Category: Mobile

Our friends at BillShrink, who developed an interactive tool that lets you compare handsets and pick the best phone-plan combination, crunched the data on some of the newer smartphones and compared them with the current champion, the iPhone 3Gs. “While sticker prices are roughly comparable between smartphones, each offers its own particularly generous features,” the company says. But in the end, customers should base their decision on the total cost of ownership of the device over the entire length of their contract with the phone company. So how does iPhone 3GS stack up against the Droid, MyTouch 3G and the  Palm Pre? Results are below the fold.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, as we noted when it rolled out last week, contains a highly interesting software layer — invented and developed at the company’s in-house research division — that enables “virtual Wi-Fi.” Essentially, it allows a user to group multiple Wi-Fi connections together to boost coverage and speeds. It stands to have an immediate impact on Wi-Fi users, but could also impact various broadband access technologies over time.

Kevin over at jkOnTheRun today discusses new beta software called Connectify that takes advantage of the feature to “turn your Windows 7 laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot.” Here’s why this technology is significant, and where it’s headed.

The day before Windows 7 was launched, I sat down in our offices with a team of three people from Microsoft to discuss the new operating system, only to learn that none of them were aware of the virtual Wi-Fi software layer that it has. This really surprised me given that previous versions of Windows have bundled connectivity and networking technologies in such a way as to cause sweeping usage changes.

There are multiple ways to share wireless connections; many people do so with the MiFi device. Connectify, though, takes direct advantage of the virtual Wi-Fi features in Windows 7 to create a software-based wireless router for Wi-Fi sharing. Just imagine the range and coverage possibilities that can come of turning your laptop into a router. (You can read more about how virtual Wi-Fi works here.)

As Kevin notes:

“With Connectify, you have a software solution to share the data connection of your PC — a secure hotspot with WPA2-Personal (AES) encryption is created via a virtual Wi-Fi interface, so any other Wi-Fi device you have can take advantage of your mobile broadband connection. And this differs from tethering options we’ve covered in the past because tethering generally only allows one other device to leverage the connection. By creating a Wi-Fi hotspot, multiple devices can join in.”

That’s pretty slick, and has sold me on trying out Connectify. It’s likely that we’ll see other interesting extensions of the virtual Wi-Fi software layer in Windows 7 as well, including applications with broadband technologies other than Wi-Fi.

Web browsing and Internet usage on mobile devices is booming, reports AdMob, a San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile advertising startup that tracks data across various mobile devices, applications and browsers. In its September 2009 Mobile Metrics report, the company found that of the top 10 devices in the U.S., five had touchscreens, six had Wi-Fi capabilities and six had their own application stores. And they are, as AdMob notes, “responsible for a much higher percentage of mobile usage than their share of handsets sold.”

The startup’s data shows that in September, 42 percent of requests in the U.S. were made from Wi-Fi capable devices. Meanwhile, 18 percent of actual U.S. requests were made over a Wi-Fi connection compared to only 5 percent in September 2008. The presence of the iPod touch and iPhone are the primary drivers behind this growth. In both the U.S. and the UK, those two devices helped bolster the web usage, AdMob data shows.

More interestingly, smartphones running on the Android operating system (OS) accounted for 17 percent of smartphone traffic in AdMob’s network in the U.S. in September, up from 13 percent in August. I suspect this number is only going to continue to go up as more and more Android devices come to market. Verizon earlier this week launched its Droid phone, which is likely to be a big driver of mobile web traffic in coming months.

Cisco Systems’ $2.9 billion purchase of wireless networking equipment maker Starent might be in trouble: The Law Offices of Brian M. Felgoise, P.C. , a law firm in Pennsylvania thinks that the wireless equipment makes is taking the lowball offer and not striking a hard enough bargain. Cisco’s $3 billion purchase of Tandberg is also facing opposition from shareholders who own 24 percent of the company. I wonder if Cisco might have to raise its offering price on these deals.

