Fusion Mobile

RIM announces 65% subscriber rise on their awarding winning BlackBerry Solution

Filed under: BlackBerry — Chris Hurcombe 05/04/2010 7:34 pm

Research in Motion (RIM) one of the worlds leaders in mobile communications have announced their quarter 4 and annual results.

In their financial year, revenue grew by 35% to 15 billion dollars. Total BlackBerry subscriptions rose to 41 million users with a record 4.9 million new subscribers adding in the last quarter.

Not only did BlackBerry subscriptions rise, the shipment of new BlackBerry Smartphones grew more than 40% to 37 million units.

The results from RIM emphasis the growing roll its BlackBerry Solution and BlackBerry Smartphones are playing in making business users more proactive in using mobile technology.

To find out more information on the BlackBerry solution for your business contact us now on 0845 263 6943

Vodafone UK Restructure and Job Cutting

Filed under: News, vodafone — Chris Hurcombe 08/03/2010 1:08 pm

Vodafone’s move to cut another 500 UK jobs is a sign that the operator needs to slim to fit the current times.

Recent restructure at Vodafone has two strands – one is to meet a cost-cutting target that doubled last year, and the other is to freshen up its flagging consumer brand.

The operator announced in November last year that it had doubled its cost-cutting target from £1bn to £2bn.

It also said it would deliver its £1bn cost-cutting drive, announced late 2008, a year earlier than planned in March 2010.

Vodafone will aim to save the further £1bn by 2012. Whether this latest round of cuts is from the first or second part of the money-saving drive is debatable – but shortly after it announced the £1bn initial saving in 2008, 500 UK jobs were culled at its UK HQ

Orange and T Mobile merger approval potentially risks 2000 jobs

Filed under: Orange — Chris Hurcombe 05/03/2010 10:03 pm

Regulators have cleared the way for Orange and T-Mobile to merge creating Britain’s largest mobile phone operator, putting thousands of jobs at risk.

Analysts estimate that up to 2,000 jobs may be on the line as the companies look to cut £3.5 billion in costs from their merged business.

Back-office staff are likely to bear the brunt of the job losses. Cuts to the enlarged company’s retail staff may be less severe than feared, with both the Orange and T-Mobile brands being maintained for at least 18 months.

The European Commission yesterday approved the two companies’ plan to merge after the Office of Fair Trading withdrew its request to conduct an in-depth investigation of the deal.

The combined company will have market share of about 37 per cent, with almost 30 million customers, and will knock O2 into second place in the UK and Vodafone into third.

Palm Pre Manufacturer losing out to BlackBerry and iPhone

Filed under: Palm — Chris Hurcombe 28/02/2010 3:16 pm

Palm has admitted that its recovery plan is faltering as it cut its third-quarter and full-year revenue target because of slow consumer demand for its smartphones.

Palm’s shares fell 18 per cent after the company said it expected quarterly revenue of $300 million to $320 million, well below the analysts’ average estimate of $424.7 million.

The company’s new hope, the Palm Pre, launched to a blaze of publicity last year and its new operating system, webOS, received favourable reviews. However, the touchscreen Palm Pre and other models have so far failed to win enough customers back in a market that it defined with its early innovative products. Sales were hurt by supply constraints and stiff competition from Apple’s iPhone, BlackBerry smartphones and Google Android phones.

Palm said that slow sales had led to weaker than expected orders from operators and the deferral of orders to future periods.

Sales of smartphones jumped 41.1 per cent to 53.8 million units in the fourth quarter and were up 23.8 per cent to 172.4 million devices for the full year.

RIM, the Canadian group that markets the BlackBerry, controlled 19.9 per cent of the smartphone market while Apple, with its iPhone, had a market share of 14.4 per cent. Palm remained outside the top five.

Interested in a business smartphone? Contact Fusion Mobile now on 0845 263 6943 to discuss all the options.

O2 Stay ahead in UK through Smartphone Growth

Filed under: O2 — Chris Hurcombe 2:58 pm

O2 reinforced its position as Britain’s biggest mobile phone company yesterday when it reported a healthy Christmas quarter, adding 338,500 new customers in the last three months of last year as well as 63,000 broadband users.

But then it warned that such good times may not last. O2, which has 21.3 million customers, said that the rate of growth in the UK could slow this year because of economic uncertainty.

