Public Mobile Has 199,000 Subscribers, Nokia Lumia 800 to Launch on February 14th & Mobile Web Usage Doubling Every Year

Public Mobile Has 199,000 Subscribers
Public Mobile launched their wireless service in 2010. According to a report in Reuters, Public Mobile, who operates in 2 core cities, increased their Q4 subscriber base by a stunning 45,000 to reach a total of 199,000 subs. 199k in 2 markets! It’s also been revealed that their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) $25.27 (most likely in Q4).
MobileSyrup

Nokia Lumia 800 to Launch in U.S. on February 14th as Part of $900 Bundle
Microsoft may be planning to launch a special bundle that includes the Nokia Lumia 800 and several accessories for $899. Citing unnamed industry sources, The Verge said the deal will kick off on February 14th and will include a Bluetooth headset, a Purity HD stereo headset and Nokia’s Play 360 wireless speaker.
BGR

StatCounter: Mobile Web Usage Doubling Every Year, Nokia Leads the Way
That’s according to the latest report from StatCounter, which found that Nokia handsets account for about 40 percent of the world’s mobile browsing, followed by Apple, at around 29 percent. Coming in at a relatively distant third is Samsung, with an approximately 14 percent share.
Engadget

‘App Economy’ Has Created Nearly Half a Million Jobs Since 2007 [STUDY]
That app you use to play Words with Friends on your phone or book a reservation using Open Table might be giving the American economy a nice boost, at least according to a new survey by TechNet. The new “app economy” has created about 466,000 jobs in the United States since 2007, according to the survey.
Mashable

TELUS, Bell and Rogers Releasing the Galaxy Note February 14th, Samsung To Announce Its New Mystery Device & What`s The Future of Your Mobile Phone

The Future of Your Mobile Phone
“The mobile operator community is conventional. 99.9 per cent of their turnover, up until about three years ago, was purely consumer handset driven. From a growth point of view, now, they’re lucky if they get maybe 110 per cent but that is it. They can’t grow any further.”
Pocket-lint

TELUS, Bell and Rogers Releasing the Galaxy Note February 14th for $249.99 on a 3-year
First out of the gate with the official release date and pricing is big box retailer Best Buy showing the Note will be available to the masses on Tuesday, February 14th for the 3-year contract price of $249.99. Best Buy also notes the Rogers logo on their info page, but doesn’t have any pricing info.
MobileSyrup

Motorola Announces New RAZR With an Unlockable Bootloader
On Monday, Motorola announced the RAZR Developer Edition on the company’s community blog. The device is essentially the same as the current RAZR, but with one special feature: an unlockable bootloader.
BGR

Samsung Is Spending Millions To Announce Its New Mystery Device During The Super Bowl
Samsung has a special promoted tweet running today that teases its upcoming Super Bowl ad. We’ve known the ad was coming for several weeks now, but today we learned that it will be used to unveil a new Samsung device.
Business Insider

Symbian Belle Coming Soon, Sony Ericsson Swallows $317 Million Pre-tax Loss & Official Wikipedia App Comes to Android

Symbian Belle Coming Soon
It has been a long time in the making, but Nokia has finally confirmed the arrival of their latest and greatest OS in regards to Symbian. Nokia took to their twitter page and said “Nokia Belle will be on the way next week”.
SmartPhoneEnvy

Another Nokia Lumia 800 Battery Update Coming in Two Weeks
Nokia said on Twitter Wednesday that a second software update will roll out to Lumia 800 devices over the next two weeks. It is largely expected that the update will help fix the poor battery life that has plagued some, but not all, Lumia 800 users.
BGR

Sony Ericsson Swallows $317 Million Pre-tax Loss as End Draws Near
Sony Ericsson’s tearful breakup continues with more woe as as the venture had to eat a pre-tax loss of €247 million (roughly $317 million). Bosses cited “unfavorable macro-economic conditions” and the Thai flooding as the reasons for the loss.
Engadget

Official Wikipedia App Comes to Android
In addition to being able to view every article in mobile-friendly format, you can save them for offline use later. You can also use your GPS to search for nearby articles (like we saw in Wikitude). You can also share articles through the official Android channels, which is convenient.
MobileSyrup

Blippar Raises Seed Funding From Qualcomm For Mobile Augmented Reality Technology

Blippar, the UK startup behind an eponymous mobile image recognition and augmented reality platform, has landed seed funding – the size of the investment was not disclosed – from Qualcomm Ventures.

The startup, which is based in London, says the seed funding serves as a springboard for a bigger Series A funding round it expects to close in early 2012.

Like other augmented reality startups like Layar and metaio, Blippar’s technology turns a smartphone’s camera into a ‘lens’ that shows virtual information on top of real-life objects, be it a link to a website, a digital coupon, a video or another type of promotion.

