Category: Mobile

It’s been more than six months since Google (NSDQ: GOOG) agreed to pay $750 million for AdMob and the company is still waiting for government approval.

Many sources have said the FTC is considering blocking the deal between Google, the dominant online advertising company, and AdMob the largest mobile ad network. In an interview with Reuters today, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said they are prepared to fight “very hard” if regulators stop the deal. Additionally, he believes it should be approved in order for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to have more competitors.

A decision has been expected at any moment for the past couple of weeks, but Schmidt opened up the possibility to it taking longer by saying he anticipated a decision over the next few weeks.

To be sure, Google has faced significant delays. After Google announced its acquisition, Apple announced it was buying Quattro Wireless, and has since been able to integrate the company and relaunch its services as a mobile ad network called iAd.

Schmidt said the waiting period has translated to a “significant disadvantage” for AdMob in competing against Apple and other rivals. “It would be better if the AdMob acquisition can be approved to see if Google can get a more competitive market on the iPhone platform.”

If the FTC denies the acquisition, the two companies could be in limbo for many more months as its tied up in litigation. Schmidt said: “We’re likely to fight very hard…It’s a very strategic acquisition for Google.” Google’s incentive may also come in the form of cash. One report pegged Google’s kill fee at $700 million if the deal were to fall apart for any reason.

Related

• Why The FTC Should Allow The Google-AdMob Merger
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Facebook has unveiled a new mobile web site that will allow people in more than 45 countries, who aren’t accustomed to paying for data plans on the phone, to access its site quickly and for free.

According to a company blog post, the deal has been inked with more than 50 mobile operators around the world, ranging from carriers in Barbados to Indonesia to Madagascar. Facebook says more countries are on the way.

The web site, which is accessible at 0.facebook.com, has all the same key features as Facebook’s regular mobile web site, like posting status updates and viewing the news feed. There’s just one catch: the photos are not viewable from the main page, and to view them, regular data fees will apply.

The deal is still pretty good since usually carriers start charging from the moment a web browser is opened on the phone. With 0.facebook.com, users will only get charged to view photos or to browse to another mobile site. A notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com. Because of this special arrangement, the light-weight version of the Facebook is only available on the certain networks. Other users will still have to access Facebook’s typical mobile site at m.Facebook.com and pay data fees.

While the obvious target market for a service like this is emerging countries where data plans have not become common, like Rwanda, Sudan and Bolivia, there’s also developed nations on the list, such as Finland. Australia, France and New Zealand are coming soon.

Hit play for an audio recording of a mystery car’s exhaust note, and then share your guesses or get a few hints from other visitors in the comments below. Be sure to check back on Thursday for the answer!

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What formats of mobile ads will Google (NSDQ: GOOG) eventually introduce? Here’s The Onion on Google’s “announcement” of targeted ads delivered directly into a phone user’s ears. Watch until the end of the clip for a jab at Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) too:

New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears

Spotify, the hot online music service that has taken Europe by storm, has been approved for launch in the Ovi store, making it a godsend for millions of Nokia users in Europe. Spotify is already available on the iPhone platform and has been charging customers for premium service. For Nokia the availability of Spotify in the Ovi Store will be a big boost as Nokia’s app store looks for successful apps to fend off rivals such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone OS.

There is also word that Spotify is going to launch in Netherlands very shortly, based on a comment thread on Get Satisfaction, where a company spokesperson recently left a comment indicating the pending launch.

As the cute Fiat 500 is about to hit American roads, the Italian carmaker is working on a four-door derivate designed to enhance the appeal of the near-forgotten brand.

With a longer wheelbase, this new model—likely to be called the 600—will provide more comfort on long-distance travel and a more inhabitable rear seat. (In our eyes, the regular 500 is really only a 2+2, which is a technical way of saying the rear seats are little more than a parcel shelf.) The 600 is expected to be built alongside the 500 in Toluca, Mexico; power will come from a highly efficient two-cylinder engine providing around 100 hp. The 500’s four-cylinder engines are also a possibility, of course.

With the 600, Fiat may discover that it’s just a brief step from the cute to the humble. We see the trendy crowd zipping around in turbocharged 500s, perhaps even with folding roofs. But we can’t quite see many folks stuffing their family into what would likely be the cheapest and tiniest four-door on the market.

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T-Mobile USA has unveiled two new prepaid plans that emphasize texting over talking. The announcement is in line with what other prepaid providers are offering—big bundles of services from voice to email and internet access for one low price without the commitment of a contract.

