Author: Tricia Duryee

Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel, which already owns the Boost and Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) brands, maybe mulling whether to buy MetroPCS Communications so that it can dominate the prepaid wireless space.

The idea was floated by Greg Miller, an analyst for Collins Stewart in a note he wrote to investors, reports Bloomberg. He reasoned: “It helps Sprint continue to consolidate its position in the increasingly competitive prepaid marketplace in densely populated major metro centers while allowing MetroPCS shareholders an avenue to continue to participate in the market from a position of greater strength.”

Miller’s theory comes only a week after reports surfaced that Leap Wireless had hired Goldman Sachs to look into selling the company or merging with rivals. In that scenario, MetroPCS was considered a likely candidate. Miller did not address the likelihood of Sprint doing a complete roll-up, where it would buy both MetroPCS and Leap.

Mobile phones in the future will translate languages in real-time, enabling people from around the world to understand each other—that is, if Google (NSDQ: GOOG) can figure out a way to do it.

The internet giant, turned mobile phone inventor, thinks it can make a fairly operational system within a couple of years, reports the UK’s Sunday Times. The process will meld together its text translation services on the computer with its voice-recognition technology on the mobile phone. The end product will likely be inundated with challenges, considering that both services are fairly buggy and inconsistent today.

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” said Google’s head of translation services Franz Och. “If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently.”

One reason the mobile phone may be more accurate is because typically only one person uses it. Over time, the technology could get a better feel for your accent and pitch, Och said.

The story did not go into how Google would make money from the services—both the text translation and voice recognition is free. As with both of those services, the accuracy seems to be just enough to get the job done. Whether that will be true with live conversations, who knows?

Paris-based Hi-media, a publicly held company that operates an ad network, a publishing business and a payments platform around the world, has opened a San Francisco office to expand its micropayments business to the U.S. Release.

The office will be headed by Pooj Preena, Hi-media USA CEO, who previously helped Skype enter the U.S. market. As the micropayments industry has heated up recently, the company will compete directly against startups, such as Boku and Zong, and hopes to help merchants sell mainly virtual goods using various payment options, including mobile phones, gift cards, pre-paid cards and home-phone billing.  Preena told mocoNews: “We’ve been doing this for eight to nine years. We started with selling content, before social gaming took off—it’s only been in the last 18 to 24 months where there’s been a substantial shift into digital and to content again.”

The company said some of the initial customers in the U.S. include Artix Entertainment, Boomerang Networks, Gambit, gWallet, Merscom Games, OLX, Peanut Labs, Quepasa, Sometrics, Sonico, TheBroth, Viwawa, Viximo, and Wadja. The platform is called Allopass.

Preena said there’s a couple of benefits of its platform, most of which come from being a well-established company. He said they can cut merchants a check every ten days, rather than other competitors that may take a month or two. The other major advantage is that it offers more than mobile payments. In the U.S., Hi-media said it can offer mobile billing from the major U.S. operators, and also billing via 900-numbers and prepaid cards.

Preena said Hi-media has about 500 employees worldwide, and of that, 140 are in the payments business. “We have fairly aggressive growth plans in the U.S., Latin America and other parts of the world.” Right now, there’s six U.S. employees, which are backed up by a technical group in Europe. It also has customer service reps in three time zones that speak 11 languages. Prior to Hi-media’s expansion to the U.S. its mobile billing platform Allopass sales were up 10 percent in the third quarter 2009 to €21.3 million.

Related

• Boku Raises $25 Million To Expand Mobile Payments Services
• Boku Upgrades Mobile Payments Platform; Adds 12 New Publisher Partners
• Hi-Media Reaps Micropayment Revenue Rises After AdLink Deal

—Tapulous rolls out Riddim Ribbon game: Tapulous, the maker of the popular music-based iPhone games, like Tap Tap Revenge, has launched its latest creation—Riddim Ribbon. The game, which is now available in the iTunes app store, lets users create their own unique mixes to hot tracks while they race down down a track. The track is really “a crazy ribbon,” in which users must pick up pebbles, and choose various forks in the road, land jumps and avoid obstacles.The co-producer of the game is The Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am. Songs in the game include The Black Eyed Peas hits: Boom Boom Pow, I Gotta Feeling, and Meet Me Halfway. The app costs $3, and each additional level is 99 cents.

