After months of hand-wringing and discussions over the Swedish brand’s future, Saab has resumed vehicle production. Now owned by supercar maker Spyker instead of GM, Saab restarted production at its Trollhättan, Sweden, factory following a seven-week hiatus.
The first car down the line was a Saab 9-5, seen above, destined for internal test fleets. The new 9-5 is scheduled to launch later this year.
Our question: Are they planning to cap production at 999?
Related posts:
Michael Bay, maker of cinematic epics like Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is making a sequel aptly called Transformers 3. We didn’t really care until Bay announced that the new film will feature an Autobot disguised as a Ferrari 458 Italia.
We at C/D headquarters are conflicted about this news, because we really like the 458, but the Transformers movies . . . not so much. Anyway, those crafty robots are going upmarket; In prior films, they transformed into Chevrolet Camaros and other GM products. The film is scheduled to hit the silver screen July 1, 2011.
[via Autoblog]
Related posts:
So says Wired UK editor David Rowan in conversation with AudioBoo’s Mark Rock…
Wired has been working with Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Experience Design to create a tablet edition that adds navigable story art, bookmarks and sharing features, 360-degree product walkthroughs and video – all underpinned by a timeline-like “scrubber” bar.
Gregory T. Huang wrote:
The mobile technology extravaganza known as the International CTIA Wireless Conference starts today in Las Vegas. Many thousands will attend. Keynotes will be given by such luminaries as Dan Hesse, the CEO of Sprint Nextel; John Stanton of Western Wireless and McCaw Cellular fame (also former CEO of T-Mobile USA); Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T; and William Morrow, the CEO of Clearwire. Hollywood director James Cameron will join Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, and Aneesh Chopra, the chief technology officer of the U.S. government, for a keynote panel discussion.
It’s clearly a Big Deal. CTIA (formerly the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association) is the main trade association for wireless operators. Its semi-annual meetings are where mobile software companies and wireless carriers gather to show off their latest wares. They are where key customer relationships get built, where deals get worked on, and where mobile startups and developers have needed to show up to have a chance at cracking a most difficult marketplace.
But not anymore. Around Seattle at least—the birthplace of McCaw Cellular, the first nationwide cellular network, and a longtime hive of wireless and mobile activity—I’m hearing that CTIA is no longer the see-and-be-seen place for mobile software startups and developers. In fact, many mobile software insiders are skipping the event this year. It’s a trend that undoubtedly stretches beyond the Northwest, and it can be traced largely to the rise of Apple’s iPhone app store and open platforms like Google Android.
If you’re a small startup, getting carriers to sell your software historically has been very difficult—and now it might be unnecessary, depending on your particular market. “There is no question that CTIA is far less relevant to mobile software and application startups than was the case even two or three years ago,” says Bill Bryant, a venture partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the co-founder of Qpass, Medio Systems, and a number of other tech companies. “For the first time, developers have true options to reach the mass market without ‘getting on deck.’” (That is, they can reach consumers more directly without having to be approved by carriers.) With less need for mobile-app developers to work with carriers, Bryant says, “CTIA is like COMDEX was: once important for distribution but now largely irrelevant. There are still some good parties, though.”
An anecdotal survey of mobile startups and developers finds several who used to go …Next Page »
Portland, Oregon mobile service provider Urban Airship announced today that it now offers push notifications as a service – with a multi-media payload. The white label technology, called AirMail, sends users of iPhone, BlackBerry and soon Android phones a push notification that when clicked launches not just an app, but specific content like images, videos or text inside that app.
Developers who put the AirMail library into their apps will also receive full analytics showing how many recipients opened the messages, how long they spent viewing the content and more. AirMail is available only as a developer preview today but a preview video can be viewed below.
Sponsor
The downside to using services like UrbanAirship is always dependence on 3rd party service providers. This newest feature is probably the startup’s most intimate integration yet from a technology perspective, but development required is non-trivial and the resulting functionality is likely to be a real boon to publishers.
If you’ve got multi-media in an iPhone app, this is a way for it to reach out and grab (with push) your users and keep them engaged.
» Verizon Wireless has partnered with Danal to roll out Danal’s BilltoMobile payment service later this spring, which will let Verizon Wireless customers charge online purchases of digital goods directly to their monthly Verizon Wireless bills. It will have a limit of $25 a month.
» Opera Software (OSL: OPERA) says that its widgets will now be available on nearly any mobile phone. Benefits to developers include speed to market and the ability to deploy on nearly any platform. It costs $9.99 a month.
» AT&T (NYSE: T) will be selling the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus for $149.99 and $49.99, respectively. It also said that it will offer the first Dell Android-based smartphone in the U.S. The phone will be called the Dell Aero, and it will feature a custom user interface developed by Dell and AT&T.
