Wireless

Speaking at the MEF forum at CommunicAsia Singapore on Tuesday, Amrish Kacker a partner and head of the Asia Pacific office of Analysys Mason predicted apps and app stores still had a world of growth in front of them, especially if apps began coming to mid and low range phones in future.

India’s Bharti Airtel today gave social networking a voice with the official unveiling of Airtel Blog – which it describes as a “unique voice-blogging service.”

The global trade body of mobile media, the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), sees some clear mobile trends emerging in 2010, including the increasing demand for multiplatform delivery, more data heavy services, micro-payments for content, operator enabled services and rather a lot more.

Big shows are all about emerging industry trends and CommunicAsia in Singapore this week is no exception, with a number of mobile and wireless fads and fashions on the horizon. Of all the hype, however, no trend is so great or prevalent as the mobile video phenomenon, taking Asia and the world by storm.

Starbucks to offer unlimited free Wi-Fi at 6700 US locations starting July 1st announced CEO Howard Schultz today in New York at Wired’s Business Conference “Disruptive by Design.”

Despite the well-publicized spat between Apple and Google, mobile advertising company Smaato’s monthly metrics shows that Symbian devices continue to dominate the US mobile advertising market.

Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) purchased 95% of Infotel Broadband Services Private Ltd for 48,000 crore ($1 billion) on Friday. Earlier that same day, Infotel was announced as the sole winner of a pan-India broadband wireless access (BWA) license for 12,848 crore ($3 billion).

We bring you the roundup of all the important news before the weekend begins

Japanese Nikkei Business Daily reported Friday that Fujitsu Ltd and Toshiba Corp are in the final stages of talks to merge their mobile phone businesses. The combined operation would become Japan’s second largest handset maker after Sharp Corp.

In remarks to Chicago’s Executives Club on Wednesday, CEO of Motorola’s Mobile Devices and home business division Sanjay Jha announced another monster iPhone killer to be available by Christmas.

Short on cash after the latest 3G spectrum auction in India, second place Reliance Communications is looking to shore up assets by approving the sale of a minority stake of up to 26% to investors. Unnamed sources suggest Dubai’s Emirates Telecommunications Corp (known as Etisalat) may buy the shares for $4 billion.

Telecommunications leaders from China and Taiwan met in Beijing on Wednesday and agreed to jointly standardize on Android, WiMax, and TD-LTE (Time-Division Long Term Evolution) among other accords.

Satnav software maker Telmap is a company that clearly knows which direction it’s going in. The privately held white label mapping and navigation firm has recently been undergoing a strategy shift, transforming itself from a subscription company into one offering LBS (location-based services) to operators like the Orange FT Group, Vodafone, Vodacom, SFR, O2, Telefonica, AOL, Pelephone, Carphone Warehouse and more.

Separating work from personal life is certainly something most people would advocate, but when it comes to one’s mobile phone, it isn’t always easy to make the break.

Mobile marketing and advertising outfit Velti has announced the launch of its mobile developer program while simultaneously releasing its software developer kits (SDK) for Android, Symbian, Windows, Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone and iPad.