Category: Mobile

The iPhone prototype story that has stolen the headlines for the past week-or-so still won’t stop.

Now, Gizmodo reports that as of Friday night, California police entered the home of Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen and seized four computers and two servers, despite the publication’s lawyer warning that a raid would be not be legal in light of both state and federal laws that prevent law officials from confiscating property of a journalist. But whether police officials feel comfortable examining the evidence is unclear, reports TechCrunch, which said the investigation is on hold while the district attorney evaluates whether the Shield Law protects Chen’s possessions.

To be sure, the case is unusual. Gizmodo paid $5,000 for what may have been a stolen next-generation iPhone. The story captivated paidContent’s State of the Gadget Media event last week. During the panel discussion, Gizmodo’s publisher and head of Gawker Media Nick Denton said he did not regret a thing, while an editor from CNET said if given the opportunity, he wouldn’t pay for the phone “to incentivize criminality.” MacRumors also said it wouldn’t pay for the story, but would have run a story.

With not much precedent for a case, many are wondering if this will be the first major test to see if bloggers have the same protections as traditional journalists. Gizmodo is definitely positioning the case that way. Its lawyer wrote in a letter to the police: “Jason is a journalist who works full time for our company…He works from home, which is his de facto newsroom, and all equipment used by him there is used for the purposes of his employment with us.” The strategy is wise, however, as techdirt points out, the Shield law protects journalists from revealing their sources—not from journalists committing crimes. This might come down to whether the iPhone, which was reportedly left in a bar, is considered stolen property or not.

Research In Motion’s stock went for a roller coaster ride today.

After losing 2.8 percent this morning, the company’s stock regained ground and is trading up nearly 3 percent to $72.70 a share after its co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said it is developing a touchscreen-friendly operating system—BlackBerry 6—that will be available by September.

The announcement puts to rest concerns that investors and analysts were having earlier in the day when the biggest news coming from RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) was that it was releasing an updated version of the BlackBerry Bold and Pearl—two popular, but older franchises. The smartphone-maker has been under fire to produce an updated operating system and browser that is more consumer friendly and comparable with the iPhone and Android phones.

Just hours earlier, investors and analysts were concerned the company wouldn’t deliver any updates, despite promises in its last earnings call that it was really excited about its upcoming phone line-up. To the contrary, new versions of the Pearl and Bold seemed to completely contradict that.

But this afternoon, Lazaridis calmed fears giving analysts a sneak peek at a revamped operating system during his keynote before RIM’s annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium event in Orlando this week. Based on early reports, analysts liked what they saw. Mackie Research Capital analyst Nick Agostino said in an email to Reuters that the audience was quiet during the demonstration and then broke into applause. He characterized the presentation as “Shock and awe.” According to MarketWatch, Matt Thornton of Avian Securities wrote in an e-mail, “It is much more modern, web 2.0 oriented….on par with Android, iPhone, WebOS.”

The OS will be rolled out to all the devices over time, including a lot of existing BlackBerry smartphone users, and will be initially available sometime between July and September. The OS will also include a more user-friendly browser that is capable of rendering full web sites better than the BlackBerry browser available today.

They say age, experience, and treachery will always overcome youth and exuberance. But after the opening races of the 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup season, it’s clear that the “always” assertion is not an absolute.

I can say this with absolute confidence, because I was in the field as a guest driver for the first two races, which went down at the beautiful Virginia International Raceway, near Danville, Virginia.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I have acquired a fair amount of age, and a lot of competition experience—almost 30 years in Sports Car Club of America club racing, including 35 round-the-clock endurance events.

Blown Doors

But the youthful VW hotshoes assembled at VIR, many of them series rookies, blew the whole age and experience theorem to pieces. Which is a roundabout way of saying they blew my doors off.

The starting field for both days was 27 cars, which included your humble narrator and one other guest driver. I qualified near the absolute back of the pack, and while I finished 19th on Saturday and 18th on Sunday, most of my forward progress was due to over-exuberance on the part of those ahead of me (read: off-track lapses), rather than my own prowess.

