Author: Tricia Duryee

This time it is Facebook that allowing developers to integrate social networking into their Android applications. Last week, it was MySpace that released a software developer tool kit.

Facebook made the announcement on their blog today, saying that their SDK—which already supported iPhone and mobile websites—is now up to speed on Android. TechCrunch notes that there have been ways to integrate Facebook into Android applications before now, but that these have really been hacked together from the iPhone SDK, and weren’t really official.

The SDKs are helpful for things like letting users login into your app using their Facebook account, and in the case of MySpace (NYSE: NWS), updating their statuses without leaving the application.

»  Verizon Wireless CEO says Sprint’s stabilization will be good for everyone because a wounded company “does desperate things.” [WSJ.]

»  Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is not appearing at Apple’s WWDC despite rumors started by Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research. [Engagdet.]

»  2ergo posts half-year loss after investing heavily. [MobileMarketing.]

»  New proposal would require identification to buy prepaid cellphones. [Washington Post.]

»  Palm’s mobile user interface guru Matias Duarte has left and has been hired on at Google (NSDQ: GOOG). [Digital Daily.]

The BlackBerry Partners Fund has expanded to China with a $100 million fund through a new joint venture with China Broadband Capital Partners, a four-year-old investment firm.

The two companies said The BlackBerry Partners Fund China will invest exclusively in opportunities supporting “the emerging mobile ecosystem in China,” which is considered the world’s largest mobile market. The fund is expected to officially close at the end of August.

No word on whether the Chinese start-ups must have a BlackBerry component or not, but it likely won’t be a requirement. Back in May 2008, the original $150 million BlackBerry Partners Fund was launched for the purpose of investing in mobile applications and services for BlackBerry and other mobile platforms.

This is more about the connections than it is the money, but mobile payments company Boku has raised even more money following its $25 million round in January.

The mobile payments space is hot right now with lots of start-ups looking to be the PayPal of mobile. Of course, they’ll have to compete against not only PayPal, but other financial behemoths, like MasterCard. Consider this funding event a combination of both money and brain power to fight that battle.

The undisclosed round is coming from Andreessen Horowitz, the firm founded by Netscape-Co-Founders Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz. The two investors, who have also placed bets in such companies as Zynga and Skype, will become strategic advisors to the San Francisco company. In addition, Boku has appointed two new executives to the team, including David Yoo, the former SVP and Chief Product Officer at AT&T (NYSE: T) Interactive, and Kevin Grant, former VP of Sales for Mobi TV. Yoo will become the SVP of Strategy and Grant will be the SVP of Sales.

Boku, which launched in June 2009, had previously raised $38 million and has been focusing on helping game and application developers charge for virtual goods on social networks. It claims that its payment service, called Paymo, accounted for nearly 100 percent of the top applications for virtual goods and currencies purchased on Facebook.

Boku said that the two new executives have been brought on board to tackle one of the biggest hurdles in the mobile payments space: reducing fees charged by carriers to make selling physical goods more feasible. In a release, Yoo said: “Mobile payments for goods and services, be they virtual, digital or physical are still in the early stages of growth. Carriers have a tremendous opportunity to generate revenue and increase ARPU as fees come down.”

Related

• Cellphones Still Not A Practical Replacement For Cash
• MasterCard Is Making It Easier To Pay By Mobile Phone
• Boku Raises $25 Million To Expand Mobile Payments Services
• Paris-Based Hi-media Expands Micropayments Business To U.S.
• Mobile Payment Provider Zong Raises $15 Million Following Spin-Off

It’s not called Hulu mobile, but it probably should be. Fox’s Mobile Group has launched a mobile beta application that provides free access to full-length TV shows on your phone.

The strangely named application is called Bitbop, and quietly became available in beta as recently as today, a spokesperson confirmed. The service was expected to launch this spring, and since it’s being called a beta, things are still likely to change.  For now, users can sign-up for a trial on its web site and the application is free and compatible on four BlackBerry phones.