—Loopt goes hyper-local for ads: Location-based mobile social networking service, Loopt, has started to integrate local advertising into its mobile service that allow users to receive offers, coupons and discounts at a neighborhood level. The service is being powered by a company called Mobile Spinach, and will be limited to San Francisco at first with Los Angeles and New York coming in months. An example is an ad for Blowfish Sushi, a San Francisco Sushi restaurant, which is offering one of their signature rolls for free. No word on whether the ads will conflict with a new Apple policy, which states that if an ad is served based on a user’s location it must serve a “beneficial” purpose.

—Social media iPhone app for skiers: Digital agency Phonevalley has created a social media app for the iPhone that it claims is the first dedicated to the European skiing community. Ski Challenge – Prove it, features 3D maps and guides for 45 European resorts. It lets users record and share tricks, publish geo-localized photos and videos on those 3D maps (or send them to Facebook), and send messages to other skiers. Users can also record their runs and chart them with other stats like alitude, distance and speed. The free app, which is available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, is sponsored by Nissan.

FLO TV is willing to spend some serious cash to make sure people are aware of mobile TV.

On Sunday, roughly 100 million people will gather in front of TVs to not only watch the Saints vs. the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV, but also the commercials. This year’s line-up includes three from the Qualcomm-backed entity, featuring talent such pop singer will.i.am from the Black-Eyed Peas and CBS (NYSE: CBS) Sports Commentators Jim Nantz and James Brown.

FLO’s plan is to raise awareness for its newly launched direct-to-consumer brand, which includes selling live mobile TV to portable devices and to screens in automobiles. The three slots will last for a total of two minutes. With Super Bowl ads estimated to cost roughly $2.5 million for 30 seconds, that could be an investment of nearly $10 million. It’s a pretty bold move for a company that only launched its first consumer product late last year. Jayne Hancock, FLO’s VP of Marketing told mocoNews: “Certainly over the last four months, consumer awareness has been elevated significantly, but it is still low for the whole category and our brand. We will be doing some heavy lifting to meet both of those challenges.”

The first ad will run about an hour before kick-off. Called “Driven Crazy,” it focuses on the in-car TV systems. It features CBS Sports Commentator James Brown, who introduces a family on a road trip to the service, when things just seem to be at the breaking point.

The second commercial, called “Injury report,” features CBS Commentator Jim Nantz, who offers a play-by-play of a man and woman on a shopping spree, where the guy is being forced to miss a game to shop for bras. The irony in this case is that FLO TV could not help because it doesn’t have the rights to the Super Bowl. Despite FLO’s close ties to CBS, it did not obtain the rights to the game. Hancock acknowledged that although they don’t have the rights to the Super Bowl, FLO does have access to more than 3,000 hours of sports. “We are selling a product like everyone else and are getting in front of 100 million viewers,” she added.

The third commercial, Hancock said, is more emotional. Will.i.am will be remaking the Who’s hit song “My Generation.” The song is accompanied by images of some of the biggest news events in people’s lives that are typically watched on TV, Hancock said. The idea is that with FLO TV, you won’t ever have to miss the big moments in life again. In this case, the commercial has an additional tie to the Super Bowl because the Who is performing at half-time.

While advertising during the Super Bowl has been a mixed bag, and many brands have never being heard from again, Hancock says it will be just the beginning for FLO in 2010. “This is the first time there’s been a commercial from the mobile TV category during the Super Bowl…There is the responsibility to sustain that.” She said the 2010 media plan will include support from their content partners, service providers, and retailers, like Best Buy, Radio Shack and soon Target.

