MWC Day Two Round Up (part two)

MWC 2013Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, announced that its UpTeq NFC SIM card has been selected by China Unicom to secure its mobile wallet program. China Unicom is the nation’s second-largest wireless operator, with more than 220 million subscribers in which over 60 million are on 3G. The Unicom Merchants’ Bank mobile wallet is the first NFC payment service being launched in China, in a joint collaboration between China Unicom and China Merchants Bank (CMB) for the mobile wallet itself.

China Unicom’s mobile wallet enables consumers to make purchases at food and beverage outlets, including retailers and merchants who accept China Union Pay’s QuickPass contactless cards. There are currently over 162,000 QuickPass point-of-sale terminals in Shanghai that are compatible with the mobile wallet.

Isreali telecommunications company, Accel Telecom has launched VOYAGER, which it claims is the first standalone Connected Car Smartphone device that can be easily installed in any car and operates using an existing phone number via a twin-SIM.

The device combines Android based Smartphone technology with an HSUPA Qualcomm module to deliver a driver centric device that ensures safer calling, easy navigation via a dedicated Waze launcher key and multiple car focused applications.

Informa Telecoms & Media today issued its latest quarterly small-cell market status report for the Small Cell Forum, which highlights that public access small cells are gaining clear market traction and will dominate small cell revenues for the foreseeable future.

Itsresearch from predicts that the installed base of small cells is set to grow from almost 11 million units today to 92 million units in 2016 - an 8x increase - with a total market value of over US$22 billion. Public access models will dominate revenues in 2016 with a market value of US$16.2 billion - 73% of the overall small cell market total - despite accounting for only 4% of small cell units deployed. It finds that the 9.6 million femtocells in operation today make up 56% of all base stations globally - outnumbering macrocells for the first time. Femtocells will continue to outnumber all other types of cell with 86% of the total base station market in 2016 and constitute 12% of overall small cell market revenues.

AppMachine was launched today claiming to enable anyone to create compelling native iOS and Android apps in a fraction of the time and costs of other platforms with no technical or design skills required.

The Device Renewal Forum (DRF) announced the publication of the world’s first standard for renewing and accepting recycled mobile devices. Known as the ‘DRF Device Renewal and Acceptance Criteria,’ this technology-agnostic standard is the basis for certifying that renewed mobile devices meet the DRF’s high-standard for product quality, appearance, performance and integrity.