Soon more people will be doing their talking on mobile handsets than landlines in Europe. According to a new report from Analysys, a European consulting telecommunication and IT firm, the migration to mobile continues to replace traditional landlines. Even in Germany, where landlines still dominate, nearly a quarter of all calls originate on a mobile handset, a rise of six percent during 2006.

It is also interesting to note that the Analysys study users aren’t necessarily talking more, they’re just using land-lines less.

[Via The Register]

Today AT&T announced the launch of an over-the-air music download service with eMusic, the largest retailer of independent music. This new service will AT&T subscribers the ability to preview and purchase music via their mobile handsets from a catalog of 2.7 million songs. This new service, which is par of the AT&T Mobile Music Platform, is among the nation’s largest wireless music catalogs.

Songs purchased from eMusic Mobile are immediately sent to the user’s wireless handset, while a duplicate copy is available for download to the user’s PC at no additional charge. AT&T customers can subscribe to download five tracks a month for $7.49, while additional packages of songs are available for the same price.

“eMusic Mobile is not your typical over-the-air service,” said Mark Collins, vice president of Consumer Data Services for AT&T’s wireless unit. “This service, which is as unique as the independent artists found in the eMusic catalog, differentiates itself from the competition through its ease of use, subscription pricing model and the ability to play these tracks in any MP3 player.”

The eMusic Mobile service will be available on select AT&T music devices, with future models added in the future. These phones include the Samsung a717, a727 and the Nokia N75, as well as the new version of the Samsung SYNC.

AT&T
eMusic

Bloglines has created the “Ultimate Pro” edition of iBloglines for the iPhone audience. It’s got added functionality like a “pin” to save posts or feeds until you’re on the fixed Web, the ability to e-mail articles, search for content, auto-refresh, personalized preferences and it automatically hides images to compensate for EDGE’s slogginess.

I swear by Bloglines, and am happy to see any sort of mobile version. But it does hurt just a bit that Bloglines actually took away functionality from its simple mobile feeds a while back. It now takes at least three clicks to get to your feeds. And even with EVDO speeds, that’s still a timely process. The rest of the features — save the auto refresh function — still exist in the basic mobile version. But we at Mobile Crunch feel like we’re using the Web version on our Blackberry, when the iPhone is more capable of sizing down Web pages to the big, small screen. Please Bloglines, bring back (and enhance) a mobile version.

Bloglines

Calling in to a conference call has been easy enough from a mobile phone – and nothing beats soaking in the rays on a roof garden while listening to a long boring call (just don’t tell my editors). But now foonzMobile from RPM Communications will let mobile users take part in a conference call that will cost nothing other than the minutes sued for a regular call. Users simply send a short text message (“START”) to FOONZ (36669) to get the ball rolling. foonzMobile then replies with a text message with the instructions, allowing you to initiate the call. Additional text messages are sent to the other parties with a number to call, and participants simply the dial that number and foonz does the connecting.

“Conference calling isn’t just for business anymore,” said Michael Bayer, CEO and co-founder of RPM Communications, Inc., the parent company of foonz. “People who want to share news, get a group of friends together, or let team mates know that practice is cancelled can forget about phone trees or calling people one-by-one. foonzMobile makes group voice communication as immediate and easy as text and IM, and it’s available to every one of the 230 million people with cell phones in the US. And of course, it’s available to businesses too.”

Additional features are available to registered foonzMobile users, but anyone can try out the service by text messaging. We’ll give the service a spin soon and let you know what we thought.

foonzMobile
RPM Communications

Calls between EU countries may just get a little cheaper this week. Under new EU rules, telecom companies have until the end of July (as in today) to offer customers a new pricing structure that means cheaper “roaming” fees. And users have two months to say whether they want to move to the new plans or stick with their existing contracts.

The European Commission calculated that mobile phone carries made about 8.5 billion euros profit a year from roaming charges! Makes you want to always stay in network doesn’t it!

[Via BBC]

Budgets are something that many college students have to deal with, and students will look for ways to make ends meet. This week Mobile Campus, a provider of mobile communications, information and transactional services for university students, announced the findings from their recent Vizu poll. According to the survey, students frequently look to save money by utilizing the exclusive discounts offered to them as students. The Internet remains the preferred channel for accessing these discounts, but a small minority are already receiving discount offers via text messages to their mobile phones.