Related

• CES Mobile Wrap: AT&T In Cars; BlackBerry Presenter; FLO On iPhone; MTV Ads
• FLO TV Adds Disney And ABC To The Line-Up
• Qualcomm’s Personal TV Now Available; Pricing Plans Are Nowhere To Be Found
• FLO TV Goes Direct To Consumer; Service Costs $9 A Month, Device Costs $250
• Qualcomm’s FLO TV Gains Major Distribution Through In-Car Entertainment Systems

Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) is considering a number of options for its struggling T-Mobile USA subsidiary, including a possible IPO or spinoff, reports the WSJ, which quotes people familiar with the matter.

As of recently, DT was rumored to have been in merger talks with Sprint (NYSE: S) or Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). However, either combination would be technically and financially challenging. But T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless carrier, needs a new strategy that can reverse its recent performance, which includes losing customers while AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon have been gaining millions.

A final decision likely won’t come for a couple of months—only recently has DT started to talk to a number of banks about underwriting an IPO, which could help fund network expansion, or a spinoff. A DT spokesman declined to comment.

People familiar with the deal said the most likely scenario would be for DT to sell about 20 percent of the division to investors and retain the rest. A merger with a U.S. rival may also still be in the card, but that scenario is now less likely. Based on the company’s estimated earnings, the company may have a value of about $20 billion and could handle about $12 billion or so in debt, the WSJ reports. It will need more cash to continue its 3G build-out, and to buy the rights to more airwaves as networks move to 4G.

At last week’s iPad event, you could hear the audience let out a collective sigh after Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) confirmed the 3G version of the tablet would be running on AT&T’s network.

Now, it is starting to appear that AT&T (NYSE: T) will keep its hold on the iPhone for the next 12 to 18 months, rather than it ending in mid-2010—as previously assumed, GigaOm reports. The new timeline was outlined in a note issued by Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst with Credit Suisse. He writes: “We believe there is a 75 percent probability that AT&T keeps exclusivity in 2010.”

Chaplin said he arrived at this conclusion based on two things: There’s no compelling evidence that it does end in 2010, and if it did, AT&T can continue to pay generous incentives to maintain the exclusivity.

While those don’t reasons don’t offer hard evidence either, Chaplin also surmises that if AT&T is granted the additional exclusivity period, it will have enough time to solve its network problems, so that when it does expire, there won’t be a mass exodus of consumers.

But there’s other reasons why their won’t be a mass exodus. Future carriers that will offer the phone may charge higher data rates, and consumers won’t necessarily be able to take their iPhone from one network to another. For example, if you look at the UK, where nearly all of the carriers are now selling the iPhone, not a lot has changed since O2’s exclusivity expired in November.

As I wrote previously, once the iPhone became widely available in the UK, there were two noticeable trends: First, increased competition did not translate into lower prices. In fact, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), which will start offering the iPhone next year, is charging more over the life of a contract than any other UK operator. And, second, the competition has not led to better network coverage. Similar to AT&T, O2’s iPhone users have suffered from many network meltdowns, including one as recently as this weekend in which users had absolutely no data service.

Related

• The U.S. Can Look To Europe To See What The iPhone’s Future Will Be Here
• AT&T Ranks Dead Last In Consumer Reports’ Survey
• Apple Shows Vulnerability By Airing Counter-Attack To Verizon ‘Map’ Ads
• @ CTIA: AT&T’s CTO Defends Network Quality; ‘I Don’t Plan The Network Based On Blogs’

—Thumbplay Signs 20 New Content Providers: New York-based Thumbplay now has 8 million tracks licensed for its new music subscription application. It recently added 20 new content partners, including Beggars Group, Merge Records, Redeye Distribution and Tunecore. The app only works on BlackBerrys and is invitation only, but its scheduled to launch in the next two months and will be available on Android, iPhone and more BlackBerrys. [Release.]

—News Over Wireless network gets local ads: The News Over Wireless network of mobile properties, which includes mobile sites and applications for ABC (NYSE: DIS), CBS (NYSE: CBS), FOX and NBC local affiliates, as well as independent television stations, said it will start monetizing their sites with the help of mOcean Mobile’s publishers platform. The deal will allow NOW to sell their own advertising. In September 2009, Mojiva created the mOcean subsidiary. [Release.]

