Blackberry has launched its first tri-band – 850/1900/2100MHz – HSDPA 3G handset, understatedly called ‘Bold’.

The phone’s manufacturer RIM states tht the quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge Bold – otherwise known as Blackberry 9000 – is built from “premium materials”, both inside and out.

The handset is finished in an almost leathery material and inside the Bold has an integrated GPS and 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi.

The Bold sports a slot for up to a 16GB SD/SDHC memory card to support the 9000’s 1GB on-board storage, which will be great for all those emails – which Blackberry boasts can be sent and received during a phone call. There is also Bluetooth 2.0 built in to the handset.

The BlackBerry Bold uses smartphone’s 624-MHz processor. So you can multitask and prioritize with access to your voice and data services at the same time. With built-in GPS capabilities, and BlackBerry Maps, you get turn-by-turn directions, so you can pinpoint where you are at any time.

The Bold also houses a two Megapixel camera with a 5x digital zoom. Images are displayed on the handset’s 320 x 480 display.

There is a media player for all your music, images and video to be played with audio backing – which can be played out the device’s dual speakers. There is a range of pre-set music modes, including Hip Hop and Jazz.

RIM’s Blackberry Bold handset will be available globally this summer, but a specific UK release or price hasn’t been pushed out yet.

Apple’s iPhone is likely to see new third-party applications soon.

Over 100,000 developers have downloaded the free software development kit (SDK) Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) unveiled last week.

Several big name software firms issued statements supporting the SDK, which is currently available as a beta or test form. The complete version, which will include the launch of online Apps store (the only Apple-authorised distribution method for iPhone software), isn’t out till June.

Business software makers Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) and NetSuite (NYSE: N) along with blogging tools provider Six Apart, said they planned to develop for the iPhone using the SDK. Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) and Epocrates (a maker of decision support tools on mobile devices for healthcare) announced their support at last week’s event.

Games companies also said to day said they are developing for the iPhone. These include; THQ Wireless, Rocket Mobile, PopCap, Electronic Arts and Sega.

The new developer announcements also follow last week’s news that high profile Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has launched a $100 million “iFund” dedicated to funding iPhone-related software and services.

Rick Jensen, senior vice president of Intuit’s small business group said, “The iPhone SDK gives us the tools we need to create powerful iPhone applications and is an important part of our overall mobile strategy.

“We’re excited that the iPhone expands the ways our customers can solve key financial tasks wherever they might be.”

Other developers have similar optimism that the iPhone will allow professionals to get more done on the go.

“NetSuite is excited at the opportunity to give every iPhone customer access to their critical business data anytime, anywhere,” said Luke Braud, vice president of software development at NetSuite.

Chris Alden, CEO of Six Apart, said his company is using the SDK to build on the iPhone-optimized blog service it already offers. “We’re taking it to the next level with our native iPhone application for TypePad that’s already in development,” he said.

Best Buy Co. Inc. is looking to step up its European mobile phone business with a $2.14 billion investment.

The American retail giant is in the process of acquiring a 50 percent stake in The Carphone Warehouse Group plc’s mobile retail operations, creating a joint project that will help launch the Best Buy brand across the Atlantic. The new company will operate 2,400 stores in nine European countries under both companies’ brands in addition to Carphone Warehouse’s mobile virtual network operator service in every country except France.

Both companies have said they hope to expand Carphone Warehouse’s existing European footprint and will be rolling out new stores under the Best Buy name by the start of next year. The UK based retailer will maintain its fixed-line telecom business.

The deal will help solidify an 18 month relationship between the two companies that seeks to join Carphone Warehouse’s strength as a high street retailer and Best Buy’s sourcing and distribution expertise. This relationship signals Best Buy’s desire to expand beyond mobile phones and in to the broader world of consumer electronics.

Carphone Warehouse’s CEO Charles Dunstone said, “we have been working closely with Best Buy for nearly two years and it is clear that we have very complementary culture, skills and assets — it’s a perfect match. … Best Buy brings demonstrable expertise in merchandising, sourcing and customer service: that should help us accelerate the evolution of our business towards the broader connectivity market. We bring local knowledge, infrastructure and the expertise in linking services to product: that should help them push into larger-format consumer electronics retailing in Europe.”

The deal should be completed, on approval of Carphone Warehouse’s shareholders, by August 30th.

The long-rumored national mobile WiMAX partnership between Sprint and Clearwire is now official, both companies have announced.

The new company will be called Clearwire, of which Sprint will own 51 percent. Intel, Comcast, Google, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks combined are investing $3.2 billion based on a $20 estimated per-share price when Clearwire opens on the NASDAQ when the deal reaches completion later this year.