Of course we have to take some of these findings with a grain of salt (or possibly several grains of salt), as text messaging is channel of delivery that already being used by Mobile Campus to target college students. But with many college students relying on mobile phones as their primary — and often only phone — it is no surprise that marketers will seriously target college students via text messages.

Mobile Campus

Yesterday we reported that according to a recent Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) study, very few mobile handsets are actually being recycled. So what is happening to them? Well, landfills are probably where a lot of them are ending up, making for a future environmental disaster.

Even if, as the report suggests, people are actually keeping the phones as backups for now, what is going to happen when users have numerous backups? With the average phone being replaced in 18 months, there are millions of phones that have no where to go. And Jeff Angel, the director of the Total Environment Center (TEC) claims that industry efforts to reclaim disposed phones isn’t working with just three percent of all mobile handsets being recycled.

So what is the solution? Well, one program that has been started is an industry-partnered program with Landcare Australia, where a tree will be planted for every handset recycled. The “Old Phones, New Trees,” program should get the tree-hugger lot involved, but that’s still a long way to go. Another option is a $10 refundable deposit on mobile phones. And there have been other programs suggested such as having to turn in an old phone to keep your number when buying a new phone.

Australian efforts are to boost collections of old phones by 200 percent and halve what goes into landfills within the next three years. That’s a good first step, but there is still a long way to go. And if you think this is bad. Where do you think those used 50-inch plasma TVs are going to end up in another decade?

[Via PC World]

Last week we reported that Oxygen Media was working on mobile game based on the reality TV series The Bad Girls Club, and this week additional details were announced. The game, which is being developed by Hong Kong-based Artificial Life, Inc., will be able for the 3G platform later this August. In addition to the 3G game, Oxygen and Artificial Life will also launch several other 2G games based on The Bad Girls Club in the coming months.

In the 3G version players will take the role of a new member of the club, and will have the usual agenda: to gain fame and win notoriety in the tabloid world. Players must prove to be a scandalous and notorious bad girl and win a spot on the cover of the Tabloid!

“Gaming is so huge with women, and Oxygen has been looking at how to break into this arena,” said Oxygen senior vice president Cynthia Ashworth. “This game presents the perfect opportunity to take our most popular television series to a new level by creating a mobile game that is on brand with the show and also connects with our young, tech-savvy female audience. This is only the beginning for Oxygen in the gaming arena.”

Bad Girls Club 3G Mobile will be available via download at the end of August for an initial price of $3.99.

Oxygen Media: Bad Girls Club 3G Mobile

Our friends at GameDaily have gotten the scoop on the arrival of PopCap Games new free Web version of Bejeweled for the Apple iPhone. This popular puzzle game is available via the Safari browser. This version of Bejeweled was developed for PopCap Games by Polish game creator Arkadiusz Mlynarczyk, one of the first coders to take advantage of the device’s gaming abilities with the Bejeweled clone known as Diamenty. As it is a browser-based title no download is required, yet much of the original functionality and gameplay remain.

[Via GameDaily]

Namco Networks announced today that Peanuts flying ace Snoopy will now soar onto mobile handsets. Woodstock’s nest has fall and he needs Snoopy’s help in Snoopy the Flying Ace, the latest mobile game from Namco Networks. The game will let Snoopy fly him Sopwith Camel fighter plane (which we’ll see as his dog house) deep into enemy territory to capture balloons and raise Woodstock’s nest.

“Snoopy’s aerial escapades are some of the most memorable moments from the Peanuts comic strips and are appealing to mass-market consumers, making them an ideal storyline for a mobile phone game,” said Scott Rubin, vice president of sales and marketing for Namco Networks. “Peanuts is one of the most beloved entertainment brands of all time and is a great addition to our lineup of top-selling, brand-based mobile games.”

Snoopy the Flying Ace is the first mobile game available through Namco Network’s partnership with United Media, a worldwide licensing and syndication company that owns the rights to the Peanuts brand. The game is available today on Sprint PCS handsets, and will be available on other carriers later this year.

Namco Games: Snoopy the Flying Ace