Author: Ingrid Lunden

A milestone for Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), as good ‘ol fashioned voice revenue ebbs – quarterly mobile data income exceeded £1 billion ($1.6 billion) for the first time, the carrier said, as it announced a tenth higher October-to-December revenue.

Data revenue rose 17.7 percent from the same period last year and now makes up 11 percent of Vodafone sales. Smartphones are now a quarter of the sales mix, but that is projected to go up to 30-40 percent in 2010/11 (Voda just got UK iPhone carriage).

Across the group, Vodafone clocked 10.3 percent higher revenue of £11.5 billion ($18.3 billion). But the mobile operator is continuing to see the impact of competition in its core European market, where service revenue fell by 3.2 percent to £7.2 billion ($11.4 billion) on an organic basis.

Fixed-line revenue grew by 10 percent to £862 million ($1.4 billion). Vodafone says it now has more than five million broadband customers in Europe, with Italy the strongest market in terms of growth, at 22.3 percent.

Compared to service revenues in Europe, there’s better news in smaller emerging markets: service revenues in Asia Pacific and the Middle East rose by 10.4 percent to £1.6 billion, while in India it was up by 13.8 percent. Verizon Wireless, Vodafone’s JV with Verizon in the U.S., saw an increase of 4.7 percent. Vodafone added 10.3 million customers to its network, bringing the total to 333 million.

Vodafone has narrowed its forecast for the financial year to £11.4-£11.8 billion, compared to previous guidance of £11-£11.8 billion.

From the earnings call:
—iPhone impact: In the earnings call, CEO Vittorio Collao said that carrying the iPhone has definitely given the carrier an ARPU lift “But it’s too early to comment” on what it is. Currently around three-quarters of iPhone subscribers are current users upgrading; the rest are new customers.

—Vodafone 360: The operator’s social-media service layer focussing on service element is “heading in the right direction”, says Collao. Looks like it might be moving into something that will be offered on other handsets, besides Vodafone’s own-branded devices: “We might need dedicated handsets but it is the service component that [will be] emphasized in the future rather than the hard form factor.”

—Update on SFR: “Open minded” was Collao’s response to reports about potentially selling off its minority stake in French mobile oerator to Vivendi (EPA: VIV), the other major shareholder. “SFR is trading well, growing at one percent versus europe shrinking three percent.” He is it is “very well positioned from a competition point of view.” Divdends will be increased. “It’s a very good minority [stake] but we have to be open minded to value and shareholder value creation.”

If Motricity can do it, perhaps others in the space can, too. MBlox, which enables payments for mobile data services, has told the WSJ that it generated “north” of $110 million in revenue in 2009, and may be seeking additional capital for further acquisitions. It may even consider an IPO in 2011 if revenues stay at this level.

MBlox originally built its business around premium SMS services but has since diversified into other areas such as enterprise messaging and “sender pays” services. We talked to a spokesperson who told us that these new areas are still a relatively small part of the business. At the same time, the premium SMS business has faced some challenges – namely regulatory scrutiny of the area after some companies were discovered to be overcharging users.

Andrew Dark, the CEO of mBlox, said in an email that the company has ditched some of its clients as a result of the scrutiny: “Where clients have proved incapable of operating to the defined standards or have been unable to meet their contractual commitments to mBlox, we have terminated those relationships within the terms of our contract and it is these contracts – held in multiple geographies, which we have chosen to cancel due to their financial or reputational unprofitability.” But premium SMS providers – the more scrupulous ones, of course – remain a major part of the company’s business today.

—One other area that mBlox has been pushing for several quarters now is this idea of “sender pays” data services, where companies offering mobile services effectively subsidize the data cost for the service. For example, Dark tells us that a UK bus company, Arriva, is using mBlox to offer a mobile ticketing service. Travelers can purchase electronic tickets, which are paid for through their mobile airtime accounts, and these are sent to their handset, with the ticket buying and sending all free of charge, regardless of their data plan.

– The company, headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and London, says it has around 500 mobile operator customers in 180 markets and has raised some $75 million to date. That figure, a spokesperson for the company tells us, represents both money raised by mBlox and MobileSys, a competitor that it acquired in 2003. Backers include Duff Ackerman and Goodrich, Norwest Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners and Trident Venture Partners.

