Author: Tricia Duryee

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week will reveal in gory detail just how complicated the industry has become.

If you don’t believe me, just consider this short list of ironies: Google’s Eric Schmidt will give one of the show’s first keynotes despite the company releasing its first phone only 16 months ago; Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is not expected to announce a phone for the first time in a decade; Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will try to grab the spotlight with a new version of its Windows phone, after losing its grasp on enterprise market; and Verizon Wireless is co-hosting a press conference with Skype, the VoIP-provider that has yet to gain the hearts of any major operators.

These changes have come about in the past three years after Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) released the iPhone and left everyone scrambling to come up with something bigger and better.

In that time, partners have become competitors, hardware makers have become service providers and operators have been stuck in the middle dealing with the consumers who demand more at cheaper prices. Take today’s pre-show announcements as examples: Samsung announced the Wave, a new smartphone based on an operating system it built, and Sony Ericsson announced Creations, a publishing platform that is designed to shake-up the content industry.

For all the latest on who is doing what, follow me at Mobile World Congress as I attend back-to-back press conferences, listen to dozens of keynotes, conduct one-on-one interviews, and eat enough ham and tapas for all of you. For live updates, follow me on Twitter at @triciad, or sign up for our daily newsletter on our web site, or check the site during the day (Barcelona time).

Here’s a rundown of this week’s schedule:

—Sunday (today): Things kicked off early with simultaneous press conferences from Samsung and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). See respective articles here and here.

—Monday: Nokia is hosting a press conference at a hotel near the convention center. It has opted not to have a booth on the show floor, and will talk about services. For the first time in a decade, it’s not expected to announce a phone.  First, Nokia will make a joint announcement with Intel (NSDQ: INTC), then it will have a solo event. Later, Microsoft will be the one to watch—its widely expected to unveil its latest Windows Mobile phone. Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) will also host a press event.

—Tuesday: Morning press conferences from Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile unit and HTC. The evening will consist of a tight series of events moving quickly from Skype’s and Verizon’s joint press conference to Google’s keynote with Eric Schmidt.

—Wednesday: Keynotes will be given by a number of companies, including RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) and Telefonica.

—Thursday: Keynotes will focus on the trendy topic of mobile advertising and next generation mobile networks, like LTE.

The day before Mobile World Congress officially kicks off, Samsung unveiled the Wave, the first phone running its new operating system called bada.

The multimedia event was held off site in a large room, where the walls served as giant video screens. Crashing waves and and over-sized images of jellyfish made it feel like an aquarium. On stage, dancers kept rhythm to loud techno music and a trapeze artist hung from the ceiling. But more important than all of that was the message that Samsung was there to deliver. For months, the South Korean handset maker has provided an often muddled and confusing explanation for what bada is, but tonight President of Samsung’s mobile communications division JK Shin explained how it fits into the company’s view of the future.

The message was essentially this: all phones should be smart. Most of Samsung’s handsets today are considered feature phones, which run on the company’s proprietary OS. The bada smartphone OS will change that. And while, it will face competition from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Symbian, Samsung has the distribution power to make a project like this a reality. Not to mention, it will give developers and content companies access to a much larger and global market. Shin: “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.”

The event was considerably light on details. The first phone, being called The Wave, was unveiled and was on display to play around with, however, Samsung didn’t address many of the basics, such as cost—which will be the primary factor in developing countries, where users pay the full price of the device and often do not have a lot of spending power. As for the legitimacy of Samsung’s argument that one day all phones will be smartphones—it’s not too far off. After all, even many feature phones today have access to the internet, email and applications. How’s that so different from a smartphone? The technical definitions are definitely blurring.

Instead, Samsung focused on the hardware and software:

—Hardware: While most feature-phones have low-end hardware, the bada vision is completely different. The Wave is thin and light and thas a “Super Amoled” screen, meaning that it is very bright and responsive to the touch. It has a super speedy 1 Ghz processor that Samsung built itself.