Maybe I should have ramped up on my treachery? But be that as it may, I left VIR Sunday afternoon with a lot of respect for all that young talent, and for Volkswagen’s first-rate program.

The TDI Series

A word on the series. This is the third year of the Jetta TDI Cup, a development series for young drivers similar to programs VW has been supporting in Europe for many years. The cars are race-prepped versions of the Jetta TDI, stripped of all non-essentials, with their 2.0-liter turbo-diesels tuned for 170 hp and 260 lb-ft of torque (versus 140 hp and 236 lb-ft for U.S.-spec production cars).

The drivers—25 of them this season—were culled from a group of about 50 applicants. Many of them have some racing experience, mostly in karts, and youth is a key requirement. The organizers will accept drivers up to age 26, provided they’re returnees. Otherwise the limit is 24, and many—most?—are much younger.

For example, this year’s opening rounds included one 15-year-old, and two who were 16. The winner of both weekend races, Ryan Ellis, is 20. Your humble narrator is in a different age bracket. Let’s just say I have enough mileage to be grandfather to many of these kids.

High Aspirations

A returnee from last year’s series, Ellis, from Ashburn, Virginia, aspires to a career in pro racing, a goal he shares with many—if not most—of the TDI Cuppers.

Is this realistic? Yes, with an asterisk. Tim Megenbier, last year’s series winner, is competing this year in VW’s Scirocco Cup series in Germany, and doing well. But if you’re well into your twenties, and just starting out, the prospects of moving up another rung of the development ladder diminishes exponentially—unless you happen to have access to plenty of money.

This experience is far from cheap—$45,000 for a 10-race season. That includes a turnkey race car, with strong technical support. Everything is highly professional. The only thing the driver is required to do is help out with car cleanup.

In addition, the price includes access to VW’s huge hospitality pavilion, with meals for drivers and their sponsors (who are, in many cases, also their parents).

It does not include travel expenses, and drivers are responsible for crash damage repair.

Things That Go Bump

There was a fair amount of damage at VIR, although the drivers were apparently better behaved than in the first two seasons. Volkswagen Motorsports and SCCA Pro Racing (the series sanctioning body) are cracking down on this with a “no contact” race policy.

However, with a field of evenly matched cars, occasional rubbing and bumping is almost impossible to avoid at times. I’m happy to say that I did avoid it, which was my one real achievement of the weekend.

On the other hand, it is now abundantly clear that I can forget about a career as a race driver.

Related posts:

1. 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Street Edition – Auto Shows
2. Green and Kinda Mean: We Race in the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup – Sport
3. Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Street Edition – Auto Shows

The Beijing auto show gave us a chance to see a face-lifted version of the Volkswagen Tiguan. As seen above, the Tiguan now wears the same corporate grille first seen on the latest Golf and now making its way onto the rest of the lineup. A 2010 Tiguan is shown below for reference.

The new grille is wider and shorter, the fog light surrounds receive chrome rings, and the lower grille wears new horizontal slats. VW hasn’t said when we’ll see the changes, but we expect the new grille to appear on American Tiguans for model year 2011. A long-wheelbase version is also slated for the Chinese market, but it will almost definitely be exclusive to the LWB-loving country.

Related posts:

1. 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan – Short Take Road Test
2. Volkswagen Tiguan Performance Concept – Auto Shows
3. 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan SEL 2.0T 4MOTION – Short Take Road Test

Motricity, which is in the increasingly tough business of providing back-end infrastructure to U.S. wireless carriers, lost $1.5 million on revenues of $29.1 million in the first quarter 2010, according to an SEC filing.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based company, which filed its registration papers back in January and is seeking $250 million in a public offering, reported that revenues increased by almost 25 percent compared to the same period a year ago, while the company’s losses narrowed significantly to $1.5 million from $69.7 million.

Most of Motricity’s current business is focused helping carriers sell mobile content, such as ringtones, applications and other services, to its end-users. However, that business is increasingly at risk as customers go directly to the web for content, or download applications from third-parties. In March, Motricity announced a three-part overhaul of its carrier offerings that attempts to bring them—and their customers—up to speed in the areas of applications, advertising and social networking. The company did not mention these new services in the filing, likely because they are too new to register any revenues.

