I think this is a major breakthrough for heavy BlackBerry users in Asia region. To facilitate the need of mobile data roaming plan for BlackBerry users, Conexus Mobile Alliance is going to roll out new plan by the end of Q1 2009. The plan currently offered by Hutchison in Hong Kong. Some operators joining are Indonesia’s Indosat, India’s MTNL, Philippines’s Smart Communications, Singapore’s StarHub, and Thailand’s True Move. For a while Japan’s DoCoMo will offer promotional rate.

“The BlackBerry smartphone is one of Asia’s most popular mobile devices among business travellers for staying in touch with their company while travelling. This new mobile data roaming plan helps businesses control their costs better because of its predictability in data roaming charges,” said Alliance Chairman and Head of StarHub Ltd’s Advanced Multimedia Services in Singapore, Mr Chan Kin Hung. “Together with the Pay-Per-Day Flat-Rate Data-Roaming Tariff Plan for mobile broadband Internet, we believe the Alliance is providing the most comprehensive and cost effective mobile data roaming services for business travellers in the region.”

Conexus Mobile Aliance is established in 2006 and one of Asia’s biggest alliance. The other alliance is Bridge Mobile Alliance. Conexus boosts combined customer base to about 210 millions customers.

Source

BlackBerry Curve 8900, also known as BlackBerry Javelin, is finally ready to be the next Curve line in the market. Starting December, Curve 8900 will be available in several stores in Europe. The phone is confirmed to be available in United Kingdom by December 20, a perfect gift for Christmas present.

Curve 8900 is the next edition of BlackBerry. Having similar form factor with BlackBerry Bold, only smaller, Curve 8900 offers better keypad arrangement, better camera quality, and sharper screen, compared to Bold.

In Asia, the phone is predicted to be in the market by January. As before the phone is currently being tested by a friend of mine in one of Indonesian operator.

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Not only the phone, aparrently LG Prada II comes also with the watch. Not just watch, but Bluetooth watch. Yeah, I must admit the watch is actually pretty stylish. Of course with Prada logo emblazoned in its front page, who doesn’t want to have it?

What can the watch do? By synchronizing to the phone via Bluetooth, the timepiece will show incoming calls or SMS. Unfortunately, the official LG Prada II site has not the price and when the watch will be available in the market.

Source

DoCoMo is member of Open Handset Alliance (OHA), an organisation pioneered by Google for Android development. Thus, it wasn’t suprise that DoCoMo and its Korean subsidiary, KTF, is about to offer Google phone next year. This new phone will be the first Google phone to be offered by Japanese and South Korean carriers. As before, T-Mobile in USA and UK has rolled the first Google phone, T-Mobile G1.

DoCoMo, Japan’s largest operator, currently owns 10% of KTF share. To reduce the cost, two companies have been jointly procuring handsets. Actually beside DoCoMo, the rival KDDI is also member of OHA. So there must be a chance of Google phone to be launched for CDMA network.

The market for smartphone in Japan is growing heavily. As before, Symbian (through Sharp and Nokia) and Windows Mobile (through HTC mostly) are long time player in this area. Starting this year, Apple’s iPhone and BlackBerry are entering the Japan market. DoCoMo also about to launch BlackBerry Bold on March next year. The upcoming Android based phone should work hard to impress Japanese savvy users.

In the other hand, there is a little exposure of foreign products in Korea. The WIPI policy pushes manufacturers to comply by installing middleware platform. This move has prevented foreign manufacturers from selling the phones there. Therefore, Korean market are conquered by local products, like Samsung, LG, and Pantech. Currently Korean government is on the way on reviewing the policy.

Source via Slashphone | Image

Nokia unveils 50-60 handsets per year, enough to make it the largest mobile manufacturer in the world. Now, Korea’s LG, the second largest in the country after Samsung, is planning to launch more handsets than Nokia. Not, 70 or 80 but 125 handsets in 2009! It means that LG will unveil around 10-11 handsets per month! Quite unbelievable.