—Software: The Wave is a bit of a hybrid between the iPhone, Android and a feature phone. It comes with Samsung’s own Touchwiz user interface. A clock widget mergers information with an analog clock, like the weather forecast for the next 12 hours, or stock quotes or your calendar items. In the contacts app, you can see a lot of information about your friends in one place, such as all the emails, text messages and IMs they’ve sent to you, but also your pictures and their latest social networking updates. A pull down bar, lets you access things like the music player, or Bluetooth connectivity.

—App Store: The third prong of this strategy includes developing an application store, where developers can sell their products and services to end-users. Given that the bada OS was developed entirely by Samsung, applications running on other platforms, like the iPhone, Android, or Brew, won’t be compatible. The app store launched in three countries—Italy, France and the UK last year—and will be in 50 by the end of the year.

The phone is expected to be available globally in April. Shin addressed just how committed Samsung is to bada: “Those of you who know Samsung, you know that when we dedicate ourselves to a new opportunity, we are serious and like to win. It [bada] is a key driver of our smartphone strategy. Samsung is advanced, but at the same time very accessible…Our revenue streams don’t compete with operators. We are proactively supporting operators with products and value-added solutions, which drive revenues for everyone.”

Samsung said that this is only beginning, or the first episode of the novel. Samsung will unveil the second episode, possibly as soon as CTIA in March.

Related

• Samsung’s Messaging Still Muddled After The Official Launch Of Bada
• Samsung Launches Yet Another Developer Platform Called ‘Bada’

While I was across town covering Samsung’s big Wave launch, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) was making a splash of its own at one of the trendiest Barcelona night clubs. On the day before Mobile World Congress begins, it announced three new phones as part of its goal of reclaiming market share in the smartphone space, while also releasing “Creations,” a new content platform.

Creations is a new publishing platform, where community members submit videos, pictures and other content for sharing. Anyone else can use it, share it or edit or update the content, which is all covered under the Creative Commons license. The platform is trying to break the idea that all content comes from big publishers, or movie studies, and attempts to tap into the YouTube generation’s user-generated mindset, reports AllAboutSymbian.

Sony Ericsson also released three new phones that focus on video and social media: The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, which is based on the Symbian operating system, and the Xperia X10 mini and the mini pro (which are two variations of the Android-based Xperia10.

—The Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro has a QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen, which allows users to produce and broadcast HD video. The phone comes connected to the PlayNow app store and will be available in select markets in the second-half of the year. The price was not announced.

—The Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro are two compact versions of its first Android device, the Xperia X10. Both of them come with slide out QWERTY keyboard. Both phones also come with “Timescape,” which is one place where users can see text messages, missed calls, and Facebook and Twitter updates. The music player also uses the “infinite button” to pull together all music content from the music store and YouTube.

Creations release. Vivaz release. Xperia X10 release.

Mobile browser-maker Skyfire has acquired kolbysoft for its expertise in creating browsers for the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Kolbysoft currently has a browser available on Android called Steel. Jeff Glueck, CEO of Skyfire, told mocoNews that they’ll continue to rely on that until it has a new version, and then will offer existing customers an upgrade. While kolbysoft’s expertise lies in Webkit, the open-source software used by Android, Apple’s Safari and others, Skyfire specializes in a server-side solution that compresses and optimizes a web site for a mobile phone. Glueck: “We are very aware of the excitement around Android, and we have watched the momentum behind the Webkit movement and we think it has great momentum and we think Skyfire can add something.”

Currently, Skyfire has free browsers on the Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems. Michael Kolb, founder of kolbysoft, will become chief client architect for all of Skyfire’s browsers across operating systems.

Skyfire, which has about 40 employees, has raised a total of $22.8 million in venture capital. Glueck said they did not need to raise additional funds for this acquisition.

Related

• Skyfire Raises $5 Million More In Second Round Of Capital

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) will not be showing off any new phones next week at Mobile World Congress in Spain, but rather will focus on its content and services strategy.

Bloomberg quotes an unnamed source as saying it will be the first time in at least a decade that the company has not released new hardware. Furthermore, the largest handset maker in the world doesn’t plan to have a formal booth at the event, but instead will host a press conference on Monday at a nearby hotel.

While many critics would like to see Nokia release a new device that competes more directly with Apple’s iPhone and the plethora of Android devices that are coming out nearly everyday, it will instead use the event to highlight the company’s efforts to beef up its services business that offers everything from music to navigation and other applications under the Ovi brand.