—Check-ins for Haiti: Check-in services, like Loopt, Gowala and Foursquare have become very competitive, and now they are tugging at your heartstrings. Every time you check-in at Chipotle, Panera Bread, or Whole Foods around the country, Loopt will donate $1 towards the Haiti earthquake relief. Half of the proceeds from the check-ins will be given to the American Red Cross and the other half will be donated to Doctors Without Borders. Gowala has responded by launching a more limited campaign called “Hearts for Haiti,” which take place Feb. 8 in only the San Francisco area. If you check-in at designated Peet’s coffee shops or a Barenaked Ladies concert during a specific time, Gowalla will donate $50 in your name to American Red Cross. [TechCrunch here and here.]

If all this world needs, it is a few more mobile application stores. GetJar is now letting carriers, retailers and other companies, launch a store using its catalog of thousands of applications. One of the first to use the white label service is The Carphone Warehouse, the mobile phone retailer in Europe.

The app store will be part of Carphone Warehouse’s new customer portal called My Hub, which is available online and on the phone to those who sign up. Eventually, Carphone Warehouse will embed My Hub directly on to the phone.

Lithuania-based GetJar, which also has offices in the UK and Silicon Valley, has accumulated a collection of more than 60,000 mobile applications that work on a variety of handsets and platforms in more than 200 countries. It is now leveraging that collection to launch the App Catalogue Express (ACE), a white label service for other carriers. In the case of Carphone Warehouse, GetJar worked with Spare Backup, a cloud-computing company, to create the app store.

Prior to launching ACE, GetJar built similar stores for partners, including Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson’s PlayNow Arena app store, and also Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), 3UK, Virgin France and Opera Mini. GetJar’s Founder and CEO Ilja Laurs: “The demand for apps has soared over the past year. Many operators and other third parties are keen to introduce an app store, without needing to manage the back office infrastructure.”

GetJar said it will generate revenue indirectly from brands, content owners and developers that will pay for better visibility. GetJar gets paid by the developer when the apps are downloaded. All of GetJar’s apps are free.

Related

• Facebook Users Download 1 Million Mobile Apps A Week—With The Help Of GetJar
• GetJar Fights Back With App Stats, New Logo
• GetJar To Provide Virgin Mobile France’s Upcoming App Store With Free Applications
• Sony Ericsson Adds Apps To PlayNow; Partners With GetJar To Beef Up Catalog By About 45,000

As expected, five UK-based mobile operators have started sharing data with comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) and the GSMA in an attempt to eliminate two of the biggest problems facing the mobile content industry: lack of consistency and transparency in reporting mobile internet trends.

In the first report released today, preliminary results found that 16 million people in the UK accessed the Internet from their mobile phones in December and viewed a total of 6.7 billion pages. The sites that received the most unique visitors include Facebook, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and carrier portals including Telefonica (NYSE: TEF), Orange and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD). The data was based on information from three carriers, by January they expect to include data from four operators, and all five should be up and running in the second quarter. Release.

The two leading the charge, ComScore and the GSMA, are clear in saying the user data is “anonymized” to maintain the subscribers’ privacy. In a release, Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board of the GSMA, said: “The underlying principle of Mobile Media Metrics is to deliver valuable and actionable reporting tools to the media industry, while respecting the privacy of individuals. Access to transparent measurement is essential in establishing mobile as a legitimate advertising medium, and Mobile Media Metrics is a critical element in advancing this process.”

Earlier this month, a similar report was released in the U.S. by a Seattle-based startup called Ground Truth. It operates a little different from comScore and the GSMA. It has not revealed which carriers it is working, and has also chosen to get data from infrastructure companies. But the goal is the same: to get real information rather than to rely on customer surveys, analyst estimates, or other third-party reports. In a sample size of 2.5 million unique U.S. mobile web users, they viewed nearly 1 billion page views and downloaded 27.8 trillion bytes of data.

