Still searching for that perfect gift for mom? Cingular Wireless and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) have two great gift ideas that are sure to have mom tickled pink this Mother’s Day. The first is the new Cingular exclusive Motorola Pink SLVR(TM); the second is the new Motorola H500 Pink Bluetooth Headset. Both are fashionably chic in bubblegum pink and make a great gift for mom or any pink-loving Cingular Wireless customer.

Motorola Pink SLVR

Like its predecessor, the Motorola SLVR in Black, the Motorola Pink SLVR is less than half an inch thick and weighs only 3.5 ounces. And while this slender device looks pretty, it still packs a powerful punch. Not only does the boost of color add a kick to the sleek metal housing of the Motorola SLVR, but with its vivid display, precision cut keypad, Bluetooth connectivity and impressive set of multimedia features, including VGA camera, video capture and playback, and 512 megabytes of expandable memory, Cingular customers can easily stay connected to the people, music and content they love while still looking stylish.

Designed to maximize entertainment and customization options, the Motorola Pink SLVR makes it easy to access Cingular’s hottest downloadable content including ringtones, games, graphics and more. Additionally, Motorola Pink SLVR delivers the iTunes functionality music lovers crave, offering the ability to carry up to 7 hours of music or 100 of their favorite songs right on their mobile.

“The Motorola Pink SLVR is an attractive update to our slimmest device,” said Jim Wicks, vice president and director, CXD, Motorola, Inc. “Delivering an ultra-thin, high-style mobile with a compelling feature set, this handset is the perfect accessory for when you refuse to compromise on style or functionality.”

Motorola H500 Pink

Also now available at Cingular is the Motorola H500 Pink Bluetooth Headset, a perfect match — in both color and functionality — to the Motorola Pink SLVR. Juggling home, work and play often leaves consumers, especially moms, with their hands full. The Motorola H500 Pink, when paired with a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone, like the Motorola Pink SLVR, helps ensure hassle-proof, hands free communication.

The new H500 Pink Bluetooth Headset is less than 17 grams, one of the lightest headsets in the industry. It features up to eight hours of talk time or 200 hours of standby time, allowing users to connect up to 30 feet away from their mobile phone. The headset also has an omni-directional microphone to clearly pick up the user’s voice.

“Cingular is committed to offering handsets and accessories that speak to our customers varied wireless needs,” said Michelle Freeman, executive director, product management, Cingular Wireless. “Both the Motorola Pink SLVR and the H500 Pink Bluetooth Headset offer a fashionable and colorful wireless alternative to their predecessors without sacrificing performance.”

Pricing and Availability

The Motorola Pink SLVR is available exclusively in the U.S. through select Cingular Wireless retail locations or via http://www.cingular.com for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement. The new Pink Motorola H500 Bluetooth Headset is also available at select Cingular Wireless retail locations for $34.99 after a $25 mail-in rebate until June 3.

The worldwide movement by operators to deploy high speed mobile broadband services – based on the global W-CDMA and HSDPA technology standards – is fuelling unprecedented economies of scale in the supply of equipment for carriers and handsets for consumers, said the GSM Association (GSMA) today.

According to the GSMA, the global trade organisation for the mobile industry, more than 105 mobile networks have launched commercial W-CDMA networks across 50 countries so far. Following the world’s first large scale commercial launch of HSDPA – the next evolution of W-CDMA – by Cingular Wireless last year in the US, more than 95 operators from 48 countries are deploying, or have announced plans to deploy the technology. Already, 18 mobile networks are providing live commercial W-CDMA/ HSDPA services in 14 countries.

Among the raft of global operator commitments, a number of networks have already announced deployment of W-CDMA/HSDPA in the 850MHz frequency band, including Cingular Wireless, Telstra in Australia and Rogers Wireless – Canada’s largest wireless voice and data communications service provider.

“Our plans to introduce a state of the art network based on the world standard for 3G wireless communications – W-CDMA – is a natural progression for Rogers’ coast-to-coast GSM/EDGE network,” said Bob Berner, CTO of Rogers Wireless. “By deploying HSDPA in the 850MHz frequency band, we will be able to better provide our customers in Canada with advanced mobile services, delivering speeds of up to 1.5 to 2 times faster than those claimed for competing technologies.”

