Huawei, the Chinese owned telecommunications equipment manufacturer that provides Telus and Bell with LTE towers, is finding itself coming under a barrage of scrutiny in Australia and the United States over cyber security fears.
Huawei and Telus inked a deal in February. In late March the Australian government blocked Huawei from bidding on contracts for the country’s new national broadband network, a $38-billion megaproject, citing security concerns.
read moreAccording to research compiled by SapientNitro, mobile payments should spread to the global mainstream in just one to four years.
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Research In Motion's Australia division has followed up its bizarre flash mob marketing flop with a scrolling text campaign online, supposedly a teaser for something larger in the works. Mentioning the word "business" a whopping eight times in a short speech makes it pretty obvious who the target demographic is.
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Waterloo's Research In Motion today launched BlackBerry Screen Reader. The free software application helps customers who are blind or visually impaired operate their smartphone. RIM says that Screen Reader provides an audible output based on visual information displayed on a BlackBerry.
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Vancouver-born entrepreneur Eric Migicovsky has now raised nearly $9 million for his product, Pebble, a smartwatch for iPhones and Android smartphones, from funding site Kickstarter. Pebble, made by Waterloo-born Allerta, also the maker of InPulse for BlackBerry, has raised three times more money than any other Kickstarter campaign in history. And it's still not done.
With 59,000 backers and $8.8 million raised, can Pebble reach the unheard of milestone of $10 million in its final 10 days? After blitzing to $1 million in a single day, Pebble maintained its blistering momentum, reaching $3 million in just three days.
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QR Codes, augmented reality, NFC, motion-based video game technology, RFID, and more have been much debated real world-virtual world technologies. They allow for users with smartphones to interact with mobile communication technologies independently. While all are at various levels of popularity, Ana Serrano in the 2012 Stratford Report believes the latter are just first-generation examples of mobile interactivity.
A Canadian police force is outfitting cop cars with Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBooks.
Mobile Innovations is the company behind the integration, which will see Canadian police use RIM tablets from their vehicle dashboard to control their car's lights and sirens, as well as receive traffic alerts and access GPS maps, plus be alerted of 911 emergencies.
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A Vancouver startup has built and launched an official Avengers app, based on the Marvel Comics franchise. Being touted as "the first fully interactive comic book," the 16-page comic book slash mobile app is called "Marvel’s The Avengers: Iron Man — Mark VII."
Developed by Loud Crow Interactive, the free iOS and Android app has been downloaded nearly two million times in less than one month. Loud Crow is a 10-man startup that was founded in 2010 and was behind the award-winning A Charlie Brown Christmas.
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Despite early adopters heralding the end of the laptop, new study indicates that tablets are still a long way from replacing them.
According to ABI Research, 16% of consumers surveyed in an ongoing tracking study plan to buy a media tablet in the first half of this year, while 33% plan to buy a notebook.
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Ontario has introduced legislation that, if passed, would make cell phone and wireless services contracts transparent and eliminate surprise costs, the government says. This proposed legislation will help "eliminate the shock many consumers get from their cell phone and wireless services bills," according to Ontario.
Recent media polls showed over 94% of consumers want more protection for cell phone contracts and cancellation fees. More than 70% of Ontarians have a wireless services agreement. About 62% of all complaints received by the federal Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services in 2010 and 2011 were about wireless services. More than 41% of those complaints came from Ontarians.
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