Dan Hesse, Sprint’s president and CEO said in a statement: “We’ve made an excellent start developing XOHM WiMAX services. Contributing those advances to a strongly backed new company – in which we’ll hold the largest interest – provides Sprint with additional financial flexibility and allows Sprint management to leverage and focus on our core business.”

“Additionally, the agreements allowing the new company and our cable company investors to bundle and resell Sprint’s 3G wireless services strengthen the distribution of our current services while reducing the complexity and enhancing Sprint’s cable relationships,” he added.

Clearwire CEO Benjamin Wolff also commented: “Given the complexity of this transaction, we have taken the time and effort to do it right, by thoughtfully leveraging the resources and opportunities that we and our investors are bringing to the table.”

Clearwire plans to reach around 130 million people in the United States by the end of 2010. The company will use Sprint’s towers, fiber network and IT support.

Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Clearwire will become wholesale resellers of sprints 3G wireless voice and data services with Google handling the web service side of the business and be the official search partner for Sprints mobile services. Intel will work with component suppliers to embed WiMAX chips in to the Centrino 2-based devices such as laptops and other Internet appliances.

Wolff becomes CEO of the new Clearwire, with Sprint’s Chief Technology Officer Barry West serving as president.

More than 10,000 people have registered for Livecontacts, a free friend finder service that launched on April 15th. Livecontacts is offered by Findwhere who are the global leader in precision tracking technology. Other companies on the market charge around $2.99 a month for similar software but Findwhere firmly believe that the service should be free.

Jaap Groot, CEO of Findwhere comments: “The proof is in the numbers. People really care about this type of solution, and they don’t want to pay for it…
We look forward to continuing to serve them through our free buddy finder and services that provide security and peace of mind.”

With the Livecontacts application, individuals use their mobile phones to make their current location known to their trusted contacts and can then track their friends who are also using the service. The location of the user is found by GPS and can be switched on or off as required.

Over the coming months, Findwhere will integrate its free location data with a large range of social applications.

Frank Gruber, a well known technology analyst noted, “Livecontacts is taking the same approach that Craigslist took to democratize the online classified advertising space by offering users what is traditionally a paid geographic data service for free.”

Livecontacts works on any mobile network operator in the world. Findwhere plans to extend Livecontacts to iPhone in the coming months. Further more, Livecontact users will soon be able to upgrade to findanywhere’s new peace of mind service’s for the mobile phone, including speed reporting for teen drivers, location tracking for elderly parents and even a panic button to alert desired recipients in emergency situations.

A good feature of Livecontacts is that it is device and network agnostic, so users don’t have to be on the same network o share their location. The buddy finder can tell between domestic and international roaming therefore reducing data charges. Frequency settings determine how often a Livecontact’s user’s location is transmitted and this optimizes battery life through smart power management.

Wireless broadband provider The Cloud is taking wi-fi access technology from Devicescape to make it easy for customers to connect to the network’s 10, 500 hotspots around the UK.

The software client Mycloud will provide seamless logon to home, office, public and free networks, the company claims.

The Cloud’s business director, Owen Geddes said the company hopes to use the software to “become an umbrella for all your Wi-Fi across Europe”. He added, “It will understand how you use Wi-Fi, where you go to use it and what you use it for, so we can offer appropriate content”.

Using Mycloud is very simple. You tell the service which service you have to access and whatever passwords and encryption keys are needed. The Devicescape technology scans for SSID’s – network identifiers – that it recognises from your list, including your service providers roaming partners.

DNS protocol is used rather than the traditional login and pulls your credentials from a central store and does the legwork by the logging on to the wireless LAN for you. This ensures that your login details are no longer stored on the mobile device and removes the need for manual logins.

Devicescape’s CEO Dave Fraser pointed out that users can choose to accept or reject connecting to open hotspots.

Mycloud will be offered to Windows XP and Vista only but Devicescape has developed its own client for Mac and some mobile phones. This is great news for phone users as phone browsers often have difficulty logging on to hotspot pages.

The technology will allow network operators to shift data traffic off their cellular networks onto Wi-Fi where possible, Geddes added. He said that The Cloud already had a deal with O2 to provide iTunes connectivity for the iPhone, for instance, and that he didn’t see this changing even with 3G and HSDPA.

“Wi-Fi is faster than 3G”, he said. “Also, 80 percent of data transactions are inside buildings, and 3G’s in-building penetration is not great.

We have wireless routers, we have mobile phone systems which mirror the modern office of today and we have access to networks and data 24 hours a day 7 days a week, from almost any place on earth. But are you making the most of it?

Small businesses seem to be in a prime position to grasp the wireless revolution, cut costs and increase productivity, but has it really hit home yet?