It is practically a Hulu look-alike because it comes loaded with TV shows from 25 content partners, including Hulu’s joint venture partners News Corp (NYSE: NWS). and NBC Universal (NYSE: GE). While the catalog is not quite as extensive, other networks involved include: The Food Network, A&E, CBS (NYSE: CBS), TLC, USA and MTV.

Previously, Fox Mobile’s EVP of Global Products Joe Bilman told mocoNews that the application will be free, but in order to access to the whole catalog, a subscription will cost $10 a month. he said the service is expected to work over WiFi and 3G, and to support a variety of handsets, including the iPhone and Android-based smartphones. The web site only lists TV shows for now, but says movies will be coming soon.

The line-up of TV shows is includes some of the best from the TV networks’ current line-up, including episodes from “The Office,” “30 Rock,” “Glee,” “24,” but also older stuff, like the first episode of “Arrested Development.”

It’s not entirely fair to say the service should be called Hulu Mobile. The big difference is that Bitbop is being produced by the Fox Mobile team, and not being co-developed by the partners that form Hulu’s independent management team. The other two obvious points is that it is a mobile service, and has a subscription service model from the start. The content owners are probably pleased to be able to try charging, rather than attempting an ad-supported model from the start and trying to charge later.

Related

• Fox Mobile Group Unveils Hulu-Like Video Streaming Service For The Phone

»  Android is getting more traction in the U.S., whereas the iPhone is more global, according to AdMob, which will soon be acquired by Google (NSDQ: GOOG). [GigaOm.]

»  Medialets has partnered with Mojiva to make its rich media ad formats for applications more widely available. It also has partnerships with Nexage and Jumptap. [Medialets blog.]

»  Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer known for making the iPhone, says it is reviewing its policies after a ninth employee between the ages of 18 and 24 committed suicide. The company has about 420,000 employees. [The New York Times.]

»  In a survey conducted by the FCC, it found that one in six U.S. mobile phone users have been shocked by fees and charges in their monthly bills. [Reuters.]

»  iVdopia, a mobile advertising network, has launched a so-called “Viper ad.” Users swipe their fingertip across the screen to reveal a menu of options. So far, more than 15 percent of users tried out the action and more than 71 percent watched the ad to the end. [See image.]

When Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs takes the stage on June 7 in San Francisco, we pretty much know what we are going to get. Between the infamous misplacing of what is believed to be the next-generation iPhone in a Palo Alto bar, and a more obscure incident in Vietnam, Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray said Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has “little room for surprise” at the Worldwide Developer Conference. Separately, Boy Genius reports that AT&T (NYSE: T) has confirmed to employees that a new iPhone launching in early June.

AppleInsider writes that Munster believes the new phone will have a front-facing camera for video conferencing, better battery life, an improved rear camera and a thinner design. He’s not expecting Apple to announce an iPhone for Verizon or any other U.S. carrier. “Bottom line: WWDC will likely be in-line with expectations, and a non-event for the stock,” Munster wrote, “but the new iPhone will likely drive unit sales beyond Street expectations, providing a positive catalyst for shares of AAPL in the coming months.”

Apple Sets Date For WWDC; Jobs To Also Appear A Week Before

MasterCard said today it will let third-party developers tap into its payment systems, so they can be used for online or mobile applications. By opening up its services, the credit card company becomes more competitive in the next generation of platforms, which are the target of more than a dozen or so start-ups that have raised millions of dollars to make paying by cell phone more ubiquitous.

Through the program, developers will be able to bypass having to get a merchant agreement, setting up the system and making the consumer enter data each time. Instead, developers could use the new open platform to embed a payment feature in virtual games or in e-commerce apps on Twitter or Facebook, or to build an app that sends a text message to the card’s owner before a purchase is made, The New York Times reports.

Internally, MasterCard has been using the APIs in-house to create iPhone applications, such as MasterCard ATM Hunter and MasterCard Easy Savings, but Garry Lyons, MasterCard’s Group Executive of R&D, said: “Opening these and other APIs to the global development community developers will provide developers the opportunity to leverage MasterCard’s leading payment platforms and come up with new ideas that may not have been previously considered or thought possible.”

