Hutchison Whampoa, the parent company of Hutchison 3G in the UK, has confirmed that it will launch next generation mobile phone services in the UK and Italy in October of this year. However, the Hong Kong-based company admitted that users may suffer problems with dropped calls. Speaking yesterday in a hastily arranged press conference, group MD Canning Fok reassured reporters that Hutchison 3G’s network will be the best in the areas where his own company provides the coverage.

The briefing for journalists was convened after the UK Sunday Times reported on possible problems with 3G calls. Fok admitted that dropped calls were inevitable, but he insisted that every network has such problems. According to Fok, the problems are likely to occur during the network “hand-over” as users travel from Hutchison’s 3G coverage area to zones where only GSM is available. Hutchison says it plans to cover 50% of the

The Hong Kong company plans to plough around US$16.7 billion into its European 3G networks by 2005.In the UK, Hutchison plans to have some 3,500 3G base stations up and running by its October launch, with 2,200 in Italy. By the end of 2003 these figures should swell to 6,000 sites in each market. The company has set itself the modest target of adding between 5,000 and 10,000 new customers in each country during its first month of operation. Fok also said he regarded the decision by spanish operator Telefnica Moviles to rein in its foreign ambitions in the 3G field as a plus for his company. “One less competitor is better for our business,” he said.

With the impending arrival of MMS, operator and OEM interest in embedded-camera capabilities has steadily risen. Device manufacturers must develop sound product development and segmentation strategies to capitalize on the pending demand for devices with this feature. Strategy Analytics expects 16M camera phones will be sold worldwide in rising sharply to 147M in 2007. Camera phones will outsell digital still cameras worldwide.

Japan and Korea are the world’s leading camera phone markets, accounting for almost 90% of total sales Embedded-camera PDAs are expected to play bridesmaid to handsets and will account for only 6% of total PDA sales in 2007.This Market Forecast provides global estimates of cellular handset, PDA, and digital still camera sell-through by region through 2007 and analyzes drivers for embedded-camera diffusion by region.

Trimble has announced that it is making three of its popular GPS-on-cellular applications available for BlackBerry smartphones. The applications will be available specifically for the BlackBerry 8800, BlackBerry 8820, and the BlackBerry Curve 8310 smartphones. The three applications to be offered include AllSport GPS, Geocache Naviagtor, and Trimble Outdoors. AllSport GPS allows BlackBerry users to track their fitness routine by logging their time, speed, calories burned, and distance traveled when their workouts take them outdoors. Recommended routes and maps can be downloaded, and you can even share stored workouts with a friend.

Geocache Navigator hooks you into the new sport called geocaching that uses GPS coordinates to create a high-tech treasure hunt. You’ll have real-time access to the geocaching.com website in addition to tools, including a radar-like interface, to guide you to the treasure. Trimble Outdoors is the ultimate tool for those who plan outdoor trips. The tool allows you to review and plan trips online. Once completed, routes, maps, and GPS waypoints can be sent to your BlackBerry. Using Trimble Outdoors, you can also create photos, video, and audio notes, which you can share in the Trimble Outdoors Google Earth Layer.If you want a review of the AllSport GPS software, then just check out our previous coverage of the software.

Trimble is really a class act when it comes to creating applications that make the most out of the GPS capabilities of mobile phones. It’s nice that BlackBerry owners can now begin to appreciate some of the products that Trimble offers. If you are a big outdoors person, then you can’t go wrong with the Trimble Outdoors application. It really would allow you to make the most out of any planned hikes or other outdoor adventures.

Emblaze Ltd. announces today that its Emoze push email and PIM will be available for users to download via the Download folder on Nokia Nseries devices. An Emoze download icon will be located in the Download! folder and will enable the users an easy and seamless way to download and activate the Emoze global push-email and PIM services.Users of Emoze technology will enjoy push-email accessibility worldwide and full synchronization of their calendar and contacts information over the air.

