Yes, a new button called Pressy has been introduced by Nimrod Back and his team. Although touch screens have no doubt taken place of actual keypads, the importance of having buttons cannot be forgotten.   This is why this team came up with a unique idea of having an extra button called “Pressy”. This “Pressy” button plugs into your headphone port and it can give you all sorts of application access and many quick access functions.

Pressy offers its users a unique set of applications to access easily by just pressing it. This button is really cool, but to work efficiently it needs applications behind it, because this button enables the Users of the phone to perform different kind of events by just pressing it, like turning on the photo, turning the camera on and taking pictures instantly, texting a message, or updating your facebook status. “Pressy” gives you the ability to do all that, all the users have to do is just specify the number of presses for each action. Users can come up with different combinations and the Pressy will do everything the user wants. Like a simple small press will tell Pressy to call your best friend, one long press may turn on the flashlight.

This Application basically works in the background and keeps an eye on the Headphone Jack, this enables Pressy to catch the event of pressing whenever the user does it. It is the unique functionality of the Pressy because its main objective is to bring quick access to the user without getting into a rush searching apps in the long list of apps.

For more information on the world head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, centrally located apartments, villas, yacht charter, restaurants, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

Swedish telecom giant Ericsson and its Zambian counterpart Zamtel have reached a deal to demonstrate their capability to deliver high-tech Fourth Generation (4G) mobile communications technology at the ongoing 20th edition of UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in Livingstone, the capital of the Southern Province of Zambia.

The demonstration, which will be the first-ever in of its nature in Zambia, was confirmed by Zamtel corporate communications manager Kennedy Mambwe.

The UNWTO conference, running from 23 to 29 August, has attracted delegations from over 150 UN member countries.

Ericsson and Zamtel will demonstrate live 4G mobile communications capability using a mobile communications network which will strengthen the shared version of the two companies to keep the mobile companies up-to-date with the latest innovations technology to ensure the delivery of high-tech mobile communications services in Zambia.

Zamtel, as a sponsor of the technology, has agreed with Ericsson to carry out a trial showcasing the advantages of 4G technology, which is currently not available in the southern African country.

The delegations attending the UNWTO conference will be able to experience internet speed of up to 50Mbps, which is considerably greater than the typical 2-3 Mbps speeds of 3G technology.

Zamtel CEO Mupanga Mwanakatwe expressed excitement over the development and promised that the company will continue to bring innovation to mobile infrastructure in the country progressively.

Hans Piet, the Head of Mobile Broadband for Ericsson in Sub-Saharan Africa, also expressed excitement over the proposed demonstration, saying it has given them the opportunity to showcase the vast benefits of the latest generation of mobile communications technology to Zambians and the international delegates.

For more information on the world of mobile head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, new hotels and apartments, restaurants, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

Underperforming Apple has suffered another major setback as it has dropped out of the top five of the Smartphone race in the APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) region due to the strong performance of Chinese vendors, according to a report published by IDC.

The study suggested that the Chinese vendors are tightening their grip over the APEJ market owing to their considerably inexpensive handsets.

IDC predicated that the Smartphone shipments in the region will nearly double up by 2017 but the Californian manufacturer won’t have a significant share in that.

The analyst firm said that the Smartphone sales in APEJ in the second quarter of 2013 were dominated by Samsung that shipped 28 million units to secure 24% market share. Overall, 119 million units were shipped in the APEJ in Q2 2013. The Smartphones sales outnumbered featured phones for the first time in the period between April-June to grab 53% share of the overall mobile industry.

Apple’s fall in the APEJ region, where it single-handedly ruled for several years, did not appear as a big surprise as it has been consistently struggling against Samsung in almost all other big markets. A research firm, Strategy Analytics (SA), last month reported that the overall market share of the California-based company hit a three-year low during Q2 2013 as it recorded only 31.2 million shipments compared to Samsung’s 76 million Smartphone units.

In APEJ all leading Chinese players such as Coolpad, Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei are responsible for Apple’s downfall, IDC said.

IDC in its study reported that the people in APEJ are gradually moving towards the homegrown brands as they accounted for 38% of Q2 2013 volumes, up from 20% in the second quarter of 2012, and 7% in the same period of 2011. The examples of these rising brands IDC believes are i-Mobile and GNET (Thailand), Lava and Micromax (India), K-Touch and Xiaomi (China), Q-Smart (Vietnam), i-Mobile and GNET (Thailand) and  S-CSL (Malaysia).

For more information on the world of mobile head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, hotels for MWC 2014 and apartments, restaurants, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

While many countries including US, UK and Asia-Pacific nations are just migrating from Third Generation (3G) to Fourth Generation (4G), Huawei has already set the sights on Fifth Generation (5G) technology – and plans to commercially introduce it by 2020.

A report publish recently by Bloomberg says that the Chinese telecom equipment giant has devoted hundreds of engineers to research and develop the technology, which is proposed to offer speed 100 times faster than 4G.