Ones of those backers says there is no pressure for an IPO soon. Kate Mitchell, a general partner with Scale Venture Partners tells the WSJ: “They are expanding their footprint geographically and they are expanding their product line. There is no rush to go public.”

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is following its $275 million (£172 million) acquisition of mobile advertising firm Quattro Wireless by hiring a couple of mobile advertising execs in Europe – suggesting it’s ramping up mobile ads sales in its head-to-head with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) in this space.

—Former Microsoft EMEA sales manager (for ScreenTonic) Theo Theodorou will head up its EMEA sales team.
—Todd Tran, previously an executive from WPP’s Group M, will be general manager for Europe, writes NMA.

I interviewed Theodorou many moons ago when he was still at Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). Back then, he was outspoken on the challenges of mobile advertising and marketing breaking into the mainstream: “Frankly there isn’t one standardised way of doing this. It’s a barrier to overcome to get mobile onto that next level.” (via FT)

That barrier in “getting to the next level” is just as true now as it was just over a year ago when we spoke. Figures from Juniper Research say that mobile advertising in 2009 totalled $1.4 billion – but that is less than one-third of one percent of all global ad revenue. Apple still only has a tiny share of the overall smartphone market, but it is has made very big business out of maximising revenues out of those users.

Yet Apple has a major contender in the mobile ad space, in the form of Google. Tran’s boss from his days at WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell, highlighted this growing dominance in December: “There’s a lot of debate about whether [mobile ads] will take off – we think it will, driven by iPhone and Android development…Our view is, Google is much much more fitter…The potential they see in mobile and mobile search – they’re much more focused and, therefore, more effective.”

Quattro works across a number of mobile advertising and marketing functions: it delivers mobile ads to different platforms through its network, it offers ad targeting services and it does analytics. Still not clear whether Quattro will also be working on marketing and advertising opportunities on the iPad too.

Trying to look for some clues as to what Theodorou might focus on with Quattro, we tracked down his blog Theosauras, where the most recent entry is on search advertising: “the next big thing”, he calls it, making a particular focus on location-based search.

Theodorou most recently comes from a short stint with Hachette Filipacchi as head of digital sales, joining the publisher only last October.

Meanwhile, Tran had most recently been MD for Joule, a mobile marketing agency within WPP’s GroupM division, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Related

• Confirmed: Apple Buys Quattro Wireless
• UBS Media Week: WPP’s Sorrell: Google’s Fitter Than Ever For Mobile Push

Three UK CEO Kevin Russell today gave a glimpse of how operators are scrambling behind the scenes in the UK over who will get to carry the iPad device in Europe. “Every man and his dog is bidding for it,” he said. While Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) made an easy-enough move to sell the device through its iPhone partner AT&T (NYSE: T) in the U.S., in the UK, no partner has been announced. Apple says WiFi devices will be shipped in the UK in late March with 3G models coming in April.

At a briefing with journalists, Russell ruled Three out of that bunfight: “I don’t see 3 overstretching itself” to try to carry it. “We will carry the iPad and the iPhone in time, on the right terms,” he said, explaining that 3 prefers to concentrate on “something that others are less confident in doing. That would excite me more.”

A device like an iPad would fit well in to 3’s current usage portfolio: Data traffic remains huge on itss network, with the vast bulk of it coming through dongle usage attached to PCs and netbooks rather than handsets.  As a measure of just how much is going to data, dongles account for 90 percent of 3 UK’s data traffic, said CTO Graham Baxter.

3UK still remains a distant fourth in terms of subscriber numbers in the UK. “How do we convert data into a reason to convert to 3?” Russell asled. More from Tuesday’s briefing…

—Bigger Spotify push coming: The unlimited-music service is available on HTC Hero via 3. Russell didn’t give subscriber numbers, but they are not likely to b high yet, given that the service was quietly launched in November on just one handset. Russell said 3 will be extending Spotify to “half a dozen” handsets in the next year. “We’re going to make a bigger retail push” on the service, he said. 3 and Spotify will be speaking together in Barcelona and may announce more news around the service then.

—What about e-Readers? Although 3 featured a picture of a Kindle device during the presentation, Russell told us that this was for “illustration” rather than as a way of indicating that Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is using some of 3’s network for its Kindle service – the retailer has been tight-lipped on who is providing network for its service in Europe. Russell says that 3 will move into offering at least one model of an e-Reader later this year.

