NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 24 March
24-03-2010
by Sylvia Leatham
IBM to create Dublin jobs | iPhone is Ireland's most popular smartphone
Tech giant IBM is to create up to 200 jobs in Dublin over the next three years, in a EUR66 million development that is being supported by the IDA. The new jobs will be established at the company's first Smarter Cities Tech Centre, which will design systems aimed at helping cities manage transport, communications, water and energy networks. Read the press release on Entemp.ie.
The Apple iPhone is the most popular smartphone in Ireland, with around 250,000 active handsets, according to estimates by mobile services company Digital Reach Group (DRG). After the iPhone, Nokia's E and N series and the Blackberry 8000 series handsets are the most popular. The company noted that Google's Android system, while a new entrant to the Irish market, is making rapid inroads with a 0.5 percent market share, following the launch of HTC's Hero handset on Meteor last October. DRG based its figures on an analysis of mobile web traffic to its advertising network Adforce.
An Post's mobile retail services are due to go live this year. The original launch date for these services was summer 2009. An Post has an MVNO agreement in place with Vodafone. The new launch schedule was contained in a ComReg report on 'Liberalising the Future Use of the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz Spectrum Bands'. Responses to the proposal were submitted by An Post, BT, Digiweb, Three, Meteor, O2 and Vodafone. Read the report on ComReg.ie.
In more news from the communications regulator, consumers are spending more time on the internet but spending less on fixed line and mobile phone services, according to a new ComReg study for Q4 2009. Mobile phone penetration is now at 95 percent, while fixed-line penetration has decreased marginally to 65 percent. The average bi-monthly spend on fixed-line services is around EUR80, down from EUR96 in a year-earlier study, while the average monthly spend on mobile is around EUR36, down from EUR41. Average monthly spend on broadband is just under EUR34. There has been a notable increase in the uptake of bundled services, from 27 percent in December 2008 to 40 percent in January 2010, the vast majority of which is double play (fixed line phone and internet). The average time spent on the internet per week has risen from 10 hours in December 2008 to 13.2 hours in January 2010. The study also says that Eircom's residential market share has fallen 11 percent since Q1 2007, and is now its lowest level ever at 71 percent. The full report is available on ComReg.ie.
Mobile communications provider Damovo Ireland has appointed Mary Bradshaw as its new managing director. Bradshaw formerly spent two years as Group HR director at Damovo.
Irish-owned logistics IT firm Heavey RF's new UK office says it has signed over STG250,000 in deals since opening in January.
Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 touchscreen smartphone will launch on O2 on 8 April. The "entertainment-rich" phone gathers music, photos and videos from multiple sources into one place and allows users to manage all communications with one person in one place. It also features "intelligent face recognition", which can recognise up to five faces in any picture and link them with information already stored on the device about that person. For more go to SonyEricsson.com.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 