Are We Close To A Global 4G Phone?

Mobile Insights is a daily newsletter from BI Intelligence delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers. Sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today.

---

Qualcomm Gets Us Closer To A Global 4G Phone (GigaOM)

Qualcomm’s new RF360 radio chip could be the answer to the problem of 4G fragmentation. It won’t produce a universal LTE phone just yet, but with 40 bands supported, it will get the industry close. The new chip can supposedly support up to 40 LTE bands, both the time division and frequency division variants of LTE and all legacy 3G and 2G technologies to boot. Qualcomm created a 3D chip that utilizes a separate sophisticated antenna tuner that can latch onto any of 40 LTE frequencies between 600 MHz and 2.7 GHz. That's pretty much the entire range of current 4G spectrum. Read >>

Tumblr's Mobile Traffic To Overtake Desktop Soon (Mashable)
Tumblr's mobile traffic will overtake its desktop traffic "either later this year or early next year ... it's accelerating." The company is "seeing 3X the growth on mobile vs. desktop," according to CEO David Karp. Last year was a pivotal one for Tumblr. The blogging network, which now has 170 million monthly visitors, for the first time began running ads last year. While Karp declined to discuss what kind of revenues Tumblr is making off of advertising, he did offer a few hints about Tumblr's direction this year. Mobile ad products, for instance, seem to be on the horizon as is a greater emphasis on search. Read >>

Spending On Mobile Games Surpasses Handheld Titles (IDC and App Annie via TechCrunch)
IDC and app tracking service App Annie are reporting that spending on mobile games finally outpaced spending on dedicated handheld titles this year (Nintendo and Sony handheld devices). App Annie reported that if you add up spending on mobile games on both iOS and Android, it now exceeds spending on handheld games.

It’s not surprising, as revenues for individual smartphone and tablet gaming businesses are now exceeding $100 million and even touching around $200 million per year now. So the question becomes, how long can Nintendo hold on? Read >>

Why Mobile App Testing Requires A New Approach (Appcelerator)
There are some fundamental differences between the testing of the business processes of applications like SAP and Oracle for enterprise (desktop) users, and today’s mobile apps. Sure, the underlying technology today is different, as is the delivery mode (now via the cloud) and the user experience, but there are more substantive ones too:

• Testing vs. quality
• Release cycles: months vs. days
• Desktop vs. mobile devices

Requirements for testing today’s mobile apps therefore need to be suited for this new world. The key requirements include:

1. Automated capture/replay (without jail-breaking)
2. Support for multiple platforms and device types
3. Integration with the development environment for rapid and continuous testing

Read >>

Multiple Phone Use is Rising in BRIC Markets (Nielsen)
How many phones does the average consumer use to stay connected? In three of the high-growth BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets, using multiple mobile devices is becoming the new norm. In India, however, the overwhelming majority (89 percent) of mobile owners still only carry one device, much like in the U.S., where only 17 percent of mobile subscribers own more than one phone.

More than half of the mobile owners in Russia (51 percent) own two or more mobile phones, and nearly half in Brazil (48 percent) use multiple phones. In fact, ownership of three or more phones is highest in Brazil at 15 percent. The use of multiple phones is also a growing trend in China, where more than one in three mobile subscribers owns multiple phones. Read >>

China Adds 13 Million New 3G Subscribers In January (Tech In Asia)
China’s big telecoms are reporting their final user numbers for January. And, as you would expect, 3G user subscriptions continue to climb across the board. In total, China gained more than 13 million new 3G subscribers. But here’s something a bit surprising: more than half of them signed up for China Mobile.

China Mobile reports that it gained 7.05 million new 3G subscribers in January, pushing its total 3G user count to nearly 95 million. China Unicom picked up 3.67 million new 3G subscribers, bringing its total 3G users above 80 million. China Telecom just barely broke the 3 million mark with its new 3G users, which puts its latest 3G user count at just above 72 million. Read >>

What Students And Parents Think About Mobile (Everyday Family via Edudemic)
As mobile technology becomes even more ingrained in our lives, what can we expect for our children? Studies show that – used wisely – mobile technology can be an important part of their everyday lives as well. Read >>