While they represent fairly good bargains, it’s unclear how much this growing segment of the U.S. market is interested in adding all of the bells and whistles to a prepaid plan. Instead of offering on an unlimited basis, T-Mobile’s new plans are a little less comprehensive. For $15 a month, users can have unlimited texting and calls for 10 cents a minute. For $50 a month, you get unlimited texting and talking. For occasional data use, T-Mobile offers a “Hour Pass,” which provides unlimited Web access for 99 cents an hour.

Sprint (NYSE: S) is being the most aggressive in the prepaid market, by launching several brands including Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), Boost Mobile and even an exclusive brand available at Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) called Common Cents Mobile. The Virgin Mobile “Beyond Talk” offer also stresses texting over talking. At the low end, it costs $25 for unlimited messaging, email, data and Web with 300 voice minutes a month. For $40, you get 1,200 minutes, and for $60, you get unlimited calling. The Wal-Mart brand offers no unlimited buckets, but rather charges seven cents per voice minute, and seven cents for each text message under no contract.

GM is launching two new alternative fuel engine choices for the 2011 Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana twins. Fleet and commercial customers will be able to buy the vans equipped with CNG (compressed natural gas) or LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) fuel systems.

Cargo vans with CNG capability will be available this fall, while cutaway bodystyles (which can be turned into buses, delivery vehicles, and more) powered by LPG will arrive early next year. The Express and Savana will continue to use a 6.0-liter V-8 engine, but with a hardened valvetrain and a new fuel injection system fed by the proper storage tanks. The vehicles are fully EPA and CARB compliant, and come with a 5 year/100,000 mile powertrain warranty.

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Smartphone handsets fueled the money Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) makes from internet data to £4 billion ( billion) during its 2009/10 fiscal year – nearly a fifth more than in the previous year.

Across that year, group profit rebounded 180 percent to £8.6 billion ( billion), recovering from last year’s £5.9 billion write-off against Turkish and Spanish telcos, on 8.4 percent higher revenue of £44.5 billion.

But Verizon Wireless in the U.S. was Vodafone’s only global geographic constituent to post higher service revenue – in its core Europe, it fell 3.5 percent to £28.3 billion.

But there’s another writedown hit – Vodafone is knocking £2.3 billion off the value of its Indian operations thanks to “the award of six new national licences in the market one year after our entry and the resulting intense price competition”.

Funny kind of pessimism – in the big, developing country, Voda attracted 32 million new Indian customers last year alone, taking it up to 72 million and leading income there up 14.7 percent.

Service revenue in Voda’s native UK dipped 4.7 percent thanks to Europe’s enforced mobile termination rate cut, which is affecting all operators there, and the decline in the last quarter slowed to 2.6 percent.

Things are maybe looking up – Voda says that last quarter in that year shows the global economic slowdown has “diminished somewhat”, because services income was down “only” 0.2 percent.

The carrier says 50 million of its 341 million customers are active data users, 31 million of them on mobile internet. And, incidentally, Indian data revenue came in at £169 million last year.

Release | Slides | Financials

One by one, the mobile song identifier just keeps hitting its targets – now it ranks as one of the most successful mobile content companies out there, and is thought likely to attempt a public offering at the end of 2010 or early 2011.

Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher last year told me his strategy was to hit 50 million users by 2009’s end (he did) and 100 million by the close of 2010. With this year not even half-way through, the company today announced it’s reached 75 million. (TechCrunch broke the embargo).

Next up? In October, Fisher told me: “Before now, I’d have said it’s not appropriate for a company the size of Shazam (to float). But for us now, given the size we’re at and the opportunity we see in front of us, once you exceed 100 million users, you are significant.” Also: “As we look to the future we absolutely think we have the size and the scale to launch a public offering.”

In its 2008/09 fiscal year, Shazam Entertainment Ltd made a £89,943 post-tax loss and a £133,462 operating loss on turnover of £7.3 million, thanks to £886,903 costs and £6.5 million expenses.

Shazam took an initial £11.5 million investment from Acacia Capital and DN Capital and a later round of an undisclosed size from Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers.

It’s made a surprisingly good fist of limiting its free mobile app whilst introducing a paid-for app that has become the core product. It’s also adding more affiliate partnerships to the app and in January claimed to be referring a whopping 260,000 paying song customers every day to retail affiliates like iTunes Store.

Those targets…
—Shazam bobbled along for about eight years as a dial-up service.
—But an iPhone app helped it double its user base to 35 million in just seven months between September 2008 and May 2009.
—December 2009: Hit 50 million target.
—May 2010: Hit 75 million target.
—December 2010: Next stop: 100 million? IPO?