In the Times article, MasterCard says that while mobile payments for digital goods has started to take off, “it’s still really hard to buy a physical item from your phone.” Last week, we wrote about how phones are not a practical replacement for cash because of 40 to 50 percent cut a carrier demands if the charge appears on the cellphone bill. Other limitations have revolved around the hardware, and having compatible payment scanners in the store with chips in the phone.

MasterCard is not the only one shifting their approach. PayPal opened its platform late last year, and other start-ups like mopay, Zong, Boku and Paris-based Hi-media, are hopeful they can transition from mostly digital goods to physical goods over time. Interested developers should contact MasterCard at [email protected] in order to learn more on how to participate in the program.

Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel’s shares are soaring after two analysts said Sprint’s actions over the past couple of years are starting to take hold and that the company is likely to post subscriber gains this year.

The stock jumped nearly 9 percent, or 38 cents, to $4.79 a share. Over the past year, the company’s stock has not exceeded $5.78 a share.

Goldman Sachs upgraded its rating on the stock to “Buy,” and raised its price target to $6 price. AP reports that Goldman’s Jason Armstrong said Sprint saw a big drop-off in new contract customers and upgrades in 2008, which means that there are fewer subscribers than before reaching the end of their two-year contracts this year. Michael Rollins at Citigroup, who maintains a “buy” rating, said he believes Sprint can post gains in contract subscribers, excluding Nextel users, as early as this quarter.

MocoSpace has been able to build a mobile social network of more than 11 million registered users without building an application or targeting smartphone users.

But now it has released an application for the Android platform, and soon iPhone, that is focused on some of the site’s more popular features, including sharing photos and messaging other members in chat rooms.

The applications represent a shift in strategy for the company that to date has mostly been access by users through browsers on low-end handsets. A recent survey of its own members found that even its users are beginning to purchase smartphones. It said that the number of Android users accessing MocoSpace’s mobile Web site spiked by 40 percent over the past six months and is growing faster than iPhone or Blackberry.

For now, the application is fairly basic. They’ll enable users to chat, upload photos, find new friends and receive message notifications, but if you want to view a profile, it will direct you to the browser. According to the Android Market, the application has already been downloaded between 10,000 and 50,000 times, and has received 200 ratings. Users have rated it four of five stars.

Related

• Mobile Social Network MocoSpace Soars To 11 Million Members
• Users Appetite For Social Networking Much Broader Than Facebook When On The Phone
• Interview: MocoSpace CEO Justin Siegel: “We’ll Generate Millions Of Dollars In Ad Revenue This Year”

At Google’s developer conference in San Francisco today, it provided rock-solid evidence of Android’s gaining momentum and outlined where the platform was headed, including new features that make the platform more competitive, and in some cases, leap-frogs the iPhone.

The entire presentation, given by Vic Gundotra, the VP of Engineering in charge of mobile applications, and was sprinkled with back-handed jabs at Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), and stressed how being open means being inclusive. “Thank you for supporting Android and for voting on the side of open,” he said. Today’s announcements included incremental updates to Android, such as new features like tethering. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) also demonstrated future versions of its app store, and showed off new ad formats that mock Apple’s iAds. As is typical with these kinds of Google events, everyone in the audience walked away with Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G, which comes out June 4.

Some of the impressive figures shared today:

—Google is now activating 100,000 mobile phones a day, up from 60,000 a day in February.
—In the first six months of offering free turn-by-turn navigation, it has mapped 1 billion miles.
—Google searches on mobile have grown five times in the past two years across all phones.
—The Android Market now has 50,000 applications, and 180,000 registered developers.