The new Motorola Droid is pretty hot today. It’s a phone! It’s a brand! It’s an iPhone killer! But here at GigaOM we decided to ask a far more important question, “Is it a RAZR killer?” Can today’s Droid phone top the world’s most ubiquitous mobile gadget on its path to crush the iPhone? Can it even get close to the iPhone? Let’s see how the competition stacks up:

	iPhone	RAZR	Droid
Release Date	July 2007	2004	Nov. 6, 2009
Numbers Sold	34 million	More than 100 million	We’re waiting …
OS	iPhone OS	None, it’s not a smartphone	Android 2.0
Device Cost	$99-$249 with 2-year plans	$100 unsubsidized today (the GSM version of the RAZR cost $500 when it launched on Cingular)	$199.99 after a rebate, with a 2-year contract
Hottest Feature	Touchscreen/browser	World’s first slim phone, latest RAZR has an 18-k gold cover	Android 2.0!!!
Best Quote	“This device is a true game-changer. Why? The immediacy of the data at your fingertips is huge. Imagine, looking up anything, anywhere.” — AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega	“Bafflingly enough, the hottest, most popular phone of 2005 is a phone from 2004, the RAZR V3,” said Miro Kazakoff, senior associate at Compete, a firm which tracks shoppers’ browsing habits. “The big thing we saw [in 2005] was this triumph of form over features.” — PC Mag	“The abundance of Google applications is to be expected, of course, but it also underscores an important strategic about-face for Verizon, which has consistently tried to ‘own the customer’ by closely regulating third-party apps and preventing outside brands from approaching its subscribers.” –GigaOM

So the Droid from Verizon just landed and we have an unboxing video. Despite all the hype, I have this to say to the makers of the iPhone: You’ve got nothing to worry about. Go out, have fun and get into the hands of a few more millions. As for the BlackBerry, its makers better be worried. Watch the unboxing video below the fold.

I’m not sure how you guys will feel about the Droid in a few days, but I can safely say that like so many so-called iPhone killers in the past, this isn’t one. That’s not a judgment as to the robustness or usability of the device — I need more time for that — it’s just that Verizon seriously overhyped it.

The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has the whole story on Motorola, Sanjay Jha and how the Droid came to be. It’s an interesting read, and one which reveals that the design choices (or lack there off) are courtesy of Verizon. As Hansell writes:

They found a way to fit a slide-out keyboard into a phone that was only 1.5 millimeters thicker than the iPhone. And they used a 3.7-inch touchscreen, noticeably bigger than the 3.5-inch screen on the iPhone. To take advantage of the higher resolution of that screen, Motorola, working with Google, developed new software that would support high-definition video and 3-D graphics.

Here are some facts about Droid collected by our team.

• Doesn’t appear to be full Microsoft Exchange support — includes Calendar, Mail and Contacts, but not Tasks or Notes, on which some corporate users rely.
• Placing the Droid in the optional car dock immediately opens up the “Car Dock” interface, and turn-by-turn GPS directions are available.
• Placing the Droid in the optional media dock places the Droid into an alarm clock and media player mode.
• The interface is a stock Google Android 2.0 design, so no extra home screens like some other recent devices.
• Unlike some HTC Android devices, Droid offers a standard 3.5 mm headset jack.
• Like webOS Synergy, Droid unifies contacts from Gmail, Facebook and Exchange.
• Dedicated hardware keys offer haptic feedback.
• Verizon includes a 16GB SD card with the Droid, it supports 32GB.
• Droid’s 5MP camera with flash trumps most other current phones with 720×480 (DVD Quality) recording at 24 fps
• The camera also supports Image Stabilization, real-time color effects, scene modes and location tagging.
• Droid does have an accelerometer and landscape keyboard, so it’s not necessary to slide out the QWERTY keyboard for landscape entry.
• There’s no MotoBLUR, but there is a Facebook widget.
• Back of the device is soft touch.
• The 854×480 display offers a higher resolution than the first ASUS Eee PC netbook, which was 800×480.
• Droid runs the same SnapdragonTI OMAP chip as the iPhone.

I just got off the phone with jkOnTheRun’s Kevin Tofel, and like every other geek, we were talking about Droid and its impact on the market. We were both wondering if Motorola’s release today of its Verizon-focused Droid handset killed the BlackBerry Storm2, the new version of the touchscreen device which also launched today. My argument is that Droid and other Android-based devices are much closer to the BlackBerry and, thus, are a bigger threat to the Canadian giant than they are to Apple. One of our commenters thought so as well.

RIM has sent us its latest device for review. I think it’s very brave to do that, because I have not necessarily been shy about my view of Storm and its touchscreen. I am going to play around with this and give you my first-hand impressions. What are your thoughts? Do you think Google’s Droid leaves RIM hurting?