The service is targeting both the professional business market as well as the mass markets of all email users and is compatible with a wide range of email and PIM services and technologies such as Exchange, Lotus Notes, Google’s Gmail and more.Naftali Shani – Chairman of Emblaze said: “Mobile email and PIM are mainly the realm of a very small elite business community of executives worldwide that use expensive solutions like BlackBerry*. The mass market and middle management levels have been very much constrained to the standard desktop Email and PIM practice. Our technology breaks through this glass and our aim is to provide our Emoze push email and PIM solution to the mass market”.Emoze is a wholly owned subsidiary of Emblaze Ltd. traded in the LSE (BLZ.L).* BlackBerry is a registered name of Research in Motion Inc.

Nokia and IBM announced that they will together provide end-to-end secured business applications on advanced mobile handsets targeted at the enterprise market. IBM Global Services will act as a system integrator of Nokia’s Mobile VPN solution for Symbian OS-based mobile handsets worldwide.Nokia’s Mobile VPN solution consists of Nokia Security Service Manager (NSSM) and Nokia Mobile VPN Client for secure over-the-air provisioning of Mobile VPN client software and policies for Nokia’s Symbian OS-based mobile handsets.

IBM Global Services will offer the Nokia solution to the fast growing enterprise market, fulfilling customer needs with a service portfolio that includes installation, maintenance, financing and consulting services. Drawing on its extensive mobility expertise and leadership in the wired Internet security market, Nokia offers mobile security solutions to extend secure network infrastructure to mobile terminals. The Nokia Mobile VPN Client is a standards-based IPSec VPN client supporting both legacy and PKI authentication. NSSM is an open standard, over-the-air provisioning system for mobile security applications, such as the Nokia Mobile VPN Client and for third party applications in the future.This open architecture underpins Nokia’s ability to offer inspired, human centric and trusted technology.

The solution allows advanced mobile handset and laptop users to share the same network security infrastructure for enterprise access. This provides advanced mobile handset connections with the high level of security and systems management capabilities that the enterprise customers have, today, in their traditional IT environment.

Lebara Mobile launched its UK service and provided details of the best-of-breed organisations it is partnering with, including Vodafone UK, Phones 4u, Data Select, Alphyra, Epay and PayPoint, to provide low-cost Pay As You Go international calls from mobiles in the UK from as little as 4p per minute, using a SIM-based service.

Focusing on ethnic communities based in the UK, Lebara Mobile Pay-As-You-Go SIM cards, top-ups and handset bundles are now available giving UK customers the ability to make low-cost international phone calls directly from their mobiles. Compatible with all standard UK GSM handsets, customers can take advantage of low-cost local, national and international calls from their mobiles in the UK.Lebara Mobile now provides low-cost SIM-based mobile services in seven European countries: the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

In 2006, Lebara was named as the fourth-fastest growing private company in the UK by The Sunday Times in its Fast Trak 100 listing, 2006′.UK mobile network operator Vodafone UK will provide the network infrastructure for Lebara Mobile customers to make calls in the UK. For global reach, calls are passed to the Lebara Mobile international switched network, and routed seamlessly to their destination.

Vodafone UK notched up its second MVNO contract in as many weeks on Wednesday, announcing the launch of Lebara Mobile, which is targeting the UK’s 1.5 million strong migrant worker community.The SIM-only prepay service will be provided to customers under the Lebara brand and will be made available through outlets targeted specifically at the migrant community.

Customers will be supported by own language customer service before and after the purchase.Tim Stone, director of new business development and wholesale at Vodafone UK, said: “In March we set out the Vodafone UK strategy to drive revenue growth and, as part of this, our ambitions to grow our wholesale market share.”Stone reckons that the migrant market in the UK could be worth up to £500m.

Lebara already has operations in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Norway.But until Lebara unveils its pricing structure later on Wednesday, it remains to be seen how the offer competes with Vodafone’s own migrant targeted tariffs. From September, Vodafone UK Pay As You Talk customers were able to make calls to friends and families in 16 countries for just 5p per minute.

