Category Archives: Wireless news

Facebook vs Hamilton

Vodafone is challenging F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, to race against the speed of it’s improved mobile data network in The Netherlands. To make it an actual challenge, Vodafone calls for 28.800 Facebook users to join the race in a virtual car on Facebook. The time it takes Vodafone’s network to download all of their profile pics, is the time to beat for Hamilton. The actual race will take place on a secret track – Schiphol is rumored – on the 13th of september. The race will be aired live on Facebook.

A house travelling for Vodafone

A while ago i posted about Vodafone in Spain doing some crazy stuff for their 3G solutions for small businesses. Time after that, they’ve created a follow-up of that campaign, consisting on a Vodafone employee (that spends some time blogging) and his family going through Spain in a “bus-house” and without a landline number to get connected to the Internet, just a mobile phone and a USB modem. Also residents of each city will be allowed to get into the bus, as it will be staying for two days in each place. All of this is being blogged at La Casa Movil and although it’s in spanish, it’s worth a read, you can use some online translation tools to get it translated into English or the language of your choice.

Wi-Fi advertising

Yesterday, my friend and co-worker Arturo and myself found out a couple of brilliant cases of integrated advertising, done respectively by German agencies Lukas Lindemann Rosinski and Jung Von Matt. I think that both the image for the first case and the video for the second one are absolutely self-explanatory…

(Further explanation here, if you feel like to and here is a video of it)

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Work is in the air…

The geniuses from Waskman came up with a very original idea to advertise the new Vodafone “Oficina Movil” (“Mobile Office”) service, which main value is to avoid freelancers and small businesses being wire-dependant on mobile phones, office phones and data services through 3G technology. So after a while of thinking who the target was they realized they could be the perfect target, so they proposed Vodafone moving their offices to the middle of Madrid and Bilbao for three weeks, writing about the whole process in a few sites.

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Marketing mobiles to kids

Marketing to kids can prove tricky. Marketing mobile phones to kids can be even trickier. The Sydney Morning Herald (free reg.) reports that in Australia there is a discussion going on children and mobile phones. New research show handset could threat kids’ health and Australian mobile carriers take different approaches to the findings. Virgin Mobile doesn’t market its products to under-10s; Telstra says 10-14 years-old are youths not children, so it’s ok to target them; Vodafone and Optus have guidelines which prohibit marketing to under-16s. Who’s right and who’s wrong? My opinion is that children simply don’t need mobile phones.

Mobile phones as a fashion statement

… for men. A new research by Idc found out that young adult males are more likely than females to purchase mobile phones as fashion statements. The study, “What Makes Mobile Users Tick? The Underlying Factors of Mobile Phone Usage and Purchase Criteria” also reveals a number of other corollaries about mobile phone users’ perceptions about their phones. For example, productivity and convenience benefits are paramount to more users compared to other fundamental benefits, such as safety and security or style and status.

Texting in France

Sending an SMS in France it’s too expensive: 0.12 � per message is a price that discourages French users from texting. In the rest of Europe the average price is 0.10� (but I pay 0.15� with Vodafone Italy), and this has helped the sms mania to explode. An article on Le Figaro (in French) explores the texting habits in France, collecting data and opinion on a market that still has to show its potentials.

Napster goes Mobile

Napster and Dwango have signed a deal to launch �Napster Mobile� across major North American carriers. The service will allow users to choose ringtones that fit their lifestyle, musical tastes and mood from an extensive song catalog while they earn credits redeemable for PC downloads.

Mobile Application Awards 2004

Ericsson has announced the winners of the Mobile Application Awards 2004. The purpose of the Awards is to find the best, market-ready mobile applications focusing on services that add value, create convenience and make daily life and work easier and more efficient. Over two hundred applications from 34 countries where submitted for the 2004 Awards. Twelve finalists where selected in four categories, based on criteria such as professionalism, market potential, innovation, consumer friendliness and ease-of-implementation by the operators and the media industry. The finalists came from Australia, Germany, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Hong Kong, Austria, USA, and the UK. The finalists got the unique opportunity to present their services live to an exclusive audience comprising of executives from mobile network operators, venture capitalists and other industry players. The winners were selected by the audience through live SMS voting. In the category “Best Mobile Enterprise Application” the winner has been Lavasphere by Gavitec AG (Germany), while Best Mobile Information Application has been named Wayfinder EuroNavigator by Wayfinder Systems AB (Sweden).

Merry Xmas (via sms)

Australians would rather get (and send) a text message during the holiday season than a Christmas card, according to a survey commissioned by Motorola. As ITnews reports, the findings are interesting also because they show that nearly half of those surveyed preferred to send text messages rather than talking on the phone.