The All-Rounder

The mobile with built-in water level software will soon be a welcome addition to the classic workmen’s toolbox. A corresponding application from Bonn developers MWM is benefiting from the acceleration sensor built into modern mobiles. The application evaluates its information on the device’s horizontal and vertical alignment. With the smartphone, workmen will certainly be able to find their workplace: satellite navigation is already a standard feature in the high quality devices.

Alongside notebooks, netbooks and classic mobiles, it is precisely the new-style smartphones which are offering the perfect hardware for the use of mobile data services. Every tenth mobile phone worldwide is, meanwhile, a smartphone with satellite navigation, internet and e-mail access. Sixteen per cent of Germans use the benefits of mobile internet and 41 per cent of smartphone owners even surf the Web daily with their phones. In this way, the all-rounders, a combination of mobile phone and personal digital assistant, are ensuring lucrative business.

»We are pleased that, with the new location of Bochum, we have found a further site for our worldwide, pioneering research and development centres. The new location will play a significant role in our leading position and in the development of our smartphone technology and will also support us in continuing to offer our customers market leading solutions.«

Mike Lazaridis, founder and Co-CEO Research In Motion

It was the iPhone from Apple which triggered the launch of this development in 2007. For the first time, it was possible to use a mobile simply by touching the screen and, as portable mini computer, it also always offers a portal into the World Wide Web – anytime and anywhere. Hereby, Apple even went new ways in its marketing and made exclusive contracts with select providers which secured Apple a share of their monthly turnover with the mobile phone contracts with the end customers. The software for the iPhone represented a further source of income for the company – external software developers are allowed to produce applications for the Apple smartphone but, in return, Apple is entitled to 30 per cent of all revenue resulting from sales.

NRW as development centre

NRW has, already for years, been regarded as the centre of the German telecommunications market. Vodafone won several awards from the GSM Association, in February 2009, at the Mobile World Congress, for its innovative leadership. For its »Vodafone Global Enterprise« service, it won in the »Best mobile business customer service« category and, with its »M-Pesa«, it won in the »Best mobile pay service« category. The BlackBerry Storm, which was exclusively marketed by the Düsseldorf company, was also awarded for being the best touchscreen smartphone.
Canadian BlackBerry manufacturer, Research In Motion (RIM), has decided to open a research and development centre close to Ruhr university, on the site of the Uni Tech Centre, and, in doing so, is offering jobs to up to 500 experts from the telecommunications sector. RIM, the developer of the BlackBerry, which is, meanwhile, a decade-old, develops wireless handheld PCs and wireless platforms as well as radio modems and software development tools.

The innovations which smartphone have brought onto the market now also offer many IT firms new business opportunities. More and more software developers are getting involved in the concept of new programmes. For the latest generation of smartphones, work is currently taking place on multi-core systems at Ruhr University Bochum. These systems have long been standard in computers and should now also be used in mobile communications. In the »eMuCo« project, researchers are trying to increase the performance of mobile devices. »The most recent progress in wireless network technology and the exponential growth in the use of multimedia applications indicates that multi-core platforms will be the solution for the future of mobile phones,« explains Dr. Maria Elizabeth Gonzalez de Izarra, head of the research team.

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