A couple of interesting titbits from this weeks I-mode newsletter...

NEC pulls out of Europe: ""NEC's varied range of 3G devices failed to compete when the bigger manufacturers came on line. NEC then spent some time with low-end devices such as the NEC E101 before concentrating more on i-mode devices for carriers such as O2. Despite being among the first to market with both 3G and i-mode handsets, NEC's impact on the market had declined to almost nothing.""

I'm not surprised; their handsets were uniformly awful; some of the recent I-mode ones got there as far as external design went, but the UI let it down badly.

A sign of operators trying out different structures for mobile content? "Since inking a partnership in February, Nippon TV and DoCoMo have been co-developing services and planning and producing special-purpose entertainment and broadcast content for broadcast TV, which is operating in Japan."

It's not surprising to see operators trying out different ways of structuring their content businesses, but I don't see why the TV model should necessarily be the one to pursue; why is TV the holy grail for content businesses?

Tom Peters on Minesweeper: "Microsoft is changing the game MINESWEEPER to placate those who thought the game was insensitive to landmine plagued communities worldwide. With the Vista release you will be able to, at least virtually, turn landmines into flowers"

JUnit Testing Using Java ME JUnit Frameworks: "Java ME JUnit extensions built especially for device application developers. Importantly, NetBeans and the NetBeans Mobility Pack plan on incorporating a Java ME JUnit-style framework with the release of NetBeans and NetBeans Mobility 5.5. The IDE provides a neat capability to add unit testing to your ME applications very quickly."

On Wednesday I went to see An Inconvenient Truth; today I read about a tornado over Brighton...

Zi makes progress with Qix: "Virgin Mobile reported a 33 percent increase in ARPU from devices equipped with Qix"

The last time I heard about a rise in ARPU that significant in relation to handset UI was in 1999/2000, when I remember being told that Nokia users generated 2x the text messaging traffic of other device owners... I guess it's (sadly) rare to see such an overt and documented link between decent UI and revenue.