Despite these overall trends, Motricity said storefront revenues continue to rise. In the first quarter, the company said managed service revenues increased $700,000, or 3.3 percent to $20.9 million. However, the amount of revenues obtained on a per transaction fell because one of its carriers converted a contract to a fixed fee arrangement. In the first quarter, user-based fees made up about 52 percent of revenues vs. 76 percent in the year-ago period. In addition, the average monthly number of users on the company’s “non-messaging based solutions” decreased to 34.4 million from 34.5 million in the comparable period of 2009.

Related

• Motricity Plays Catch-Up: Rolls Out App Stores For Carriers
• Motricity Updates IPO Filing: 2009 Revenues Up, Losses Improve
• Motricity Files For $250 Million Public Offering
• The Man Behind Motricity’s $250 Million IPO & His Incentives

Yahoo and Samsung have extended a three-year-old partnership that will bring the internet search provider’s content to millions of Samsung handsets running both its homegrown bada operating system and Google’s Android.

The deal is not exclusive, but if Samsung decides to, it could do something as extreme as replacing Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search on Android devices with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Previously, Yahoo was providing a limited number of applications to Samsung, including Go, Flickr and Finance, to lower-end handsets. This new agreement expands to more countries, more devices and more Yahoo services.

Samsung will now pre-load a number of Yahoo services on to its handsets, including Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Front Page, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Flickr, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Contacts, Yahoo! Calendar, and Yahoo! Weather on a global basis starting in May.

Yahoo’s partnership with Samsung comes at a confusing time in the wireless industry, where carriers, handset makers and operating systems are all forming conflicting search deals that clash with one another. In recent months, AT&T (NYSE: T) replaced Google search with Yahoo on an Android device to comply with a search deal it has with Yahoo. In addition, T-Mobile USA recently ended its multi-year contract with Yahoo to begin a new one with Google.

Imagine a confusing scenario in which Samsung makes an Android phone with Yahoo services for Verizon Wireless, which has an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s Bing. While these partnerships are still being signed, their importance is definitely being diminished—end-users can easily bypass pre-loaded applications by downloading applications from the competition in open marketplaces, or by going to a web site from within the browser.

Related

• T-Mobile USA Says They Ditched Yahoo For Google Because Consumers Demanded It
• Yahoo Disbands Mobile Group As Part Of Reorganization
• Yahoo Loses Exclusive T-Mobile USA Search Deal To Google
• AT&T Strips Google’s Search Off Android; Will Verizon Or T-Mobile Follow?

The Pearl 3G might be the tiniest member of the BlackBerry family, but it’s definitely not a weakling. It feels sturdy, has features its older siblings don’t (Wireless N support!), and is a full-fledged smartphone with all the BlackBerry basics. More »

Google’s Android Market is on pace to cross the 50,000 application titles threshold this week, based on data from AndroLib, up from 20,000 just four months ago. But the Android Market needs a vast overhaul if it’s ever going to catch up to — much less surpass — Apple’s App Store, which offers nearly four times that number. Consumers need an easier way to both find Android software and to update existing titles, while developers need a hand marketing their software.

Apple took its store to the web earlier this year. Aside from offering consumers another place to search for software — and earn Apple 30 percent of every purchase — the online store provides software developers with search engine optimization advantages. By using proper keywords and Apple’s online web store preview, they can better market their wares.

Even after consumers find and install applications, the relationship doesn’t end there; software titles are routinely upgraded. Unfortunately, no currently available version of Android offers an “update all” function like Apple’s iPhone. My own Google Nexus One running Android 2.1, for example, finds updates for my apps on an almost-daily basis. But it requires a several-click process to actually install the latest upgrade to an application — a process that I have to repeat for every individual software title when an update is found in the Market on my phone.

