My colleague, a great fan of Nokia always argue that Nokia had the best smart phone, well before iPhone ever made into the market. I don’t know much about that device he is talking about, but see what iPhone had done to the user and market.

1. More users are using email on their phones.
2. More users are now browsing web using a mobile phone.
3. More web sites and business applications created iPhone ready websites and applications. I haven’t heard of a single web app that was declared as Nokia ready.
4. Now with introduction of games through apple Appstore, I am pretty sure more people will play games on their mobile phones. 
5. In turn, carriers will see more people buying data services, a dream for a long time for every carrier word wide.

See the following news report at NY Times arguing that that even carriers are changing their game plan, thanks to iPhone, every carrier is trying to open the walled garden. Nokia was a mobile device provider for a long time. Has Nokia made a single carrier open up?

Applications spur open environment
Consumers have long been frustrated with how much control carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and the like — have exerted over what they could download to their mobile phones. But in the last nine months, carriers, software developers and cellphone makers have embraced a new attitude of openness toward consumers.

iPhone is the best gadget I have ever seen in my life and iPhone is what I have been dreaming of a smart phone all the while. The touch screen is a full surprise to me, though.

Source: 49% of humans have mobile phones: ITU
THE number of mobile phone users world soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent, the International Telecommunications Union has said in a report.

Africa showed the strongest gains over the past two years and more than two thirds of all mobile subscribers were from developing countries by the end of 2007, the ITU said. This is ‘a positive trend that suggests that developing countries are catching up,” the report said. Mobile subscription growth stood at 39 percent annually in Africa between 2005-2007, and 28 percent in Asia over the same period. India and China added 154 million and 143 million new subscribers respectively. The global annual average growth rate stood at 22 percent, the ITU said.

In a press release that carefully avoids any mention of the iPhone, Apple’s U.S. mobile carrier announced Wednesday that roughly two-third of its nationwide cell phone network be 3G ready within the next month.

By the end of June, according to AT&T, 275 U.S. markets will offer download speeds of 1.4 Mbps and upload speeds of 500 to 800 kbps (using HSDPA for downlink and HSUPA for up).

FORTUNE: Apple 2.0 AT&T: 3G network will be ready in 275 markets by June 30 «

Facebook has a brand new Sugar Mama, thanks to a unique new application that lets friends earn wireless airtime for other friends who are Virgin Mobile USA customers. The national provider of wireless communications services and plans without annual contracts has designed the “Fund My Phone” application, allowing Virgin Mobile USA’s more than 5 million customers to get their Facebook friends to help pay for their wireless minutes.

“Fund My Phone” is an extension of the popular Sugar Mama mobile marketing program first launched by Virgin Mobile USA in 2006. Customers who opt in to Sugar Mama are invited to earn up to 75 minutes per month by viewing a variety of ad spots and other creative materials and answer a few questions. Customers also earn airtime by completing surveys online, responding to branded text messages or forwarding Sugar Mama spots to friends to share. Over 700,000 Virgin Mobile USA customers have opted-in to Sugar Mama since its launch, earning more than 26 million minutes of free airtime.

Virgin Mobile USA’s New ‘Fund My Phone’ Application on Facebook(R) Platform - FierceWireless

T-Mobile USA amassed 981,000 net additions in the first three months, three quarters of which were post-pay customers. Another 1.1 million subscribers were added when its purchase of SunCom was consolidated on February 22. T-Mobile USA currently has a total of 30.8 million subscribers. The calling plan MyFaves was doing especially well in the US, with 5.5 million customers at the end of the quarter. SMS and MMS usage was also up from the same quarter last year, with 33 billion messages sent in Q1 2008

Earnings: Deutsche Telekom First Quarter Stable; T-Mobile Hit By Currency Declines - washingtonpost.com

Microsoft, purveyors of everything Windows Mobile, have just released a public version of TellMe, their new Location Based Application with voice recognition for the BlackBerry platform. TellMe is a cool little piece of software taking your GPS coordinates and providing you with search results, movie times, restaurant reviews, traffic info, and more based on your current location. As an added bonus, all of this information can be accessed with simple voice instructions, allowing you to use the software on the road without risking your spotless driving record. Currently, the software is supported on all GPS-equipped ‘Berrys, including the 8800, 8820, 8830, 8310, and we assume the 8110.

Microsoft’s new LBS for BlackBerry | The Boy Genius Report

T-Mobile USA has revealed it is preparing to ship out its first mobile phones built on Google Android platform later this year.

Read the news article here T-Mobile confirms Android handsets this year

AT&T Raises Messaging Rates
Effective March 30, AT&T customers who do not subscribe to a bundled messaging plan will have to pay $0.20 per SMS and $0.30 per MMS. The cost of sending each will rise by $0.05

In CBS Test, Mobile Ads Find Users
CBS plans to announce on Wednesday that it is trying one of the first serious experiments with cellphone advertising that is customized for a person’s location. Its CBS Mobileunit is teaming up with the social networking service Loopt, which allows its subscribers to track participating friends and family on their mobile phones.

Apple’s iPhone is 3rd most shipped smartphone
According to a recent report from Canalys, Apple’s iPhone is the third-best selling smartphone in the world. The iPhone had a 6.5 percent market share worldwide during the fourth quarter

Americans Recycled less than 10% of Mobile Phones
Only 9.4% of Americans who bought new mobile phones last quarter recycled their old handsets, a survey from iSuppli Corp’s consumerTrak service says. This is double the number of phones recycled in the third quarter of 2007 but well below the numbers hoped for

Will Watch Ads For Free Games
The vast majority of people — 90 percent, to be precise — will watch ads if it means they get to play games for free, according to a report presented by RealNetworks at the Casual Connect conference in Amsterdam.

On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times.

A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone.

The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.

Source: Google Sees Surge in iPhone Traffic

Motorola Seeking for a Comeback
It boasts 2 new attention-grabbing, "multimedia monster" handsets - the mobile film studio Moto Z10 and a powerful music phone Rokr E8 - much to the delight of journalists/bloggers and consumers alike.

Study: More than half of Americans embracing mobile data
According to Deloitte & Touche, millennials (consumers ages 13 to 24) lead the new media charge, with 46 percent embracing their mobile handsets as entertainment devices

Beam Files To Your Mobile For Free
Beam it up Scotty is a way to send pictures, music, videos, documents or any other file to any mobile device for free

Nokia’s New User Interface an iPhone Look-alike
As expected, everybody wants to be iPhone lately. Take for instance this patent filed by Nokia in June 2007 for its own version of multi-touch user interface

A 100-inch WVGA Display in the Palm of Your Hand
Microvision’s new projector is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and can project a DVD-quality widescreen 848 x 480 pixel image up to 100-inches in size!