—Which streaming apps are the biggest bandwidth hogs? Spotify streams take up around 100kbps; iPlayer can take up to 1600kbps. YouTube is the most popular streamed application today and weighs in at 300kbps. That number, says CTO Graham Baxter, is restricted by YouTube itself.

—Facebook is massive: No news here but some numbers from 3 on just how much it’s getting used on its network. Traffic for Facebook usage went up from 319 million page views in 2008 to 2.5 billion page views in 2009. On average, there are 19 Facebook pages viewed per day.

—Skype also still growing: 3 projects that it will carry a billion Skype minutes on its network in 2010, compared to 710 million in 2009.

Where is Android fitting into the mix? There is the HTC/Android handset that has Spotify preloaded, and there will be plenty more. “Android is important,” said Russell. Nothing on the Nexus One – 3 was reported to be on call as one of the early carriers for the device.

—Network issues on the horizon: Russell and Baxter both talked a lot about the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Orange in the UK. When the two operators merge they will have a huge amount of spectrum between them in the 1800MHz band. 3 is currently lobbying Ofcom to consider refarming this to other operators to create a more level playing field. As significantly, 3 and T-Mobile are in a JV currently to share infrastructure for 3G networks. They aim to have nearly 13,000 sites in place by October this year. “We will need to make sure that Orange is consistent with the same direction that 3 would want to be in,” were the T-Mo/Orange merger to go ahead.

One more publishing deal in Asia involving a UK publisher: Pearson is forming a JV with Nokia to deliver mobile education services. Called Beijing Mobiledu Technologies, the JV is an extension of Nokia’s Mobiledu service, which was launched in 2007 and provides English-language educational content directly to mobile phones, from a variety of content providers.

The deal looks like a double-helper: It will give Pearson (NYSE: PSO) a leg-up in their strategy to expand in the Chinese market, which John Fallon, chief exec of Pearson’s International Education business says has the highest number of people learning English of any market. And it will also give Nokia (NYSE: NOK) a more dedicated partner to develop content for Mobiledu. The service claims to have 20 million subscribers, although Nokia says in a release that only 1.5 million of those “actively” use the service each month.

Mobiledu can be accessed through Nokia’s Ovi store, through a WAP portal, and through an application preloaded on new Nokia handsets in the country. Apps that are currently on the site retail for around 2 yuan ($0.30) each.

The JV will be headed up by Angela Long, who is the former head of Mobiledu.

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More money being invested into the mobile video space, this time at the infrastructure end: Avvasi, a Canadian developer of software and hardware to help mobile operators optimize and monetize mobile video, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. Existing investors participated including the Canadian VCs Celtic House Venture Partners and Tech Capital Partners. Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund also participated.

Mate Prgin, CEO of Avvasi, says that the company has “several” operator customers of different sizes both in North America and Europe, but declined to give their names. He also would not disclose how much money his company has raised to date. The company is due to release its first commercial product during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. The funding will be used to speed up its product-release schedule.

“A dramatic shift in the mobile handset market towards smartphones and 3G/3G+ connected laptops has resulted in an exponential growth of mobile data traffic,” Celtic House Partner Brian Antonen says in the release. “Streaming video is one of the fastest growing categories of mobile data traffic and is becoming an increasingly significant revenue driver for wireless carriers. Avvasi provides cost-effective and highly scalable solutions that enable carriers to capitalize and profit from these trends.”

Some of Avvasi’s founders had come from the IPTV technology company PixStream, which was acquired by Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) in 2000.

It may be getting slammed for the quality of its network, but AT&T is still raking it in on mobile. Today the operator reported that revenues for Q4 fell slightly to $30.9 billion, from $31.1 billion for the same quarter a year ago. But net income went up to $3 billion from $2.4 billion, a rise of almost 26 percent.

Mobile led the way, accounting for $12.6 billion of that revenue figure. AT&T (NYSE: T) added 2.7 million more customers to its wireless service, bringing the total number up to 7.3 million for 2009. The company also reported strong data growth both in terms of volume and value: up 26.3 percent to $805 million. Within that text messages are still on the rise, up 70 percent, and MMS nearly doubling over the last year.

—Integrated devices: Devices that have mobile Internet access totaled 30.2 million for the quarter, nearly double the 16.2 million reported a quarter earlier.

