes up the heaviest tier of mobile users, said Nokia and adverts will include a ‘spotlight’ ad which is placed above all organic browse, search and contextual ads. Universal Pictures said it will use Spotlight to promote its new film, “Wanted.”
German transmitter builder Rohde & Schwarz, which claims to be the world’s number one manufacturer of TV transmitters, said this week that it will support the ATSC M/H technology in the US which emerges from the merger of the two Samsung and LG candidates for an ATSC Mobile TV standard. The two announced they were merging their technologies last month and quickly LG partner Harris promised to deliver on the standard by November. Rohde & Schwarz was contributing technology in partnership with Samsung and has taken a good while longer to consider the merged standard, but will now deliver it in a firmware upgrade to its R&S SX800 digital exciter, already in the field.
Mobile TV platform operator Mobile 3.0 launched its mobile TV package in DVB-H technology in Germany on June 1 and service can be received in Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Hanover, with further cities to follow. It offers a 9 channel bouquet plus three radio stations at present, but cellular operators, angry at not winning the rights to run the service may boycott it, and plan to offer DVB-T chips in their handsets instead.
Pyramid Research says that Latin America’s handset market is seeing a huge number of customers upgrade from voice only phones to phones with music and camera capabilities. The researcher expects the music enabled category will almost triple in size, from 40 million handsets in 2008 to 115 million in 2012, accounting for 58% of total handsets.
Internet measurement company comScore says it has acquired M:Metrics a specialist in mobile measurement which tracks phone usage in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. comScore paid $44.3 million in cash plus 50,000 options to purchase shares in comScore common stock. M:Metrics also has an on-device meter in 4,000 Smartphone measuring internet access and usage as well as the advertising consumed.
DiBcom says that it is the chip provider to LG for a DVB-T chip for the German handset market on the new LG HB620T handset, a clamshell with a 2 inch, TV friendly landscape LCD display. It says the phone has been tested at high speeds on the German Autobahn. Our own view is that even DiBcom DVB-T chips will use a lot of power, and produce an inferior image to DVB-H (because the signal is weaker), but most German cellular operators seem convinced they should offer them in order to undermine the DVB-H service launch there.
Apple iPhone took only a 19.2% share of the US smartphone market in the first quarter of 2008, down from a 26.7% of smartphones sold in the fourth quarter said US researcher IDC this week. The bulk of the slack was taken up by the new Research In Motion BlackBerries.
The tender for the Mobile TV service in Poland has been delayed by at least a month, and may be delayed further. The Office of Electronic Communications there said it will reschedule the bidding, and so far only the main cellular operators there have openly declared they will bid, although it is widely expected that broadcasters such as Polski Operator Telewizyjny (POT), a subsidiary of TVN and Polsat, and Cyfrowy Polsatmay join in.