The all too familiar sight of the Google search bar and search engine functionality on your Apple iPhone could be a thing of the past, according to Business Week.  What would replace Google? Well apparently, Microsoft’s Bing could be the new default search engine for the Apple iPhone.

According to one source at Apple – “Apple and Google known the other is their primary enemy, Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle”.  Apple and Google, had until recently enjoyed a successful relationship with Google Maps, GMail and the aforementioned Google Search.  A recent tension erupted with the possible introduction of Google Voice, promising cheaper calls, which Google had intended to release to the App store.  Apple is rumoured to be investigating possibilities of releases an independent search technology, which would rule out Google or Microsoft altogether.

So big changes ahead for iPhone users perhaps?  Personally, I enjoy the Google functionality on my iPhone – it’s fast, easy and familiar.  Although it’s a cliché the saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” seems all too apparent here.  However, if relationships between Apple and Google are as shaky as rumour tells, perhaps we have no choice.

Reports have it, that £78 million was spent on marketing campaigns in 2009, this was an increase in expenditure of 10%.

Mobile companies all over the globally spent over £78 million on advertising campaigns, however it seems mobile phone sales were flat!

Gartner reported that even though mobile marketing budgets increased by 10%, this did not impact positively on sales volumes. You could argue the fact, you can now get 24 month and even 36 month contracts thus meaning customers aren’t placing their current mobile contract. In 2009 the third quarter results showed sales were strong and over 1.21 billion mobiles were shipped. When you compare this to last year’s figures, it is only a increase of 0.67%.

I have announced the increase in smartphone interest and the fact that this continues to grow this year. The smartphone market is however up by 23.6% year on year and even accounted for 14% of the total mobile sales. Garter has reports that by 2013, the smartphone market is projected to increase by 38%.

Jeff Taylor the Mobile marketing director and co-founder of INQ said marketing did not help to lift sales because businesses have been relying on “dull” campaigns, which were not enough to attract end users.

“To date, the mobile industry has pretty much just thrown money at the problem of attracting people through advertising,” said Taylor.

“Last year’s £78 million plus spend in the UK will rise again this year.

“The problem though, is that by and large, the campaigns are dull and workmanlike and do a pretty poor job of exciting customers, capturing their imaginations or generating stronger emotional connections to brands.

“The mobile sector, for all the money it spends on advertising, seriously lags most other categories when it comes to innovative, edgy or engaging creative.

“Some players will (hopefully) see the error in this and work to spend less, but deploy far more cleverly to genuinely connect with the audience they are targeting.”

Orange will continue to innovate the mobile phone this year and we look forward to see what offers are available in 2010.

HTC signs big distributor Brightstar, which will hopefully boost earnings this year and make 2010 their year.

The Taiwanese manufacturer HTC has reported to of signed a pan-European deal with Brightstar Europe to distribute its accessories range.

Florian Seiche the vice president of HTC Europe said: “We have formed a partnership with Brightstar Europe to invest in what is an increasingly significant sector for HTC. The pan-European deal will enable the accessories team at HTC Europe to focus more on the needs of its distribution partners, to better support their businesses.”

While Rod Millar the president of Brightstar Europe said “By utilising our state of the art logistics and infrastructure, we believe we can shorten HTC’s time to market, satisfy demand and quicken turnaround time by providing significant vendor support to its partner distribution channels.”

This master partnership agreement is going to allow HTC to launch its official accessory line, by Brightstar supplying them to a range of products.  Brightstar’s message is ‘Brightstar Delivers The Right Product, In The Right Place At The Right Time.’ – Let’s see if this happens for HTC.

Orange have announced record sales in contract and pay-as-you-go during the Christmas period.

Orange reported record sales on contract and pay-as-you-go phones due to its ‘free box’ for prepay customers and availability of the iPhone on contract.

Orange spoke last week about sales on both contract and prepay during Christmas, they reached record levels. There are a few reasons why their sale soared, prepay was up due to the result of it phone portfolio, but they also said its thanks to its free Christmas Gift Box offer containing £60 of accessories, which sold out over Christmas!

The Orange Christmas gift box included:
Multimedia gifts, including 30 free MMS, 5 free international minutes, 1 free ring tone, wallpaper and game. Plus a few quirky bits, a Christmas phone stocking, to keep your new phone warm this Christmas, a magnetic photo frame, Lip balm, a watch and phone charms.

Orange went onto confirm their top selling mobile phone over the Christmas period was the pay-as-you-go Samsung C3050. All prepay customers (while in stock) received the Christmas Gift Box if they spent £30 or more.

The Apple iPhone drove contract sales for Orange, but they were reported not to comment on this handset. A spokesperson for Orange said: ‘Orange Retail has had its best Christmas ever thanks to our strong device portfolio and our Pay As You Go Christmas Gift Box.

“Our Pay Monthly sales for December were also up year on year which is fantastic considering Christmas is traditionally Pay As You Go orientated.”

A great end to the year for Orange, let’s see what this year brings.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, released worldwide on the 10^th November 2009, on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC is a record breaker – selling 1.23 MILLION units in it’s first day.  This doubled the Previous record held by Grand Theft Auto IV.  The game has now made over $1 Billion in just over 2 months, according to Activision estimates!

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has exceeded our expectations and shattered theatrical box office and video game records”

Robert Kotick – CEO of Activision Blizzard.

If you at home are wanting to see what all the fuss is about and experience possibly one of the best gaming experiences to date, you can…. For FREE!  Here at OneStopPhoneShop we are offering FREE Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 packages including Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with all our phone contracts.  Take a look for yourself!

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