Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Fed up with the multitude of different data, headset and charging connectors for mobile phones? Take heart: there are moves towards standardisation on a USB connection.
A new standard has been ratified and promoted by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) with support from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) which according to OMTP, "represents a significant step towards standardising common cable connectors resulting in obvious consumer and environmental benefits."
According to OMTP, Nokia played a pivotal role in pursuing the agreement. Markku Verkama, director of portfolio planning at Nokia Technology Platforms said: "The USB-IF was first to recognise a clear market need for a universal data and charging mechanism for devices.
The OMTP recommends that the micro USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard is used across mobile devices. "USB is the de facto standard for the PC industry and it is a technology understood by consumers. Reaching mobile industry agreement on USB will help streamline the whole value chain and provide end users with a larger choice of the most popular peripherals. The customer will also be able to use their legacy home entertainment and PC equipment, as well as creating a new market opportunity for peripheral vendors."
OMTP (www.omtp.org) is an operator-sponsored forum established in mid 2004 to define common requirements across operators. It claims to "serve the needs of each and every link in the mobile phone value chain by gathering and driving mobile terminal requirements." There are currently nine full members: Cingular Wireless, Hutchison 3G, Orange, SK Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, T-Mobile and Vodafone. OMTP also has the support of four sponsors: AOL, Ericsson, Nokia, and SanDisk and a total of 39 participants from all parts of the industry; including application software, hardware and the OS space..
OMTP claims that, in the UK alone, with consumers changing their handset on average twice a year, through contract upgrades or personal choice, there are literally hundreds of millions of chargers and data cables in circulation and, on top of that, a huge number of different peripherals such as headsets for voice calls, car kits, data cables, etc. "This fragmentation creates unnecessary cost for the whole value chain, creates clutter and limits the freedom of selection for end user, and restricts competition by creating barriers of market entry."
David Bass
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