Hat tip to Ronak for the Storm vs Android chart link on Google Trends.

Vdopia, a profitable iPhone advertising platform, has raised $4 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, which only launched in the U.S. in March, claims it’s seeing 4 percent click-through rates for its pre-roll videos before applications start — an impressive number that Vdopia says does not include accidental clicks, as so many ad stats do.

The iPhone makes an an ideal advertising environment because it eliminates the clutter of a web page, said Vdopia founder Srikanth Kakani during a phone interview Tuesday. Vdopia claims it now reaches more than 10 million U.S. iPhone users through apps like iBaseball and Arcade Hoops, with advertisers including Coke Zero, Warner Bros. and the National Guard.

Alongside the funding, Vdopia has brought on tech entrepreneur and investor Rohit Sharma as its president and CEO. Sharma was previously an investor at Mohr Davidow Ventures and CTO of ONI Systems. Next up for Vdopia is the Android platform. The company also maintains a web-based video ad business in India, where most of its 17-member team is based.

T-Mobile USA has seen its growth stall and its ARPU slide in recent months as cut-rate discount service providers poach budget-conscious customers, and as AT&T and Verizon Wireless target high-end users. So the nation’s fourth-largest carrier is taking aim at both segments at we enter the holiday season with new calling plans and two new Android phones. But it’s the prepaid guys who have the most to fear.

“Even More Plus” plans, which don’t require a contract, include an unlimited-everything option for $80 a month and a voice-only unlimited plan for $50 a month. And while T-Mobile doesn’t offer subsidized handsets with the new no-contract plans, it does allow users to pay for expensive phones over a 20-month period without interest; users who already have a handset can also take advantage without additional fees. A number of traditional contract plans are offered, too, under the “Even More” category.

The prepaid plans, which were announced yesterday, had been rumored for weeks as the centerpiece of T-Mobile’s “Project Dark” initiative, and the carrier is clearly taking aim at its bigger brothers by marketing the offerings on its web site as “1/2 the price of comparable AT&T or Verizon plans.” But it’s the smaller, prepaid-only providers that could be feeling nervous about the new plans. T-Mobile hasn’t matched the rock-bottom plans of bargain-basement providers like TracFone Wireless, but it does operate a truly national network and it offers a more compelling lineup of handsets than most prepaid competitors. For prepaid users looking for more than just voice and text messaging, “Even More Plus” will be pretty attractive.

What a Monday it is turning out to be for the mobile industry — one major news announcement after another. Three of the most notable include:

• BlackBerry 5.0, the latest operating system update for RIM devices, is out. James Kendrick from jkOnTheRun has the details. From what I understand, it has follow-up flags for email, which makes it pretty useful.

• T-Mobile USA caused a major upheaval yesterday when it announced an everything unlimited plan for $79 a month. You just need to bring your own devices. Jason Devitt, CEO of Skydeck and one of our favorite mobile industry insiders, thinks this is a major development as it indicates that the market might be ready to transition from the culture of two-year contracts and subsidized phones.

• Verizon is betting that a slew of new devices, including the Android-powered Droid, are going to push its sales up in the coming quarters. The company needs a hit phone badly: It added 1.2 million new subscribers in the third quarter vs. 2 million added by archnemesis AT&T during the same period.

Qualcomm has joined its rival Intel in jumping aboard the open source bandwagon. The San Diego-based chipmaker today unveiled the Qualcomm Innovation Center, a subsidiary created to “optimize open source software with Qualcomm technology.” The QuIC, as Qualcomm has dubbed it, will be headed by Rob Chandhok, who serves as senior vice president of software strategies for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.

“Open source and community-driven software development is becoming increasingly important to the wireless industry,” Chandhok said in a prepared statement. “To fulfill this commitment and to provide focus to this effort, Qualcomm has transferred experienced software engineers to QuIC. These engineers will focus on such important open source initiatives as Linux and Webkit, and on open source operating systems such as Symbian, Android and Chrome.”

Qualcomm gained traction in the feature-phone space with its own BREW platform for application development, but working with other platforms is nothing new for the company: Earlier this year it released Java Platform Standard Edition 6 on its Snapdragon ARM-based architecture, and it’s targeting carriers with a cross-platform app store. And while Apple’s proprietary iPhone OS has taken the mobile industry by storm, open source operating systems such as Android, Chrome and Moblin are gaining traction (GigaOM Pro, sub. required) among developers on both handsets and netbooks. Indeed, Intel has partnered with Nokia in an effort to build its open source business in mobile. So as Qualcomm steps up its fight with its rival, the company is sagely placing a wager on the open source market.