Blippar says it has seen hundreds of thousands of consumer downloads in the first 7 months since its debut in the UK, and that major brands like Tesco, Nestle, Samsung and Unilever have already orchestrated campaign ‘blipps’.

CrunchBase Information

blippar

Qualcomm Ventures

Information provided by CrunchBase

iOS Closes Out The Year With 52% Mobile Web Market Share, Canadians Downloaded 41 Million Apps Between Christmas and New Years Eve & Are Text Messages Declining Worldwide?

iOS Closes Out The Year With 52% Mobile Web Market Share
According to end-of-the-month data from statistics provider NetMarketShare, iOS users ended up with a 52% market share of mobile web browsing in December 2011. More simply put, that means that over half of the mobile web browsing last month took place on an iOS device. Android, meanwhile, had a 16.2% share, behind Java ME at 21.27%, which fell into second place.
TechCrunch

DROID 3, LG Revolution, and All of Verizon’s 4G LTE Hotspots to Be Discontinued in January, Report Claims
In 2011, carriers and manufacturers were releasing smartphones at such short intervals that within weeks, your once new and high-end device would most likely already be outdated. Unfortunately, it looks like things won’t be slowing down in 2012. After a mere six months on the market, Verizon Wireless has issued an end-of-life discontinuation for the Motorola DROID 3.
BGR

Canadians Downloaded 41 Million Apps Between Christmas and New Years Eve
Overall, amongst all tallied countries, there were 1.2 billion apps downloaded in the iOS and Android app stores, the US taking the lions’ share with 509 million downloads. Still, considering our tiny population, 41 million apps is a metric tonne, and shows how app-addicted we all are. Total app downloads were 60% above the December weekly average.
MobileSyrup

Are Text Messages Declining Worldwide?
It may seem like everyone, everywhere is sending text messages these days. But according to a Forbes report, texting may be on the decline across various countries.
Mashable

Rogers and Fido Offer Customers Several Premium SMS Choices, Samsung Promises Android 4.0 Update for Galaxy Range & The AT&T T-Mobile Deal Is Officially Dead

Rogers and Fido Offer Customers Several Premium SMS Choices, Including a $40 Monthly Subscription Cap
On their company blog Rogers and Fido noted they now “provide a $40 monthly subscription cap for premium SMS programs, so when your subscription to a premium SMS program reaches $40 you won’t receive any more texts or charges.”
MobileSyrup

The AT&T T-Mobile Deal Is Officially Dead
AT&T said today it was abandoning its plan to acquire T-Mobile. AT&T’s decision forces the company to pay T-Mobile $4 billion in a “break up” fee that was agreed upon when the deal was first struck.
Mashable

Samsung Promises Android 4.0 Update for Galaxy Range
Samsung today announced that it will provide a select number of its Galaxy-branded smartphones and tablets with the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Samsung said the Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note will receive Android 4.0 during the first quarter of 2012.
PhoneScoop

Apple Acquires Israeli Flash Memory Firm Anobit for $500 Million
Apple has reportedly completed its acquisition of Israel-based flash memory firm Anobit in a deal worth up to $500 million. Hebrew-language financial newspaper Calcalist on Tuesday claimed that a deal had been reached after reporting earlier this month that Apple was in late-stage talks to buy the fabless chip maker.
BGR

Eeve Creates Location-Based Photo Groups, Automatic For The People

Eeve is an iPhone app [iTunes link] that allows people to create location-based photo albums that sort of clump together to document events. There are hits and misses in this space. Gowalla tried to get people to tell stories with check-ins and photos. Color tried to get people to check into location with photos. The EyeEm app introduces a location-based element. Few apps have really captured the imagination, other than maybe Instagram, but that won’t let you ‘join’ a location-based group. Eeve does.

Launching out of public beta today, Eeve thinks it can solve this location issue with temporary photo albums or what they call ‘Eeves’. A person taking the first photo at a certain time and location starts an Eeve group. Everybody else also at the same location can simply join and participate (without asking, based on location). Not bad for weddings and parties!

The latest version means you don;t need to think hard about starting an Eeve group, or search for an Eeve group at your location. You just take photos and Eeve does everything in the background, so if you are the first person at a certain time and location taking a photo, you start the Eeve and if somebody else already started one, Eeve displays that Eeve while taking the photo and your photo will be added to the same Eeve location group. There also are lots more tagging and sharing option now.

The team of four founders started Eeve while finishing their degrees at UCL and the startup is bootstrapped.

Personally I see this being most useful at conferences, but I’d like to see a web platform where you can see the images. Still, Instagram hasn’t done too badly without one so far…

A combination of Eeve and Sharypic would be very cool.