Prepay customers are able to make the 5p per minute calls from the UK to landlines in China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Lithuania, Latvia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Thailand and Turkey. Calls made to mobiles in these same countries cost 15p per minute.At the time, Vodafone said there were an estimated 5 to 7 million people from international communities living in the UK.

Web browser developer Mozilla, creator of Firefox, has revealed plans to bring its own offering to the mobile table. To date, Mozilla’s foray into the mobile space has been through fairly niche channels. A Mozilla-based browser is already available for the the Nokia N800 and Firefox is a key part of Ubuntu Mobile, part of the Intel Internet Project. Most recently, chip manufacturer ARM has put serious effort towards Firefox on mobile devices.”A large portion of the world accesses the internet from mobile devices, and this will become increasingly true over time,” said Mike Schroepfer, VP of engineering at Mozilla. “Each Firefox install is an individual choice by a person to download something that didn’t ship by default on their computer.

Why not offer that option for mobile devices?”Mozilla reckons the desktop and mobile browsing experiences can be bridged to build a better experience for both. “Wouldn’t it be great if your bookmarks, history, extensions, etc. from Firefox on your computer just worked on your phone?” said Schroepfer. As a result, Mozilla will expand its small team of full time mobile contributors to focus on the technology. The company recently hired Christian Sejersen, the former head of browsers at mobile software firm Openwave, to head up the engineering department.

Mobile broadband subscribers will overtake fixed broadband users in 2011, according to new research from industry analysts. In June, there were already more than 200 commercial mobile broadband networks worldwide with more than 50 million subscribers using hundreds of different devices.

But figures from telecoms.com parent, Informa Telecoms & Media, predict that rapid adoption of mobile broadband will lead it to dominant the connectivity market within four years, when services based on HSPA, EV-DO, WiMAX and other systems will have more subscribers than services based on DSL, cable and FTTH. Overall there will be more than 1 billion broadband subscribers worldwide in 2011, with the majority using mobile rather than fixed systems. “Mobile broadband is already a significant market but will explode in the next five years as networks, devices and services mature and spark mass market adoption,” said Mike Roberts, principal analyst at Informa and author of the report ‘Future Mobile Broadband: Revenue Opportunities for HSPA to LTE, EV-DO to UMB & WiMAX’.Informa’s subscriber and device forecasts in the report predict that HSPA will be the leading mobile broadband system in 2012 by number of subscribers, followed by EV-DO and Mobile WiMAX. EV-DO will have the most subscribers at end-2007 but will be overtaken by HSDPA in 2009. TD-SCDMA will also become a significant force in the mobile broadband market with close to 50 million subscribers in China by 2012.”Mobile WiMAX will be the leading next generation system based on OFDMA and MIMO in 2012 given its two year head start in the market, but LTE will overtake it in the long run due to the huge installed base of WCDMA/HSPA operators that plan to deploy LTE,” Roberts said.

UK mobile operator O2 confirmed the details of its forthcoming fixed line broadband package on Thursday, citing a launch date of October 15. O2 intends to target the large proportion of UK consumers that are dissatisfied with their existing broadband service. One of the main complaints UK broadband subs have is lower than advertised speeds. “O2 Broadband comes with the simple promise to make broadband better, by addressing the frustrations that have created dissatisfaction and creating an overall service quality that sets a new standard in the market,” the company said.

As revealed by telecoms.com on Wednesday, three discounted price plans will be available for O2 Pay Monthly customers starting with the Standard package at £7.50 per month for up for 8Mbps; the Premium package at £10 per month for up to 16Mbps; and the Ultimate package at £15 per month for speeds of up to 20Mbps. All package included ‘unlimited usage’ but a fair usage policy applies.O2 prepay users and non-O2 customers will pay an additional £10 per month on each of the available packages.

Along with a plug and play wireless router, O2 is dipping its toe in to the convergence pool by allowing emails sent to your O2 account to be forwarded to your phone and address book synchronisation between the PC and mobile. Subscribers also get 100 free texts a month, which can be sent from a PC.