Buzz of the week 19-May-08

1. Sprint's iPhone killer to debut 20-Jun

Sprint confirmed that it will debut the Samsung Instinct on June 20. The phone, which has been pegged as the carrier's answer to the iPhone, is expected to cost between $200 and $300. Visit Sprint's official site NowIsGood for more information.

2. Social Networks generate almost 40% worldwide mobile web traffic.

Social networking now generates almost 40 percent of worldwide mobile web traffic, even topping 60 percent in markets including the U.S., South Africa and Indonesia, according to browser development firm Opera Software's first "State of the Mobile Web" report. Basing its findings on the traffic patterns of more than 44 million Opera Mini browser users worldwide, Opera reports MySpace is the most visited mobile web destination in the U.S. market, followed in descending order by Google, mobile social networking service MocoSpace, Yahoo and Facebook.

3. Messaging milestones from AT&T and Verizon

AT&T is touting its text messaging traffic surge generated by "American Idol" fans who used their cell phones to vote for their pick. This season's show generated more than 78 million text messages for AT&T, which is the exclusive sponsor of the show. During the previous season, the show generated 64.5 million text messages. The carrier added new elements to this year's contest by using text messaging to inform the final three contestants of the Producer's Choice selection via their Apple iPhones.

Not to be outdone by its competitor, Verizon Wireless decided to promote its text messaging volumes. The carrier announced that it delivered 58 billion text messages during the first quarter of 2008.

4. Orange and Nokia in 3-yr games, music partnership

Orange and Nokia announced a three-year strategic international partnership that will include a suite of integrated multimedia services as well as the addition of 10 new Nokia handsets to the Orange Signature range. The initiative, which will launch across nine international markets in the second half of 2008, will offer Orange subscribers direct access to the Orange Music Store, both Orange and NGage games, and Nokia Maps--all services will be integrated into the Orange user interface, enabling single-click access to information and entertainment content. Per terms of the agreement, Orange and Nokia will team on marketing and collaborate to develop new mobile multimedia applications, with a particular emphasis on location-based services; the firms said they plan to create 10 million active Mobile Maps users on Nokia devices within the operator's footprint by 2010.

5. Videocon wants to buy Motorola even as another Motorola senior exec departs

Diversified business group Videocon said its talks to buy out the mobile handset business of US-based Motorola are at 'initial' stages.

Elsewhere, another Motorola executive has departed from the company. Rich Nottenburg, chief strategy and technology officer, is the latest executive to leave amid investor Carl Icahn's activist ways to shake up the Motorola board. Nottenburg's departure follows the replacements of CEO Ed Zander in January, acting CFO Tom Meredith in February along with mobile devices head Stu Reed, Casey Keller, head of marketing, treasurer Steve Strobel and EMEA mobile-devices head Mike Fenger. Dan Moloney, who leads the company's home and networks mobility business, will replace Nottenburg.

6. BREW conference May28-30

BREW conference in back. I attended the same in 2005 and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Next week we will have some announcements from the conference.

Have a great day,

RamP!