—Network speed/quality: AT&T says it is ahead of schedule in upgrading its 3G network nationwide to HSPA, which will give the network speeds of up to 7.2Mbps; ten handsets, including the iPhone 3GS, are HSPA-enabled. The operator also spent a bit of time defending its network quality, laying out its “aggressive” program of network enhancements, in particular for the high-usage markets of San Francisco and New York. This includes deploying Ethernet to improve backhaul and similar projects in the next 90 days.

—iPad: AT&T was announced as the operator partner for Apple’s new device. It will be sold with two different price plans: $15 for 250 MB or $30 for unlimited usage, both without a contract.  AT&T noted that there were no revenue agreements in place with respect to that deal. The device will be sold unsubsidized—and also unlocked for access to some other carriers.

—U-verse: The IPTV service added another 248,000 subscribers, bringing its total subscriber base up to nearly 2 million. AT&T will be opening up further markets this year, concentrating on the southeastern part the country. It says that currently penetration is around the 20 percent mark but it could grow “into the thirties”.

Some much-needed good news from Nokia, which reported gains in mobile market share and a 65 percent increase in profits for Q4.

Net profits were €948 million ($1.3 billion), compared to €576 million ($806 million) for the same quarter a year ago, even while sale dropped down to €12 billion ($16.8 billion), down from €12.7 billion ($17.8 billion) one year ago. Downloads at Nokia’s Ovi app store are now at one million per day.

After a bumper year for new entrants in the smartphone area like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Nokia is clawing back some market share in smartphones, with share up from 35 percent to 40 percent in that segment, the company is still looking for a product that can capture the public in the same way that Apple has with its iPhone.

“We are currently lagging with high-end midnshare products,” says Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the CEO of Nokia (NYSE: NOK). “We are definitely working on that product and will come out with that.” During the conference call he several times referred to having a “good” portfolio but needing a “great” portfolio.

But Nokia has cut R&D spend by €1.6 billion ($2.2 billion). How will that affect their ambitions to develop market-leading phones? “We are cutting out overall investment levels in R&D that we feel is adequate,” says Kallasvuo. “But high-end investment is happening as we speak. There is nothing new, no need to ramp up the investment.”

In all Nokia said it shipped 126.9 million devices, a 12 percent rise over the same quarter a year ago. Of that, 20.8 million were converged devices.

One million downloads per day on Ovi, but what about active users? There have been some questions about how Nokia counts Ovi users, using a very loose definition of “active”. Nokia says it is now “improving the KPIs” behind what it means to be “active but not that active.” He said that current figures that Nokia uses are good to use internally “drive change”. A preview of the kind of metrics they’ll be using in future: “When we launched the turn-by-turn navigation we have been able to follow that completely to see what users doing to a detail.”

Music to our ears? Comes With Music, Nokia’s music service, is now in 15 markets with 25 different operators but still faces some setbacks here. Most recently, Nokia released a new version of one of its music flagship devices, the X6 without the music service priced in.

Stable retail channel: Unlike Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM), which yesterday revised down its revenue forecasts, citing lower demand in its retail channel for feature phones using its technology, Nokia says that while it too had seen similar trends “that situation has now normalised.”

Nokia’s Navteq division reported revenues of €225 million ($315 milion). The company last week announced that it would be making mapping services free on its handsets.

What about tablets? Nokia says it is looking at this area more, “exploring as we speak.” Kallasvuo said that the Nokia booklet, which uses the Linux-based Maemo Windows 7 operating system, has had “tremendous” response. “The traction that we are getting gives us the understanding that we can deliver [different products] between the phone and the PC. You will see more in this space going forward.”

Qualcomm reported today that net profit more than doubled to $841 million in the first quarter 2010 from $341 million a year ago. Revenue also rose to $2.67 billion compared to $2.52 billion. But the mobile chipmaker revised down its forecasts for the quarter ahead, citing competition in the market and “subdued economic recovery,” particularly in developed markets like Japan and Europe. Revenues for 2010 were cut to a range of $10.4 billion to $11 billion, compared to its earlier range of $10.5 billion to $11.3 billion.

Despite increasing mobile-data usage worldwide, the economy continues to impact Qualcomm’s sales. Worldwide, lower sales at the retail end are having a knock-on effect on inventory. “We continue to think the retail channel is quite lean…at the low end of the normal band,” said William Keitel, Qualcomm’s CFO. “Our forecast for the year assumes that channel will continue to stay lean throughout 2010.”