O2’s revenue growth in the UK, excluding the impact of cuts to wholesale rates enforced by Ofcom, rose by 8 per cent in the fourth quarter, boosted by its army of smartphone users. O2 said that the company had five million smartphone users in the UK, including two million iPhone owners, who generated £650 million of data revenue last year.

Christmas is traditionally a strong period for growth in pay-as-you-go customers, but mobile phone companies, with the exception of T-Mobile, had more success signing up people to long-term contracts thanks in large part to the growing popularity of smartphones. O2 signed up 235,000 pay monthly customers, taking its total contract customer growth for the year to 1.1 million, a rise of 19 per cent. Almost 45 per cent of its users are locked into long-term contracts.

Interested in an O2 business solution? Contact O2 Approved Partner Fusion Mobile today to discuss all the benefits.

RIM launches BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express

Filed under: BlackBerry — Chris Hurcombe 16/02/2010 5:23 pm

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, or BES Express is the new free BlackBerry Software for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Windows Small Business Server.

The new BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express software will be provided free of charge in order to address two key market opportunities. First, the software offers economical advantages to small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that desire the enterprise-grade security and manageability of BlackBerry® Enterprise Server but don’t require all of its advanced features. Second, more and more consumers are purchasing BlackBerry smartphones and the free BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express software provides a cost-effective solution that enables IT departments to meet the growing demand from employees to be able to connect their personal BlackBerry smartphones to their work email.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express works with Microsoft Exchange 2010, 2007 and 2003 and Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2008 and 2003 to provide users with secure, push-based, wireless access to email, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks, as well as other business applications and enterprise systems behind the firewall. Importantly, the new server software utilises the same robust security architecture found in BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express is expected to be available as a free download in March. For more information about BlackBerry and how it can benefit your business contact Fusion Mobile now 0845 263 6943.

Free BlackBerry Software for UK Business Users

Filed under: BlackBerry — Chris Hurcombe 14/02/2010 12:45 pm

Fusion Mobile, one of the UK’s leading independent BlackBerry solution specialists is offering UK SME customers the opportunity to move their existing business mobiles onto a BlackBerry solution with no setup up cost for the supply and installation of the required BlackBerry server software.

The offer of Free BlackBerry Software is designed to help Small to Medium businesses in the UK take advantage of the award winning BlackBerry email solution which could make their staff upto 38% more productive without having to worry about paying thousands of pounds to implement the solution.

With the UK still in the midst of recession, investment in technology to improve business efficiency is still proving to be a difficult choice for businesses as cash flow is critical. UK businesses can now take advantage of the BlackBerry solution at a fraction of the cost to help them keep ahead of their competitors.

To discuss the benefits of how BlackBerry can improve efficiency significantly, contact Fusion Mobile now on 0845 263 6943.

How to wipe your BlackBerry Gemini 8520 Smartphone

Filed under: BlackBerry Support — Chris Hurcombe 12:17 pm

If you need to completely wipe your BlackBerry Gemini 8520 Smartphone for any reason, please see the simple steps below from Fusion Mobile which should help you with your task.

Please be aware you will lose all your content, email, software and settings when you do this.

Do you need to replace your BlackBerry Gemini 8520 Smartphone, speak to us to see how our prices compare to your existing provider.

BlackBerry Gemini 8520 Smartphone wipe instructions

1. Go to Options
2. Select Security Options
3. Select General Settings
4. Click the Menu key
5. Select Wipe Handheld
6. Click Continue
7. Type in the word blackberry

Does your business need some dedicated support for your BlackBerry users? Not only could we save you up to 60% on your business BlackBerry mobile contract, our BlackBerry Support Contracts help you keep your staff up and running with our great service level agreements.

Business Touchscreen Smartphone Boom

Filed under: BlackBerry, News — Chris Hurcombe 12/02/2010 10:27 am

The world’s smartphone makers shipped more touchscreen models in Q4 2009 than at any time in the past – and more touchphones than devices with buttons.

During the quarter, 55 per cent of all smartphones shipped had touchscreens. That’s just under 30m touchscreen handsets altogether, market watcher Canalys said today.
Touchscreen shipments were up 138 per cent year on year, compared to overall smartphone shipment growth of 41 per cent.