Related

• @ MWC: GSMA To Give Customers’ Mobile Browsing Data To Advertisers

After being blown away by the amount of mobile web traffic NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) received during the Beijing Olympics, it is investing even more heavily in mobile for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

In the summer of 2008, the Olympics were considered one of the largest digital events to date, and NBC executives were stunned by the 6.5 million unique visitors coming to its mobile web site during the games. But with smartphone adoption and data consumption steadily increasing since, this Olympics could draw even bigger crowds to the mobile phone.

An NBC spokesperson told mocoNews that this year they’ve added two apps, a smartphone version of the NBC Olympics mobile site, and new social media features to its mobile offerings. In addition, NBC said they have been able to attract advertisers to mobile—not because it was part of a larger media TV or online buy—but because of the strong performance numbers from Beijing.

Here’s NBC’s mobile line-up for the Olympics:

—Applications: NBC has launched two apps: The NBC Olympics application is basically an extension of the website. It has news, results and video, but also social networking elements For instance, users will be able to follow the Twitter feeds of athletes or share items with Facebook. It also uses technology from AT&T (NYSE: T) that allows you to chat with friends, publicly or privately. Since it launched Tuesday, it’s received 32 ratings, and most give it five stars. The second application is the NBC Olympics Cheer App. Users can tap different buttons on the screen to hear sounds like cowbells, airhorns, applause and others. There’s also an option to record your own cheer. Because it’s sponsored by Coca-Cola, the sounds include a Coke being poured and ice cubes in a glass. Both are free. NBC says a BlackBerry app is coming soon, but that it has no plans to support other platforms.

—The Mobile web: NBC has added a new smartphone version to its mobile site, which will display well on phones with big screens, such as the iPhone, Android phones, and some BlackBerry phones. Users will be able to personalize the site for their favorite sports, or their region with content from the local NBC affiliates. Spectators at the game will have access to a Vancouver guide, as well. The site is at m.nbcolympics.com.

—Video and alerts: The mobile web site will have videos, but no live coverage of the event. The only live coverage on mobile will be available on the NBC Olympics 2Go channel on AT&T Mobile TV or MobiTV subscribers. In addition, NBC is rolling out more text message alerts. Users will have the option of getting information about news, event reminders, medals awarded and specific sports. They are free. Standard data rates apply. Users can either sign up on the phone or on the web.

Related

• NBC Reports 6.5 Million Uniques And 826,000 Videos Streamed On Mobile During The Olympics
• Updated: NBC Had Big Mobile Ambitions For The Olympics But Some Text Alerts Failed
• NBCU’s Cross-Platform Olympics: ‘Stunned’ By Mobile Adoption; But Will Users Return After The Games?

Who knows if it is AT&T’s plans to invest heavily in its network, or if it was the federal inquiries into AT&T (NYSE: T) or Apple’s practices, but there’s evidence that the two companies are opening up to higher bandwidth apps, including voice and video over the 3G network.

In the past two days, two companies have announced that their applications, which were previously limited to running over Wi-Fi networks, will be coming soon to the iPhone on AT&T’s 3G network. This morning, AT&T said it will now support Sling Media’s SlingPlayer over 3G, and yesterday, Skype said it will soon release a version of its iPhone VoIP app that will run over 3G.

In a release today, AT&T said that it has been testing the Sling Media application since December, and “recently notified Sling Media—as well as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)—that the optimized app can run on its 3G network.” For Skype, it was a slightly different situation. Skype wrote in a blog post yesterday that after Apple announced the iPad, it lifted its restriction on calling on 3G, “which is great news.”

In April 2009, when Skype launched the iPhone app, it became the No. 1 most downloaded application. Of course, carriers worried that the service would eat into their already declining voice revenues—AT&T’s reaction was to restrict the app to Wi-Fi-only (which Apple reinforced). In May 2009, Sling first launch its streaming video player. While it originally was intended for both Wi-Fi and 3G, AT&T changed its terms of service agreement to restrict the app to 3G. The app costs $30. Sling and various consumer groups complained to the FCC about the ban since other applications, like MLB’s live streaming app, did work over 3G, reports the NYTimes.

