Europe still needs a big deployment similar to Sprint Nextel and Clearwire in the US, it seems. That could well be under way since BT is planning, through WiMAX, to come back as a wireless service provider in 2008. And they have been running trials for many months with a range of vendors, some of whom have not yet been mentioned by the "smart" press. Whoever wins that deal will be in business, although WiMAX is still a buyer's market at present.

The WiMAX World Europe event in Vienna had not much that was new. Motorola, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent seem to be investing the most, at least among the big vendors, judging from the amount of people that they had at their booths. They were joined by Nokia Siemens this time. Best live demo was given by another vendor, though. SR Telecom from Canada showed how their QoS works when the network is congested. They loaded a link with a Smartbits box and ran video streaming, showing how it can influence the viewing experience for the end users. Nice demo and one that attracted the most service providers, since they felt like they were at home in their own labs. To me the best product marketing job at that show.

Motorola announced that their new mobile phone lines will be based primarily on an improved Razr2 model. It will have about 10 times the performance of its 100-million selling Razr1 model. The Razr2 will have a slimmer frame, larger screen, display on the outside and improved call quality. The new phone is to be expected later this year, but analysts are still skeptical whether it will be sufficient to revive their former success. Other phone models that they want to push and improve more are the Rokr and Moto8 models.

It is obvious that Motorola works off existing designs, trying to minimize the risk and also shorten time to market. Real design innovation can only be found in the "multimedia monster" Z8, with 30 frame-per-second mobile TV rather than 25, and its unique slider technique, which should give a more comfortable viewing experience. I doubt any media-addicted kid cares about that feature much, though...

With Motorola's annoucement of slow sales in Q3 - and now also in Q4 - some analysts are starting to wonder if this is a sign for the entire mobile handset industry that slower growth times are ahead.

Now Motorola has had one killer model in the last few years, the RAZR, which instantly made clamshell phones a success. The RAZR was such a big success that Motorola became the number 2 cellphone vendor in the world and moved even closer to the number 1 NOKIA. NOKIA itself did not really have such a big single winner phone model but instead was trying in all phone categories (music, low cost, smartphones, multimedia, clamshells) to bring many, many models on the market. Lots of losers were among the designs, I am sure, but with the big model range they were able to maintain their number one lead and still grow their overall business overall. It was a product strategy of being present in all segments while also trying to move towards new multimedia devices, hoping that mobile TV would fuel that market. SonyEricsson has been primarily trying to position itself in music phones and some smartphones. The only vendor being really innovative in the last few months with really new innovative design formats was Samsung though. They have tried out new form factors with such phones as the small volume and - when opened - v-shaped SGH X-830 or the card phone SGH-P310. Both seem right now only available in Europe and Asia. Otherwise Samsung is trying to copy both the Motorola RAZR and also some of Nokia's Nseries multimedia phones with similiar designs.

Nokia is BTW also the only vendor that is doing very heavy product marketing activities online, such as for the Nseries and also pushes mobile TV. They have created partly very good content, which goes far beyond the usual TV clips with some fancy looking crowds in "cool" environments. Overall the Nseries multimedia phones (N92, 93) are too big and heavy for my taste and would really need a killer mobile application before they become a big success. The idea that everybody is becoming a blogger who wants to instantly upload pictures or videos taken on the road or at parties is not yet becoming a reality.

What all the above also shows though is that cell phone innovation which also enjoys mainstream acceptance seems to be coming to an end, at least for some time. The big leap forward as we have seen it in the last 2 years or so does not seem to be continuing. In such a tough environment Nokia and also Samsung seem to have the right strategy. SonyEricsson would be hit very hard if indeed Apple enters the music phone market as well this year. And Motorola could go through some tough times pretty soon, having relied and milked its RAZR success for too long without using the time to build something similarly successful. One thing remains certain in the mobile phone markets. It will stay a fast moving highly competitive market, too fast for Siemens, Alcatel and a few others. But maybe next week's CES show will prove me wrong in case the vendors surprise with truly new innovative designs. They had better do so if they also want to enjoy strong growth in 2007.

According to Gartner Dataquest, the sales of mobile phones could for the first time ever reach 1 billion units in 2006. Some other trends can be summarized as follows:

• Consolidation, fewer players seem to be dominant and growing the most: Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, LG: the rest continue to lose market share
• AsiaPac grows the most with +55%, but also in Europe +9% is not a bad number for a "saturated" market, total worldwide market growth in Q3 was +22%

Strike 2 for WiMAX (after Clearwire) when Sprint Nextel announced its complementary technology (to the existing EV-DO network) choice. It will be WiMAX that is going to be deployed using Sprint's 2.5GHz licensed spectrum in the US. When there are winners, there are also loosers: HSDPA, Flash-OFDM, and IPWireless technology were trialed as well but WiMAX made the race.

Needless to say that this is a big - breakthrough - win for WiMAX technology, since Sprint covers 85% of the US territories, to reach 100 million people from 2008 on. As the WSJ reports, a nationwide network could cost between $1bn and $4bn. Interesting also that Motorola was part of the announcement so we have probably already seen their technology partner (next to Samsung and Intel). Finally Sprint talked about becoming "a conduit for media, and only this kind of network— not the current roadmap for 3G cellular —can deliver the bandwidth."

Looks to me like mobile Internet may seen the light of the day finally since at least the lack of sufficient speed with 3G can be addressed by WiMAX. Three more things remain to be resolved though to make mobile Internet a mainstream application.

Although the target seems developing countries and prepaid markets, I hope (for myself) that it will be available here too.

Mobileburn.com was able to test drive the device, here the promising report:

While its spec sheet might not seem all that impressive, the F3 demands your attention when you have it in your hands. It is amazingly thin (9mm/.35"), solid, and beautiful. The monochromatic EPD (Electrophoretic) "Clear Vision" display is retro-cool looking in that 1980's LCD watch kinda way. In fact, when in use, it looks for all the world like an Etch-a-Sketch children's toy, thanks to its black digits and powdery gray background. The display is made up of two lines for text and numbers with icons filling the top and bottom areas. The same EPD technology appears to be used for the volume and battery level indicators that sit above the display and on either side of the big Motorola "M" emblem. EPD technology is often known by other names like "e-ink" and "e-paper", among others.
The very basic menu system, accessed with the up arrow button to the left of the d-pad, makes use of simple icons and voice prompts to denote what section the user is in and what they can do there. There is no icon grid main menu, no animations, nothing to confuse even your grandmother. In fact, the large, high-contrast display and simple user interface make this the perfect phone for the very young and the very old alike. The F3 might have been designed with users in places like New Delhi in mind, but I'm quite certain that it will find a following in many other places as well.
Motorola expects the MOTOFONE F3 to sell for well under US$50 without any carrier subsidies at all. That, along with its good looks and high usability, is likely to make the MOTOFONE F3 a very popular handset, in my opinion.