This week, mobile operator KTF of Korea also announced that it will switch focus from its CDMA network to a new nationwide W-CDMA/ HSDPA network covering 84 South Korean cities by the end of the year. KTF has cited many compelling reasons for this shift, from simple economic efficiencies and global roaming to global handset availability and choice, economies of scale and significant potential revenue gains from high speed services.

As part of the evolutionary GSM family of technologies, W-CDMA & HSDPA will benefit from the strengths of the global GSM eco-system, such as global roaming and interoperability, open standards and huge economies of scale – evidenced through lower costs for handsets, and greater variety.

More than 315 handset products for W-CDMA are available already from the vendor community, 25 of which are HSDPA ready and a raft of new products are due for shipment in 2006.

“With more than 680 networks in our community heading along this globally agreed evolutionary path, no other technology can match the economies of scale and interoperability generated by GSM’s 1.8 billion and growing user base,” said Rob Conway, CEO and Board member of the GSM Association. “As economies of scale reach the point of critical mass for suppliers, we will see HSDPA become a ubiquitous part of device product ranges, just as GSM, GPRS and W-CDMA are today.”

The CTO of Cingular Wireless, the first network in the world to launch a large scale HSDPA network, Kris Rinne added: “Cingular is demonstrating that HSDPA is a real and robust technology that allows people on the move to enjoy high speed data and multimedia products and services. For us it was about enhancing our broad deployment of EDGE capabilities in the urban and suburban areas – and in technology terms, UMTS (W-CDMA) with HSDPA is uniquely positioned as the only 3G technology that supports both circuit switched voice and high speed packet data.”

The trend of operator migration from TDMA, CDMA and PDC to the global mobile path of GSM/GPRS/ W-CDMA & HSDPA continues – as seen across a raft of countries from Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, to Japan, Korea, Singapore and the US among many others in recent years. This ease of migration has been witnessed in the phenomenal growth of markets such as Brazil, which three years ago moved to the GSM family. Today GSM is the market leader, and the choice of more than 50 million users.

In terms of global footprint, the GSM world is more than six times bigger than that of the nearest competing wireless technology, with 82% share of the digital wireless market and growing, while market share for other wireless technologies continues to decline. The scale of GSM growth enables consumers to enjoy unequalled value and variety of products and services, brought to bear by a global eco-system of hundreds and thousands of suppliers, as opposed to the few serving proprietary standards.

As many as 25 million wireless phone subscribers in North America could be using their mobile phones as mobile wallets by 2011, reports In-Stat, a high-tech market research firm. Unlike M-commerce, the mobile transaction concept touted in the 1990s that never took hold, the mobile wallet is a much more versatile application that includes elements of mobile transactions, as well as other items one may find in a wallet, such as membership cards, loyalty cards, and other forms of identification.

“In-Stat believes that the market can grow only by adopting a technology that offers the most versatility by providing both transaction capability and content discovery,” says David Chamberlain, In-Stat analyst. “There are several technologies that could enable mobile wallet operations of handsets, including Near Field Communications (NFC), Radio Frequency (RFID), bar codes, and visual recognition. Standardization efforts around NFC may give that system the edge.”

Recent research by In-Stat found the following:

- According to an In-Stat consumer survey, attitudes of US users towards mobile wallets are at best, lukewarm, with roughly one-third of respondents interested, one-third indifferent, and one-third uninterested.
- The most frequently mentioned barrier to the mobile wallet is added fees for its use (72% of respondents), followed by security concerns about loss of the phone and privacy.
- Survey data found that mobile wallet was most appealing to technology innovators and early adopters as well as subscribers who already rely heavily on their wireless phones.

The research, “Mobile Wallet: More than M-Commerce” (#IN0602908MCM), addresses the North America market and includes forecasts for mobile wallet users in North America from 2005-2010. The report was developed through the results of an online survey of In-Stat’s Technology Adoption Panel (TAP) and on interviews with key players in the sector including credit card company JCB, semiconductor vendor Philips, credit card terminal company ViVOtech, and traditional wireless companies such as Nokia and Cingular Wireless.

This research is part of In-Stat’s Mobile Consumer service, which integrates primary end-user research, strategic industry analysis, technology assessment, and applied econometrics to provide a unique 360-degree view of the US consumer market for mobile wireless services. It examines the US market for wireless data and multimedia applications, including SMS, MMS, mobile gaming, location-based services, downloadable content, mobile video and music, and wireless Internet services. It also provides a complete market view by combining analysis of technology trends and consumer behavior, including tracking and forecasting of wireless data spending by segment.