That slower market has not yet been offset by some of the gains that Qualcomm has made over the last few months in both the smartphone/mid-range phone sectors as well as in eReaders.

The company’s Snapdragon processor is being built into Google’s Nexus One device and other devices. And the Brew platform is being used to deliver an app store experience to mid-range phones on AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless all committing to Brew-based apps. (Although Brew is licensed free to handset makers, developers and operators, Qualcomm charges for the chipsets that are needed to run the platform.)

Meanwhile, the company’s QSI segment, which includes FLO TV, incurred $106 million in operating expenses, or a $0.03 diluted loss per share, primarily related to FLO. 

Very few mentions of the 300-pound gorilla a few hundred miles north of San Diego that was announcing a tablet product today.

– One analyst’s question on whether the radio in the new Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPad was a Qualcomm product got no comment.

– Another asked how the iPad announcement would impact Qualcomm’s interest in developing Mirasol, its eReader display technology. “Mirasol is getting a good response from customers,” said Steve Altman, president of Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM). “Our technology will be a differentiator in the long term.” The new color display is on track to launch by the end of this year.

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• Qualcomm’s Revenues Down 19 Percent in Q4; Profits Hurt By Charges

So the pieces have come together for how Orange plans to use its relationship with Blyk, the European company that once ran a “free” ad-supported mobile service for 16-24 year-olds but turned away from the free model after failing to make it work financially. The UK mobile operator today announced Orange Shots, an SMS/MMS-based advertising service “powered by Blyk.”

Gone is the age restriction and gone too is the free service, though…

While Blyk will provide the technology behind the service, it will be sold through Unanimis, the digital ad agency that Orange bought last August for an undisclosed sum.

Blyk ended its service with a mere 200,000 subscribers on its network – not the critical mass that major brands like to target with their marketing activities. Orange will be starting Shots with an even smaller number: it says ads initially will be sent out to 100,000 people, users “who have opted in to receive contact”.

“New profiles and customer segments will quickly follow, matching Orange’s ambition to significantly grow this audience,” promises Orange in a press release.

But it remains to be seen whether that base will grow, if there is no longer an incentive of free service in exchange for agreeing to receive the advertising. Current Shots recipients are people are on Orange’s Monkey tariff, a pay-as-you-go service that offers 300 free texts and music when a user tops up by £10 ($16) every month.

Blyk always boasted that it had significantly higher response rates for its adverts than the average online or mobile advertiser: typically a 25 percent response rate. Orange says that it has been testing out the service since September and it has found response rates of between 21 and 39 percent. Advertisers to date have included 4Music (Orange’s music partner for the Monkey service), Ubisoft, COI and Snickers.

Blyk continues to offer an own-branded service in the Netherlands, using Vodafone’s network in the country.

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• Orange Buying Unanimis, Forms Multimedia Ad Network

Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) reported a Q4 net loss of $653 million, compared to a net profit of $1.24 billion a year ago. That works out to 23 cents per share compared to 43 cents per share a year ago. Verizon cited costs from layoffs, more spending to grow its wireless business, and more attrition in its fixed-line business as the main causes for the loss. Job cuts alone – the operator has laid of thousands – cost the company $3 billion, the company said today in an earnings call.

The operator picked up 2.2 million mobile subscribers, beating expectations of 1.5 million, according to analysts surveyed by Reuters. That brings the subscriber base for Verizon Wireless up to 91.2 million. Wireless revenue was $15.7 billion. Stripping out Alltel, acquired in 2009, Verizon’s overall sales rose a mere 0.2 percent.

Wireless: The Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid was cited in particular as one of the drivers of the operator’s strong revenues in the last quarter, but it was also a cost: Verizon noted that operating margins for wireless were down to 27.3 percent, compared to 29.7 percent a year before. Average revenues per user were also down by 0.6 percent to $50.75.

—Wireline: Revenues were down to $11.46 billion, a fall of 3.9 percent. The number of residential lines is now 16.23 million, a decline of more than 10 percent.

—The one bright spot in wireline was the company’s FiOS service. The TV service added 153,000 to bring its total to 2.9 million. FiOS Inte Arnet also added 153,000 customers, bringing that total to 3.4 million. Total broadband revenues grew by 25.5 percent over the same quarter last year, to $1.7 billion.

