After a disappointing 2004 mobile businesses may have been hoping for a better 2005: they didn't get it.
At the start of the year 3G subscribers were growing slowly, the devices had limited applications and consumers still weren't staying on their phones long enough to justify the enormous cost of the licences. In the background regulators were rumbling about prices and competition rules.
In the wider sphere 3G still hadn't found its killer app and the industry was searching high and low for one. Hardware sales were strong, and a growing percentage of sales were in alternative mobile devices.
But the growing power of mobile phones had attracted the first serious virus writers and mobile spammers.
There was a mixed bag of outcomes on all of these fronts, overall more positive than negative. But the elephant in the living room was the growing threat to mobile operators from Wi-Fi.
Hardware sales of mobile devices have continued to grow strongly in 2005 and there are now more mobiles than people in the UK. Undeterred by the odd health warning people continued to buy and replace mobile hardware, keeping sales buoyant if inefficient.
Nokia continued to dominate, with smartphones and mobile devices proving most popular. Cameraphones are also increasingly commonplace and proved useful in the wake of the 7 July bombings.
This growth wasn't just limited to the pure mobile phone. While sales of unconnected PDAs stuttered, mobile devices like RIM's BlackBerry proved almost too popular, although increased competition and legal problems have caused real harm to the Canadian company.
Over the year the industry began rolling out a huge variety of new applications to get us using all these mobile devices more often. The British obliged, slowly. One of the biggest pushes by manufacturers has been for mobile video and TV.
Microsoft and Tivo kicked off the year's announcements in this sphere with a new partnership for mobile video, and a cellular TV network wasn't far behind. There have been some innovative applications that proved locally popular and advertisers, television companies and record companies took to the medium like ducks to water.
William Gibson's idea that "the street finds its own uses for technology" proved true as mobile video was put to uses not envisaged by its operators, and a few that it won't admit to. Mobile video was behind jailings, tracking and a manhunt this year.
Despite all this effort results for mobile video and TV have been mixed. Some analysts think that mobile viewing won't kick off until 2007 at the earliest, due to poor network capacity, difficulties with billing, consumer uncertainty and a looming standards war. Phone manufacturers are undeterred, however.
Mobile music is another of the year's biggest movers and here the picture is more encouraging. Some in the music business are hailing mobile music as their industry's saviour.
The industry held its breath over the September launch of the much-touted iTunes phone from Apple. The hype proved more attractive than the product, however, which was limited to 100 songs so as not to compete with iPods, according to some, and the industry said no thanks. Meanwhile other hardware manufacturers are getting into the music game.
Courtesy - Iain Thomson, vnunet.com
At the start of the year 3G subscribers were growing slowly, the devices had limited applications and consumers still weren't staying on their phones long enough to justify the enormous cost of the licences. In the background regulators were rumbling about prices and competition rules.
In the wider sphere 3G still hadn't found its killer app and the industry was searching high and low for one. Hardware sales were strong, and a growing percentage of sales were in alternative mobile devices.
But the growing power of mobile phones had attracted the first serious virus writers and mobile spammers.
There was a mixed bag of outcomes on all of these fronts, overall more positive than negative. But the elephant in the living room was the growing threat to mobile operators from Wi-Fi.
Hardware sales of mobile devices have continued to grow strongly in 2005 and there are now more mobiles than people in the UK. Undeterred by the odd health warning people continued to buy and replace mobile hardware, keeping sales buoyant if inefficient.
Nokia continued to dominate, with smartphones and mobile devices proving most popular. Cameraphones are also increasingly commonplace and proved useful in the wake of the 7 July bombings.
This growth wasn't just limited to the pure mobile phone. While sales of unconnected PDAs stuttered, mobile devices like RIM's BlackBerry proved almost too popular, although increased competition and legal problems have caused real harm to the Canadian company.
Over the year the industry began rolling out a huge variety of new applications to get us using all these mobile devices more often. The British obliged, slowly. One of the biggest pushes by manufacturers has been for mobile video and TV.
Microsoft and Tivo kicked off the year's announcements in this sphere with a new partnership for mobile video, and a cellular TV network wasn't far behind. There have been some innovative applications that proved locally popular and advertisers, television companies and record companies took to the medium like ducks to water.
William Gibson's idea that "the street finds its own uses for technology" proved true as mobile video was put to uses not envisaged by its operators, and a few that it won't admit to. Mobile video was behind jailings, tracking and a manhunt this year.
Despite all this effort results for mobile video and TV have been mixed. Some analysts think that mobile viewing won't kick off until 2007 at the earliest, due to poor network capacity, difficulties with billing, consumer uncertainty and a looming standards war. Phone manufacturers are undeterred, however.
Mobile music is another of the year's biggest movers and here the picture is more encouraging. Some in the music business are hailing mobile music as their industry's saviour.
The industry held its breath over the September launch of the much-touted iTunes phone from Apple. The hype proved more attractive than the product, however, which was limited to 100 songs so as not to compete with iPods, according to some, and the industry said no thanks. Meanwhile other hardware manufacturers are getting into the music game.
Courtesy - Iain Thomson, vnunet.com