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The Register: Mobile calls are replacing fixed-line usage across Europe, according to a new report from Analysys, but people aren’t talking more, they’re just using fixed-lines less.

The change has been most stark in Finland, where 2006 saw another 10 per cent of calls migrate onto mobile networks; bringing the total to 74.6 per cent at the end of the year.

Even in Germany, where fixed-lines still dominate, 24.3 per cent of calls originate on a mobile handset: a rise of 6% during 2006, which increased voice use of mobiles by 23%.

The report comes from Analysys, consultants to the telecommunications and IT industries, and is entitled “The Acceleration of Fixed-Mobile Substitution in Western Europe: facts and figures”.

Analysys paint a picture of an exponential rise in the use of mobile phones country by country, as users in each become more comfortable with using their mobiles, and operators get more innovative with their pricing.

But despite this the authors don’t believe that users are making more calls, simply that they are moving away from using their fixed-lines and towards relying on their handsets.

True convergence should make the difference academic in the near future, but companies solely involved in fixed-telephony provision might like to see the writing on the wall

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Camera Core: ASUS prepares the launch of a spectacular “Candy Bar” type phone, that will feature dedicated GPS and a full strength HSDPA, this will add some really impressive speeds, possibly even up to or around the 3.6 M bps while downloading to the phone.

The processor will be a massive ARM 520 Mhz, with 128 MB of RAM and of course no mobile phone will be complete without Windows Mobile 6, this will offer high speed wireless connections, which is exactly what you would expect.

There was an earlier model, which features two Mp cameras, but as that was the older phone, so they just would not do at all, therefore it is expected that this phone will be fitted with a 3.2 MP camera and a simple small font camera.

Also included is an FM radio, you never know when you will need it.

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The Register: Oki has been eyeballing the mobile phone market and witnessed an opportunity for increased security. As a result, it has developed an iris recognition software that may help ensure undesirables are prevented access from our most cherished communications devices.

Although technical details are still somewhat scarce, the Japanese electronics firm’s software prototype is based on its belief that because most mobiles now have built-in cameras, why not harness them to clamp down security on our most beloved communications devices even further. Oki also believes the software could prove useful for PDAs.

Oki’s software package is based on an iris recognition algorithm that it claims fits around your mobile’s camera, without it using up great swathes of your phone’s processing capacity. The software itself requires around 200KB of your phone’s memory, with around a further 200KB memory when in operation.

The software does require a mobile with a camera ability of at least 1-megapixel, and takes around 0.5s to authenticate an iris, but Oki claims faster checks would be possible with a beefier CPU.

The software is compatible with Windows Mobile 2003, XP and Symbian operating systems, the latter of which is commonplace on Nokia handsets including the N70. However, Oki claims it that future compatibility with Linux and Brew may be possible.

Oki expects to begin shipping the software later this month, though availability and pricing is yet to be announced.

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Esato: Young single women who have mobile phones, assign to their mobile devices an important role in relationships and dating, organizing their lives, and in fashion, according to a recent study commissioned by Samsung Telecommunications America.“The cell phone is an integral part of the single females life, serving as a pocket-size detective, matchmaker, wing-woman and beyond. It is now officially a girl’s best friend,” said Randy Smith, VP of channel marketing for Samsung.

Among the survey findings:

• More than two-thirds of women (73%) of women have ditched traditional, paper address books for their cell phones to keep track of contacts.
• The average number of cell phone contacts is 63.
• Almost one-third of respondents said they can tell a good amount about a person by the type of cell phone they have (32%).
• Some 12% of females surveyed said that they would be less likely to date someone if they had a big and bulky cell phone.
• Nearly three-quarters of females surveyed look at their cell phone, rather than their watch, to get the time (74%).

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ZDNet: By the end of July, global mobile phone use will for the first time pass the 3 billion mark, equivalent to half the world’s population, as cell phone demand booms in China, India and Africa, a survey said on Wednesday.

From African farmers to Chinese factory workers, mobile operators will have notched up more than 3.25 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide by the end of the year, according to a report by U.K.-based telecommunications-analysis company The Mobile World.

More than 1,000 new customers are effectively signing up for mobile phones every minute around the world, the survey showed.

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NetworkWorld:  Companies like TomTom, Garmin and Magellan may face future trouble from newer navigation applications on mobile smart phones.Research firm In-Stat thinks so. “Mobile phone operators now have the ability to market a downloadable navigation application that is just as good as, if not better, than personal navigation devices,” In-Stat says in a new report.

Handset-based mapping and navigation apps could “cause a major change” in the navigation market, the firm adds.

Why?

1) People already own their cell phone, and many have GPS capabilities built in because of mandates to support E-911 services. If they want to try a navigation system, they don’t have to buy an additional device.

2) Customers who don’t want to use their navigation application all the time can pay for just a 24-hour version, giving them the directions they need for one-time trips. Unless we drive to unknown locations for a living, most of us know how to get where we’re going. It’s the occasional unknown destination that makes us sometimes yearn for driving directions.

In-Stat predicts that by 2012 there will be 42 million mapping and navigation mobile phone subscribers.

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Cellular-news: Exposure to mobile phone emissions does not cause headaches finds a Norwegian study. The study concludes that people who experience such symptoms do so because they expect that they will occur.

The scientists recruited 17 subjects who “regularly experienced pain or discomfort in the head during or shortly after mobile phone calls lasting between 15 and 30 minutes.” The participants were subjected to multiple sessions with and without actual mobile phone emissions occurring – without knowing which session was which. Each session lasted 30 minutes, and 65 pairs of trials were conducted.

The medical journal Cephalalgia reports that the subjects said they felt an increase in pain or discomfort during 68 percent of all trials, even though only 50% of the tests would have had actual phone radiation being emitted. The team concludes that the most likely explanation for the headaches and discomfort reported by the subjects “is that the symptoms are due to negative expectations.”

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DigiTimes:  There were 461.08 million subscribers of mobile communication services in China as of the end December; an increase of 17.20% for the whole of 2006 by 67.68 million subscribers, according to statistics from China’s Ministry of Information Industry.

The number of mobile subscribers in China at the end of December grew by 6.05 million from a month earlier. Also at the end of December, there were there 367.81 million subscribers of fixed telecommunication networks in China.

Last month, mobile phone subscribers in China sent 40.55 billion short messages, averaging 2.86 short messages per phone number a day.

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