A look back at who and what made the headlines
The balance of power shifted a little in 2008, with Google, Apple and Nokia muscling in on the content space. It was an historic year for the industry. Here’s a month by month review...
January
Sony Ericsson added five million tracks to its PlayNow content offering... People were making muttering noises about Blyk, but the ad-funded MVNO revealed it had hit 30,000 subs. Not a great deal of reach, but it seemed happy enough... and Jump Games secured a licensing deal with Man Utd, adding weight to the idea of the 'rising East'.
February
A joint project was unveiled by the GSMA and UK operators to share metrics and methodologies is to make mobile a viable ad channel. The consortium suggested the end result could be a 'smart pipe' worth $250bn... Zed confirmed ... Nokia annual revenues of over $500munveiled the N96, the new daddy of the Nseries range.
March
AT&T confirmed it would launch Media FLO mobile TV in May, ending a long wait for the platform to get its second US operator outing after Verizon... Record label Sony BMG added its backing to Nokia's Comes With Music unlimited ‘free’ downloads concept... and the BBC launched its iPlayer catch-up TV service for iPhone.
April
Telcogames went into administration, much to the dismay of out-of-pocket developers. The firm blamed cashflow and an unsuccessful foray into native games... Apple revealed the iPhone generated $378m in 2007... Social network Itsmy.com celebrated its one millionth user... Nokia launched N-Gage after many months of technical delays.
May
Qualcomm made a move into mobile widgets at BREW 2008... Orange and Nokia signed a content deal that skirted the issue of Nokia-branded services... HTC presented its Touch Diamond handset to accelerate the hype around touchscreens... while Vodafone and Telecom Italia joined Telia Sonera in signing up to sell iPhone.
June
Apple unveiled its iPhone 3G to predictable bedlam. Within a month of its July 11th launch the device had sold one million units and the App Store generated 10 million downloads... Nokia acquired Symbian for £209 million and moved to turn the OS open source to consolidate its lead over Microsoft, RIM and – more importantly – Android and iPhone.
July
AdMob’s absurd growth continued – it surged past 3.5bn ads served a month... Orange announced it would aggregate Facebook, MySpace and Bebo in one big social network love-in... The EC considered action against dodgy D2C content providers... Nokia’s 5800 touchscreen handset made a cameo appearance in The Dark Knight.
August
Research says one eighth of handsets shipped in EMEA are smartphones... do they include the 100,000 Skypephones sold by 3..? Zeemote finally launched its Bluetooth gaming controller with Sony Ericsson in the Netherlands, and then confirmed its software would go in selected in Nokia handsets too... Zed bagged a €92.5m war chest from investors.
September
Sony Ericsson made a long-awaited move into unlimited music downloads, choosing Omnifone to power its PlayNow Plus service... AT&T made Yahoo its official partner to maintain the frantic instability in mobile search... T-Mobile USA revealed plans for an Apple style open app store.
October
A huge month for the market with the Android-powered G1 finally launching via T-Mobile. Great apps, ugly styling... BlackBerry and Vodafone stun everyone with the touchscreen Storm and RIM reveals plans for an app store... Nokia launches Comes With Music and previews its touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic phone.
November
3UK, having frightened the trade with the Skypephone in 2006, delivers INQ1 with Skype, IM and Facebook rolled in... further proof of the power of social networks when BlackBerry confirmed 400,000 downloads of its MySpace app... ominously Vivendi Games withdrew from mobile altogether.
December
The blogosphere squealed at the rumour that Wal-Mart might sell iPhone 4GB for $99, and at the reality that 100 million iPhone apps were sold in 45 days... MobiTV confirmed its five millionth subscriber... Nokia wowed Nokia World with its first Nseries qwerty, the N97...
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