It’s unclear what new services Nokia will unveil at the show. Last year, Nokia announced its Ovi Store for the first time in addition to announcing six new devices that focused on push email. Just recently, Nokia made its navigation and mapping services free to keep up with Google’s Android.

Likely, Nokia is waiting until the second half of this year for major product announcements when a new version of Symbian is complete.

Related

• @ MWC: Nokia VP Opens Up On How Open The Ovi App Store Will Be
• Nokia Says Free Ovi Navigation Driving A Download Every Second
• Nokia Follows Google Down Free-GPS Route In Drive Against TomTom

After years of debating what to do, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) has decided to break the company in two. The separation is targeted for the first quarter of next year.

The entities will become two, independently, publicly traded companies. One will include the mobile devices and home businesses, and the other will include its enterprise mobility solutions and networks businesses. Motorola’s co-CEO and held of mobile devices Sanjay Jha, will serve as CEO of the mobile devices and home businesses, and Co-CEO Greg Brown will serve as CEO of the enterprise group. Release.

Jha said combining the mobile devices and home business makes sense: “Together we will be best positioned to lead in the convergence of mobility, media, and the Internet. Our expanding portfolio of smartphones and end-to-end video content delivery capabilities will enable us to provide advanced mobile media solutions and multi-screen experiences for our customers.”

Brown will be in charge of the business that offers rugged two-way radios, mobile computers, secure public safety systems, scanning, RFID, and wireless network infrastructure.

The process of breaking up the company sounds like it will be fairly easy to do. The board of directors supports the plan, and Motorola says it will be able to split it in tow through a tax-free stock dividend of shares in the new company to Motorola shareholders. It says both businesses will be capitalized. It also expects that post-separation, the Enterprise Mobility and Networks business will achieve an investment grade rating and will be the entity responsible for Motorola’s existing public market debt at the time of separation.

More details will be reported in a conference call this afternoon.

Sprint (NYSE: S) is partnering with GetJar, an independent Lithuania-based application store, to offer thousands of free applications on a variety of its handsets. Release.

The partnership with Sprint marks GetJar’s highest profile agreement in the the U.S. to date, however, the relatively under-the-radar company has signed up others worldwide with Carphone Warehouse, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) and Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) France.

All of GetJar’s 60,000 applications are free, so typically, GetJar’s revenues come from developers and content owners that pay for better placement in the storefront. Most carriers have hesitated to open up their storefronts to free apps because it’s hard to make money from them. In the case of Sony Ericsson, GetJar must share any revenue it receives from downloads that are generated on a Sony Ericsson handset. If Sprint has a similar arrangement, the deal is a no-brainier…it doesn’t spend many resources on managing the applications, but still receives a cut.

Sprint said the apps will be available on feature phones, including the LG (SEO: 066570) Lotus Elite, the Samsung Reclaim and the Sanyo 2700, and smartphones running BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. For those phones, a link is already accessible to GetJar on Sprint’s portal. “Our partnership with GetJar means that all Sprint customers will now have access to thousands of applications ranging from popular apps such as YouTube and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps to more niche applications that address their business needs,” said Len Barlik, Sprint’s VP of wireless and wireline services.

Related

• Sony Ericsson Adds Apps To PlayNow; Partners With GetJar To Beef Up Catalog By About 45,000
• GetJar To Provide Virgin Mobile France’s Upcoming App Store With Free Applications
• GetJar Rides App Store Trend: Carphone Warehouse Uses Its New White Label Services

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) investment arm is on a funding spree. This time Motorola Ventures is funding Zenverge, an advanced media integrated circuits company. Other investors in the undisclosed round include DCM and Norwest Venture Partners. Zenverge’s financing will support production of a family of circuits for digital HD convergence. Release.

For those keeping track, this is at least the company’s fourth investment in as many months. The other recent investments include: TuneWiki, Scanbuy, and Sensitive Object. The copanies cover a wide range of sectors including music services, multi-touch capabilities and barcode-scanning technology.

Zenverge’s focus is perhaps more intended for Motorola’s set-top business, although portable devices is include in its portfolio. Its circuits are being incorporated into HDTVs, Blu-ray/DVD players, set-tops, and other equipment.

