{"id":28804,"date":"2013-01-05T11:56:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-05T09:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=28804"},"modified":"2013-01-07T09:49:46","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T07:49:46","slug":"apple-maps-wins-wireless-turkey-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/28804\/apple-maps-wins-wireless-turkey-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Maps wins Wireless Turkey award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ovum<\/a>\u00a0has announced Apple Maps as the winner of its 2012 Wireless Turkey Awards, “for its ability to get such an important service so incredibly wrong”.<\/p>\n

The awards are handed out to\u00a0innovations and events that gave the industry a\u00a0reason to “groan” according to the research group which said it\u00a0tracked, reported on, and analyzed thousands of innovations within the mobile telecoms industry in 2012.<\/p>\n

Emeka Obiodu<\/a>, principal analyst of Ovum\u2019s industries, communications & broadband (ICB) team, \u00a0said:\u00a0“We reviewed many mobile tariffs claiming to offer unlimited data that offered anything but, while mobile apps continued to present a rich vein of interesting material. Among vendors, device makers, and large over-the-top players, the patent wars are looking increasingly self-defeating.”<\/p>\n

A smartphone-based map\u00a0shouldn’t\u00a0lead you astray in 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ovum notes that as Apple<\/a> and Google<\/a> bluffed over why Apple had to drop Google Maps<\/a> from its latest smartphones, Apple\u2019s efforts to go it alone became a major source of embarrassment. “Google has even rubbed salt in the wounds with a revamped, improved map app for the iPhone,” it said.<\/p>\n

Among humorous websites lambasting misplaced, mislabeled, and disturbingly morphed towns and sites, police in Victoria, Australia issued a more somber warning to Apple Maps users.<\/p>\n

The police highlighted the app\u2019s life-threatening potential after having to rescue several people from searing temperatures in the Murray Sunset National Park when they became stranded after following incorrect directions from Apple Maps.<\/p>\n

“It is testimony to the trust in which the Apple brand is held that people followed these directions in good faith. The episode highlights the heightened responsibility that players must take for user safety when entering the location space,” said\u00a0Obiodu.<\/p>\n

Tariff plans ought to be simple<\/strong><\/p>\n

The research firm says that telcos played it very safe in 2012. “We sought innovatively wacky services, but found none. However, our recently compiled database of unlimited mobile data tariffs returned a number of interesting results relating to \u201cunlimited\u201d mobile data plans. Users should expect mobile data plans labeled as unlimited to at least offer something close to unlimited data. However, the reality is different, with most so-called unlimited plans offering far from unlimited data,”\u00a0said\u00a0Obiodu.<\/p>\n

Having looked at T-Mobile<\/a> Netherland\u2019s \u201cUnlimited Internet Plan\u201d, Ovum says it was left asking: why bother? The \u20ac5.08 per month bolt-on allows users to have their mobile Internet connection throttled if they exceed their monthly allowance, rather than face excess usage charges.<\/p>\n

The plan may help users control spending, but in order to return to a \u201cusable\u201d downlink speed users must pay a further \u20ac5.08, which still only limits them to their original data allowance.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The proliferation of apps and app platform battles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ovum says that while it is impossible to evaluate the more than 1.5 million mobile applications that are now available across multiple platforms, some of the apps it came\u00a0across in 2012 were “simply baffling”.<\/p>\n

“Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the quest to create an app for every possible occasion. And for this, the iPoo iPhone app captured our imagination, offering users a social network that they can use while in the ‘smallest room’. Its description sums up the app\u2019s lack of subtlety: ‘write messages, draw graffiti, earn points and badges, see what others are posting \u2013 all while dropping a deuce’,” said the group’s analyst\u00a0Obiodu.<\/p>\n

And if app developers have been creative, the owners of the platforms and device manufacturers have been zealously creative too, albeit in a legal sense, Ovum points out.<\/p>\n

A multitude of patent lawsuits involving the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, Samsung<\/a>, HTC<\/a>, Nokia<\/a>, and RIM<\/a> dominated the news during the year.<\/p>\n

“Somehow, it all seems like a conspiracy to prove the academics \u2013 Baumol, and then Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny \u2013 right when they argued that too many lawyers in a market leads to unproductive rent-seeking entrepreneurship. Here\u2019s hoping that 2013 sees the briefcases put away and innovation making the headlines,”\u00a0Obiodu said.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One step forward, two steps back for IT services<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Apple Maps could kill you (in Australia)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ovum has announced Apple Maps as the winner of its 2012 Wireless Turkey Awards, “for its ability to get such an important service so incredibly wrong”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,21],"tags":[51,45,53,26,245,209,169,187,2296,157,52,399],"class_list":["post-28804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","category-telecommunications","tag-apple","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-headline","tag-htc","tag-iphone","tag-microsoft","tag-nokia","tag-ovum","tag-rim","tag-samsung","tag-t-mobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28804"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29307,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28804\/revisions\/29307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}