Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Telenor Secures 1 Million MNP Customers


Telenor Pakistan has attracted one million customers through Mobile Number Portability (MNP), since the MNP service started back in March 2007, confirmed us sources at the company.
Having said this, Telenor has become the first operator in the country to achieve the landmark. Looks Telenor’s plan for relying on MNP went successful.
As per un-confirmed stats, from Pakistan MNP Database, a total of 2.4 million customers have availed the service till February 2010.
For last one year, as the tariffs had hit the bottom line, cellular companies heavily invested in MNP offerings. For this they are giving away huge incentives for customers of other networks to port-in. The war is still on – and may continue for another couple of quarters.
We were unable to get MNP subscriber stats for other companies.

Opera Shows Apple a Better iPhone Web Browser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpTCS3g-cBY

Opera Shows Apple a Better iPhone Web Browser

This could be available for the iPhone soon as long as Apple lets it through the App Store gates.


When the iPhone originally launched in 2007, the Safari browser was a revelation in web browsing on a smartphone. Nowadays, competing browsers also based off of the Webkit source from Google's Android and Palm's WebOS have caught up.


iPhone Safari is still plenty usable, especially for those on Wi-Fi or a strong 3G connection, but Opera can do better through its Opera Mini browser and some clever server-side compression tricks.
Opera says that due to server-side rendering, Opera Mini compresses data by up to 90 percent before sending it to the phone, resulting in rapid page loading with less data transferred. This could be hugely useful for those on capped data plans, especially when roaming.


Check out the video below for a demonstration on how much faster Opera Mini is over Safari when on a meager 2G EDGE connection.


Opera announced that its Mini browser for iPhone was officially submitted to the Apple iPhone App store today. Of course, given Apple's tight control over what can and cannot be on the iPhone, it's anyone's guess as to whether or not Opera Mini will be approved.

Microsoft is Relying on Adsense to Promote IE in Pakistan


Microsoft Pakistan is apparently worried about declining market share of Internet Explorer in Pakistan, which has dropped down from 75.07 percent in July 2008 to 52.79 percent in March 2010.
For the purpose, Microsoft is promoting IE 8 in the country, through a campaign that is heavily advertised on Google Adsense and interestingly not on its own Ad network.
One may argue that it’s a cross network promotion campaign, but what for those who are Mozilla users and are on Bing?
It Merits mentioning here that Microsoft has previously used Adsense for promoting their other products as well, including their search engine Bing.
Campaign asks users to download IE8, in order to enter into a contest that can win you shirts, caps, bags and Notebooks. To view details click here.
Watch terms and conditions which say: Personal data which you provide when you enter the contest may be used for future Microsoft marketing activity.