Phones with ever more bells and whistles

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/13/business/nokia.php

Phones with ever more bells and whistles
By Eric Sylvers International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2006
BARCELONA Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and BenQ Mobile - four of the world's largest makers of mobile phones - on Monday introduced new handsets that promise faster Internet connections, using new technologies not yet on the market, and better music functions that will allow them to compete directly with digital music players.

Nokia, the world's biggest maker of mobile phones, said that within the next four months it would begin selling a phone that can automatically switch between wireless and fixed-line networks. The 6136 would route an indoor call over an Internet connection, and the call would automatically switch to a wireless connection when the phone went out of range of the fixed-line Internet connection.

The jumping from mobile to fixed-line networks and back is appealing for consumers because it will save them money, since calls on fixed-line networks are cheaper. The technology could also make it possible to have only one phone, which would make the best use of any available network; but it is a potential threat for cellphone operators, which could lose business as calls move to fixed-line networks.

So far, the most interest in the new phones has come from fixed-line companies, which would be able to increase traffic that has been shifting to mobile networks for the past decade. There has also been interest from companies with both fixed and mobile businesses, like Telecom Italia.

"I'm convinced we will see both pure mobile phone companies do it and also hybrid mobile-fixed companies" the chief executive of Nokia, Jorma Ollila, said during a news conference at the annual 3GSM conference in Barcelona. "It will be a race to see which operator will begin using this phone first."

Ollila declined to identify which operators would be the first to sell the 6136, which will cost E275, or $327, before taxes and subsidies given by cellphone operators to their customers. Operators have been reluctant to say when they might begin to sell the phones.

Phones with advanced features are changing from a niche product to a mass-market offering. Nokia has forecast that phones packed with functions that make them all but portable computers will double to 100 million units this year, and Ollila said Monday that Nokia would sell 80 million phones with music players this year.

Sony Ericsson is banking on music phones to increase market share, and on Monday it introduced a phone that can hold as many as 4,000 songs and also has fast Internet access. Motorola, meanwhile, said it would begin using Microsoft's Windows Media technology in several music phones that will be sold alongside the iTunes phones, developed with Apple, that it already sells.

BenQ, the Taiwan company that four months ago bought the cellphone business of Siemens, said it would bring to market the first phone with high-speed downlink packet access, or HSDPA, in time for the soccer World Cup in Germany in June. If HSDPA lives up to its billing, it will deliver data transfer speeds rivaling all but the best fixed-line broadband networks. Though Samsung Electronics last month announced the first HSDPA phone, BenQ said it would begin selling its phone first.

"Content is becoming king, and we have to be able to deliver it to customers worldwide," said the chief executive of BenQ Mobile, Clemens Joos, at the 3GSM event. BenQ Mobile is based in Munich.

Joos declined to say what the phone would cost, adding that it would vary by market, but he said it would be available at least six weeks before its nearest competitor.