Q4 accounted for almost 40 per cent of the touchscreen smartphones shipped during 2009, a year that notched up total shipments of 75.9m, the researcher said. Some 166.27m smartphones shipped in 2009.
Canalys spoke to 4,000 consumers late in 2009 and found that 60 per cent of them wanted a touchscreen interface on their next phone. While some existing touchphone users said they will switch back to a different interface, Canalys said it expects the overall shift toward touchscreens to continue during 2010.
It said it expects 166m touchscreen smartphones to ship this year.

It comes as no surprise that Apple topped the chart of touchphone vendors, shipping 25.10m smartphones in 2009, just ahead of Nokia’s 22.36m. HTC managed 7.73m and Samsung 4.84m. Everyone else, together, racked up shipments totaling 15.82m units.

From a marketshare perspective, they divide up this way: Apple 33.1 per cent, Nokia 29.5 per cent, HTC 10.2 per cent, Samsung 6.4 per cent and everyone else 20.9 per cent.

Not a good result for RIM, but then its touchscreen Blackberry’s aren’t as widely seen as the Qwerty models. But a look at the OS figures shows its position to be strong, for now. Symbian was in 47.2 per cent of the smartphones shipped in 2009, followed by BlackBerry (20.8 per cent), iPhone (15.1 per cent), Windows Mobile (8.8 per cent), Android (4.7 per cent) and others (3.4 per cent).

Open Source for Symbian Phone Operating System

Filed under: Android, News, Nokia, O2, Orange, Palm, Samsung, iPhone, vodafone — Chris Hurcombe 04/02/2010 11:34 am

The group behind the world’s most popular smartphone operating system – Symbian – is giving away “billions of dollars” worth of code for free.

The Symbian Foundation’s announced that it would make its code open source in 2008 and has now completed the move.
It means that any organisation or individual can now use and modify the platform’s underlying source code “for any purpose”.

Symbian has shipped in more than 330m mobile phones, the foundation says.
It believes the move will attract new developers to work on the system and help speed up the pace of improvements.
“This is the largest open source migration effort ever,” Lee Williams of the Symbian Foundation told BBC News.

“It will increase rate of evolution and increase the rate of innovation of the platform.”
Ian Fogg, principal analyst at Forrester research, said the move was about Symbian “transitioning from one business model to another” as well as trying to gain “momentum and mindshare” for software that had been overshadowed by the release of Apple’s iPhone and Google Android operating system.

Evolutionary barrier

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia bought the software in 2008 and helped establish the non-profit Symbian Foundation to oversee its development and transition to open source.
The foundation includes Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.
The group has now released what it calls the Symbian platform as open source code. This platform unites different elements of the Symbian operating system as well as components – in particular, user interfaces – developed by individual members.

Until now, Symbian’s source code was only open to members of the organisation.
It can be downloaded from the foundation’s website from 1400 GMT.
Mr Williams said that one of the motivations for the move was to speed up the rate at which the 10-year-old platform evolved.
“When we chatted to companies who develop third party applications, we found people would spend up to nine months just trying to navigate the intellectual property,” he said.
“That was really hindering the rate of progress.”
Opening up the platform would also improve security, he added.

‘Mind share’

Symbian development is currently dominated by Nokia, but the foundation hoped to reduce the firm’s input to “no more than 50%” by the middle of 2011, said Mr Williams.
“We will see a dramatic shift in terms of who is contributing to the platform.”
However, said Mr Williams, the foundation would monitor phones using the platform to ensure that they met with minimum standards.

Despite being the world’s most popular smart phone operating system, Symbian has been losing the publicity battle, with Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iPhone dominating recent headlines.

“Symbian desperately needs to regain mindshare at the moment,” said Mr Fogg.
“It’s useful for them to say Symbian is now open – Google has done very well out of that.”
He also said that the software “may not be as open and free as an outsider might think”.
“Almost all of the open source operating systems on mobile phones – Nokia’s Maemo, Google’s Android – typically have proprietary software in them.”

For example, Android incorporates Google’s e-mail system Gmail.
But Mr Williams denied the move to open source was a marketing move.
“The ideas we are executing ideas came 12-18 months before Android and before the launch of the original iPhone,” Mr Williams told BBC News.

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