» New York-based Thumbplay has officially made its subscription full-track music service available to the public in beta. The service, which is limited to the BlackBerry platform for now, costs $9.99 a month.
Eric Koester wrote:
“Exhaustingly awesome.”
“The talent in that room is pretty inspiring.”
“54 hours…from idea to products I’d pay money for in just 54 hours. Wow.”
Those are just a couple comments I gleaned from some of the attendees and guests at the demos held at the Startup Weekend demo finale. I’d second each of these thoughts—you are crazy if you didn’t walk out of that room with a clear sense of potential and possibilities.
I had the privilege to attend Startup Weekend held in Seattle from March 19-21 at Adobe’s Fremont campus—my third time participating in a Weekend. If you haven’t heard about Startup Weekend, it is a 54-hour intensive event that throws a group of entrepreneurs, developers, business people, coders, and startup junkies into a room, lets those individuals form teams around crowdsourced ideas, plies them with caffeine, beer, and junk food, and lets the magic happen.
And what results from that combination is downright stunning. Sitting in the audience on Sunday, the crowd was treated to demos of an amazingly rich Facebook application, a powerful application leveraging open-source mobile phone camera software, a ready-made online portal for “green” consumers, an iPad game for kids, iPhone applications for video game swapping and mobile app discovery, and location-based tools to better connect users, just to name a few of the demos. I go to meet the people and get a chance to see what smart people think are the next big ideas for innovation. And this weekend we saw some interesting trends.
What did I take away from this Startup Weekend?
Now first let me say that it’s easy to get caught up in the exciting demos and the “tech-focused” product ideas being offered up at an event like this. But the reality is we might only see a couple of these technologies make it past the weekend and be heard from again. Even still, I think there are some real insights that I drew from the projects about what is on the horizon for startups in the technology space, mass-adoption of technologies, and more generally about the Seattle tech scene. Here are my thoughts:
* Everything is getting more social. Facebook and Twitter alone have created huge opportunities for new companies. Raising Uncle Jesse (a “hopefully” viral Facebook app), Digri (discussed below), MobVoice (a real-time crowd-source rating service), Locql (a tool to get local information from local individuals in your social networks), and EveryDayOneThing (a “green” consumer portal) were technologies that all tied into Facebook, the largest social network in the world, and/or Twitter. As our personal online networks grow, technologies will be needed to help us better manage, mine, and understand our networks.
* Location, location, location. Lots of folks outside the tech world have never heard of tools like Foursquare or Gowalla which provide location-based mobile service (the most common current application is some variation of “checking into” bars, coffee shops, etc. to let your social community know where you are at). While these location-based platforms may not be completely mainstream yet, a couple “little” companies (such as Google and Facebook) have their eyes on this space …Next Page »
Wireless carriers typically take center stage at CTIA, but this week in Las Vegas expect it to be a bit more balanced: Event organizers are doing more than ever before to cater to the changing landscape of the industry.
The show will focus much more on application developers and start-ups with keynotes and at least two additional multi-day conference tracks aimed at them. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) may have kicked off the application trend with the iPhone, but it has since become top of mind for every part of the ecosystem from the carriers to handset makers and content companies. At CTIA this week, we will be reminded of that more than ever.
Pre-show events kick off today with special sessions focused on topics, such as mobile advertising and mobile payments. The main show kicks off tomorrow with keynotes for the week coming from AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S), Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR), Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT), Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) and others. The day three keynote even includes a presentation from Twitter’s Co-founder Biz Stone.
As for the application developers, there will be at least two multi-day tracks specifically tailored for them. Much like App Planet at Mobile World Congress in Spain this year, CTIA will have Apps World, which is being described as “a place for developers to network, be educated….and stay caffeinated.” Another track, which is being produced by Open Mobile Solutions, is hosting a number of pitch sessions, which will give five companies an hour to present their mobile application to a panel of industry experts, who will provide feedback. CTIA will also have WIP Jam, the long-standing developer-focused event.
Over the past couple of years, attendees to the two CTIA shows often complained about the lack of news and the refusal by organizers to recognize how important applications and developers were to the ecosystem. The Spring show, in particular, often fell flat after following two heavy-hitting shows like CES in January and Mobile World Congress in February. But this time, it seems like there’s potential for a lot of buzz. What wasn’t ready to release in Spain will be announced this week in Las Vegas. For example, Verizon Wireless announced its partnership with Skype in Spain, and this week they are expected to unveil the VoIP product. Plus, there will be press conferences from Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Samsung, Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) and others. One of the bigger news stories expected include the launch of the first 4G phone running over Sprint’s WiMax network.
Expect start-ups to also play a more central role. At the 2008 Fall show, I specifically noted the lack of start-ups, like Twitter and Qik, despite it being hosted in San Francisco. Qik attended the following show in the Spring of 2009, and now a year and a half later, Twitter is making its way on to the scene. It may have taken awhile, and it still may not be perfect, but it’s progress.
