Re:Viewing 2005: The year in mobile and wireless

'Look to the future now, it's only just begun'

Mobile email, mega-mergers, BlackBerry envy and standards wars - it's been a big year for the mobile and wireless sector. Jo Best looks back at the highlights - and makes one or two predictions for what to expect in 2006.

Christmas isn't Christmas without Noddy Holder belting out Merry Christmas Everybody complete with the classic line: "Look to the future now, it's only just begun."

It's been pretty much the maxim for the mobile industry this year, with operators, content providers and handset manufacturers all searching for the next big thing. That's not to say voice and text aren't still lining the coffers, of course, but with 3G now officially bedded down and providing lots of bandwidth, the mobile world is scrabbling to put it to good use.

So where have the mobile big boys been focusing their efforts in 2005? Well, music on mobiles is so 2004. Admittedly, the joint fruits of Apple and Motorola appeared in the form of the Rokr handset this year - and was promptly labelled by one analyst house wit as the Lemn.

2005, however, was the year of much sexier data services - everyone who's anyone fancies themselves as the next RIM.

Nokia, for one, announced it was getting into the BlackBerry-wannabe market, buying mobile email provider Intellisync and bringing out its own BlackBerry-alike range of business devices. One exec was even so bold as to say the Finnish giant would beat RIM at its own game by 2008.

Vodafone also jumped on the mobile email bandwagon, announcing its own-brand business email service, supplied by Visto, while operating systems arch-rivals Microsoft and Symbian announced an agreement to enable Symbian smart phones to work with Microsoft's email offerings.

According to the analysts, it's a red-hot market to be in, with 60 per cent of firms now looking at deploying mobile email.

Another technology being touted as the new black for mobiles is TV. Orange signed up MobiTV to offer the likes of Celebrity Love Island to its subscribers, 3 encouraged its users to do a more DIY approach and Nokia brought out a phone that looked reminiscent of a portable TV circa the 1980s.

And what's a new technology without a good old fashioned standards battle? Qualcomm is shouting its MediaFLO technology from the rooftops and has signed up Verizon Wireless to use it. Nokia, on the other hand, is plumping for DVB-H and has signed up O2 for trials in Oxford.

Still, if silicon.com's readers and analysts are to be believed, none of us much fancy watching it anyway, so the standards war might end up more of a standards conker-fight.

Another landmark in mobile data this year came in the form of O2's launch of i-mode, the mobile internet cousin from Japan's NTT DoCoMo. Among the big names to join the roster of i-mode content providers was online bank Egg and lastminute.com. Expect more ecommerce giants to join in 2006.

But as the operators know, data services and bandwidth are like bacon and eggs - it's unwise to have one without the other - which is why HSDPA has become one of the most familiar acronyms of this year.

HSDPA, or 3.5G as it's also known, has attracted a lot of attention from the UK's operators with its boasts of faster download speeds. All of the network providers have promised to launch their HSDPA networks soon, with T-Mobile announcing an HSDPA launch in 2006 and O2 first off the mark with a small-scale rollout in the Isle of Man.

One suggestion for why the mobile world is so excited about 3.5G is the threat of mobile VoIP, made real by the spectre of metro wi-fi and WiMax networks. With the ink newly dry on the mobile WiMax standard, it's not yet decided to what degree - if at all - mobile WiMax will impact on traditional mobile operators' revenues.

However, with 3G patent-owner Qualcomm insisting it's not panicking about the phenomenon and Intel insisting that WiMax is the way forward, you can bet 2005 won't be the end of WiMax.

BT is one of the companies looking to make WiMax work for it - and other wireless technologies besides. With ever-decreasing voice minutes bugging the fixed-line telcos, this year also saw BT making its first baby steps into becoming a converged fixed-mobile provider with the launch of landline-cum-mobile, BT Fusion.

While BT's pricing will probably be enough to put people off for a while yet, it's a dead cert that more operators will follow the telco's lead and start to offer converged fixed-mobile products next year.

BT isn't the only non-mobile company seeking to get its claws into the wireless world this year. The on-off courtship between NTL and Virgin Mobile is one clear indication of a growing move towards 'quadruple play' in the telecoms world.

While the broadband market has been doing mergers and acquisitions like it's going out of fashion, the mobile market hasn't been without a bit of chequebook bashing.

The US has been leading the way, with mega-mergers between Nextel and Sprint and MCI and Verizon kicking off the year.

Over in the old world, O2 found itself on the receiving end of Telefonica's wallet in a £18bn takeover; Vodafone splashed the cash all over Europe, including a $4.55bn Turkish buy; and France Telecom offered €570m for a Belgian operator.

Expect more of the same in 2006 and maybe an IPO or two.

Stay tuned for more of silicon.com's 2005 sector wraps-ups over the coming days.