T-Mobile USA said today that Swype, the text input technology designed for touchscreens, is being rolled out on the new myTouch 3G and the upcoming HTC HD2. The announcement marks the second U.S. carrier and second handset-maker to support the startup’s quirky text input method.

Swype’s CEO Mike McSherry told mocoNews that the two T-Mobile handsets are just the beginning and that Swype will be preloaded on at least 10 phone in the first six months of 2010, spanning multiple OEMs, carriers, operating systems and regions.

Late last year, Verizon Wireless started selling the new Samsung Omnia II with Swype, which Samsung called “Genius Texting.” The technology, being developed by the Seattle-based company, attempts to make touchscreen keyboards easier and more accurate. A user drags their finger from letter to letter in a very fluid manner, rather than pressing each individual character.

Swype will be integrated in the new version of T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G, which is available starting today. In addition to having Swype built-in, the new hardware sports a built-in 3.5mm headset jack, updated music player and has additional memory with 288 MB of RAM. It’s conceivable that the myTouch phones sold to date could receive an over-the-air update to include Swype. T-Mobile also plans to integrate Swype into a number of future devices, including the HTC HD2, a Windows Mobile phone coming this spring.

In December, Swype received funding from both Samsung and Nokia (NYSE: NOK), indicating that the two handset makers will deploy the technology on a broad basis. With today’s announcement, there’s clearly support also coming from multiple carriers and HTC.

Just yesterday, a study released by the NPD Group found that the majority of U.S. consumers are still basing their phone-buying decision on how well the device inputs text. That has led to an increase in the number of Qwerty keyboards and touchscreens sold.

Related

• Nokia, Samsung Invest In Swype To Improve Typing On Touchscreens
• Samsung Omnia II With New ‘Genius Texting’ Coming Dec. 2
• The Quest To Make A Better Virtual Keyboard

San Mateo, Calif.-based Glu Mobile (NSDQ: GLUU) said the company is continuing to reinvent itself as its traditional feature phone business continues to decline faster than anticipated, and game sales on smartphone platforms don’t increase fast enough.

In the fourth quarter, Glu reported revenues of $19.1 million, falling from the year-ago period when it reported $21.6 million in sales. Of those sales, Niccolo de Masi, Glu’s newly appointed CEO, said only a sliver is coming from smartphone platforms, including iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile. He said smartphone sales totaled about $1.7 million in Q4, increasing 350 percent from the year-ago period. The results are weak when compared to competitors, such as Paris-based Gameloft (EPA: GFT), which recorded $9.7 million in Q4 from iPhone games. Likewise, Electronic Arts’ mobile business is thriving with overall mobile sales up 14 percent in its fiscal third quarter to $57 million compared to a year ago.

de Masi: “Our fourth quarter results highlight Glu’s progress and challenges as the industry transitions to smartphones. We have already begun reallocating resources with a target of doubling our smartphone studio capacity this year….We will be scaling back unprofitable activities as we sharpen our strategic focus and seek to ensure there are no further cash concerns for our business.” During the company’s conference call, de Masi elaborated by saying it will explore developing new titles that fit between the genres of Farmville and World of Warcraft. The idea will be to build a customer base across all of its titles using a social network-like community and then to incorporate micro-transactions and other premium business models. Some of these projects are already underway, but it may take six to nine months for them to get to market.

The company said its net loss totaled $6.7 million, or 23 cents a share, narrowing only slightly from the year ago period when it lost $6.9 million, or $1.26 a share. The Q4 net loss included $5.5 million of non-cash royalty impairments and $444,000 in restructuring charges. The non-cash royalty payments mostly had to do with royalty payments the studio made in Europe two years ago, which are now not expected to meet expectations. Excluding the royalty impairment, non-GAAP operating income for the quarter would have been $1.4 million.

Still, one of the biggest goals of the company is to achieve positive cash flows, and indeed, it generated $195,000 in cash in Q4, marking its third consecutive quarter. That streak is expected to be broken in the first quarter when it has to make additional cash payments to shareholders from its MIG acquisition.

