INTERVIEW. Intivation has declared 2009 a breakthrough year and the solar power mobile phone technology giant is not about to rest on its laurels.

Paul Naastepad, chief executive officer of Intivation, says GSM Association award the Netherlands based company won early this year is clear testimony that they are moving in the right direction in technology advancement.

IDC forecasts that global mobile phone shipments will fall 2.2 per cent next year, the first decline since 2001.
However, the researchers expect smartphone sales to outperform the market next year, growing an estimated 8.9 per cent.

Motorola has sued a former executive for allegedly violating a non-compete agreement and threatening to reveal its trade secrets by taking a job with Apple’s iPhone division, the mobile phone maker said in a lawsuit.
Michael Fenger accepted “millions of dollars in cash, restricted stock units, and stock options” in exchange for agreeing not to join a competitor for two years after leaving Motorola, where he oversaw mobile devices in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the lawsuit said.

The world’s fifth-placed handset maker is to shed 2,000 jobs as the company reports a Q2 operating loss of US$3.17 million.
Sony Ericsson a drop in net income from US$347.6million a year ago to US$9.48 million, while sales slumped 9.4 per cent to US$4.4 billion.
The joint venture between Sony and Ericsson AB also forecast further bad news in the third quarter.

Some impressive mobile phone product launches between now and the year-end will help the world’s mobile handset markets finish 2008 with strong sales, according to ABI Research.
Spurred on by the launch of Apple’s second-generation iPhone, rival handset vendors such as RIM, Nokia and Samsung are also expected to debut new models in the second half of 2008.

The function-packed Apple iPhone 3G may about to be released to the world but many consumers say they just want a mobile that’s a phone
Clint Wheelock, vice president and chief research officer for ABI Research, said: “It’s still a voice-centric world. Consumers across all mature markets still choose their mobile operator based on ‘the basics’: price, friends/family on the same network, and network coverage.”
A report from ABI Research shows that cameras, Bluetooth, and music top consumers’ lists as “must have” features on mobile phones.

There were 592 million slotted phones shipped worldwide in 2007, representing 53 per cent of all mobile phone shipments, according to a survey by Strategy Analytics.
It reports that, with nearly 57 per cent of slotted phone shipments in 2007, the microSD (including microSDHC) slot format is now more popular than the MMC format.
The microSD format is expected to hit peak penetration of 86 per cent in 2011, after which it will face competition from other, new, high capacity systems, such as the Universal Flash Storage (UFS).
Steve Entwistle, vice president of the Strategic Technologies within Strategy Analytics, said penetration of slotted phones was already over 85 per cent in many developed countries.

The value of payments made using mobile phones for everything from music, tickets and games to gifts will increase five-fold over the next five years.
This is one of the forecasts made by Juniper Research in a region by region analysis which explores how the mobile phone is developing into a payment tool that will be used by more and more people, more and more often in future.
Not surprisingly, the report concludes that there is a significant opportunity for mobile payment services, systems, software and supporting services to underpin the processing of the spiralling value of payment transactions by 2013.
Howard Wilcox , the report’s author, noted that retailers need to move quickly to exploit the opportunity presented, and ensure that they maintain ease of use for their customers who are already familiar with web shopping from their PCs.

The mobile phone distributor, Brightpoint, is to take cost-cutting measures across its global operations over fears of a slowdown in handset sales.
The company said it now expects the global handset market to reach 1.25-1.30 billion units this year, down from a previous estimate of 1.25-1.35 billion.
Second-quarter sell-in units are expected to be “flat to slightly up” compared to the first three months of the year.
This contrasts with a previous forecast for 3-5 per cent growth by the distributor.
The cost-cutting will come mainly in Europe, at the former Dangaard operations.
Brightpoint is cutting 50-75 jobs at its European head office in Denmark, and eliminating another 225-250 positions across its other European operations.
This is expected to result in annual cost savings of US$25-30 million.

Almost a quarter of European households have given up fixed landlines for mobile phones and online calling, according to a European Union survey.
The poll, carried out in November and December, found that 24 per cent of European households now eschew fixed landlines in favour of mobile phones, up from 22 per cent in a survey two years earlier.
The Czech Republic, Finland and Lithuania had the lowest number of landlines in use across the 27-nation bloc.
The results chime with the growing interest in the use of mobile VoIP services – either via GSM/GPRS wireless standards or through WiFi – and the widespread installation of internet calling software on smartphones.