In my 15 years in the U.S., I had never attended either of the great endurance races—the 12 Hours of Sebring or the 24 Hours of Daytona—so I was glad to be able to fill in a gap in my racing education by going to Florida this past weekend to watch the event at Sebring.
Why this race rather than Daytona? Simply because the cars in the American Le Mans Series are sexier than in the Grand-Am races, with the added bonus that Peugeot sent a brace of its wicked 908 HDI FAP prototypes to Florida. Now, I know that Peugeot had a walkover because it wouldn’t agree to Audi competing with the 2009 R15, which is illegal under the 2010 rules, but I’m not sure that most of the 100,000-plus people at the event really cared that much about the closeness (or not) of the racing.
That’s because Sebring is effectively a party cunningly disguised as a motor race. We braved the infield at the track and can report that the only sporting event at which we have seen more dead beer cans and bottles was the Le Mans 24 Hours—and the French event didn’t win by much. A lot of the spectators were very knowledgeable, for sure, and a lot were rooting for their favorite makes, but the racing did seem to be subsidiary to the partying. I particularly liked the posse of drinkers who were dressed as Fresian cows . . .
For those of us who were sober, though, the biggest disappointment was how the race for the GT2 class unfolded. The BMW M3s, lead Risi Ferrari, Falken and Flying Lizard 911s, and the works Corvettes were all incredibly close in qualifying and ran as a train for the first couple of hours. Then the Falken car started shedding wheels, one of which clobbered the Flying Lizard car, causing it to lose a tire. Normally, this wouldn’t have been too big a problem, except the Flying Lizard car came into the pits under a full-course caution and had to sit there because the rules say the car can’t be worked on in those circumstances.
The Corvettes were running well, too, until they ran into each other at a pitstop. Oops. At that point, we were left with the two BMWs chasing the Risi Ferrari and it looked like a great race was brewing. Until, with about five hours to go, there was a full-course caution. Unfortunately for BMW, the leader was stationed between its cars and the Ferrari, so under ALMS rules, the Ferrari was waved around to the tail of the train of cars following the pace car, effectively gaining a lap on the M3s and ending the race.
BMW driver Bill Auberlen had a remedy for the situation—adopt the Grand-Am pace car rules, whereby all cars between the pace car and the class leaders have to drive past the pace car and onto the rear of the train. When it’s time for the restart, the cars line up in class order, with the fastest classes at the front, so the quicker cars don’t have to fight their way past slower vehicles. Seems like a good idea to me.
Related posts:
When the fanfare of the iPad launch begins to diminish, eyes will begin to look to the fast approaching summer and seek an updated iPhone. Though rumors of the iPhone 4.0 OS are circulating, there’s been little talk about what could be next for the iPhone hardware. Will it take design cues from the iPad with an aluminum enclosure, though that would feel in some ways to be a step backwards? More importantly, is the time right for the iPhone to take the leap to 4G?
Three years ago when the handset launched, the iPhone was a 2G device. As a quick bit of history to what all of these G’s mean, Wikipedia offers the definition that the naming conventions “generally refer to a change in the fundamental nature of the service.” For example, 2G represented the switch from analog phones to digital ones (the iPhone was never analog). 3G brought multimedia support (recall how the iPhone 3.0 OS didn’t bring MMS support to original iPhones). True 4G networks represent all IP packet switched networks and as a result, consumers benefit from increases in data speeds.
3G is based on two parallel infrastructures of circuit-switched and packet-switched networks. To get a quick idea of the difference, a circuit switched network involves securing a circuit from the origin to the destination. Packet switching involves segmenting the comment into individual packets that can be routed individually (and even take different paths) to reach the destination where they are then reassembled in order. From a technical perspective, this is a much better utilization of resources as capacity isn’t wasted on circuit switching when the circuit may not be in continuous use.
The general idea behind 4G is to provide “a comprehensive and secure all-IP based solution where facilities such as IP telephony, ultra-broadband Internet access, gaming services and streamed multimedia” can be provided to users. Pulling this off, however, involves meeting standards set forth by the International Telecommunication Union. To be in compliance and really be operating at 4G standards, the cellular system must have “target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 megabits per second for high mobility” like mobile access and up to 1 gigabit per second for low mobility, like local wireless access. That’s a very high bar compared to current standards, even compared to what most of you probably have for broadband at home.
On the road to 4G, you might encounter something called 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE). Though it technically doesn’t comply with all of the 4G specs (mostly in terms of speed), you’ll still see this branded as 4G. Since last year, that’s where most networks have been headed. LTE promises to bring some speed improvements (and hopefully latency improvements too, as that’s a big issue that really affects how the true speed is perceived).