Perhaps, AT&T was concerned about the regulatory threat, but today it said the delay was more about getting the application to use less data. “Just as we’ve worked with Sling Media in this instance, we look forward to collaborating with other developers so that mobile customers can access a wider, more bandwidth-sensitive, and powerful range of applications in the future,” said Ralph de la Vega, AT&T Mobility’s president and CEO.

But who knows, maybe the move to be more open is also be linked to AT&T’s confidence in its network? For some time, consumers have been vocal about AT&T’s poor voice and data quality in major cities, like New York and San Francisco. But the carrier has recently come out with aggressive plans that are designed to fix the network. This year, it will spend $18 billion to $19 billion on its networks, which includes spending twice as much on the wireless network as it did last year.

Related

• Google Says About 1 Percent Of All Android Apps Are Removed From Market—Skype Isn’t One
• Skype Updates Mobile Apps; Users Scoff At Lack Of New iPhone Features
• SlingPlayer For iPhone Launches Tomorrow—Finally
• Update: AT&T Says It Did Not Block Google App; Apple Says It Acted Alone

Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Ventures, the investment arm of the handset-maker, has made an undisclosed investment in New York-based Scanbuy, which has developed a platform that let’s advertisers provide information to consumers through scanning a barcode with their phone. Release.

Motorola led the round with Masthead Venture Partners, Hudson Ventures and select private investors also participating. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Scanbuy’s barcodes can be placed on product packaging or in a magazine, and can link to more information, such as product reviews, price comparisons, coupon offers or directions to the closest store. Some of Scanbuy’s customers include: Nike, American Airlines, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Coca-Cola, Volkswagen and Sears. The software works on major operating systems, like Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Java and Symbian. The money will go towards expanding around the world, said Jonathan Bulkeley, Sacnbuy’s CEO. “We are thrilled to have a strategic investor like Motorola involved at this next stage of development. Their expertise and resources will contribute to mass adoption of this great technology.”

If figuring out how to sell mobile games on the iPhone is a first-person shooter, Gameloft (EPA: GFT) has mastered the art of throwing grenades.

The Paris-based company said it recorded revenues of 7 million euros ($9.7 million) from games sold on the iPhone during the fourth quarter, which easily exceeded the company’s goal of achieving sales of 4.4 million euros ($6.1 million). For the year, iPhone revenues totaled 17.6 million euros ($24.6 million), up 231 percent over 2008. On an annualized basis, iPhone games now make up 14.4 percent of Gameloft’s overall revenues.

Overall, the company’s Q4 sales totaled 31.8 million euros ($44.3 million), down 6 percent compared to the year-ago period. The company attributed the decline to Gameloft’s withdrawal from boxed games and the drop in the dollar. If those considerations are taken out of the equation, sales were up 7 percent year-over-year. Gameloft said full annual results will be released March 23, but it is expecting profitability to rise, including its operating margin (before stock options), which is expected to jump to as high as 9 percent in 2009 compared to 3 percent in 2008. Release.

Regional breakdown: Gameloft said Europe represented 39 percent of full-year sales; North America represented 32 percent and the rest of the world totaled 29 percent. That’s changed slightly from 2008: Europe accounted for 43 percent; North America for 30 percent and the rest of the world, 27 percent.

Mobile gaming revenues: Mobile games account for 94 percent of the company’s revenues with the remaining 6 percent related to console games. Full-year revenues from mobile games grew 12 percent year-over-year—mostly because of the iPhone’s success. In the fourth quarter, iPhone revenues hit 7 million euros, up 115 percent over the year-ago period.

SinglePoint has sold off a piece of its business that has roots stretching back 16 years. Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), the Swedish infrastructure provider, has agreed to buy some of SinglePoint’s assets, which will enable it to send premium and standard text messages in the U.S. Release.

The messaging services will be part of Ericsson’s Multimedia Brokering business in the U.S., and will enable it to compete against aggregators, like mBlox and Amdocs (NYSE: DOX). While terms of the deal were not disclosed, generally, these services are considered valuable because most carriers limit the number of aggregators they work with—essentially closing the market to new entrants.