More refining on paywalls, from one of the first to introduce them. The Financial Times is gearing up to launch a “day pass” to access its content online and by mobile this year. But for now it is ruling out charging for individual articles until the right technology is in place.

The object of the day pass is to bring in new subscribers through a gradual process: “[Day passes are] something we think will have a market. It’s reasonable to assume there are a lot of people who will quite happily pay that, but aren’t willing to commit to one year’s subscription in one go,” Rob Grimshaw, the managing director of FT.com, told Journalism.co.uk.

Grimshaw says that charging per article would be something the FT would like to consider, but the technology won’t be available until later in the year.

John Ridding, the chief executive of the FT Group, a division of Pearson (NYSE: PSO), said this month that content revenues will overtake print advertising revenues by 2012.

Part of FT’s success story has been its mobile apps. The FT’s mobile app is free of charge, but like the FT.com, it follows a tiered charging model, with unpaid subscribers getting three articles per month free. The FT says it has had 200,000 downloads of its iPhone app to date, and it is planning to relaunch a new version of its app for BlackBerry devices, with an app for Android devices also in the works.

Grimshaw will be speaking more about paid content models for mobile and online at paidContent’s conference, paidContent 2010: Discussing the economics of content, taking place on February 19 in New York.

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—Strong Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) iPhone sales: Despite being one of the latest operators to launch the iPhone in the UK, the mobile operator says it continues to see strong sales of the device. Today, it said it sold 100,000 iPhones to date, after reaching the 50,000 milestone last week.

—AQA on Android: The question/answer texting service has developed a widget for java-based devices and iPhones, with Android on the way. AQA

—Blinked.TV: Another live mobile streaming site is launching, joining the likes of Qik, Flixwagon and Bambuser. This one works on Symbian-based devices, with testing the in works for iPhones too. Download here.

—AdMob Euro stats: In Dec. 2009, AdMob said Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) devices generated more than half the total ad requests in western Europe, at the expense of Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Devices using the Android OS generated eight percent of all smartphone requests, making it the second-largest market after North America in penetration. (Report.)

Israel-based Mobixell, which last year last year cut its staff by around 10 due to the business climate, has bought mobile internet company 724 Solutions for an undisclosed sum.

Mobixell develops products that help mobile operators deliver mobile TV, advertising and other multimedia services, while U.S.-based 724 Solutions specializes in platforms that help operators optimize the delivery of mobile data services. Mobixell says it will use the acquisition to fill out its portfolio.

Together, the two companies count hundreds of mobile operators as customers worldwide, including Verizon Wireless, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) in Europe, Orange and Bharti-Airtel. In 2009, the company had to downsize its operations “in response to economic conditions,” according to a spokesperson.

Mobixell and 724 Solutions each have over $20 million in turnover annually, said the spokesperson. Mobixell is funded by Apax and Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Capital and has raised $29 million in funding to date.

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Truphone, a UK-based VoIP provider, will offer a competitively priced SIM-only mobile service for voice, texting and data—effectively becoming a virtual network operator. The company has signed deals with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) in the UK and an unnamed U.S. operator.

So far, Truphone’s business has been to offer a WiFi-based VoIP service via apps for Android, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Blackberry, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) smartphones. It claims to have gained “hundreds of thousands of subscribers” this way. But this new service instead embraces traditional mobile networks. Called Truphone Local Anywhere, it will offer mobile service over the conventional networks of Vodafone and the unnamed operator. The service will be limited to using standard voice minutes. “This doesn’t use any VoIP at all because that’s one of the things that terrifies an operator,” a spokesperson tells paidContent:UK.

Truphone says that while it is a SIM-only service for now, it plans to bundle the SIMs with handsets in the future.

It’s hard to make money as a VoIP-only operator, as Skype and others have proven. Truphone acquired SIM4Travel, a roaming SIM card provider, in April 2008. SIM4Travel also added a core GSM network to Truphone’s business. It is these assets that Truphone is using to build its own mobile network ambitions.

The data rates it offers are competitive with those of current UK operators: in the UK a megabyte costs £0.50 (81 cents), with unlimited bundles priced at £21-a-month ($33.89). Bundles in the U.S. will cost $30-a-month.

The company says it plans to announce further such agreements in Australia, Africa, Singapore and Hong Kong later this year. Until then, roaming in those countries will be under wholesale agreements, which the company claims still offer a discount on mobile roaming rates.