Outlook:: GAAP revenue is expected to fall between $15 million and $15.5 million, and its GAAP net loss is expected to be between $5.4 million and $5.8 million, equaling between 18 to 19 cents a share.

SinglePoint is acquiring India-based M2Junction, which has developed a text-messaging mobile advertising platform. The purchase comes just a week after the Bellevue, Wash. company sold off off a piece of its business to Ericsson and announced a new CEO. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

SinglePoint said the acquisition enables it to enter the Indian mobile advertising market, by serving content owners, mobile operators and brands agencies. M2Junction is based in Dallas with significant operations in Hyderabad, India. In a release, SinglePoint’s new CEO Gowri Shankar, said: “India is the fastest growing SMS market in the world with an incredible mobile advertising opportunity…M2Junction has been SinglePoint’s preferred global partner and is a perfect collaborator for our entry to India.”

Last week, SinglePoint sold its assets that enable it to send premium and standard text messages in the U.S. to Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) in order to better focus on the mobile advertising opportunity in text messages. At the time, SinglePoint pledged to get into international markets, where it did not currently have a presence, so it can scale the business. Shankar reasoned that mobile advertising in text messages will continue to be a big opportunity in developing countries: “Especially, once you have a global footprint, smartphones won’t penetrate some markets very quickly—there in lies the opportunity for us.”

Dayakar Puskoor, Chairman of M2Junction, will join the SinglePoint board of directors as a strategic advisor and help guide the company’s strategy in India. Raghu Kumar, M2Junction’s former CEO, will lead the Indian subsidiary of SinglePoint and report to Shankar.

Related

• SinglePoint Sells Off Carrier Pipes To Ericsson; Focuses On Mobile Advertising

AT&T (NYSE: T) has been the least vocal of the largest U.S. carriers on its upgrade plans in the future, but today it confirmed that it will conduct two field trials of high-speed LTE technology this year, and will begin commercial deployments in 2011. Release.

Verizon Wireless has been much more aggressive about its 4G plans. Already, it has two trials up and running and anticipates having up to 30 markets this year, covering roughly 100 people. In addition, Sprint (NYSE: S), through its majority ownership of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR), is investing in WiMax with already dozens of cities covered in the U.S. AT&T has picked both Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) as equipment suppliers for the deployment of LTE.

AT&T is consistently defending its time schedule for its roll-outs, saying that its aligned “with industry expectations for development of LTE technology and widespread availability of equipment and compatible LTE mobile devices.” Sprint currently does not offer mobile phones running on 4G, but some could come as early as the second-half of this year. It’s expected that phones using LTE will take even longer.

In the meantime, AT&T has other upgrades to its network to make, which are designed simplify the upgrade to LTE:

—Deploying HSPA 7.2 software and additional bandwidth for backhaul (HSPA 7.2 will potentially double peak speeds, and the backhaul will support the LTE network).
—Currently, AT&T is offering 10 HSPA 7.2-compatible devices. The upcoming Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPad will be compatible. 

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) reportedly has an all-new plan for how the company will be broken up.

The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company is now considering turning its core handset business into a new, publicly traded company, while also splitting its most profitable wireless-networking and set-top division into two, reports the WSJ. According to people familiar with the deal, the wireless-networking business would be auctioned off, while the set-top business would be spun off.

For more than a year, the company has been mulling various strategies, which at times included selling either the networking or the handset divisions.

If the new plan, which still needs to be finalized, is put into action, Motorola could be at least one-third of its current size, and have around $7 billion in sales (compared with $22 billion in sales in 2009). Its new business would be focused on selling equipment for public-radio systems and bar-code scanners. There were no details on how a standalone handset business would look like, however, that division is expected to be profitable in the fourth quarter thanks to the company’s aggressive smartphone moves.

In Motorola’s Q4 conference call in January, executives said the company is still moving “full steam ahead on separation” of Motorola, and added the company is “continually working on the appropriate structures for separation.”

MusiGames, a Brazilian-based mobile games company, said it has raised $1.5 million in capital and grants to develop more music titles for Apple’s App Store. The announcement is being made today at Macworld in San Francisco.

