Archive for July 4th, 2008

What Is The Right Price For The Mobile Number You Want?

Published by Babar Bhatti on July 4, 2008 under Business, Entrepreneurship, Mobile Phones, Mobile Trends, Telecommunications

In the last few months I have observed a steady increase in the number of comments at TelecomPk.net in the category of “I want this zong/ufone number.” Some of the commentators also gave an offer price for the specific number they wanted. And of course there are comments from sellers who want to advertise the availability of numbers. So I ran a small poll (closed now) to see what is the affordability range for a mobile number of choice. Notwithstanding the unscientific nature and the small sample size, the poll gave a decent idea of the average price for a desired phone number.

Two-thirds (66%) said that Rs.15000 is the pricethey will pay for a phone number they like. One-fourth (25%) were willing to shell out Rs. 50K for a number. And the remaining 9% selected Rs. 25K. The results are not surpising at all. In a few days I will write about the options available for buying/selling numbers (that is SIMs) and the process.

A Few Great Apps For BlackBerry

Published by Babar Bhatti on July 4, 2008 under BlackBerry, Mobile Applications, Mobile Phones, Smart Phones, Telecommunications, Wireless

Push email is the strong selling point for BlackBerry but there are plenty of other free BlackBerry applications which are quite useful, given the unlimited data plan which comes with BlackBerry.There are three major platforms to watch out for: BlackBerry, iPhone and Android. The interesting trend is that BlackBerry is coming up with applications for iPhone and Google has some great features for BlackBerry and iPhone users.  Just this week Google announced major enhancements for search on BlackBerry.

I came across this video from CNet with the accompanying article in CIO magazine which features 6 free applications for BlackBerry: Viigo mobile RSS reader, Beyond411 local search, Travel companion WorldMate Live, Google Maps (now with voice search on Pearl), Facebook for BlackBerry and TwitterBerry. Some of these are for the US such as 411 local search. I am quite sure its only a matter of time that such hyper local services will start appearing everywhere. Of course everyone has their own favorites and I would love to hear about which apps are popular with BlackBerry users in Pakistan.