With the Google I/O conference scheduled for May 19, look not only for Froyo, or Android 2.2, but also for enhancements to the Android Market and simpler application update features. In order to have a truly successful mobile platform, the quantity of useful software titles is only half of the equation — Google needs to address the other half by enhancing the user experience.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• Why Android Could Fuel Mobile Advertising
• Will Killer Apps Affect Which Handsets Consumers Buy?
• Mobile Market Overview, Q1 2010

Chart courtesy of AndroidLib

While it may seem that every major media outlet has had an iPhone app available for some time, there are a few holdouts. Fox News Channel has been one, but the News Corp (NYSE: NWS). cable net will announce the launch of the iPhone app later today. In a conversation with paidContent, Jeremy Steinberg, FNC’s VP for digital sales & business development, says the network didn’t feel there was a need to rush into the app space until advertisers were ready for more serious placements. In the meantime, FNC doesn’t plan to rely solely on ad revenues for its mobile offerings, as Steinberg says that the network is developing some paid apps for release later this year.

While FNC has tended to trounce CNN in many of the most important TV ratings categories, the CNN iPhone app has held the number one slot in paid news apps since it first went on sale last September for $1.99. Since the FNC app is free, the two won’t be directly competing. But FNC’s entry into the app market may allow it to build up some interest before unveiling a paid app later on.

In looking at the mobile ad landscape, Steinberg sees it as still between experimental and meaningful. “A lot of advertisers in the space are looking at expanding their footprint, and over the past year, with the growing adoption of the iPhone and now the iPad, eyeballs are really turning to mobile apps,” Steinberg says. “In all the conversations we have with advertisers today, mobile always comes up.

“That said, we feel strongly that it’s necessary to create a significant dual revenue stream to match what we have at the cable network,” he adds. “So there will be paid mobile apps down the road and we will offer unique, premium content.”

The FNC iPhone app does have a noteworthy sponsor in Sprint (NYSE: S), which will be the exclusive advertiser for the next month and could try to capitalize on users’ frustration with the AT&T-powered connection for the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) device. For now, there are no plans to release an app for Google’s Android, though Steinberg said one is likely.

As for the iPhone app itself, it will offer live streaming video as well as clips and news updates. The app will also promote listening to Fox News Talk Radio with live streams.

Related

• A Dozen National Broadcasters Align To Create One Mobile TV Network

BlackBerry users who are stuck with CDMA-based carriers (like Verizon) now have another option in the form of the Bold 9650, replacing the Tour and its janky trackball with an optical trackpad. (Also, hello Wi-Fi.) More »

Research In Motion today introduced two new BlackBerry handsets, the Bold 9650 and Pearl 3G, in advance of the company’s Wireless Electronics Symposium, which officially begins tomorrow in Orlando, Fla. Both handsets are slightly redesigned, updated models of currently available BlackBerry devices, but neither runs on the new BlackBerry operating system, screenshots of which surfaced last week.

The Bold 9650 supports both GSM / CDMA networks for voice and HSPA / EVDO for wireless data, allowing for potential support on all major U.S. carriers and use by international travelers. Such network flexibility comes at a price however — talk and standby times for the Bold 9650 are 5 hours and 13 days, which is less than the 6 hours and 17 days of battery life on currently available Bold 9700. Nearly all other features and known specifications of the 9650 are comparable to the 9700, including the 3.2 megapixel camera, integrated GPS radio and optical trackpad.

The new Pearl 3G — HSPA only, no EVDO — is also comparable to current BlackBerry models, but gains 802.11n Wi-Fi support for faster wireless transfers over a greater range. Gone is the trackball from the new Pearl 3G, which is replaced by the same optical trackpad found on the new Bold model. The Pearl’s camera sensor is bumped to 3.2 megapixels and supports auto-focus, a 2.5x digital zoom and video recording. Based on the supported frequencies, the Pearl 3G will work on both the T-Mobile and AT&T networks for voice and high-speed data in the U.S.