Google’s announcements can be broken down into four parts:

Froyo: Google unveiled Android 2.2, which is code-named Froyo for Frozen Yogurt. The platform, which will be released to hardware compatible phones over time, will be two to five times faster than running Eclair. That will improve the entire experience on the phone, but also the performance of games. New enterprise features for Froyo includes integrating Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Exchange and enabling an IT department to remote wipe a device if necessary. Cool new features from Froyo consists of tethering, so you can internet-enable your laptop, or create a WiFi hotspot with your phone. One necessary chagne that Froyo has is to allow users to save large applications to the SD card, rather than the phone’s memory. This task will now be done automatically for the user. It will also have Adobe’s Flash, clearly something the iPhone won’t be supporting. In one of his jabs at Apple, Gundotra, said: “A special thanks to Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) for wanting to engage with us. It’s much nicer [for Google to be inclusive] than just saying no.”

New developer updates: A few new features were added to the developer SDK. One of the more impressive demonstrations was of how the Chrome browser on the PC was tied to the phone. If you find directions on the computer, and send them to the phone, it immediately launches the maps application.

—Android Market updates: Google provided a sneak peak of upcoming Android Market updates. A user can now access the application catalog from the browser, and then can send applications right to the phone, without having to tether the device to the PC. Google is also making easy to slide over all your non-DRM music to the Android device. It also demonstrated how to buy songs or albums in the market, which Gundotra said is not just for apps, signaling that Google will be getting into more content sales.

—Advertising: One area they are facing stiff competition from Apple is advertising. While Apple moves forward with its iAd service, Google is still waiting to hear from the FTC about its purchase of AdMob. Gundotra: “We aren’t new at this game, we aren’t charging people $1 million to be part of our program. Advertisers and publishers have all different kinds of needs, local, direct response, and brand, and you need formats that meet the needs. We have those formats.” Today, Google announced they are releasing “expandable ads,” which allow a banner to become bigger within an application when someone clicks on it. The ad format is part of Google’s Adsense for Mobile Apps which is in Beta. From the expandable ad, people will be about to see a map, or click to call and watch movie trailers.

Cellphones may be the one item that people never leave the house without, but a wallet must come in at a close second. That’s because paying for physical goods—a subway ticket, a sandwich, or a new pair of shoes—with a cellphone hasn’t taken off, especially in North America.

There’s one good reason for that: If a user wants to charge the purchase to his or her cellphone bill, the carrier will likely take a 40 to 50 percent cut of the transaction from the retailer. Purchases are also typically capped at $25. Under these conditions, a trip to the grocery store, or the mall is completely uneconomical for the retailer. But Mobile payment service provider mopay says that’s changing and is now supporting purchasing physical goods billing in countries outside of the U.S. It said both in other countries, both the percentages that carriers are charging and the limits are slowly becoming less onerous. Retailers are also raising prices in order to make-up for how much the carriers are charging.

Mopay said it is currently supporting physical goods in 28 of the 75 countries in which mopay offers some sort of payment options. Mostly they are countries in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East. It is also live in Australia and New Zealand. Users are able to purchase virtually anything from tickets to movie downloads to physical goods.

The service is not yet available in the U.S., where mobile payments have been more limited to virtual goods, such as a song or buying virtual currency in an online game. Several companies are going after this market, which has recently become frothy with several companies raising big rounds of capital. Companies include: Zong, PayPal, Boku and Paris-based Hi-media.

Kolja Reiss, Mopay’s managing director of mopay, said in a release that other countries, including the Asian market, is leading the way. “mopay actively pushes mobile payments to essentially become a replacement for cash and other intricate methods of payment, foreseeably eliminating the need for the traditional ‘wallet’ as we know it.”

Perhaps it will never make sense for people to purchase physical goods on their phone, and instead, there will be other solutions created to leave the wallet at home. MobileCrunch reported yesterday a feasible alternative. Visa is working on a new way to charge things to your credit card, and not your cellphone bill. It’s a bit complicated, but basically it has partnered with a company to create a case for your iPhone that allows you to just tap the phone to a credit card payment system to make a transaction. The complicated part is that the case has a microSD card slot, and the card is not only a memory chip but also a near-field communication chip. Trials are scheduled to start during the second quarter of 2010.

Samsung said its proprietary smartphone platform that it has been prepping for the past year will be the basis for one-third of the smartphones that it ships in 2010.