As the mobile web increasingly looks a lot more like the PC-based one, companies like Lookout are hoping to make a name for themselves in providing security from hacks on users’ smartphones. The San Francisco company has raised an $11 million second round.

Aside from promising to block mobile viruses and malware, Lookout’s cloud-based app also covers data loss and theft of the phone itself. Lookout, previously known as consulting firm called Flexilis, is available is on across some 400 mobile networks in 170 countries.

In conjunction with the funding, Lookout has also made a few executive additions. Joseph Ansanelli, former CEO and co-founder of Vontu, has been named as chairman of Lookout’s board. Also, Chris Jones was added as VP of product management. He was formerly senior director of portfolio product management at Symantec. Lastly, Julie Herendeen, previously vice president of network products and advertising solutions for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), has been named VP of marketing.

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Audi is the automaker furthest ahead in aluminum construction, but the head of its lightweight materials effort says that steel definitely has a future.

Heinrich Timm, head of Audi’s Aluminum and Lightweight Design Center in Neckarsulm, Germany, is considered by many to be the godfather of the modern aluminum car. In a lengthy private briefing at Audi’s sprawling, 13,700-employee Neckarsulm plant, where aluminum R8s and A8s are assembled along with a raft of other mainstream Audis, Timm said the future for body construction in lower-cost cars will be a mix of materials such as aluminum, steel, and composites, including plastic and carbon fiber.

Because aluminum is typically twice the cost of steel, and its use means that costs for almost every other aspect of the car—from assembly to parts handling to service and repair—are significantly higher, “from an economic sense, it doesn’t make sense to use one material,” says Timm.

With the ultra-chic R8 and new R8 Spyder convertible as well as the freshly redesigned A8 sedan being assembled in the halls below from aluminum, Timm said the prototype for lower-cost cars actually is the current Audi TT, which is assembled in Gyor, Hungary. It’s made from 31 percent aluminum sheet, 31 percent steel sheet, 22 percent aluminum castings, and 16 percent aluminum extrusions. By comparison, the more expensive A8 uses just 8 percent steel in its mostly aluminum body. The whole rear of the TT’s skeleton is conventional steel stampings, used strategically for weight balance, strength, and cost, says Timm.

Timm, a 38-year Audi veteran who started working on aluminum construction in 1982, believes steel will always be king in smaller, cheap cars where every dollar added to the price counts. But in mid-priced cars, targeted use of aluminum and composites in the body construction can help hold the line on weight.

Weight gain in the mid-size segment, where Audi’s own A4 competes, has averaged a 10 percent increase per year, says Timm. However, the current A4 gained no weight over its predecessor, he says, because the company is smarter about its use of materials, and especially its use of steel. “There are 11 types of steel sheet in the A4,” says Timm, including various exotic types of high-strength steel in critical load areas.

According to Timm, if the car’s weight drops by 220 pounds but everything else remains the same, fuel use drops by 1 to 3 mpg and a car needs 20 fewer feet to hit 60 mph. Audi has also focused on components such as fuel tanks, suspension bits, and brakes in the search to save extra pounds. Because its effect is so magnified, rotational mass, including the weight of flywheels, crankshafts, and road wheels, is a particularly attractive target. Cutting two pounds from a flywheel has the same effect on fuel economy as pulling 35 pounds off the body, says Timm. Using its own lightweight A5 2.0T concept as an example, look for future Audis to continue shedding the pounds.

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It’s amazing what confidence will do for a racing driver. After a couple of pretty sloppy drives in the Australian and Chinese Grands Prix, Mark Webber pulled it together at Barcelona last week to lead all the way after starting from pole position, comprehensively outdriving his more highly touted teammate, Sebastian Vettel. One week later at F1’s glamour event, the Monaco GP, Webber did the same thing: This time, he drove off into the distance in a manner that was reminiscent of a Senna or a Stewart or a Clark in their pomp.

It’s always difficult to know what to make of Webber, partly because he didn’t have the same kind of spoon-fed path up the career ladder that the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso or even Vettel enjoyed. Webber never ran for a true front-running team in Formula 3 and had to seek employment in sports cars—admittedly with Mercedes-Benz, who were keen to put him in Indycars thereafter—before hooking up with Paul Stoddart to run in F3000. Even there, he looked good rather than great, and it was only because fellow Australian Stoddart purchased Minardi that he got a ride in F1.

