News

China Mobile, the largest mobile operator in China, reportedly added 7.5 million subscribers in the month of June alone, bringing its total up to 415 million subscribers. According to China's Ministry of Information Industry, there are now over 600 million cell phone subscribers in the entire country.

Thanks to its size and population density, China's mobile networks have been growing extremely quickly, with many users dumping their landline for a cell phone.

Alltel Wireless today announced the addition of "texting" to its exclusive "My Circle" offer. With a "My Circle" message pack starting at $7.99, users can send and receive unlimited text/video/picture messages to anyone in their "Circle," as well as other Alltel Wireless customers. Alltel offers the $19.99 All Access Pass that includes unlimited messaging and mobile web. "My Circle" message packs can be added to any "My Circle" five, 10 or 20 calling plan.

Customers can choose from several message packs including plans for $7.99 or $12.99 which provides users 400 or 1,000 additional text/video/picture messages, respectively, to communicate with consumers outside of their "Circle" or that are not Alltel customers.

In addition to the "My Circle" message packs, Alltel is also introducing new "My Circle" Family Choice Plus plans. For $84.99 per month, customers will receive two lines with 1,000 shared minutes and the ability to call any 10 numbers on any network.

The web has been going nuts over a post by Engadget that stated that it was told that Helio was closing up its retail shops and that its customers would be picked up by Virgin Mobile. While it is true that the company has been having rough times, and that it is in talks with Virgin, nothing definitive has been said yet. News site mocoNews spoke with Helio and was basically told that nothing official has happened yet. It also called a few other stores and they seemingly were unaware of anything going down. Stay tuned.

The new single chip Bluetooth system, the BTS4025, was introduced by Qualcomm. This one will allow handset manufacturers to build smaller, less expensive, and more energy efficient handsets with full Bluetooth 2.1+EDR capabilities.

The new BTS4025 measures 3.2mm x 2.9mm and uses half as much power in standby mode as do typical chipsets, and that the device requires few external components.

The BTS4025 features a built-in amplifier and is shipping in sample quantities at this moment.

NTT DOCOMO announced today the new 906i and 706i series comprising 19 handsets and 64 body colors.

The 906i series' eight handsets come with 3G/GSM international roaming, upgraded GPS location information, HSDPA, "One-Segment" mobile TV, 2 in 1 (combines capabilities of two phones in one), DCMX mobile credit card and iD mobile credit payments, VGA LCD screen and voice-to-text translation for Chinese, English and Japanese.

The 906i series enables full-spec enjoyment of diverse video content and services, including DOCOMO's Music & Video Channel, which provides more than 100 channels of downloadable broadcasts spanning 14 genres, and the new video portal on the i-mode top screen, which offers a wide array of free, searchable videos and clips.

The handsets come with upgraded full browsers to play Windows Media Video (all models except F906i) and Flash 8 (all models except P906i) content commonly available on PC websites, and can upload movies and images of up to 2MB.

Nokia and Orange signed a 3-year agreement that includes new Nokia models coming to Orange, as well as the Ovi services suite.

Orange will launch several new Nokia handsets in the second half of 2008 in nine major markets. Nokia's suite of Ovi services, including music, gaming, maps, and advertising, will also be integrated under the Orange Signature program. The various Ovi services such as Nokia Maps and N-Gage will be branded as Orange products, powered by Nokia. The two companies will jointly market the products, as well.

Vodafone UK will begin a multi-million pound investment this summer to extend its fast and reliable mobile broadband network to a further three million people across six major conurbations; Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Reading.

Roll out is expected to be completed by Autumn 2008. This summer will also see Vodafone start to do even more to simplify the way it sells mobile broadband services to customers.

Vodafone UK will do even more to help customers make the most of the service, providing more information that reflects the way customers actually use the network.

For example, customers can expect to see more information at the point of sale to help them understand the time it will take to download files, films and music on the mobile broadband network4. The number of emails a customer can expect to download or the number of web pages they can browse will also be more clearly illustrated.

Research In Motion and Microsoft have announced that the two are working together to bring Windows Live services to Research In Motion's range of BlackBerry smartphones. From now on BlackBerry smartphone customers will enjoy easy mobile access to Windows Live Messenger and an enhanced level of integration between Windows Live Hotmail and the BlackBerry platform.

This will allow customers who use Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger on their BlackBerry smartphone to benefit from the BlackBerry platform architecture with the ability to communicate in real time using push technology, and an exceptional mobile communications experience.

Opera Software today announced that the globally acclaimed Opera Mini browser for mobile phones is available for the Android platform. Today's technical preview release is available at labs.opera.com, inviting the Android development community to test the fresh build and share feedback with Opera for the forthcoming beta. Opera Mini for Android makes the company's fast-performing and device-adapting Web experience available to any range of handset built on Android.

Opera is renowned for its cross-platform portability and today's release embraces the Android platform in Opera's commitment to making the best Internet experience available on any device.

Kyocera made an impression at CTIA 2008 this week with a trio of new CDMA handsets with a fashion sense. The Neo E1100, Mako S4000, and Adreno S2400 are planned to be available in Q3 2008 and feature support for the AWS frequencies (1700/2100MHz).

The Neo E1100 has a minimalistic black design on the outside with a glowing blue 'lightpipe' running down the center. At one end the 'lightpipe' circles the lens for the 1.3 megapixel camera and on the other end you'll find a small hidden display running alongside it. While the display only shows basic info like battery life, signal strength and caller ID, it matches the overall clean design of the phone's exterior.