For SinglePoint, the sale indicates that it is still searching for a successful business after operating for 16 years and raising $45 million in venture capital. Going forward, the company says the sale will give it the cash, the resources and the energy to invest in its year-old mobile advertising business, which focuses on monetizing text messages from big media companies, like CBS (NYSE: CBS), NBC and ABC (NYSE: DIS). SinglePoint, formerly called Wireless Services, has also appointed a new CEO. Gowri Shankar, SinglePoint’s SVP of sales and business development, has replaced Rich Begert, who will become an advisor and remain a member of the board. Release.

Of course, mobile advertising is considered a viable field after Google (NSDQ: GOOG) purchased AdMob for $750 million and Apple bought Quattro Wireless. Has the mobile advertising industry gotten hot? Shankar: “That’s for sure, it’s got a lot of attention and a lot of focus, and I think it will continue to grow. It will move from experimental to real, and that’s where we think the big opportunity is.”

Shankar said he still thinks there’s a possibility of SinglePoint getting sold to either Google or Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). While both of them purchased mobile ad networks, neither of them have expertise in advertising within text messages, which continues to be the most ubiquitous mobile phone service. In order to get their attention, SinglePoint will have to move into international markets, where it does not have a presence today. Shankar says to expect announcements on international expansion soon. Shankar: “Especially, once you have a global footprint, smartphones won’t penetrate some markets very quickly—there in lies the opportunity for us.”

SinglePoint’s text messaging service acts as a marketplace where publishers find advertisers for its text message campaigns, including such shows as Deal or No Deal, MTV Movie Awards, American Idol, Project Runway, and the Olympics.

Nokia’s defensive move to make its Ovi maps and navigation free is already seeing strong customer response. Since launching Jan. 21, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) said today that people have downloaded the service 1.4 million times, and the one million mark was hit in just a week.

The rate of downloads are staggering, and will presumably surpass Google’s Android user base since Nokia’s reach is much larger. “We’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s EVP. “When we announced free walk & drive navigation we knew it would be a game-changer. The number of people now using their Nokia for navigation, and as a result looking for more location-aware software, is growing faster than even we predicted.” There’s no doubt that the program is also helping to get the word out about its Ovi Store, which is now averaging one million downloads a day.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) started providing free navigation services on the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid, and has rolled it out to many more devices since. That prompted Nokia to stop charging for its mapping services. It’s still not clear how Nokia will make money from giving away the software for free. Nokia got into the maps business after it spent millions on acquiring Navteq. Nokia said its strategy is to “lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services.” Vanjoki: “This is great news for our 3rd party application developers.  Within a matter of days there is an installed base of more than 1 million active users all potentially hungry for new and innovative location-aware apps. For the operators too there is a growing opportunity to sell more data-plans and a complete navigation package to existing and new customers.”

Nokia provided a list of the top five countries where maps are being downloaded the most. They are very representative of the company’s global reach: China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain. The service covers more than 180 countries and is available in 46 languages. For now, current users will have to download the app to their devices. At least 12 devices are supported. Going forward, all new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost.

Related

• Nokia Claws Back Some Smartphone Share As Profits Rise
• Nokia Breaks Its Target For Internet Service Users?
• Google Rolls Out Navigation To More Android Devices; Will Other Smartphones Follow?
• Nokia Follows Google Down Free-GPS Route In Drive Against TomTom

—Verizon launches third Android device: Verizon will begin selling the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) DEVOUR, its third Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android phone next month. The phone will come with Motorola’s MOTOBLUR, a software layer that syncs contacts from work and personal e-mail services, and also pushes down updates from social sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The phone has a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, and a 3.1 inch touchscreen. No word on pricing. [Release.]

—Nexus One gets multi-touch: This week, Google starts pushing out a software update to the Nexus One that will provide new features and fix some bugs. Most notably, it will enable multitouch, or what Google is calling “pinch to zoom,” much like the iPhone has today. Users will also get the Google Goggles app and an new version of maps. 3G connectivity should also improve. [Release.]

