BenQ P51 Pocket PC phone was vaporware after all

The reason is trivial: BenQ, that previously has purchased Siemens Mobile division from Siemens, is firing all German employees and closing all facilities in Germany.

What is the reason of closure? Obviously the market share of BenQ-Siemens mobile phones was falling rapidly and that was the reason. What was the reason of this fall of market share? On one hand one could suspect German workers, who take benefit of overly bureaucratic and too employer-hostile German social system, but we think that it was clearly mis-management on part of BenQ. Anyway: after Sierra Wireless, yet another (potential) vendor/maker of Windows Mobile phones goes away. All in all bad news for Windows Mobile camp!

Information from BenQ follows.

* * * * *

BenQ Announces Discontinuation of Funding for its German BenQ Mobile Phone Subsidiary

To stem unsustainable losses at BenQ's mobile operations, BenQ Corporation's board of directors convened today and resolved to discontinue capital injection into BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co OHG, its German mobile phone subsidiary.

Gracenote(R) and Samsung Partner to Get Music From the PC to the ...

LOS ANGELES, BUSINESS WIRE -- Gracenote, a global leader in digital entertainment technology, today announced an agreement with Samsung Electronics, a leading provider and innovator of Click for the lowest price on dmnobieblankmobile phones');" onMouseOut="hideAd();" class=Hotlink>mobile phones and telecom systems, to provide its Music ID(TM) and Playlist(TM) technologies to ease the management and transferring of music from the PC to a wide range of SAMSUNG handsets, starting with the SGH-E500. The Samsung E500 with Gracenote functionality is currently available throughout Europe.

The new E500 is the first Samsung handset to ship with Gracenote Music ID and Playlist technologies, which allow consumers who use the Samsung Mobile PC application to get content from the PC onto their E500 handset with reliability and ease.

LG Camera Phone Roundup

Europe UK : LG Mobile bring the KG920 ( above ) 5 Mega-Pixel digital camera phone to the UK in silver with a unique camera-style form, the KG920 boasts an innovative twist design that allows the camera to rotate up to 180 degrees.

A UK first, the LG KG920 is set to outperform even the latest digital cameras available in the UK market with its multitude of photographic capabilities. Within its super-slim, compact form, the KG920 packs a powerful 4x digital zoom for crystal clear close-up shots. With summer season well underway, the handset is ideal to capture the perfect snaps whilst on holiday abroad or out and about in the UK.

Alongside taking stunning photos, the KG920 also offers melodic entertainment so music lovers can enjoy listening to their favourite tunes on the class-leading MP3/AAC music player, and save a combination of music and photos to the 256MB memory card included with the handset.

Orange 'Unique Phone' service available in November

Orange has announced more details of its One Phone package that will allow people to have one handset that will switch between an Orange Wireless router connection and the Orange mobile network. Outline detail of the new service are on the Orange website here.

Handsets for the new service are expected to be available from November 2006, with three handsets to choose from initially the Motorola A910, Nokia 6136 and the Samsung P200. Registration to be first in the line for handsets can be done at www.orange.co.uk/uniquephone.

The service will not switch between the Livebox and mobile networks in the middle of a call, which to some extent may be preferable as if moving around your home it will avoid lots of switching pauses as the handset switches between networks.