Participants in the round include Criatec Fund, a Brazilian seed capital group, and Brazilian innovation agencies, including the FINEP/Facepe and CNPq. The company, which produced the hit-seller “Drums Challenge,” said it plans to launch eight games in 2010, and will be demonstrating some of them at the show this week.

Oberon Media, through its publishing division I-play, is investing heavily in Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android and anticipates releasing 20-plus games for the platform in 2010.

Keith Adair, I-play’s global VP of sales and marketing for mobile, told mocoNews that Android has at least one advantage: Not only can games be distributed via Google’s Android Market, but increasingly carriers will launch their own portals on the platform, enabling a second point of distribution. While carriers are still defining their portal strategy on Android, the new distribution channels will likely give long-established mobile developers, like I-play and others, a boost because they have valuable operator contacts.

Adair: “We see a big opportunity on the carrier side. I don’t believe that the Google marketplace will be the only interesting channel for Android content.”

Adair said carriers are still working on their exact strategy, but that the portals will take several shapes and forms. Given that consumers can download and discover content more freely on smartphones, it will be interesting to see how the carrier differentiate themselves and draw consumers into their portals.

The New York-based company said it will launch about 20 titles this year for Android, including such I-play franchises as Fast & Furious, Deal or No Deal and Bubble Town. In addition, Oberon said it will develop social and micro-transaction services for Android. Some features may include connected games and multi-player functionality, although those won’t be available until March. Most new releases will start to come out this month, but I-play has already tested a couple of games in the market: Deal or No Deal and Sexy Pillowfight. According to the Android market, both were marked down for a holiday special to $1.49 and 99 cents, respectively. Neither have performed terribly well. Sexy Pillowfight received between 1,000 and 5,000 downloads, and Deal or No Deal garnered 500 to 1,000.

The focus on Android follows a significant restructuring at Oberon, which included the departure of Oberon’s COO Don Ryan and a round of layoffs. Other cut-backs occurred as recently as November 2008, just after the company said it raised $20 million in additional capital.

Related

• Industry Moves: Oberon Names COO; MMA President Resigns
• Casual Gaming Firm Oberon Media Gets $20 Million Funding From China
• Oberon Media To Cut Back On Spending To Reach Profitability Next Year, Says Memo

SurfKitchen, the UK provider of storefront services to carriers, has launched its first deployment in the U.S. with T-Mobile USA. SurfKitchen has integrated with T-Mobile’s web2go portal on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 7510, a low-end device, as a complement to the high-end bets T-Mobile is taking with Google’s Android. Release.

While the launch is limited to one phone, the deal is significant for SurfKitchen as it tries to help the carriers compete with app stores from other handset makers and providers. SurfKitchen’s CTO Dave Evans told mocoNews: “It’s pretty exciting and indicative of the overall ecosystem. We are seeing carriers be much more aggressive with what they do with app shops, as a way to differentiate themselves from OEMs. We are focusing how we support that.”

Last year, SurfKitchen decided to refocus its efforts more on application services as Apple’s iPhone took off. One such deployment was with the UK’s Orange, which wanted to create an application store to compete with Nokia’s Ovi, Google’s Android and other channels. The Orange store runs on a wide variety of phones, including Java, Android, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and BlackBerry.

Evans said while carriers find it important to invest in these services, the economic downturn over the past year hasn’t helped. Also, carriers are feeling pressured to invest heavily in network infrastructure, leaving less cash for other projects.

Still, he believes SurfKitchen is prospering. The privately held company has 55 employees and is profitable on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It has not raised capital since 2004, and has no immediate plans to do so. Contrast that with one of its U.S.-based competitors, Motricity, which is trying to raise $250 million in a public offering. Evans: “There’s a lot of opportunity. This will be a $13 billion marketplace in 2012. We continue as a viable concern, but I think we’ll see the number of players consolidating and potentially some will disappear over the next few months.”

Huawei, a China-based wireless infrastructure and handset maker, will pre-install Opera Software’s mobile browser on a range of mobile handsets. Opera said in a release that Huawei will use the Opera Mobile 10 browser, which is developed for OEMs and operators. Jiang Huabing, Head of Huawei’s handset and R&D department, said: “China represents unique growth opportunities in the mobile market, and we hope that with the addition of Opera Mobile to our handsets, more of China will soon be online.”

