Designed as a multimedia heavy-hitter, the V600i is a sleek, black candy-bar style model that combines a 1.3-megapixel camera with video phone capability, digital music and video player, plus high-speed download and streaming ability for music and video from the Vodafone Live! content and services portal. Similarly featured is the K608, but in silver livery and tweaked specifically for 3’s network portal and content, with a dedicated 3 ‘triangle’ key on the side.

Both models are scheduled for release in the third quarter of the year, and sport Sony Ericsson’s dual-front camera/phone look and controls. Other features include a large 262K-colour TFD display, Bluetooth and USB for synching data with a PC, plus email capability and built in FM radio. There’s also a sophisticated 3D Java gaming engine, and some 32MB of memory. More

Analysts at Informa Telecoms predict the way people pay for content will change as content providers target people directly, outside operators. Audio will be big business too, worth $11bn (£6.3bn) by 2010, with downloaded music likely to double as ring tones.

This is partly down to prices people are used to paying for music online. On average, ring tones currently cost more than the average full-track music downloads onto a computer or digital music player.

People will shy away from having to pay for a music download online, then paying for the same track to use as a ringt one, at three times the price. More here

Without naming its source, the paper says completion of the stake purchase announced in March has been held back due to plans by the Indonesian government to hold a second auction and reallocate 3G spectrum.

In March, Hutchison Telecom, a unit of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (0013.HK), said it would buy a 60% stake in PT Cyber Access Communications, a mobile telecommunications carrier. More here