Mobiles2day - Mobile Industry News

Today LG Electronics announced new slim slider phone: LG-KF510. According to press release phone is just over 1cm thick (10.9mm), includes 3MP camera and MP3 player.

Phone will be on display at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, Spain on February 11 - 14, 2008. Phone will be available starting from March 2008.

This fashion phone will be available in Stardust Gray and Sunset Red metal gradation paint schemes.

O2 is changing it’s iPhone tariffs effective from 1st February 2008. Now new and existing customers on certain tariffs will get at least double allowance for the same money! Table below shows comparison of old and new allowances:

As we can see existing customers on £35 per month now get 3 times more inclusive minutes and 2.5 times texts! Customers on £45 now get double of inclusive minutes, £55 tariff is now discontinued and all existing customers on this tariff will be moved to £45. There is 1 new tariff introduced: £75, which gives 3000 minutes and 500 texts inclusive.

O2 informs on their website that existing customers will be upgraded to new tariffs latest by mid March 2008. Customers do not need to do anything, O2 will send sms informing them about changes.

All tariffs come with unlimited (subject to O2 excessive usage policy, check here for details) data and Wi-Fi usage, visual voicemail and reduced roaming rates. Same as before, minimum contract length is 18 months.

If you are new customer, you still have to pay £269 for the handset. Considering that new customers have to pay so much for this ‘Jesus phone’, it is a good move by O2, their tariffs are now more competitive comparing to other mobile operators. In effect O2 is rewarding existing customers and makes iPhone tariffs more attractive to new ones.

What competitors offer for similar monthly payments? Let’s have a look at O2’s basic £35 tariff and compare it to other operators. T-Mobile’s Flext 35 + Web’n'Walk (18 months) gives you up to 900 minutes or 1800 texts and unlimited browsing for £37.5 per month. Vodafone for £35 per month on 18 months contract gives you 500 minutes and 500 texts. As you can see O2’s new iPhone tariffs are a big improvement. The only problem is that other operators give you range of mobile phones for free on these tariffs and some of them are as good as iPhone.

I would say that £269 for iPhone is pretty high and you are tied for next 18 months. O2 and Apple have to cut the price of iPhone like Apple did in US. I am sure many more customers will be joining O2 then.

What do you think?

Samsung unveiled it’s new touch phone - SGH-F490 on Consumer Electronics Show 2008 in Las Vegas. With growing popularity of touch phones, Samsung has entered market with this model, which is very similar to LG’s KU990 Viewty model.

LG KU990 Viewty	Samsung SGH-F490

LG Viewty is already available in UK and Samsung is planning to launch SGH-F490 in Europe end of January retailing at 530 euros (approx. £400).

Here is a small comparison table of features of both phones:

Maria Sharapova, female tennis player (aged 20 and ranked fifth in the world) and Sony Ericsson signed exclusive four year sponsorship agreement for Maria Sharapova to become the company’s first global brand ambassador.

Sharapova is expected to promote Sony Ericsson brand and products. Here are comments from Dee Dutta, Corporate Vice President and Head of Marketing at Sony Ericsson:

“Now in our seventh year as a company, the brand has evolved significantly and securing a global brand ambassador is a natural progression to take our brand to the next level in an increasingly competitive market place.”

“Maria’s iconic status, determination, dynamism, success and charm match strongly with the Sony Ericsson brand, which prides itself on innovative and cool design with substance.”

“Our alignment with Maria’s global iconic status, combined with our brand expertise and innovative thinking aims to provide something new and something different to our customers around the world.”

Maria Sharapova’s comments:

“It is really exciting to be working with a cool brand like Sony Ericsson which has such a strong reputation in the entertainment industry”.

“Even though most people know me as a tennis player, I have so many passions beyond the sport like fashion, music, film and design; which Sony Ericsson and I are going to be exploring together through our partnership.”

Source

Nokia has launched a set of low-priced phone models:

Model	Price	Description	Image
Nokia 1208	£39.00	Affordable and easy-to-use, with handy One Touch shortcut keys, unique cost management features, and a vibrant color display screen to make your connections hassle-free.
Nokia 2630	£79.00	Celebrate life’s precious moments with the slender Nokia 2630, featuring a VGA camera for pictures and video, email, Bluetooth, WAP 2.0 browser, and FM radio.
Nokia 2760	£69.00	Elegant and modern design, digital VGA camera (4x zoom) with video recorder and playback, large user memory, and easy Bluetooth connectivity.

Phones are available to buy from Nokia website.

Samsung on the other hand is planning to enter low-end handset market this year to compete more effectively with Nokia. Samsung is planning to release phones with colour screens for $40-$50 (£20-£25) and capture market in emerging markets, such as India, Russia and Latin America.

Currently Samsung is number 2 phone maker in the world and is planning to secure it’s market share by expanding to lower-end market.

There are no signs of new inexpensive handsets on Samsung’s website yet, but I am sure they will appear very soon!

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