While there are many small businesses making full use of the internet, fewer of these businesses seem to be making full use of the mobile office which is available to them, whether you are in the airport, overseas or just lounging around at home. There will obviously be times when you need a break, but if you run your own small business you will need to know when orders come in, when your site is down and other elements which can and should give you the best chance of being successful.

Those successful small businesses which you hear about in the newspapers, in the trade magazines and on the TV are the ones which embrace new technology (so long as it benefits their business and business ethic). The chance to improve efficiency should never be under estimated and while there are only so many things you can physically do in one day, sometimes just to be able to check up and monitor what is happening with you business can mean the difference between success and failure.

The wireless revolution is here to stay and after the recent sale of further bandwidth in the US we can expect bigger and better services to hit the market in the short, medium and longer term. How the business sector react and use these new services will become ever more vital. Respect and embrace new technology but never fear it!

They may be the best known of the US carriers, but AT&T have been fairly slow to market with some of the earlier technologies used by their competitors, but not now. AT&T have announced the launch of their mobile TV service which is set to hit the wireless airwaves this Sunday – in a blaze of glory if all of the hype is to be believed!

Using specially manufactured handset, customers will be able to catch a whole array of their favourite programs on their phones, on the move. AT&T have teamed up with Media FLO USA to launch the service which will include input from partners such as CBS Mobile, ESPN Mobile, CNN Mobile Live and the Comedy Central to name but a few.

Initially it will cost $15 a month for 10 channels although the price of the handsets, at between $199 and $299, may well restrict the initial take-up in the market place. It should be safe to assume that once the takeup picks up, and AT&T find other more subtle income streams connected with the service, the handset price should fall quite dramatically.

While Mobile TV is not a new concept and has been brought to the market in other areas around the world, it is the fact that this is live TV which seems to set it out from the rest. The chance to catch the latest news or your favourite program while on the move will catch the eye of many mobile phone users.

AT&T seem to be making up for some of the problems they have had in the past and the often pedestrian pace which they have embraced some of the more risky forms of technology. Are we entering a new era for AT&T? Are we entering a new era for live TV on your mobile?

It looks like we could have the answers very soon……

While the whole world seems to have been primed for the launch of Apple’s new iPhone in June, it seems that the new product may be a lot bigger and a lot better than everyone has been led to believe. Rumours believed to have come from within the Apple camp are suggesting we will soon see a 3G version of the popular handset and an attempt by Apple to tie down some of the biggest players in the technology industry to the phone. So what is happening?

Though it has been common knowledge that Apple are looking to strengthen their position in the wireless market, and take the iPhone even higher up the technology ladder, what may happen looks likely to beat any possible expectations people might have held.

The word on the street is that they have already lined up an impressive team which includes :-

Cisco

If the rumours are correct, Cisco is set to introduce a new piece of software to the iPhone which will allow you to “flick” documents from your iPhone to your desktop. This should be worth seeing by itself!

Intel

Not sure how this is going to work yet but Intel are looking to tie motion sensors to maps. Sounds a bit space age, but interesting never the less.

Electronic Arts and Sega

If you are going for the mobile phone gaming market you may as well go with the best and they don’t come any better than Electronic Arts and Sega. New games are set to hit the market which will be controlled by “waving your phone in the air”.

All in all it seems that the next iPhone is going to raise the bar even further in what is become a very very competitive market place. Apple is becoming the Google of the mobile phone world, and nobody is anywhere near catching them!

In a blow for the mobile phone industry it has been revealed that mobile broadband speeds have actually slowed over the last few months, as oppose to the massive increase which many network providers have advertised. While the likes of Vodafone offer a service which offers broadband speeds in the region of 7Mbs, the average rate has been shown to be no higher than 2.3Mbs, with the lowest across the industry at a poor 1Mbs. So what is going on?

The mobile broadband industry in the UK is well behind its foreign counterparts with areas such as Singapore offering speeds which put the UK to shame. The problem for the UK consumer is the fact that companies such as Vodafone, and the rest in the industry who offer mobile broadband, prefer to highlight the maximum speeds available on their services. The actual average speed has been shown to be substantially less than some of the more headline grabbing promises. So is this misrepresentation?

The fact that the top speeds are available to some users in the network ensures that there are no legal problems with the figures quoted on websites and in the press. Coverage in some of the more rural areas of the UK is sparse to say the least, which is the opposite of the more urban areas where coverage is substantially better.

Those in the broadband industry are now suggesting that customers looking for mobile broadband should also consider the coverage of the network they plan to sign up with, which should give an idea of the speeds which might be available in their area. There is no doubt that mobile broadband is the future but there is still a long way to go before the service is really ready for the mass market.