The two companies did not say how many handsets will be shipped with the Norwegian-based browser, but last year Huawei shipped 30 million mobile phones. Opera has other reseller partnerships, including with AT&T in the U.S.

Related

• Updated: Opera Acquires Mobile Ad Net AdMarvel For $8 Million
• Lars Boilesen Succeeds von Tetzchner As Opera Software’s New CEO

Mobclix has partnered with Nielsen to be able to deliver more targeted mobile ads, giving it some name-brand recognition to stick out from all the competition.

The deal allows the ad network aggregator to resell Nielsen’s research products, which categorize consumers into roughly 150 segments based on a user’s age and gender as well as location, or other more lifestyle-like qualities, such as spending power and tech awareness, reports GigaOm. The benefit of this partnership is that typically more relevant ads are more successful and therefore fetch a higher price. Mobclix says there’s also a benefit to developers: they’ll be able to tell what kinds of apps resonate with their audience, and how they can increase user engagement, downloads and better rankings.

The brand-name recognition that Nielsen gives to Mobclix is equally important, as the mobile advertising space heats up and there’s massive companies to compete against, like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). In addition, there’s not just competition from within mobile advertising. One of the biggest challenges is to convince brands and advertisers to leave other mediums for mobile. With more relevant data, that argument might be easier to win. For example, eMarketer said roughly $416 million was spent on mobile advertising in 2009, compared to the nearly $24 billion spent online, the $51 billion spent on TV ads, and the $38 billion spent on newspaper ads.

Mobclix did not address privacy concerns about targeting end users, but you can assume that the information that Nielsen is providing to Mobclix is in aggregate and would eliminate any personally identifiable information [Note: The company confirmed the information is in aggregate.]. Whether that’s good enough for Apple, it’s unclear. Last week, the company warned developers that if their app uses location-based information, the information must be put to “beneficial” use, or else “your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”

U.S. consumers are continuing to base their phone-buying decision on how well the device sends text messages, which is leading to an increase in the number of Qwerty keyboards and touchscreens sold, reports NPD Group, a market research firm. “Regardless of whether they opt for a data plan, consumers want richer user interface options; the humble keypad is losing in the race to optimize a handset’s surface,” said Ross Rubin, executive director of NPD. Release.

In fact, in the fourth quarter of the top 10 best-selling mobile phones, all came equipped with a touch screen, a QWERTY keyboard, or both:

1. RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) BlackBerry Curve (all models)
2. LG (SEO: 066570) enV3
3. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone 3GS
4. Apple iPhone 3G
5. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid
6. LG enV Touch
7. RIM Blackberry Tour
8. Samsung Intensity
9. Samsung Solstice
10. Samsung Impression

The only phone in the top 10 that had both a Qwerty keyboard and a touchscreen was the Motorola Droid, which despite being launched during the middle of the quarter, rose to the fifth most-purchased consumer mobile phone in the U.S. Meanwhiel, LG and RIM all declined in unit share. In Q4, 46 percent of phones sold had Qwerty keyboards, compared to 31 percent in the year-ago period, and even less—24 percent—had touchscreens.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has lowered its “equipment recovery fee” to $150 from $350 when customers drop its Nexus One phone before their contract with T-Mobile USA officially expires. The change occurs just after the FCC formally sent letters to various operators and Google about wireless early termination fees. In this case, the Google fee is a bit confusing because it is in addition to the $200 fee that T-Mobile charges when users break a contract early.

The WSJ reports that a Google representative said the company had been working with T-Mobile to lower the equipment fee. The change was posted officially on Google’s terms of service page for the Nexus One. While the fee was changed, Google was clear that it doesn’t represent a change in its financial philosophy. It said. “We make no profit from commissions from operators or from equipment recovery fees, and our recovery fees are based on operator charges to Google for early termination of service,” the company said in a statement.

Related

• FCC Formalizes ETF Inquiry By Sending Letters To Google, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile And Verizon
• Google Drops The Price Of The Nexus One As Devices Flood eBay
• Google May Find Out That Consumers Like To Buy Cellphones The Old Fashioned Way