Some recent news reveal that finally the new H3G Nec e616 is
being delivered in UK and Austria and Italy is going to follow
soon.
This could be the first serious 3G phone in the EU market
and sales of this handset model will be very important to
see the market potential and prospective for H3G and
3G in general.
In the H3G pipeline there is also the Motorola A385 that
I've recently tested but is less interesting than the nice
e616. Unconfirmed rumours are on about a lower
priced Nec 3G phone for the first quarter of 2004.
Most of the EU operators will launch 3G services by middle
of next year including Vodafone Italy.
Recently I've seen some demos from TIM and Vodafone
Italy and the 3G network looks like they working well.
Most of the delays are due to the lack of handsets and I
expect the EU big telco 3G push together with the availability
of a second generation 3G phone from Nokia. This
because the Finnish producer is dictating the timing
(Something that the Telco operators are desperately
trying to change) for the introduction of EU 3G services
market thanks to the 50% handset market share.
In the past MMS services where introduced in Europe
when 7650 became available and will be probably again
the case with UMTS.
The Nec e616 will include AGPS location based services
support. Such services will be probably introduced by H3G
in Europe by the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004 when
the e616s and a385 will be on the market in quantities.
Best Regards
________________________________________________________
giovanni bertani mobile vas consultant and analyst
exsense italy
Received on Mon Oct 20 22:32:44 2003