Prior to 2009, he had spent a season with Minardi, two with Jaguar Racing, two with Williams, and two with a Red Bull team that was starting to gel. He had never been in a front-running car, which made it difficult to gauge just how good he is, except he had a tendency to blow off his teammates in qualifying and was regarded as a solid racer. But last year, the team came alive, and Webber did a really good job during the second half of the season. Over the course of the year, Vettel did even better, but it’s worth remembering that Webber broke his leg in the 2008–2009 off-season and that must have hampered his preparation, most notably his fitness regimen.

In lots of ways, Webber reminds me of Jack Brabham, his countryman who won three world drivers’ titles in 1959, 1960, and 1966. Like Brabham, Webber is a hard racer who takes no prisoners and he had to graft to get to F1. And I think that both drivers are sorely underrated. “Black Jack” raced against and beat some of the best ever, men like Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks, Dan Gurney, Jochen Rindt, Jim Clark, and Jackie Stewart, yet few critics hold him in the same lofty regard despite his three titles. I once asked Brabham if he felt sore about the lack of critical acclaim and he just grinned and said, “Can’t have been all that bad, can I?” Webber, too, has beaten the likes of Schumacher, Button, Hamilton, Alonso, and Vettel, so he can’t be too bad, either.

This will probably put the hex on Webber, but it would nice if the hard-working but underappreciated Aussie can become the third world champion from Down Under, along with Brabham and Alan Jones. It would also be good to see one of F1’s elder statesmen putting it to the 20-somethings who seem to make up most of the grid.

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Mobile marketing firm Velti has filed to raise up to $200 million in a U.S. IPO. The company, which provides a platform advertisers use to manage their mobile ad camapaigns, says it will use the proceeds to pay back all of its $39 million in debt, as well as for “general corporate purposes.”

Velti has been trading on the AIM stock exchange in London for four years, so its financial status was already known. (It raised $17 million in its IPO there in 2006). The company’s F-1 filing does however provide some updates: Its revenue was $90 million last year, up from $62 million in 2008. Net income was $6.2 million, compared to a $6.2 million loss in 2008. And Velti paid $3.6 million for Ad Infuse, the U.S.-based mobile ad startup it purchased a year ago.

Velti expects to trade under the symbol VELT on the Nasdaq stock market. The offering is being underwritten by Needham & Co., RBC Capital Markets, Canaccord Genuity, and ThinkEquity.

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Booyah, a startup battling rivals Gowalla and FourSquare in the very hot location-based mobile app market, has raised $20 million. Like Gowalla and FourSquare, Booyah’s app, MyTown, lets users check in at actual locations. They can also “buy” locations and charge rent when others visit.

The company says in a release that MyTown is gaining more than 100,000 new users a week and now has two million users. That puts it ahead of Gowalla, which claims 250,000 users, and FourSquare, which has 1.1 million, according to stats put together by TechCrunch.

Booyah had raised $4.5 million in a first round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers one-and-a-half years ago back when it was concentrating on another app, Booyah Society, which let users keep track of their daily accomplishments and earn badges for completing tasks, like visiting a real-world destination; the company raised another $5 million in September. This round was led by Accel Partners; existing backers Kleiner Perkins and DAG Ventures also participated.

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CrowdStar, the fast-growing social game startup behind Happy Aquarium, has hired Niren Hiro, an executive at mobile ad network AdMob as its CEO. Hiro, a former general manager at Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), joined AdMob in 2006 and had served as VP of business development at the firm, which is in the process of being sold to Google (NSDQ: GOOG).

Hiro’s hiring comes as several of CrowdStar’s titles have taken off. The company is now the fifth largest Facebook app developer, according to AppData, and the startup has said it plans to more than double its staff by year-end. That growth has attracted interest from investors—and earlier this year Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) was reportedly in talks to buy the company.

Hiro doesn’t seem to be replacing one specific executive, with VentureBeat noting that until now CrowdStar has “run itself without a formal organization chart.”

Related

• Microsoft Reportedly In Talks To Buy Social Games Maker CrowdStar

Nearly six months after former CEO Niccolo de Masi quit to join rival Glu Mobile (NSDQ: GLUU), mobile game firm Hands-On Mobile has finally found a replacement. The company has hired Judy Wade, a VP of strategy and emerging business at Linden Lab, as CEO.

Wade joins as Hands-On Mobile, which was once the fourth largest U.S. mobile game publisher, has gone through a series of strategic shake-ups. The company, which had already shed both its European and Korean operations two years ago, followed up those deals by selling its HOMBRE division to GoTV Networks this month.

Hands-On Mobile now says it is making a push into the social gaming sector. It just launched its World Poker Tour-branded Texas Hold ‘Em Poker game on Facebook. More about Wade in the release here.

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