The 5G service will run on 10GB per second, compared with 100Mb per theoretical maximum per second under 4G. The technology will also allow people to expectance fiber network like interface on a wireless connection.

Zhou Yuefang, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Huawei’s LTE business unit, said that there will be billions of connections in the next seven years and 5G can provide massive connectivity. He said the process for new broadband technologies to become mainstream and adopted by mobile ecosystem usually takes at least five years.

Yuefang said that the company will install small cells within buildings to improve the quality of indoor coverage and ultimately the 5G will have enhanced spectrum management flexibility. The COO, however, refused to disclose the amount to be spent for the development of technology.

Earlier this year, Samsung had claimed that it tested 5G wireless service in-house and that technology was hundreds of times faster than 4G. The South Korean electronics giant had also announced the version to commercially roll-out the technology by 2020.

Mobile internet services began with 3G. Its predecessor 2G was for voice calls, while 1G refers to an original analog, voice-only cellular telephone standard that was developed in the 1980s.

For more information on the world of mobile head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, new apartments for mobile world congress, restaurants, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

The Smartphone penetration in Hong Kong has been propelled to 63% compared to 49% in the same period last year and 35% in 2011, latest research has found.

According to the report, Hong Kong has the highest mobile internet usage rate in the Asia Pacific region, with almost 96% of users going online through their devices every day.

Japan occupied second place in the region with 94% Smartphone usage while Singapore and South Korea came in at third and fourth position with 93% and 92% mobile phone usage.

Google and Ipsos MediaCT conducted an online study in the first three months of the year on random sampling of one thousand Smartphone owners surveyed between the ages of 18 and 64.

Google’s “Our Mobile Planet Data and Analysis” tool ranked Hong Kong seventh in the world in terms of Smartphone penetration and South Korea and Singapore on second and fourth place respectively.

More than half of the respondents surveyed said over the past six months they spent more time online on their handsets than their computers.

The study revealed that people are becoming extremely passionate about their Smartphones, with 22% of respondents saying they could even eliminate their television favoring their handsets. Three-quarter of respondents said they don’t leave home without their beloved devices.

Almost all respondents use their Smartphones to research local information, 79% of them confessed to do so at least once a week and 39% doing it every day.

The study also said that a normal Smartphone user has installed 39 applications on their Smartphones, with at least 10 paid-for apps.

For more information on the world of mobile head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, hotels for Mobile World Congress, restaurants, new event locations, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

Facebook has announced a new project – Facebook Mobile Games Publishing – to help small and medium-sized game developers distribute their own mobile game to studios worldwide.

The polite program will see Facebook promoting games in its own applications, revealing them to millions of its mobile users. In exchange, the social network will take the revenue from the developers who join the program.  However, the percentage of revenue it will take wasn’t revealed by the company.

Facebook has not yet announced the terms to join the program.  The only technical requirement for it is that the games should support Facebook integration.

Currently, there are more than 800 million people using Facebook mobile apps every month, with over 260 million playing Facebook games. The company will also give developers access to analytics tools.

Facebook has already racked up 10 developers including U.K.’s Space Ape, which is run by veteran social games maker Playfish, educational game maker Brainbow and Kiwi. Even though the social network began the project to target independent developers who lack the resources to compete with big game studios, a large French gaming company Gameloft has also joined the program with the game Kingdom & Lords.

The other small or mid-sized developers can become the part of program by completing the application form.

Following the news of Facebook’s entrance into mobile games publishing the shares of social gaming company Zynga fell by 1.3%.  Zynga was once the closest game partner of social networks but the two companies have become more competitive with each other since last year when the struggling company launched its own mobile developer partner program.

For more information on the world of mobile head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS and Book your apartments for mobile world congress 2014, marketing and event management, restaurants, new hotels and apartments, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

Mobile communication trade group, the GSM Association (GSMA) has announced plans to unite mobile connectivity with high street shopping experiences to help retailers.

At an event held last week in London GSMA, which represents nearly 800 mobile operators worldwide, deliberated how the mobile operators can utilize the Near Filed Communication (NFC) and the other related services to offer the value added services to their customers.

The affirmation of GSMA’s plans came after research, conducted by tech consultants Latitude, found that the mobile alerts would prompt almost 60% of US and UK Smartphone users to shop at least once a week. It said 80 percent will be interested in a mobile wallet.

GMSA, the joint venture of Telefonica UK and Vodafone – Weve – payment service provider – The Logic – and NFC specialists – Proxama – comprehensively discussed the idea of a ‘loyalty wallet’ during the event.

The loyalty wallet will use the NFC and related technologies to combine loyalty cards, discounts, offers and incentives and store items in a single application.

Anne Bouverot, the GSMA general director, said that mobile commerce will develop to support the entire customer experience and they will go further than visiting a single store.

He said the consumers are looking for flexible and all-embracing services that guide them with research, vouchers, travel directions, entertainment and several other aspects of an outing to a destination retailer.