LG’s VP marketing for mobile global, Chang Ma, said:

We have to work with different operators in different countries, we don’t think it’s a big number

Well, big numbers don’t mean big sales, but at least LG will try. I think some will be launched worldwide, while most will aimed to hit local market. Cross my finger for that!

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Motorola announced its latest device, named MOTO VE66. A slider phone, this handset is going to have widget integration, allowing users to access stock tickers, RSS feeds, sport scores, and anything else. Probably like Widsets from Nokia.

Besides the widget thingy, the phone is also equipped with basic thingy, like:

• HSDPA radio for both Europe and North America frequency
• Wi-Fi
• 5 megapixels camera with integrated autofocus, LED flash, and auto stabilizer
• CrystalTalk technology to reduce background noice
• USB 2.0 connection for transferring files
• FM Tuner and RDS
• FastScroll one-touch navigation wheel

This phone will be available this Q4, I believe near Christmas. In conjunction with the announcement, Motorola also creates Widget Developer Challenge, to enhance the support for Motorola’s new widget features.

Source

Axis is the newest player in GSM technology in Indonesia. But, it is aggressively expanding its network to boost its subscribers by creating many promotion. To support the increasing number of users, Axis selects AIRCOM, an independent network planning and optimisation consultancy, to help them realizing the idea. AIRCOM is headquarted in UK with offices in 18 countries.

AIRCOM helps Axis by providing CONNECT microwave planning tool. CONNECT will provide additional site visibility across the AXIS microwave network, meaning it will be able to rapidly plan and optimise single or entire network links in both its 2G and 3G networks.

With AIRCOM’s unique single database, Axis engineers can gain remote access from anywhere in the world, meaning any discrepancies from transferring data between islands is immediately eliminated. This gives AXIS the clearest view possible of its nationwide network.

Implementation of CONNECT into the AXIS network is already underway, with engineer training set to be conducted later this month.

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Apparently, Razec is not only creating Sora pic for eye candy. More on Esato, he mentions the specification of his concept phone. According to his drawings, the mid-end Xperia concept phone should have multimedia/web mode, Windows Mobile 7, and a 1 GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 CPU as the core.

If it does really implemented, this phone must be the first phone to be powered with 1 GHz processor core. The one million dollar question is will Sony Ericsson ever really make this dream come true?

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Notorious economic newspaper, Wall Street Journal (WSJ), unveils its online report about the 2009 outlook of mobile manufacturers sales condition. Following the slowdown in 2008–thanks to global financial crisis–WSJ predicted 2009 will be a rocky mountain for phone sales. Here is the summary of what analyst predicted:

• Shipment will lower 1% to 9% of total sales next year
• Research In Motion (RIM), Apple, and HTC will outperform other companies, thanks to aggressive promotion for their smartphone. Smartphone definitely the range that hardly to be affected by financial crisis
• Companies that is aimed for mid-range sector, like Motorola and Sony Ericsson will face tough road. The middle class suffer most for this financial crisis, ever since we heard about lay-off in many sectors. Sales will drop in India and China market
• Nokia as the market leader could steal the share to be even bigger than ever. Nokia is leading in most countries, especially with its low-end phones in India and other developing countries

In conclusion, the analyst said that most manufacturers will survive. But they also said, some may not. Yet, there is no further information of which companies will collapse, joining the late Siemens.

Source via moconews | Image

A Sony Ericsson fanboy, Razec, has created his concept about mid-end Xperia version. The concept is first posted in Esato. Mid-end here means smaller screen size and smaller number of features. Still the concept phone will be powered by Windows Mobile. Codenamed as Sora, the idea is due to dissapointment of new Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 price tag.

Xperia X1 may be charged as high as US$ 800. Definitely can make people think twice on buying this first Windows Mobile-equipped Sony Ericsson handset. Still in Indonesia, there are lot of antusiasm of welcoming the arrival of the phone.

Source via Concept-phones