Geraldine Wilson, the CEO of Truphone, was once the head of Yahoo’s Connected Life division in Europe. The company has raised £36.5 million ($58.9 million) from investors, including the publisher Independent News & Media, Eden Ventures, Burda Digital, Wellington Partners and Straub Ventures. Release

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Nokia (NYSE: NOK) may have spent €8 billion ($11.2 billion) acquiring Navteq in 2007, but today the handset maker announced it’s making its GPS navigation features available for free to all users.

Turn-by-turn navigation and traffic updates had respectively cost around €1.59 ($2) and €0.69 ($0.97) a day. But now the service will come pre-loaded on selected Nokia smartphones; those who already own devices can download the app.

The free service will help keep Nokia’s handsets, by way of services, more competitive with the rest of the smartphone market. It puts Nokia in competition on a services level against the likes of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which offers a free navigation service for Android devices, and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), whose store boasts dozens of mapping apps, such as Tom Tom’s own app.

But to be clear, this remains at heart a device play: “This will help Nokia to boost our smartphone sales,” said Anssi Vanjoki, executive VP for Nokia, at the press event today in London.

Tom Tom, one of the most dominant GPS players whose iPhone application is one of the most popular in the App Store, saw its share price dip by 11 percent in early trading today in the wake of the Nokia announcement.

—So how will Nokia make money? That’s the big question. Nokia is hoping to use its Ovi services suite, of which Maps is a part, to drive handset sales. But it also sees potential revenue in third-party services developed on top of Maps – APIs were also opened up for this today, and Maps already offers location features for Facebook, Lonely Planet, Time Out etc. There are no advertisements on Maps today, but multimedia EVP Anssi Vanjoki says this may be a future income generator. Aside from leveraging Ovi to make its phones more attractive, Nokia hopes to make €2 billion ($2.8 billion) in direct services revenue by 2011.

—Will it work?: Remains to be seen, but Nokia may be on to something: stats released today from Essential Research indicate real-time traffic updates was the biggest driver to mobile internet adoption, among those who currently do not use it. It also found that social media was the biggest driver to mobile internet usage, so pre-integrating Facebook with the mapping service from the start could have also been a good move on Nokia’s part.

—What about other devices?: Vanjoki told me, on the sidelines of the event, that Nokia is “absolutely not” interested in developing the service for non-Nokia platforms. No question then of whether Nokia is really considering hiving off its handset division, something Vanjoki himself seemed to suggest in an interview last year: “That idea is absolute bull,” Vanjoki told me.

More from the announcement…

The service is available on 10 smartphones as of today, and Nokia says it will extend this to more devices in the coming months, including its Maemo-based devices.

At launch, the service will have turn-by-turn voice guidance for 74 countries in 46 languages, as well as traffic information for over 10 countries. There are detailed maps for over 180 countries. The turn-by-turn navigation can be set for both pedestrian and car journeys, although if you’re taking a journey that involves both, you will need to programme two different searches. A Nokia spokesperson said this might be a feature that will be more seamless in future.

Nokia reports its results next week.

Related

• Nokia To Blame For Weak Smartphone Sales In 2009
• Google Rolls Out Navigation To More Android Devices; Will Other Smartphones Follow?

Two acquisitions announced today in mobile enterprise space:

– Apperian, a developer of iPhone applications for consumers and enterprises, has bought DS Media Labs, another mobile developer, for an undisclosed sum. Apperian will use the acquisition to develop apps for other mobile platforms, and to expand its mobile enterprise business. Release via Yahoo

– Ifbyphone, a provider of mobile voice and data services, has acquired Cloudvox, an open-source, cloud-based platform for developing voice applications. Ifbyphone will integrate Cloudvox’s platform into its portfolio of cloud-based services. Ifbyphone has raised $9.1 million in funding to date, writes VentureBeat. Financial details were not disclosed.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) may still be trading patent blow-for-blows with Apple in the U.S., but in Europe it’s won a patent case that may strengthen its resolve against Cupertino…

The UK High Court has ruled in its favour, Nokia tells us (and Reuters), declaring invalid patents EP 540 808 (UK) and EP 1 186 189 (UK), held by German intellectual property license holder IPCom. Nokia’s spokesperson tells us…

—“Patent ‘808 deals with synchronization of the mobile to the network. IPCom alleged that Patent ‘808 was essential to GSM. The court found that it was neither valid nor essential.

