Interesting — the SIMposium 2009 summit has just announced the sales figures for SIM card shipments and sales for 2008. The figures put SIM cards at 2.9 billion units shipped with focus on the emerging markets in Asia. GSM technology is far more common in the Asia-Pacific region.

What’s also interesting is that 3G SIM cards make up 14% of total shipments and the memory size of SIM cards have increased to store more data (i.e. contacts and value added services from telcos) by 11%.

Post from: Cellphone9

It doesn’t have WiFi, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad phone. The LG Lotus will be out this 2009. The square-ishly designed Lotus sports a bright screen with 65k colors, Bluetooth, a 2MP camera, 80MB of internal memory, and SDHC expansion support. The phone comes with a QWERTY keypad and looks extremely beautiful. It will be available in CDMA networks such as Sprint.

So do you like it? Pictured here is the more eccentric purple one as compared to the plain black model. The design leaves a lot for fancy conversation. I personally like it, from an aesthetic approach but wouldn’t hold on to it simply because of the lack of WiFi and GSM compatibility.

Post from: Cellphone9

Back here we have three major telcos (Globe, SMART, SUN) on GSM and one that runs on a CDMA network. The latter, called Bayan Telecommunications dominates the “wireless landline” market by releasing CDMA based landlines without wires made by HUAWEI and some cellphones that also run on CDMA.

Lately (that’s in the past 4 months), the major landline service provider, PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company) released their own version of the wireless landline. But no it doesn’t run on CDMA. It runs on GSM. This is the direct competitor to the Bayan Telecommunications wireless landline that, and this is confirmed, makes use of the GSM technology of SMART Telecommunications since PLDT and SMART belong to the same group.

What then differentiates the GSM wireless landline of PLDT from the GSM mobile phone service of SMART? PLDT has cheaper rates at P2.50 per minute while SMART prepaid subscribers have to pay P6.00 per minute. Wait. Wait. So what’s the diff? I would understand if both are running on different networks – but they aren’t. Is SMART screwing their already huge subscriber base by letting their other company charge lower? Surely the public knows this but calculating the rates makes you wonder why SMART has been overcharging calls by 300%. SMART’s network is also allegedly optimized for SMS, not voice.

It may not be a big issue for a lot of people – well like me I’m a SMART postpaid subscriber so I get lots of free calls and SMS. But I really wonder why PLDT set itself up make known the real rates that they can charge for calls.

Anyone care to comment?

Post from: Cellphone9