TamsBlackBerry – the BlackBerry blog

Week 2 of our Crazy Sunday raffle is over: this means that one price must be given away, and another one must be announced. Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, please allow me to thank you all for talking back!

Your comments are what keeps a news service like this one running. Tell us that you love us, or tell that you hate us (and why)…but show us that you are there! We love you all…seriously!

This week, you guys are entitled to a free pop at SplashData’s SplashMoney! SplashMoney is a really cool budgeting app – and is darn easy to use!

Last week’s price (a license of SplashID, a password manager program) goes back to the prize queue. In case anyone else wants a pop at the program, knock 20% off the product’s retail price in the TamsShop with the discount code CRAZYSUNDAY.

With that, this post ends – just talk back and leave behind an email address in order to participate!

Quite a bit of time has passed since we last heard from Krusell – but the boys just sent me their latest top-seller list:

1. (2) Nokia 3109
2. (1) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia
3. (8) Nokia 5800
4. (5) Nokia E71
5. (4) HTC Touch HD
6. (7) Nokia 3120
7. (3) Nokia 6300
8. (6) Nokia E51
9. (-) Sony Ericsson C702
10. (-) Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia
() = Last month’s position.

On Krusell’s Top 10 list for April, six out of ten phones are Nokia. At the moment Nokia is a very strong brand in many markets, says Ulf Sandberg MD at Krusell. Though it is rather surprising a pretty simple handset as the Nokia 3109 takes the no. 1 position this month. We all know that most people who buy a smart phone or a more expensive device prefer to protect it with a case. Now also phones in the lower price range frequently shows up on our list. This is encouraging for us, but I am still a bit surprised, Mr Sandberg ends.

As usual: keep in mind that Krusell has a very strong high-street presence and thus has more “down-to-earth” figures compared to metering companies which focus solely on smartphones…

The plethora of chargers used by different manufacturers has attracted EU regulation for quite some time – it looks like the US CTIA will now follow suite:

…
The CTIA wireless association endorsed a plan to create a common format for all cellular phone chargers.

The plan, known as Universal Charging Solution, aims to have the majority of all new mobile phones use MicroUSB as a common charging interface. This would potentially lower the costs for end users because they could use the same charger for future handsets.
…

Even though I prefer the handling of MiniUSB to the somewhat difficult-to-unplug MicroUSB port, standardization definitely is helpful – imagine being able to travel with but one charger…

Palm OS and BlackBerry users share a problem: no proper web browser is available for their platform due to difficulty of development or porting. Thus, both Palm OS and RIM heads are forced to use J2ME browsers like the infamous Opera Mini…or its rival SkyFire (if available).

The screenshots below hit is via the Boy Genius, who hasn’t got too much further information:

I personally think that it is but a question of time until the program is released. Existing versions of the program have been written in java for J2ME – rewriting them for a different UI stack is a small effort at best (and isn’t even 100% necessary).

Either way, stay tuned – and keep us posted!

The quote below is part of a recent press release from Deutsche Telekom, which is the mother company of the infamous carrier known as T-Mobile:

…The sale of more than 1 million G1 handsets since the market launch in October 2008 alone, and a total of over 1.5 million 3G-capable handsets sold in the United States, clearly shows, however, that customers are demanding products and ser-vices based on these increased bandwidths and that the provision of these products and services is an important selling point in competition.
…

From my personal point of view, this shows but one thing: the recession has not killed the US cell phone market (as of this writing). New players like Palm can still sell quite a few boxen if marketed right…

Feedback, anyone?

Common sense tells us that carriers are opposed to all kinds of EU legislation which forces them to lower their prices – but this is not true in the case of the Austrian branch of Hutchison Whampoa.

Their never-lazy press team just sent out an email celebrating the change – the most interesting quotes have been translated below for your enjoyment:

…the average Three customer has voice-roamed 32 percent more since the last regulation…

…in the Past, Three has seen insane effects of affordable roaming. The ThreeLikeHome service boosted roaming use in participating networks insanely: in the first year, voice roaming increased by 427 percent, data roaming rose by 8900 percent (8900, no typo).

Of course, the latter figures can not be extrapolated directly due to the especially good conditions of the ThreeLikeHome bundle – but the basic message is clear: Customers want cheap roaming, and tend to roam a lot more as prices fall.

This one comes hot on the heels of Nintendo announcing the sale of half a million DSi’s in the first week after their US launch:

Apple sold 3.79 million iPhones during the quarter, and 11.01 million iPods – a figure that includes iPod touch devices, although also iPod Shuffles. Apple’s revenues for the quarter from iPhone handset sales, accessory sales and carrier payments topped $1.52 billion.

…

“The sum of iPhone plus iPod touch is now about 37 million units… The iPod touch is the runaway hit and it’s clearly being driven by the App Store.”