Upgraded handsets are usually welcomed by consumers, but these two devices are only prolonging the inevitable for Research In Motion. To continue growing market share against the likes of Android and iPhone, the new BlackBerry operating system needs to arrive sooner, rather than later. And it must include that WebKit-based browser that Research In Motion has in the works too. BlackBerry devices may be king of email activities, but consumers are already using the web for social networking more than they’re emailing. It’s time for Research In Motion to get in motion on the new OS.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Three Things RIM Must Do to Remain a Player in Superphones

With its ultra-compact two-inch wide, 3.3 ounce body, the Pearl 3G is the smallest BlackBerry yet. Despite its size though, it’s still a full-featured BlackBerry, and oddly, complete with 802.11n wireless support—a first for BlackBerry devices. More »

A recent study by ABI Research has shown that about 1% of global wireless phone subscribers recycle their cell phones but that 98% would recycle their cell phones with the right incentives.

In order to help move us from 1% towards that 98% potential, two former chief executives of two major electronics companies — Sprint and RadioShack — have teamed up to create a new cell phone recycling firm.

(more…)

In the mobile industry, hype usually outpaces true performance by a substantial margin. But mobile commerce -– the business of conducting transactions on mobile phones –- is gaining real traction, much of it driven by the mobile web. So while downloadable smartphone applications are the hottest thing in mobile, retailers looking to hawk their stuff to on-the-go users need to make wireless websites their top priority.

“Mobile commerce” is an overly broad term; it includes everything from buying and downloading apps and content (a wildly successful space thanks to the emergence of the iPhone) to the concept of using a phone as a kind of credit card at the retail counter (a segment that has yet to grow legs despite plenty of investment). But another segment is quietly generating money: selling physical goods to consumers over the mobile web. And it’s a potentially huge industry.

eBay is gunning for a whopping $1.5 billion in mobile sales this year, and Amazon’s mobile site traffic is second only to eBay among vendors of real-world stuff, according to figures from Nielsen. An annual survey from Deloitte last year that found that one in five consumers planned to use their mobile phones to shop during the 2009 holiday season, 25 percent of whom said they intended to make purchases on their phones.

Of course, many mobile purchases of real-world goods are being conducted through handset-specific apps that provide a highly optimized user experience. But building an iPhone application isn’t a surefire path to success. Some offerings are plagued with performance problems or inadequate functionality, and many simply aren’t much better than a mobile site. More importantly, mobile applications by definition can address only a small fraction of the potential market.

The iPhone accounted for only 16.6 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to ABI Research, and Strategy Analytics pegged the iPhone’s share of the overall handset market at a mere 3 percent. Meanwhile, it’s difficult –- if not impossible –- to find a mobile phone on retail shelves that doesn’t have at least a rudimentary browser.

As I describe in my column at GigaOM Pro this week, there are a few approaches online retailers can take to maximize mobile sales regardless of which device users have in hand:

• Develop clean, simple mobile pages that require minimal data transmissions.
• Offer mobile storefronts with stripped-down but still innovative features targeting phone users.
• Focus on simple, secure payment systems, whether you’re selling via apps or the mobile web.

Make it easy for users to tune into the mobile web to comparison shop, get product information and close the deal. Vendors who do those things will watch their mobile sales ramp up dramatically. Read the full post here.

Image courtesy of Flickr user 2 dogs

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) said yesterday it was delaying the release of new smartphones loaded with the latest Symbian operating system to the third quarter because it was not meeting quality requirements.

Now the handset-maker is also slashing prices of its cellphones with some smartphones being discounted by as much as 10 percent, reports Reuters.

The delay comes at the wrong time. Already, the largest handset maker in the world has had a hard time competing against other smartphone makers, such as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), or manufacturers developing phones based on Google’s Android. The company has already been forced to drop prices. In the first quarter, it charged on average 155 euros for a smartphone, down from 190 euros in the third quarter—or much lower than Apple’s average selling price of $622 per iPhone.

Nokia’s smartphone shipments are also not growing as fast as others. It said during the first quarter, smartphone sales jumped 50 percent compared to the same period a year. During the same time period, for comparison, Apple saw iPhone sales jump by 131 percent.

