Orange has claimed they have greater 3G coverage than 3 – 3 have complained about the £4 million 3G coverage campaign being run by Orange.

Orange has hit back at their rivals 3, by complaining to the ASA – Advertising Standards Association. The massive £4 million campaign which is running until the middle of December, can be found across buses, digital panels, airports, train stations and shopping malls, which claim Orange’s 3G network covers a massive 93% of the UK’s population.

The battle started with the above campaign, 3 came into the equation, when they claimed ‘that if measuring network coverage by population and geographically, it has a bigger 3G network than Orange’.

3’ complaint is at the moment being looked into by the ASA and apparently will take up to five weeks to process.

An Orange spokesperson said ‘According to the figures posted by each of the UK mobile operators, the Orange 3G network covers more of the British population than any other operator. The percentages regarding 3G population coverage are based on the most up-to-date figures that each company has published.

“The figure that 3 has published shows that we have a greater 3G population coverage than they do. We think that’s something to shout about and that’s why we’re telling our customers – and theirs – about it.”

A 3 spokesperson said: “We’re confident that we have the biggest 3G network in the UK, both in terms of geographic and population coverage, built on a 9,192 site network that grows by around 150-sites each week.

“But it’s no surprise consumers are being confused about coverage. Right now each operator chooses a population coverage measurement that suits it. We currently claim 92 per cent coverage. We could use a measure used elsewhere in the industry that would boost our claimed population coverage to 95 per cent in an instant, without reaching a single extra customer.

“We’re happy to open up our network to a third-party to judge. We’d like to see a common standard applied across the industry, to give consumers a more realistic picture of 3G coverage available to UK consumers on all networks.”

The ASA will determine who is right in the coverage row, if anyone, meanwhile, another network came under fire from the ASA with its summer advertising campaign. Vodafone claimed it had abolished roaming, which made customers think Vodafone had removed roaming rates permanently rather than just in the summer or 2009. They received 21 complaints questioning this campaign.

The network did say they had stated the dates in the campaign. The ASA said: “The ads must not appear again in their current form.  We told Vodafone to ensure that significant conditions of promotions were made clear, and did not contradict the main claim, in future ads.”

Companies will continue to battle their advertising campaigns as long as they continue to be misleading.

The Samsung Tocco Lite has been in our top 10 handsets since its release back in May! Results show the Tocco isn’t just one of our best selling phones, its globally hitting expected targets and going beyond them. Sales of the Tocco reached 10 million in just six months – which is a company record!

The Samsung S5230, nicknamed the ‘Tocco Lite’ gives you the chance to own a touchscreen mobile phone without compensating on any features and is set at a new fantastic low price.  With a great, slim and compact look and a 3 inch TFT screen it’s as much of a pleasure to look at as it is to use!

Samsung has announced sales of the Tocco Lite surpassed 10 million units globally six months after its release in May. This 10 million figure has been announced as a new record breaker, beating that of the E250 Slider, which took 10 months from its release too reach the 10 million unit mark.

Touchscreens are becoming just as popular as the original keypad, with phones such as the Samsung Tocco Lite, the iPhone and all the new HTC’s being touchscreens. Within just 4 months the Samsung Tocco Lite had hit the 5 million mark, selling 700,000 units in May and 900,000 units in June, before taking the step up to 1.6 million and 1.7 million units in July and August. This phone is sleek, stylish and affordable; you have everything you need in a new handset, at a price that won’t break the bank.

Samsung Mobile Communications division vice president of marketing Young-hee Lee said: “We’ve entered an era where full touch-screen mobiles are mainstream devices and we are very pleased with the broad popularity of the Samsung Tocco Lite.

“Samsung is aiming to take the lead in the global touch-screen mobile market with our diverse product line up and customised, unique marketing approach.”

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The mobile phone manufacturer is recalling 14 million phone chargers, with fears customers could cause electric shocks.

The chargers in question are models AC-3E, AC-3U and AC-4U and were made by a Chinese firm BYD and sold throughout Europe and North America.

Nokia report no one has been injured yet and they are replacing all chargers free of charge. Nokia say the recall is a “proactive, precautionary measure”.

An investigation was done and reported, the covers of charger of covers were prone to coming loose and exposing internal wiring. All costs will be covered by the Chinese manufacturer BYD.

If you visit Nokia’s site you can find out if your charger is faulty.

Google is the world’s most popular search engine and is taking the world by storm. Information has been leaked that Google have agreed a deal to purchase the mobile advertising firm AdMob.

What does a multi-billion company pay for such a big opportunity in the ever increasing market of mobile phones? £449m in stock for the ad firm!

The mobile phone market is booming, more and more people are purchasing smartphones, allowing them to use their phones like a PC. AdMob is a specialist company, they sell adverts that are displayed on small screens, for example on HTC or BlackBerry phones.

Google are a smart company, they know the mobile market is an area to be involved in and an area that will keep expanding. Google spoke about mobile advertising and said it had “enormous potential” and praised AdMob’s “exceptional progress”.

Google’s vice-president of product management Susan Wojcicki said “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley start-up, generating impressive year-on-year revenue growth, and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google,”

AdMob made their goal and stuck by it, they wanted to make it possible for businesses to bring their products and ideas to the mobile phone world. With the Google and AdMob partnership in motion, there’s exciting opportunities around the corner.

A prediction by Gartner analysts say all major PC manufacturers are in talks of entering the smartphone market by the end of this year, if they hadn’t done so already.

Smart is moving on up
Smartphones are on the up, more and more people are buying BlackBerry and HTC mobile phones. With this mass increase in smartphones, there is a market that’s starting to see a slump, that market is computers. Sales of computers according to an analyst firm called Gartner will start and have started plummeting. Manufactures will find it difficult to enter the ‘smartphone market’ due to less emphasis being placed on technical specifications. Networks such as Orange, O2 for example, have a strong hold over the handset manufactures and have the strength to fight against the computer companies.

Gartner have said, ‘the market share of any PC maker will not rise above two per cent within the next three years, while global smartphone sales will increase by 29% year-on-year to 180 million units in 2009.’

To put smartphones into perspective, smartphones now account for 14% of the overall mobile phone sales. Stats show by the year 2012 the smartphone sales will increase too 37% globally.

The principal research analyst at Gartner, Roberta Cozza has said: “PC vendors should realise that while convergence of technologies offers an opportunity to enter into the smartphone arena, the business models, go to market and positioning of products is very different from the PC market.

“PC vendors will find it difficult to simply use existing supply chains and channels to expand their presence in the smartphone market.

“The smartphone market has never been more competitive and even established handset vendors are being challenged to maintain or expand their positions.

“Understanding of mobile consumer behaviours, competitiveness and positioning of their mobile products and relationships with carriers are all barriers that cannot be overcome in the short term. This will limit any PC vendor presence in the smartphone market to low single digits for some time.”

Revenue forecast have been made smartphones, they are set to reach $191 million by the year 2012, which Gartner have said is higher than end user spending on mobile PC’s.

Dell’s first mobile phone
Dell have been in talks with ‘China Mobile’ about producing a smartphone, which will carry a mobile operating system, allowing Dell a move into this competitive smartphone market. Dell are the worlds number two PC supplier and are highly likely to be introducing this ‘dell phone’ in 2010. The phone is rumoured to hit China by the end of this year, unfortunately no one from ‘China Mobile’ is currently available to comment on this.

Update to follow on the launch date of Dell’s first smartphone.