Just to keep the numbers in scale…

via PocketGamer

The first round of Crazy Sunday has just ended on the six participating news services – and the winners have been determined and were furthermore contacted by email. But before we look at who lucked out, let’s look at this week’s price.

This week, people who tend to forget passwords must enter lest they burn in hell. The reason is our prize: you are in for a free license of SplashData’s password manager SplashID.

As usual: post a non-spam comment with your email address in the email field on any news story to participate. The Tamoggemon Content team wishes you all the best!

Unfortunately, our license of HanDBase has to wait for another time – watch this space, it may just reappear another day…

I guess that the quote below doesn’t need any further explanation:

Early U.S. sales of the new Nintendo DSi hand-held system are ahead of those for Nintendo DS Lite, according to Nintendo’s internal tracking numbers. In its first week, Nintendo DSi sold 435,000 in the United States. After the same amount of time on the U.S. market after its launch, Nintendo DS Lite had sold 226,300 systems. These numbers demonstrate that the Nintendo DS brand remains strong, and that consumers continue to look for the best new experiences on their portable video game systems.

When looking at the figures above, the folks claiming that the Nintendo DS moves ten times as many games as the Sony PSP seem pretty honest. I heard from multiple industry sources in Austria about this phenomenon, and have to wonder why…

Ideas, anyone?

Image: Baron Valium

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is very business-related; and contains quite a few posts which are very interesting for enterprising developers. As I do not believe in top lists (except when based on hard numeric facts), I will not nominate a best post – instead, take a look at the offerings below and visit the ones you like:

MobileSlate’s Eric Chan has posted an extremely interesting text called Where’s The Beef – Making Money in Mobile. He takes a very detailed look at margins in various aspects of mobile…definitely a good read.

I never liked Android too much as I am pretty sure that it will get overloaded with ads in the near future: Vanessa Measom from VisionMobile also bewares of Androids bearing gifts!

Chetan Sharma analyzes data from a mobile marketing company.

Steven Hoober has an extremely slow web site. Nevertheless, his musings on why the mobile and desktop web should remain seperate are very interesting.

RIM folks are currently experiencing the transition to touchscreens…which means that all touchscreen related topics are extra interesting for them. James Cooper looks at the influence of touchscreens on the mobile internet…

Dalibor Kunic brings us an interview with a Croatian iPhone developer.

Phil Barrett decided to use a Flash service for sharing his very interesting presentation on mobile marketing. As I loathe Flash (just upload a bunch of GIFs), he goes last – but do give him a visit as the slides are very interesting.

With that, please allow me to remind you all of the Crazy Sunday Promotion which is being held all over the Tamoggemon Content Network. Leave a comment behind on any site and any post, and you might just win a prize!

BTW: next week’s Carnival will be held at The Catalyst Code. The Carnival will return to the Tamoggemon Content Network on the 20th of July – it will then be hosted on TamsIJungle.

Enjoy!

Dear Readers,
Please accept my most sincere apologies for not having written more in the past few days, but I was without my laptop due to a variety of shipment eekers with a German web shop.

However, better late than never…please give a warm welcome to crazy Sunday. Crazy Sunday is the latest brainchild of yours truly’s wife, and will allow you to pick up a nice bunch of free stuff in the next few months (void where prohibited!).

The rules of Crazy Sunday are easy: I announce a new product here every Monday, along with the winner of the last one. As this one is delayed, the next announcement will be on Monday, the 20th. BTW: the winner is chosen at random from all people who lave left behind a non-spam comment on any post along with a valid email address in the email field.

DDH’s HanDBase for BlackBerry is an extremely useful product: it allows you to keep large databases of stuff on your handheld. You define the scheme on the PC, and deploy it to the handset…after which data parsing and collecting can begin.

For the item above, all comments posted on the 12th of April are counted. In case you haven’t talked back yet, do so now – it is free and anonymous (your email address is protected by Austrian law unless you post political stuff).

Seth Godin is the man behind a very interesting marketing blog, a bunch of top-selling business books and – last but not least – the concept of permission marketing. I thus was somewhat surprised to see him talk about graphics design…but felt that his list could be useful nevertheless.

Seth listed a variety of books and web sites which could be helpful for people wanting to become decent graphic designers – further information can be had here:
http://www.squidoo.com/become-a-really-good-graphic-designer

Analysts all over the internet report that RIM and T-Mobile USA have ganged up for the introduction of an “exciting new BlackBerry collaboration”.

As of now, nobody (including the recipient of the invitation) knows what the fuzz is about – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

The picture on the left side is part of the latest ad wave which swamps Austria – our governmental carrier A1 seems to have gone over the top when it comes to peddling the Storm.

The boys have launched TV spots (!!!), newspaper ads and a huge load of advertising flyers which are made in cooperation with their partners…