The latest phones, based on the updated Symbian operating systems, will now be announced sometime before June, and rolled out in the third quarter. The update is expected to improve the user interface, which up until now has been criticized as offering a clunky experience. Carolina Milanesi, an Egham, U.K.-based analyst at Gartner told Bloomberg that Nokia’s smartphone reputation is suffering: “Unfortunately it’s not Mercedes-Benz or BMW that I think of when I think of them today. Ford is what comes to mind. Reliable, not expensive, and I get a bit more than I paid for.”

Related

• Nokia Sales Up, But Symbian Delay Blunts iPhone Counter-Attack

Another day and another potential buyer of Palm has been crossed off the list — HTC is reportedly passing on the opportunity to purchase the troubled smartphone maker. Which means all signs are now pointing to Lenovo making a bid, especially in light of its recent decision to jump back into the smartphone market. But at this point, I don’t see Lenovo — or any other handset maker, for that matter — spending the billion or so dollars some expect Palm would fetch, for I think it’s too late for its webOS to compete against the platforms of Apple and Google.

With application developers focusing the lions’ share of their attention on creating titles for iPhone and Android handsets, any company considering involvement with Palm faces a limited ecosystem for software as compared to larger rivals. As a former Palm Pre owner, webOS was a joy to use, but it never truly gained the attention of developers, and so without a vast library of high-quality apps to choose from, I jumped ship.

Multitasking is good, but not enough

To be sure, I’ve owned or used phones from every platform and can say unequivocally that Palm’s webOS handsets do multitasking better than any other smartphone device, thanks to their innovative card system. But it’s not enough of a differentiator; if it were, consumers would shun Apple’s iPhone, which offers limited multitasking for native Apple software.

And Lenovo has already started to build atop of the multitasking Android OS; it introduced the world to its Android-powered Lephone in February. Its decision was an easy one to understand: The operating system doesn’t cost the company anything and it can leverage the growing popularity of Google’s platform in the process.

Why not a Facebook phone?

So given that Lenovo’s already made its support for the Android platform clear, who’s left to save Palm? Maybe it’s time to step outside the box and consider a less traditional option: Facebook. The webOS Synergy feature can already be used to link a Palm phone with a Facebook profile for easier contact management. In light of the social networking site’s plan to make the entire web social, that’s just the tip of the potential iceberg.

Imagine that Facebook partners with and pays Palm to rebrand its handsets as Facebook phones. Due to ineffective marketing, consumers don’t know about webOS, but they do know what Facebook is. The rebrand alone could vault Palm’s handset line into the spotlight. With the right hooks between Facebook and webOS, the devices would be dedicated social networking mobile phones, the number of which is steadily increasing due to the rise in social activities on smartphones. Palm could use the huge Facebook ecosystem as a carrot to dangle in front of mobile app developers, and Facebook would gain control over a mobile platform.

Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question about Palm all along. It’s not which carrier does Palm need, it’s which company Palm should partner with to save itself?

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Could Games Redeem Windows Mobile and Palm’s webOS?

To Win In the Mobile Market, Focus On Consumers

Image courtesy of Palm

Ferrari is the latest manufacturer to claim a lap record on the famed Nürburgring, with the race-ready 599XX. ( Click here to read our review of the burly beast.) Test driver Raffaele De Simone lapped the German track just in 6 minutes, 58 seconds. Click here to watch an in-car video of the lap.

Ferrari says the 599XX is the first “production-derived” car to lap the ‘Ring under seven minutes, although using the word “production” here, while technically true, seems like a stretch. The 599XX has Lexan windows instead of glass, a trick active downforce system complete with trunk-mounted fans, costs $1.5 million, and isn’t road-legal. In our book, that’s pretty far from production, no matter how similar the bodywork is to a regular 599GTB. Regardless, 6:58 is blisteringly quick and a testament to the 599XX’s monstrous performance levels.

Related posts:

1. Gumpert Apollo Sport Laps Nürburgring in 7:11, Claims Production-Car Record
2. Ferrari 599XX – Video
3. Ferrari 599XX – First Drive Review