A quick roundup of some of the day’s notable mobile news:
Wireless carrier T-Mobile is testing a cell phone that can hop over to
a WiFi network in the home or office. I think this technology actually has the
most promise for office environments, where calls can be extremely
important and dropped calls are especially annoying. T-Mobile is
focusing its marketing on home users, though – a strategy I’m not so
sure about. (Granted, T-Mobile doesn’t have much of an enterprise
business anyway.)
Chiltern Railways in the U.K. Is testing a system that allows people to buy train tickets through SMS. The tickets will have to be purchased at least 24 hours in advance – which seems to sort of defeat the purpose, if you ask me – and the buyer will get a secure barcode that can be scanned at the ticket gate.
One of those stories sure to freak out men everywhere: Researchers in Ohio found a correlation between heavy mobile phone use, and lower sperm counts in men. Some other researchers are questioning whether there’s a cause-effect relationship there, noting that most men who spend a lot of time on the phone actually hold it to their ears, not their crotches.
JupiterResearch predicts that ad spending on mobile devices will double in five years. Which I guess is nice, but for some reason doesn’t sound like a very optimistic projection.