—Will the next tablet come with Android?: Potentially there will be tablets running Android, as we saw at CES, but now speculation is shifting to Google’s Chrome PC operating system. Google’s “The Chromium Project” has released a number of mockups and early concepts regarding what a Chrome-based tablet PC might look like. Unlike the just-announced Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPad, which revolves around apps, the Chrome tablet takes a more PC approach. [PCWorld.]

Buongiorno (BIT: BNG), a Milan-based mobile content company, released preliminary figures for 2009 and despite a 18 percent decrease in sales year-over-year, executives remained upbeat about the company’s performance.

Over the past year, the company has tried to focus on new opportunities, moving away from more traditional mobile content to branch out into services, like social networking and mobile advertising. Buongiorno’s CEO Andrea Casalini: “We are really satisfied with how 2009 ended, given the challenging economic environment…We can look with confidence to 2010, a year where we want to get back on a growth path and substantially increase our investments in new initiatives.”

The company said revenues fell to 259 million euros ($361.9 million) in 2009 from 316 million euros ($441.5 million) in the year ago period. The decrease was attributed to a “rationalization of the product portfolio and changes in the accounting principles of some contracts.” Buongiorno said EBITDA, which is earnings before some expenses, such as interest, taxes and depreciation, totaled Euro 39 million ($54.5 million), which was flat compared to a year ago. Margins improved slightly to 15 percent from 12.4 percent. The company’s final results will be reviewed by the Board on March 15.

Related

• Earnings: Buongiorno Sees Revenues Fall; Focuses On New Forms Of Content

The Mobile Marketing Association is reorganizing its structure in order to support the “unprecedented awareness” of mobile marketing worldwide and its surging membership, the non-profit trade association said today.

The new structure will give its four operating regions in Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Latin America and North America, more autonomy. Each region will have a managing director, who will launch local councils, local events and have full financial responsibility. As part of the restructuring, MMA appointed a new North American head, Michael Becker, co-founder of iLoop Mobile. It also continues to search for a CEO after its global CEO and President Mike Wehrs resigned Dec. 31. Release.

The managing directors are as follows: Paul Berney in EMEA, Rohit Dadwal in APAC and Michael Becker will assume the role of managing director in North America. The managing directors will report to the MMA’s interim CEO, Federico Pisani Massamormile. “The restructuring enables us to address the growing popularity of mobile marketing and our increasing membership all over the world, while enabling a measure of ‘geographic specificity’ to how the organization operates,” said Pisani Massamormile.

Palm’s stock jumped 7.1 percent to $11.29 a share today after Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg released bullish comments about the handset maker.

Goldberg said he not only believed that the webOS platform could become valuable if Palm (NSDQ: PALM) continues to add new carriers, but reignited rumors that there’s a possibility of a sale within the next two years. In addition, he repeated his “Buy” rating on the stock, and raised his price target to $20, from $19—nearly doubling the stock price from yesterday, reports Barron’s Tech Trader Daily.

Previously, analysts and others speculated that Nokia (NYSE: NOK), HP or even Dell would be interested in buying the company. A larger parent might provide more capital, so that the handset-maker can expand more quickly. A partner may also bring new distribution to the table, including carrier partnerships. Goldberg did not speculate who the buyer might be.

—Device sales: The analyst was very optimistic about Palm’s January announcement that Verizon Wireless will be offering the Palm Pixi and the Palm Pre Plus. He thinks they can sell 600,000 units in the February quarter, with Palm’s total sales reaching 1.3 million units. He is forecasting 7.3 million units for calendar 2010, and 11.3 million in 2011.

—Applications: Goldberg is also optimistic about the number of applications in Palm’s App Catalog. In January, the company took the SDK out of beta, allowing any developers to create games or other apps on the platform. He says Palm currently has 1,288, but by the end of the year end, he thinks it will soar beyond BlackBerry’s 5,000 apps, and maybe beyond Android’s 20,000 apps. (He believes Palm already has more than Windows Mobile and Nokia’s Ovi.)

Related

• @ CES: Palm Beefs Up Developer Program To Catch-Up With Other App Stores
• Palm’s Q2 Earnings Slipped As It Shipped Fewer Smartphones
• Is Nokia Eyeing Palm?