Dawn of 4G WiMAX and the 5 Giants

Nokia joins Intel, Samsung and Motorola in creating advance infrastructure for 4G WiMAX. It also announced it signed a pact with Sprint Nextel to be the key infrastructure and consumer electronic device provider. Full story at Nokia Press Release.

With barely a year after Globe and Smart started offering 3G access in the Philippines, what will the dawn of 4G WiMAX bring to the local mobile industry. Obviously the telcos haven't recovered yet from their initial investments thus its most probable we will be again one of the last country to enjoy 4G experience while its ironic more and more countries look up to the Philippines as the number one innovator in value added mobile services.

But there is one player in the telco industry that might pull 4G first, introducing CURE, the 4th telco in the Philippines. I got acquainted CURE last August 2004 when they scouted for local VAS providers, CURE is very young as pointed by its President Eric Recto during an interview by PhilippineBusiness. However, unknown to many there is a 5th telco preparing its entry into the local mobile industry but its unlikely it's head will surface on the first half of this year (2007). I know the details on the 5th telco, compared to the 4 telcos, it won't be a GSM/WCDMA network and like CURE is in better position to enter Mobile 2.0 -- there are a lot of things where I must keep my mouth shut so that's all you'll get about it :P

What ever happens, its the consumer who will eventually be the winner having to choose between 5 Giants depending on their lifestyle and it means a brighter future for Philippine's mobile industry.

YouTube Stream beta launch

YouTube has launched Streams. Its a mash-up between watch playlist and chat, a noticeable feature is the ability to queue videos so they load up in the background as the current video still plays. It also allows other users to add videos on the list and shows on the chat the current video they are watching. Im not sure when they had this feature activated since there's still a few streams on the list which includes the greatest videos, comedians, nude videos and more.



See also YouTube help on Streams

Books on your mobile phones!

According to Textually, Japan has stepped up to be the first country to widely distribute novels via mobile phones written by mobile novelist (I'll call them mobelist). "The first mobile phone novel was written six years ago by fiction writer Yoshi, but the trend picked up in the last couple years when high-school girls with no previous publishing experience started posting stories they wrote on community portals for others to download and read on their cell phones". You can follow the rest of the story via Wired.

After reading this story I suddenly remembered the same thing posted about a year ago by Orlando Andico when he presented an idea of selling cheap novels via MMS (mms file). But just like my first mentor on business and marketing used to say: "Whenever you have a big new idea, you are alone, 10 other people in the world has the same idea.. It's a matter of who has the guts to do it". I guess the Japanese mobelists just beats us on that.