Weekly Mobile News Roundup

• On Monday, Sumsung announced that in 2010 they'll have a water-fueled power pack for use in mobile phones.  You put water into the phone and it reacts with a metal plate to create hydrogen.  The hydrogen then reacts with additional oxygen to create power for the handset.  With the first generation the fuel cell would need to be replaced every 5 days.  Samsung says that eventually that won't be an issue and all that you'll need to power your mobile is good old fashioned H20.

The official press release at Samsung.

• Also on Monday, Cellular South announced that it would give new customers up to $200 off of their bill to compensate for the Early Termination Fee (ETF) that they'd incur by switching over to Cell South while still under contract.  In an age with over 70% of the potential cell market saturated, stealing customers away from the competition is a key to growth.  Cellular South has definitely taken a ballsy move towards that end.

Details at Cellular South.

• Lee Kun-hee, Chief Executive at Samsung, has stepped down after his indictment on charges of tax evasion and breach of trust.  His son, being groomed to take over for Daddy, also stepped down to take an as yet unspecified role overseas.  Also in the wake of Lee's resignation, Samsung announced plans to make its management structure more transparent.

Details at Reuters.

• On Tuesday, April 22nd, AllTel made an announcement with the opposite goal of Cellular South's.  While Cell South is trying to woo customers away from the competition, AllTel is trying to retain.  AllTel's flagship plan is My Circle, which is similar to T-Mobiles My Faves.  You select a group of phone numbers (5 with T-Mo and 10 or 20 with AllTel) and you can make unlimited calls to them, regardless of what carrier they're with.  They don't even have to be a mobile phone.  Now that My Circle is celebrating its 2nd birthday, they're celebrating in a big way - they're giving My Circlers a bonus number, increasing the number of people in someone's circle from 10 to 11 or 20 to 21.  Additionally, every two years another number can be added to the circle.

Details at AllTel.

• On the 22rd, Apple confirmed that it bought chip maker P.A. Semi for $278 Million.  P.A. is a small company whose primary focus is high performance with low low power consumption.  This could be huge for the iPhone, which Andrew saw first-hand at SXSW causing long lines at power outlets due to its apparent inability to hold a charge and factual inability to have its battery swapped out for a spare.

Forbes broke the story, and they have the details here.

• On Wednesday, Sprint announced that it is ending its Voice Command service.  The service allowed customers to store contacts online to access via dialing a special number.  No one cared, and we're no different.

Details at RCR News.

• More Wednesday Sprint shenanigans!  Comcast, Time-Warner and Cox are all pulling out of their joint venture with Sprint, called Pivot.  Pivot was a way for cable providers to offer mobile phone service to combat phone companies offering television services.  Among the reasons cited for the pull-out were the complex nature of the combined plans and trying to mesh the service-centered cable industry with the largely retail mobile phone industry.

Details at Yahoo! News.

• Wednesday had big news coming from Finland's mobile phone giant, Nokia.  They've announced that their Symbian S-60 mobile phone operating system will support contextually aware widgets.  We all know what widgets are - mini-web applications.  We have some on the sidebar, like the widget that lets you access the Capitol valley archives, for instance.  What makes the new widgets coming to Nokia is their ability to customize and update their offerings based on information gleaned from the phone.  For instance, a WeatherBug widget can update the current weather and forecast based on the GPS location of the handset.  Privacy concerns should be alleviated by the fact that these are widgets and not ads.  Which ones, if any, that you see on your phone are entirely chosen by the user.

The official announcement over at Nokia.

• On the 23rd NextWave Wireless announced that it will be selling its spectrum holdings.  They have spectrum in the 1.7/2.1 GHZ, 2.3 GHZ, and 2.5 GHz bandwidths.  This swath of spectrum is great for handling capacity.  They said that they feel that their hardware offerings are strong enough that they don't need the spectrum any longer.  They said that they started receiving offers after the 700 MHz auction ended, but won't say from whom.  NextWave's licenses cover up to 251 Million potential wireless customers.

Official press release at NextWave.

• Skype announced that it would have beta software available for mobile phones.  Skype's claim to fame is its VoIP service.  The service allows for unlimited Skype to Skype calling as well as insanely low rates to land lines.  The beta will not be availble in the States, where the FCC denied Skype's petition to see their platform have "Carterfone" rules applied to it for use on mobile networks.  "Carterfone" is what allows you to buy any brand of handset for use with your landline phone service.  This is important in 2 major ways:

1 - It keeps the phone company from having a monopoly over you by selling a service and then mandating that you buy their equipment to use with it.  "Thanks for signing up for our low low rates.  By the way, you'll need to by a phone from us, but don't worry. It only costs $549.99!"
2 - It keeps the phone industry competitive.  People would probably be pretty loathe to switch phone companies if they knew that they'd have to purchase a special phone, potentially at an absurd price, from the new carrier.

The FCC denying "Carterfone" status to Skype may seem out-of-line, but I see it as a move to preserve the wireless carrier industry in the United States.

Andrew's article on Skype and its mobile beta release.
Alex' article on why the FCC's decision regarding Skype makes sense.