Super 3G' handsets to ring the changes

'Super 3G' devices will become the largest selling handset type by 2012 as the worldwide mobile market moves towards higher data-rate networks, market watchers predict.

The latest Future Mobile Handsets report from Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts super 3G devices to account for 35.8 per cent of all handset sales in 2012, up from only 1.8 per cent in 2007.

The global handset market will have more than doubled in the past six years, clocking up 974.7 million handset sales in 2006 alone.

This buoyant growth is expected to slow from 2007 onwards, however, with annual growth rates eventually dipping under 10 per cent from 2008.

Total handset sales are forecast to pass the one billion mark for the first time in 2007 to reach an unprecedented 1.105 billion, according to Informa.

Tags: super 3g, handset, mobile, device

Local Blackberry users without email

Telecommunications service provider Optus has issued a statement confirming its Blackberry data services was down for most of the day on 6 November.

A spokesperson for Optus said its customers experienced disruption to their BlackBerry data services, but technicians were able to resolve the issue and progressively restore customers to normal service from approximately 1pm.

In the statement, Optus apologised “for any inconvenience caused to its customers by this disruption,” however no other details were given about the outage.

This isn’t the first time BlackBerry users have experienced downtime. Back in April most BlackBerry users in the Western Hemisphere found that the push e-mail service had recovered from the outage that began on the 18 April and continued for almost 24 hours.

Tags: blackberry, services, downtime