Verizon Communications this morning said its third-quarter net income fell by 10 percent from last year as its fixed-line phone business continued to shrivel, offsetting gains by the company’s mobile and FiOS businesses. Verizon Wireless, the company’s joint venture with Vodafone Group, added 1.2 million mobile customers during the quarter, outperforming the average analyst estimate of 1 million. That’s short of the 2 million net additions reported by AT&T last week — thanks largely to the iPhone, of course — but Verizon Wireless still holds a healthy 8 million-customer lead over AT&T, at 89 million, and is well positioned to build on its lead in overall subscribers in the next few quarters (GigaOM Pro, sub. required).

Verizon also added 191,000 customers for its FiOS TV service and 198,000 for its FiOS web offering in its most recent quarter, upping its fiber-TV audience to 2.7 million and its FiOS web subscriber base to 3.3 million users. Those gains couldn’t offset losses in Verizon’s landline business, which continues to erode as the economy plods along and consumers and businesses look to mobile and Internet voice services to cut costs. Landline revenues fell nearly 5 percent to $11.6 billion and the number of consumer local phone connections fell 10 percent during the quarter.

And while Verizon has long been hindered by a lackluster portfolio of smartphones, the carrier is already backing its upcoming Droid device with an eye-catching marketing campaign, it will soon launch the BlackBerry Storm 2 and it has confirmed it will launch the Palm Pre early next year. I’ve been highly critical of Verizon’s go-it-alone strategy in the past, but the company’s alliance with Android — and its soon-to-be impressive smartphone lineup — could pay significant dividends in the next few quarters.

With a number of Google’s Android OS-based smartphones on the horizon, developers are devoting significant resources to the mobile platform, which will result in a boom in Android apps, according to reports  from two Silicon Valley startups, Flurry and AdMob. Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile metrics company, today said that it had seen an unprecedented 94 percent increase in the number of projects started by Android developers between September and October. 

Flurry collects data from more than two-thirds of all Android-powered devices, and nearly 500 developers have embedded Flurry Analytics across more than 1,500 applications, tracking more than 100 million end user sessions to date.  Of the estimated 3 million Android handsets deployed, more than 2.1 million include applications integrated with Flurry Analytics, the company says.

AdMob, which serves advertising inside mobile apps, recently noted that Android OS accounted for 17 percent of all smartphone traffic in its network in September, up from 13 percent in August.

“With 12 Android phones already available through 32 carriers in 26 countries, the international impact of Android may be greater than it is in the U.S.,” AdMob said on its official blog. About 10,000 apps are available for the Android platform vs. 85,000 for Apple’s iPhone OS. More than 2 billions apps have been downloaded from Apple’s iTunes App Store.

Last week, Douglas MacMillan of BusinessWeek profiled iPhone app developers who had made over a million dollars by selling their applications (or games). In comparison, many Android app developers have been frustrated with the Android stores and lack of sales.

That might change soon, as AdMob folks point out on their blog:

There is also huge marketing muscle behind Android now. Verizon, who has been aching for a handset to combat the iPhone, launched the much discussed Droid campaign this past weekend. Motorola is betting the house on Android and investing significantly in the Cliq and MotoBlur functionality. Enter a T-Mobile store and the myTouch is promoted everywhere, from the devices to the signage to the accessory wall. No doubt that this will be a huge holiday season for Android devices in the U.S.

Subscribe to GigaOM Pro for introductory price of $79 a year to get access to this report and more latest research on mobile and mobile apps.

Last week, Sebastian pointed out that Android needs more than just marketing to succeed against the RIM and Apple juggernauts. More than 75 million Android handsets will ship in 2012, according to Gartner Research, making Google’s mobile operating system the second most popular smartphone OS behind Symbian. The problems Android faces are fragmentation of the user experience and the existence of multiple app stores.

Google will have to step up to the plate with exceptional marketing and promotion to get the all-important dollars into the pockets of already-enthusiastic developers.

The Android world is getting bigger all the time. After much speculation, Verizon this week confirmed the introduction of its first Android phone with a slick advertising campaign. The Verizon Droid, which is expected to be announced next week, will be made by Motorola. (The handset was previously dubbed the Sholes.) The ad campaign includes TV spots in the U.S. listing the various ways that the Droid is better than the iPhone. Based on press kits sent to the media, the Droid is expected to start shipping Nov. 9.