Weve CEO David Sear hailed the idea of the loyalty wallet and stressed the need of collaboration between operators and retailers. He added that Weve is in talks with some of UK’s top retailers for the implementation of mobile commerce vision.

For more information on the world of mobile head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, marketing and event space at Mobile World Congress, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

The Near Field Communication (NFC) market will witness immense growth in both products and applications in the years to come, according a market research report – NFC Market – Global Forecast & Analysis (2011 – 2016) – published recently by MarketsandMarkets.

NFC market includes products such as NFC chips, readers, tags, NFC enabled SIM/UICC cards and NFC based micro SD cards while NFC applications include mobile payment, ticketing, access control, data sharing, and advertisements.

MarketsandMarkets, a U.S-based global market research and consulting company, after comprehensively analyzing the NFC market on the basis of products, applications, technology, and geography predicted that the total worth of Near Field market will reach $10015.96 million by 2016.

In 2011, there were only 5% NFC-enabled phones in the world and it will grow to approximately 46% by 2016. This indicates that the handset makers are rapidly adopting the latest inventions of technology into their mobiles.

North America, Europe, and APAC are the regions that are expected to make the most in the NFC market. While North America and Europe are still on track to become the major contributors of NFC chips market, APAC has already caught-up with the technology and has accounted for almost one fourth of the share of the total chips market in 2011. The sky-rocketing growth of the market in APAC is attributed to the countries such as South Korea, China, and Japan who had adopted the technology shortly after its invention.

Presently, the NFC application market is occupied by small group of players but a larger number of industry players are expected to increase their involvement with the growth of the application market.

The revenue of the applications market will grow by 35% to reach $34,515 million in 2016 from $7,686 million in 2011. The most productive of all segments is the mobile payments segment that includes both, in-store payment and on-line payment. It is followed by ticketing and access control segments.

For more information on the world head to GSMA Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

MasterCard has launched its MasterPass wallet service in United Kingdom, for the first time in a European country.

The service had already been launched in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but the consumers in Europe were yet to experience it.

MasterPass, which can be used online, in-store or elsewhere, enables the consumers to store all their payment, loyalty, store card, shipping and billing address details in one place.

The consumers can access the wallet of their choice and authenticate a transaction by clicking on a Masterpass button and entering a registered password for checkout. The credit card details aren’t needed to be entered to finish the transaction.

MasterCard said that the consumers can also add other branded credit, debit, prepaid and private label cards to their wallet.

Initially, the service is available with UK retailers Prezzy Box and The Hut Group but it will be available on website Boots.com next week and House of Fraser in the next month. The retailers do not pay for the service and instead card payment provider pays fee to MasterCard.

In the physical stores, the MasterPass checkout service works with both physical cards and mobiles. In case of devices, the payments are made via Near Field Communication (NFC) and QR codes, MasterCard said.

The MasterPass linked wallets provide retailers, banks, and other partners with their own branded MasterPass wallets. Alternatively, the existing wallets can also be connected to the MasterPass acceptance network.

The MasterCard is planning to launch the MasterPass wallet across Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East by 2014.

For more information on the world head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality Hotels for Mobile World Congress 2014, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.

Samsung has launched its latest top-of-the-range smart device processor – Exynos 5 Octa – which it says has 20% more power than its predecessor.

The South Korean electronics giants claimed that the four 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 cores and as many 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A15 processors in the chip allow it to boast 20% more CPU processing power than in the earlier Exynos 5410, used to power some versions of its Galaxy S4 handset.

The firm said that the mobile chip is capable of almost doubling the graphical prowess of the devices. The chip uses a new image-compression solution to reduce the power consumption.

The extremely powerful chip offers “desktop-quality” video editing and supporst 1080p high-definition video playback at 60 frames per second, it said.

Exynos 5 is the first production-ready chip to feature ARM Holding’s latest GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) architecture. The potential of GPUs has not remained limited to video games graphics and they are widely being used to handle the general computing tasks today.

Though GPUs are relevantly slower at performing single calculations than CPUs, their advantage is that they can carry numerous calculations at the same time. Specifically they are capable of handling the highly “parallelizable” tasks such as running augmented reality apps and applying filters to photographs effectively.

Using GPU isn’t very popular among the smart device manufacturers and the vast majority of smart devices use ARM-designed CPUs. The Cambridge-based ARM accounted for about 20% of the overall Android phone sales last year.

The newly-developed chip will replace Exynos Samsung’s current octa-core processor as the firm’s flagship chip. Octa-core processor was used in Samsung’s flagship device Galaxy S4 but despite of its remarkable success, Exynos chips failed to attract the attention of most of tech firms, who continue to favor Qualcomm Snapdragon and Nvidia Tegra chipsets.

For more information on the world head to Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, taking place from 24-27 February, 2014. Contact EAS for best in quality accommodation Hotels for MWC 2014, marketing and event management, venues, hotels near the Fira Gran Via.  For further information, click here.