Mobile Network Comparison

Google have just announced that Andy Rubin – the Android co-found and pioneer for the last 10 years – is no longer going to be working on the mobile operating system. CEO Larry Page announced that he will leave his post as Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content and take on a new rôle in the company. His replacement will be Sundar Pichai, who has been with Google since 2004 and helped introduce familiar products such as Google Chrome, Chrome OS, Google Maps, Gmail and the new Google Drive.

Andy Rubin first founded Android Inc. in California in 2003 and it was quickly bought out by Google in August two years later. However, it wasn’t until 2008 that Google’s software was first available on a publicly-released mobile phone. The first smartphone to use Android as its operating system was the HTC Dream.

Since then, of course, Android has been on the up-and-up buoyed by Google’s financial backing and expertise. Google claims to have activated over a quarter of a BILLION Android handsets to date and it ships on well over half of the smartphones sold worldwide. Even the app store Google Play [link] is doing very well with over 25 billion apps now downloaded. And handsets are getting better and better – the latest and greatest Android smartphone is the Google-branded Nexus 4.

However, although it seems nothing can contain the freight train that is Android growth, analysts don’t’ believe it can expand at the current rate perpetually. Even though well over a million new Android devices are activated every day, it would be impossible to grow exponentially forever and sales might be levelling off soon.

It remains to be seen what the purpose of this reshuffle is. It’s possible that we will see great convergence of Android and Chrome in the future. As for Andy Rubin, not much has been mentioned about his new responsibilities or even why he’s leaving Android just now. We have to suspect he will still be involved in Google’s mobile efforts to some extent.

What do you make of this? Is it a wise move by Google or a mistake to tear Andy away from his baby? And what do you make of the rumours about a merger of Android and Chrome OS? Give us your comments below.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has confirmed that the company has no intention of selling cut-price BlackBerry handsets for the budget market. At a trade conference in the company’s home country of Canada, the executive made it very clear that its’ not their intention to join in a race-to-the-bottom.

The company was formerly known as Research In Motion but recently officially renamed itself BlackBerry after its popular line of handsets. It was only recently that they attempted to turn their poor fortunes around after a disappointing few years by releasing new phone models. These include the BlackBerry Z10 which was one of the first handsets to run the new operating system called BlackBerry 10.

Thorsten Heins’s comments come soon after speculation that BlackBerry would try to elbow its way into the low-end of the market which has seen competitors such as HTC and Samsung have a lot of success.

In fact, the latest sales figures are showing that some of the most profitable handsets are those aimed at customers with a lower budget for a mobile phone. Especially with the emerging markets in Asia such as China and India, it’s thought that cheap mobile phones might be the way forward for manufacturers. Now that smartphones are available for significantly less than £100, more and more people are able to afford the cheaper models. The results are so promising that many have even predicted that even Apple, a company renowned for charging over the odds for its products, has been rumoured to be considering the release of a cheaper smartphone in an attempt to dominate every pricing niche in the market.

These latest claims do make perfect sense in light of the initial array of BlackBerry 10 phones available. Both the Z10 and the Q10 are certainly at the upper end of most people’s price range. And, furthermore, BlackBerry’s MD for Europe has claimed that producing expensive, high-end devices is a deliberate “statement of intent” on their behalf. The new devices running on the latest version of their OS are not likely to be coming down in price any time soon.

BlackBerry’s traditional forte has been in the business market where handset prices are rarely much of an issue. However, arguably, it has been teenagers keeping them afloat recently. Time will tell whether the youth market can afford the latest and greatest BlackBerry smartphones. This is especially true with Google’s Android going from strength to strength and having a wide variety of cheaper options available. Many analysts are already painting this as a mistake for BlackBerry as their main hope of survival is through smart diversification. Indeed, so far only Apple has managed to remain competitive whilst marketing itself as a manufacturer of only upper-end devices.

What’s your take? Do you think the new BlackBerry handsets are any good? And is this a big mistake? Would you prefer to be able to buy cheaper Blackberry 10 devices?

EE, the UK’s biggest mobile network has bumped up contract prices again. The operator that is formed of T-Mobile and Orange will be raising their monthly fees by 3.3% in the coming months. Orange customers will see their bills increase from the 10th April while T-Mobile customers get an extra month before their bills go up on 9th May.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing customers can do about it. You may have thought that you signed up for a mobile contract that had a fixed price each month but the networks’ sneaky small print gives them an excuse to do almost anything. Even if you signed your agreement in good faith, EE can do pretty much whatever they want and you’re still stuck until the end of your contract. The bad news is that Ofcom is letting the networks get away with it. Some Orange customers would say they are really taking the pith(!)

So why do contract prices need to go up? Well, networks are making big investments in new technologies at the moment. EE recently launched its new 4G network at great expense. It also just spent almost £600 million in the recently 4G spectrum auction.

Rather than plan in advance and accept these outgoings as normal costs of business the mobile operators expect their customers to absorb them. So it’s down to EE users to pay for their increasing costs. And this isn’t a one-off. In fact, it was only just over a year ago that Orange increased their tariffs mid-term by 4.34%. They’d already increased prices in June 2011. And T-Mobile raised prices by 3.7% just last May.

The price increase is thought to affect over 5 million contract customers. And it’s going to make over £50 million for EE.

In fact, the situation is even worse than that. The fact that networks have no shame about grabbing every last penny from you is made abundantly clear by Orange’s new “Fix the price of your monthly plan ” add-on. You probably won’t believe the cheek of this but it’s an extra you have to pay for to ensure you aren’t affected by price rises after signing your contract.

That’s right, if you agree to fork out £35/month on your mobile phone you have to pay extra to actually ensure that they don’t bait and switch it up to £40/month halfway through. It’s come to the point where you have to pay extra to actually pay the amount you agreed upon and not more. And the bolt-on isn’t cheap either – it costs between 50p and £2.

Thankfully, the price rise “only” affects EE’s Orange and T-Mobile brands, not the 4G-only EE brand itself. Still, that is a small comfort for those hit by the increases.

So what can you do about it? If you’re currently locked into a contract, not much at all. If you are on Orange you do still have time to buy into the con of the ” Fix the price of your monthly plan”. Just call 150 to sort it out. But that’s still going to cost you more that you bargained on.

However, if you’re out of contract or near the end, it’s another reason to look at PAYG instead. With the abundance of cheap virtual networks offering great monthly deals, you’d be a fool not to. Most of the time you can actually save money over going on a contract even after you factor in the price of paying for your own handset. Vote with your wallet and don’t reward the mobile networks who think they can get away scot free with constantly increasing prices.

Are you on T-Mobile or Orange? What do you think of these new price increases? Are you planning to move to the freedom of pay-as-you-go when you get the chance? And if so, which network are you going to choose to switch to?