Sony Ericsson yesterday launched a Walkman-branded music phone with an iTrip-style FM radio transmitter built in to beam songs to nearby car stereos and hi-fi units. The snag: the stylish W525 is only available in Japan. Continued

Letters Phone fury (and carrier cringes) After my piece lamenting how Nokia’s high end phones had lost their ease of use and reliability, we got a letter from reader Brendon McLean. “It’s not just Nokia!”, wrote Brendon - “but an industry-wide problem”. And he encapsulated his complaints very succinctly. So we invited him to expand a little, which he did here yesterday. Continued

Merger with T-Mobile on the cards? Deutsche Telekom is close to making a 1.6bn ($2.2bn) bid for mobile operator Orange Netherlands - owned by France Telecom. Continued

Musical convergence RealNetworks, the firm behind the Real media player and Rhapsody download site, made a significant move yesterday when it bought Sony NetServices, the Japanese giant’s European mobile music outfit. Continued

Mobile TV alone to generate €4.7bn by 2010 Mobile content is set for a revolution, with gaming, music and TV all poised to transform the market in the next five years. Continued

Too mundane for 21st century Mobile phone call volumes have dropped for the first time in 10 years, according to the annual JD Power survey. Continued

Comment Will it beat Orange to the punch? One story that sneaked past us at the end of last week was the fact that Vodafone has managed to outbid other mobile operators for the Spanish ISP Ya.com. We feel the deal presages a quadruple play move by Vodafone within the year. Continued

Letters Phone fury (and carrier cringes) After my piece lamenting how Nokia’s high end phones had lost their ease of use and reliability, we got a letter from reader Brendon McLean. “It’s not just Nokia!”, wrote Brendon - “but an industry-wide problem”. And he encapsulated his complaints very succinctly. So we invited him to expand a little, which he did here yesterday. Continued

Sony Ericsson yesterday launched a Walkman-branded music phone with an iTrip-style FM radio transmitter built in to beam songs to nearby car stereos and hi-fi units. The snag: the stylish W525 is only available in Japan. Continued

Surf’s up? Omo it isn’t… Washing powder buffs, rejoice. Buy a Tide-brand T-shirt before 25 June and you could win a Tide-brand iPod and a $50 worth of iTunes content. Continued

Opinion Will the iPhone save the mobile industry? Nokia’s recent announcement heralding the arrival of “widgets” is further proof that the entire mobile industry is a rudderless ship furiously innovating in circles. Continued

Orange has a new solution to running out of credit for pre-pay customers - an overdraft. Customers signing up to the company’s Speakeasy pre-pay tariff can get 2.50 worth of ‘overdraft’ (known as the Reserve Tank) to stay connected when… Continued

Samsung has unveiled another smartphone - the SGH-i400 - which should debut in Europe sometime in late summer. It’s a slider handset, using the Symbian S60 operating system. Details confirmed so far include a two megapixel camera, dedicated MP3 keys,… Continued

Impacted with Chartered and Samsung IBM is teaming up with four other chipmakers to develop manufacturing technologies for semiconductors that shrink the average circuit feature to 32 nanometers. The alliance, which is aimed at containing the spiraling cost of building bleeding-edge chips, also involves Chartered Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics, Infineon Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor. Continued

Group Test Time for a new gogglebox? The world of TV is changing, as HD hits the mainstream and digital broadcasting finally overtakes analog. There are myriad options available too, from plasma to LCD, little to gargantuan and everything in between. One for every flavour then… Continued

Sony Ericsson yesterday launched a Walkman-branded music phone with an iTrip-style FM radio transmitter built in to beam songs to nearby car stereos and hi-fi units. The snag: the stylish W525 is only available in Japan. Continued

Slams ‘false rumours’ of delays Apple’s iPhone has been given the green light to take a bite out of the US handset market as the firm bit back at false rumours that sent shares plummeting. Continued

Indian government approval finally arrives Vodafone has announced that its expansion into India will go ahead with the acquisition of Essar from Hutchison, confirming reports that the Indian finance minister gave clearance for the deal at the end of last week. Continued

Upscaling comes to old games, movies Sony is to update the PlayStation 3 system software today, rolling out a firmware tweak that allows PSOne, PS2 and DVD movies to be upscaled by the console to full 1080p HD resolution via HDMI. Well, if you’ve got the right kind of telly, of course… Continued

And all shall have prizes… Although the New Statesman magazine’s annual New Media Awards (NMA) don’t quite match up to the EFF’s annual Nepotism Award - nothing quite does - they’re still a rich source of humour and embarrassment. Continued

Linux meets Microsoft Not content with simply revamping its Razr, Motorola has updated its Rokr handset - the original iTunes phone - this time bringing it more in tune with the latest Moto look. Continued

Letters Phone fury (and carrier cringes) After my piece lamenting how Nokia’s high end phones had lost their ease of use and reliability, we got a letter from reader Brendon McLean. “It’s not just Nokia!”, wrote Brendon - “but an industry-wide problem”. And he encapsulated his complaints very succinctly. So we invited him to expand a little, which he did here yesterday. Continued

Review As capacious as an elephant’s scrotum - and as visually appealing? You can go too far to be consumer friendly. Making a device straightforward to set up and get running with some clear, simple guidance is all very well, but it’s easy to overdo it and come across chirpy and brainless. Seagate has come perilously close with its FreeAgent Pro external hard drive. Continued

Musical convergence RealNetworks, the firm behind the Real media player and Rhapsody download site, made a significant move yesterday when it bought Sony NetServices, the Japanese giant’s European mobile music outfit. Continued

As Alltel scores points The large cellcos continue to wrestle with the thorny issue of how to turn the mobile internet trend to their advantage, even as it chips away at their walled gardens and therefore their margins. Continued

‘Can be exploited by any greedy Estonian teenager with a $300 Linux machine’ A flawed feature that could amplify denial-of-service attacks on next-generation networks has vendors and engineers rushing to eliminate the potential security issue. Continued

Mobile TV alone to generate €4.7bn by 2010 Mobile content is set for a revolution, with gaming, music and TV all poised to transform the market in the next five years. Continued

Local loop unbundling hits where it hurts Europe’s biggest telecommunications firm, Deutsche Telekom, lost over half a million customers during the first quarter of 2007 as fixed-line subscribers fled to cheaper rivals. Continued