The first phone based on bada is called the Wave, which is expected to launch in the next few weeks in Britain and Germany, according to Lee Ho-soo, head of Samsung’s smartphone operating system, Reuters reports. With only about half the year left, Samsung must be expecting to accelerate development given its goal of shipping around 18 million smartphone units this year, which is only a small fraction of the overall it makes. The remaining two-thirds of the company’s smartphones will likely use the Symbian, Windows and Android operating systems.

Samsung’s bada will face a lot of competition in the space, especially when it comes to attracting application developers to the platform.

However, as the second-largest handset maker in the world, it may be able to achieve significant volumes quickly. It could simply swap out its old feature-phone proprietary platforms for the new Bada OS, and rely on its current market share to sell a lot of phones. In February, Samsung’s mobile communications division President JK Shin said it was there goal to enlarge the smartphone market to a bigger demographic of users: “We are committed to bringing the smartphone era to everyone, and making it a true democracy for billions of people on all continents in all corners of the world. This is Samsung’s vision to advance the democratization of the smartphone era, regardless of cost, or lifestyle or geographic location.”

Samsung said today that the bada application store won’t launch until June, and that eventually bada could run on more than just smartphones. Bada is “aimed at offering a unified platform for a wide range of products we offer such as TVs and computers,” Lee said.

Related

• Samsung’s Messaging Still Muddled After The Official Launch Of Bada
• Samsung Unveils Vision Of The Future: No More Dumb Phones

Here’s further proof that the buzz and hype in mobile is increasingly narrowing in on two mobile platforms: Android and iPhone.

Gartner said in its smartphone report released today that when looking at the OS market in the first quarter, Android and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) were the only two vendors in the top five to increase market share year-over-year. Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and Apple had its strongest quarter yet, coming in at third behind both Symbian and RIM (NSDQ: RIMM). Symbian remained in the top position, but lost 4.5 percentage points compared to the year-ago period.

Something that’s helping to float all boats is consumers’ increasing appetite to buy new smartphones. Gartner said smartphones accounted for 17.3 percent of all mobile handset sales sold globally in the first quarter, up from 13.6 percent in the same period in 2009. In Q1, smartphone sales totaled 54.3 million, up 48.7 percent from 36.5 million last year.

The jump in smartphone sales led to an increase of overall phone sales worldwide. When counting all phones sold, ranging from smartphones to lower-end feature phones, sales totaled 314.7 million, a 17 percent increase. Carolina Milanesi, Gartner’s research VP, said in a release: “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year.”

MySpace (NYSE: NWS) is enabling thousands of third-party mobile developers to integrate MySpace into their applications, which will let users login into their accounts and update their statuses without leaving the application.

The developer kit initially will be available for Google’s Android platform, and is being announced today as part of Google’s developer conference. In the next two weeks, it will become available for the iPhone. However, it’s the Android platform that has been one of MySpace’s biggest success stories. As one of the earliest applications on Android, it has the ability to claim it is ranked as one of the top 10 most popular apps. In the past year, unique users have jumped 230 percent year-over-year, said MySpace’s Co-President Mike Jones.

MySpace is being a bit vague about how these SDKs could be used by third-parties, mostly because there’s so many possibilities. But in theoretical situations, you can imagine a mobile game developer enabling players to post their scores in a status update, or a photo-sharing site that wants to enable the ability to post photos to multiple sites, including MySpace.

MySpace hopes by giving developers access to these tools, it will both increase the number of integrations with MySpace from mobile, but also increase the number of uploads from the phone to the web (including photos, status updates, etc.). Currently, it said 30 percent of the site’s traffic comes from phones, and it projects that to jump to more than 50 percent within a year.

The developer kit provides access to login capabilities, meaning that users can login to MySpace without leaving the app.; Status updates, allowing users to update their mood or update their profile; Friends lists; and Photo and video upload functionality. Access to the SDK is free, and is the same tools that MySpace developers use in house to create their own applications.

Related

• Users Appetite For Social Networking Much Broader Than Facebook When On The Phone