Meanwhile, recent announcements are making it clear that Android isn’t just a platform for smartphones — it can be leveraged on other devices as well. No fewer than three e-book readers based on the OS were announced this week, including Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Spring Design’s Alex, and enTourage’s eDGe. All three of the readers bring unique qualities to the e-book reader space, and having open-source Android onboard opens the door to a wave of possible applications on the devices. Given the closed nature of the Kindle, Amazon could have reason to be nervous.

Plus, Dell was spotted in Thailand showing off a UMPC with Android under the hood. The 5-inch Dell Streak has no voice capability, but uses Wi-Fi and 3G to provide ubiquitous connectivity. Not much is known about the little gadget, or if the company will add it to its offerings. But the video demo of the device shows a very compelling handheld web tablet.

Last week, Lee Williams, executive director at Symbian, stopped by our office to brief me on a new version of the operating system that is going to be released soon. He talked about SEE09, their developer conference in London next week. We discussed a whole bunch of things, some of it on video. Toward the end of the video chat, Williams shared his unfiltered views of Google’s Android, including the unease it is causing with handset makers and carriers. I plan on spending the weekend writing a post about Symbian, but in the interim, watch Williams speak his mind about Android. “Android is building a perfect storm of fragmentation,” he said. “I don’t view Apple as evil, just greedy. Google…come on.” Watch the video below the fold.

Right after our Mobilize 09 conference, it became clear that 2010 was going to be the year of Android, thanks to a growing number of Android-powered handsets from makers such as Motorola and Samsung. Some analysts are forecasting that by 2012 it will be the second most popular smartphone OS, behind Symbian, the operating system that powers most of Nokia’s high-end phones. According to Gartner, Android’s share will be at 18 percent of all smartphones sold globally in 2012, or about 94 million users out of 525 million.

(Related GigaOM Pro reports: “With Verizon, Google’s Android Flexes Its Muscles” and “Google’s Mobile Strategy”)

The Powermat charging pad.

The technology industry has invested a lot of marketing energy and dollars into getting consumers excited about wireless power, the promise being that it will free us from the size and feature constraints imposed by batteries. There’s a consortium of bigwigs from Nokia  to Dell trying to advance a standard called Qi, and Intel and WiTricity are trying to develop an even more compelling technology that will transfer power over the air. But we’re still a long way from cutting the cord.

Consumers intent on living a wireless life have two new options this holiday season — both of which are getting a lot of attention: mats on which they can wirelessly charge their mobile devices. Unfortunately this sounds far cooler than it really is. The two products — the Powermat, which goes on sale Sunday at Amazon, and the Duracell MyGrid, which went on sale earlier this month — use different techniques to charge a device, but both require the mat to be plugged into an outlet, which eliminates the wire to the device, but not the one to the wall.

Moreover, as I explain in a new report over at GigaOM Pro, (subscription required) these products aren’t likely to change the industry much unless consumers really want to shell out $140 or more to avoid inserting a micro USB adapter into the port on their phone. That’s a lot of money for convenience:

Wireless power mats are a lifestyle technology, says David Baarman, the director of advanced technologies at Fulton Innovation and the lead inventor of its eCoupled wireless charging technology. And lifestyle technologies, like Bluetooth, have to be standardized, cheap to implement and dead simple to gain mass adoption.

For real innovation, we’re going to have to wait for Intel and WiTricity to bring their wireless charging over the air capabilities to the mass market (or until solar or kinetic energy harvesting become efficient enough to deliver sufficient power quickly).

For more on today’s wireless power options check out the report, or our 10 Things to Know About Wireless Power.

Verizon is showing off an advertisement today (that will run on TV starting Monday) aimed at stopping people from texting and driving, but it’s far too mild for me. I prefer something along the lines of this CTIA ad, which has some of the drama we’ve come to expect from public service announcements. However, the CTIA ad is aimed at teenagers rather than adults; given how many adults text or even just browse on their phones as they drive, perhaps they need an ad targeted at them, too. But will these ads, a bevy of upcoming laws and even the existence of sites like AKBadDriver’s tweet stream actually stop folks from texting (or reading emails) while driving? What about you? Take the poll below the fold.