When the Informer saw the news this week that a Californian artist had created a model of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs out of his own waste he naturally jumped to the wrong conclusion; namely that an art school flunky had made some sort of jobbie-Jobs. Of course we cannot rule out the possibility that, at this very moment, somebody, somewhere is meticulously bent on just such a project, in the middle of their living room, with all the manic concentration of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters. But the story centred in fact on an artist that had created a Jobs figurine from Jobs’ own domestic rubbish, gathered over a period of months from his bins, before he passed away.
As is usual on the morning of the launch of an iPhone, there were queues outside Apple retail stores so long that even the Parisian paparazzi struggled to capture the scenes with their hi-tech lenses. But although the majority of those sleeping rough for several nights to be among the first to own the slightly thinner, slightly taller and slightly faster version of last year’s phone were hardcore Apple fans, an increasing proportion were opportunists, lining up to be caught on camera in their promotional t-shirts or selling their space in line for four figure sums.
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Telefonica This week it was announced that a new species of monkey had been discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo. To the untrained eye – and even to the trained eye – this new monkey bears a striking resemblance to species already in circulation. Nevertheless, close inspection revealed it to be distinct from its peers. The fact that the differences are less in evidence than the similarities has not dampened the sense of jubilation in the monkey-studying community, because new monkeys don’t come along all that often.
It’s that time of year again readers: Back to school. New shoes; new backpack; new Windows Phone 8 device?
Yep, they’re finally here – – those first Windows Phone 8 handsets, launched in that awkward window between the end of August and the annual Apple product frenzy that takes place in early September. As if Windows Phone champion Nokia didn’t already have enough to worry about, handset king Samsung delivered the Finn a ringing slap across the face by announcing its own WP8 unit six days earlier.
July 27th, 2012 – a date that will live gilded in our memories forever. The eyes of the world are on London, a historic city bristling with pride at being chosen to host this momentous event. It is the culmination of years’ of hard work, dedication and belief. The crowds have gathered in celebration and the flags are flying high. Let the ceremony begin because, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the 500th edition of A Week in Wireless.
Microsoft has had a record quarter. For the first time in its life as a public company the software giant has reported a quarterly loss. Admittedly that’s not the kind of record you want to be setting, but it’s a record nonetheless. The firm decided to write down the value of advertising player Aquantive, which it gobbled up for $6.3bn in 2007 and it is this that accounts for the $492m loss, the firm said.
What allows hundreds of known criminals to be able to roam the street at night, impedes London cyclists from getting around town, exacerbates a nation’s fears over the Olympics Games, and leaves eight million Brits up in arms? A mobile network outage, as O2 found out this week when its network failed for 24 hours.
It’s been a huge week for science; unless you’ve been hiding under a cluster of electrons, it could not have escaped your attention that the Higgs-Boson particle has been discovered by scientists at CERN. The discovery has been hailed as the “key missing element” in the understanding of the universe, according to Professor Jim Virdee, head of physics at Imperial College, with CERN director general Rolf Heuer, adding: “We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature.”
You can’t deny a spectacular comeback when you see one, especially one as fast as Philipp Humm’s. After two less than fortunate years at the helm of T-Mobile USA, where he was responsible for engineering the failed merger with AT&T (although he did score $4bn in break up fees), Humm stepped down from his role, and less than 24 hours later was revealed as the new chief of Vodafone’s Northern & Central European operations.
This week the Czech Republic, France and England have been battling it out in different groups for a shot at lifting the European LTE cup. Well, in fairness that victory was claimed a long time ago by the Scandinavian operators, and as is typical, England’s chances really aren’t looking too good.
Scalado sounds like the name of a character from Goodfellas, the film based on the life of mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill, who died this week. Tony “Eraser” Scalado. If you want someone rubbed out, he’s the man. In fact, Scalado is a Swedish imaging company whose technology can be found in the handsets of all of the top five vendors.
Vodafone and O2 have looked on enviously as Everything Everywhere and 3UK boasted about the savings they’ve made on network costs and claims to be providing the most comprehensive coverage of any network in the UK through their shared MBNL venture. The operators have spent months complaining to Ofcom about Everything Everywhere’s plans to launch LTE services ahead of the UK auction, and no doubt rued 3UK’s claims that it too could piggyback on EE’s network if it gets the green light.
In preparation for the frenzied celebrations that will take place over this weekend, to mark 60 years of our Queen’s royal behind warming the throne, the Informer presents the Jubilee edition of AWIW. Well, everybody else seems to be doing it.
The Informer spent a few days in Barcelona this week, sniffing around the LTE World Summit. The default setting in the LTE sector is positive and forward- looking but a frank, challenging opening keynote from Orange Spain CTO Eduardo Duato at the event this week spat rather effectively in that soup.
The world’s favourite social butterfly, Facebook, finally made its Wall Street debut Thursday as the IPO process got underway. Although it was to be expected, at $38 each, the shares still seem ridiculously overpriced. Legal advisory firm Magister Advisors explained to the Informer that Facebook needs to make ten times more revenue per year than it currently is making, and hit annual figures of between $30bn to $40bn, in order to provide value for that price. The site may be the internet’s equivalent of crack, but making this much money is still a tall order.
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