—“Patent ‘189 deals with access to the RACH (that is the Random Access Channel, where the mobile announces to the network that it wants to make a call, and asks for a channel. In case of overload, there is a kind of lottery). IPCom alleged Patent ‘189 was essential to UMTS (3G). The Court found that the patent was not valid, but if it had been, it would have been essential.”

IPCom originally acquired the patents from Bosch, which created the GSM patents between the 1980s and 2000, when it had interests and ambitions in the mobile industry. According to The Register, IPCom has been trying to get some €12 billion in licensing from Nokia in relation to these patents, a sum that Nokia has been resisting.

Nokia’s win is wider than just for itself – IPCom has now pledged to the European Commission it will offer its other mobile patents under fair licensing terms. Last year, Nokia had complained to the EC that IPCom was asking for too much money. IPCom had acquired around 160 patent families that are “key to mobile communications standards” and based around GSM technology.

Just like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in the U.S., IPCom had, in a separate case in Germany, sought an injunction on the sale of Nokia handsets in the country, although a court in Mannheim put the request on hold until the European Patent Office decided on those patents’ validity. There is another UK case pending for next week concerning more patents owned by IPCom.

The patents in question in the IPCom case cover nuts-and-bolts GSM technology, rather than the newer innovations that are at the centre of Nokia’s dispute with Apple – touchscreens and other smartphone functionality. But, as in Nokia’s Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) patent dispute, this case demonstrates Nokia’s tenacity when it comes to IP.

—Separately, Nokia is also doing some patent work related to future products. Ubergizmo notes that one of the latest filings is for a flexible device that executes different commands depending on how one bends it. A patent for application 20100011291 has still not been issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

Update: Nokia tells us that following Monday’s ruling, IPCom “has conceded defeat in a further case, due to start trial in the UK next week. The case involved three further UK patents that IPCom had asserted against Nokia as being essential to the GSM and/or UMTS standards. IPCom has now accepted that these patents are also invalid.”

Related

• Apple Matches Nokia’s Latest Attack By Filing A New Patent Complaint Of Its Own

When Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) launched its larger Kindle, the DX, in Europe two weeks ago, the promotion around the product was noticeable for being pretty US-centric. Even on sites in countries like France, if you wanted to buy the device, you were redirected to Amazon.com, where you were given product information in dollars. Now, finally, some moves that speak of a more regional approach: the online retailer is apparently now offering its Android MP3 music store in the UK, with prices in sterling (although it has yet to announce the service); and it’s expanding its Kindle self-publishing platform DTP to UK, German and French markets. Both had previously only been available in the US.

Amazon’s mobile music service – which comes pre-loaded on the new Nexus handset, and appears with the latest, 2.1 upgrade of the Android platform – could position Android devices to compete better with the many other mobile devices bundled with music download services in the UK.

Existing mobile download services run the gamut from newer services like those from 7digital/BlackBerry, to Nokia’s Comes With Music service, operator-branded music stores such as Vodafone’s and, of course, Apple’s iPhone. The store has some 9 million tracks in stock, with prices ranging from 29p to 89p for single tracks.

But as Ronan de Renesse, a senior mobile media analyst with Screen Digest, points out in The Telegraph, the impact might be tempered by the fact that Amazon is not the number-one MP3 destination online. “If the roles were reversed, and Amazon was the market leader, things would be more interesting. As it is, I think this is important for the Android platform, but Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) will not be that worried.”

Meanwhile, the self-publishing service for the Kindle will allow publishers and authors to directly upload their books into the Amazon Kindle store. This will expand the library of non-US content, but according to TechWatch, authors will only get 35 percent of the cover price of each item. According to the release from Amazon, the company plans to extend the DTP service to more languages in the future.

Related

• Digital Music Retailer 7digital Launching In U.S., Debuts BlackBerry App

—LG/Android: The Korean handset maker LG is launching its first Android-OS phone, the GW620 Intouch Max, aimed at the “lower mid-tier” of the market, with T-Mobile and Virgin in the UK. via MobileNews

—Santander: The Spanish banking group is launching a digital game to help with its rebranding of UK banks Abbey and Bradford & Bingley to Santander. The “Red Brick” game is available as an iPhone app, a mobile game and a Facebook widget. via Brand Republic

—Flirtomatic: The UK online and mobile social network Flirtomatic is launching an ad-funded free iPhone app. via GoMoNews