With the increase of iPhone users on AT&T’s network in the U.S., there are places across the country where strains are felt during heavy usage times. This reality mixed with the expensive cost and rollout of 4G service means that carriers will continue to invest in their 3G networks, which is a win to everyone. In fact, iPhone 3GS users are capable of taking advantage of the HSPA 7.2 megabits per second speeds if in a compatible market. Trials for this began last year and the technology is still being rolled out over this year.
AT&T announced in February that its next-generation 4G network wouldn’t be available until 2011, though trials would begin later this year. So will the next iPhone be the iPhone 4G? Most likely. The iPhone 3GS was released before AT&T’s networks had upgraded to offer the faster speed and I predict a similar case with this year’s iPhone model. Will Apple call it the iPhone 4G? Especially considering there aren’t plans for a 5G or 6G network in immediate future? That remains to be seen but if I had any say in the matter, I’d prefer it to just be called the iPhone.
What are your thoughts? Do you have the iPhone 3GS and does the network feel faster in your neighborhood? Are you like me and still have the 3G, hoping that the next iPhone will be a substantial upgrade? Drop us a line and tell us what you think.
AT&T today launched a new bundle of services containing video, data and voice, but this time consumers can choose whether they want wireless or a landline (it could be VoIP or a traditional circuit-switched line) for voice. This upends the idea that after the triple play, the next big ISP offering would be a quadruple play, that includes voice, video data and mobility.
It also gives consumers a bit more choice in terms of paying for a service they actually use. AT&T still will offer a quadruple play for those who want it, but flexibility around voice gives AT&T an offering that the cable providers can’t match today with their bundles.
For those of us watching the technical limits between TV, voice and the web erode (it’s going to be all IP soon enough), the willingness of a major service provider to accept that the landline is dying (and maybe hasten its death) is a hopeful sign. AT&T is doing this to help differentiate itself from its cable competitors, but if competition can lead to a phone company shrinking its bundle, there’s still hope.
I’d like to see the bundle compress further. A wireline data and mobile data/voice offering would be awesome. Already there are people who buy wireless and wireline data — (and some who just go all wireless) — and leave the pay TV and landlines for those living in the 20th century. The key will be getting speeds that are fast enough and unencumbered by artificially low caps and tiers.
Related GigaOM Pro Content (sub req’d):
How Mobile Network Operators Must Evolve as Data Ramps Up
Image courtesy of Flickr user mrbill
It used to be you might need a huge thumb, like Sissy Hankshaw, to be a master of the roadways. Then, along came Craigslist’s rideshare board, making it even easier to get around the world sans car.
Today, Flinc has debuted at the DEMO conference in hopes of forever changing the lives of leather tramps and hitchhikers, or even the car-less simply looking for a lift, worldwide.
Sponsor
Flinc is following in the footsteps of another ride-share app for the iPhone that debuted at DEMO in 2008, Avego. Flinc has one major difference – it will be “the first dynamic ridesharing service that connects Internet-enabled navigation systems with smartphones”, according to a tweet by the company this morning.
Flinc acts as a go-between, matching potential riders with drivers by offering riders with a list of available drivers, including the price and profile for each ride. When a rider picks a driver, the driver can see on the navigation system how far out of their way they would need to go and has the option to refuse or accept the ride request. Any cost for the ride is taken care of by the app.
According to the company, “flinc is a dynamic ridesharing service that can be used on smart phones or online, combining GPS and location based capabilities with social networking to offer a dynamic and automated method of transport.”
The only problem we see, of course, is that a service like this needs to become ubiquitous before it is even slightly useful, so it requires a leap of faith on its users’ ends. Avego, which came out in 2008, says today that it has more than 7,000 “empty seats” worldwide, with 165 in Texas and 75 in Austin. But could we find a ride across town? Not really. Either way, the idea of real-time ride-sharing apps is one we love, both for its greenness and its inherent utility.
What we really love about this is that it doesn’t (from what little we’ve seen on the website) have anything to do with badges or virtual items or “checking in”, like we’ve seen so much with so many location-based services lately. Flinc and Avego both deal with location in its most basic sense: you are in Austin, someone else is in Austin, you both want to go to Arizona, let’s make it happen.
Currently, the project is in initial testing stages and has yet to launch. To this end, it is asking where to go to market first, allowing potential users to suggest its launch location.
AT&T this morning confirmed that it will add Palm’s Pre Plus and Pixi Plus to its portfolio, in addition to Dell’s Aero, an Android-based handset set to hit the market “soon.” But while the nation’s second-largest carrier will be the only U.S. operator to support every major smartphone OS, its strategy can still be summed up in one word: iPhone. Here’s a quick breakdown of the tier-one carriers and their current strategies:
The Fanboy: Apple’s iconic gadget has been AT&T’s savior over the last year or so, even if its popularity has exposed the carrier’s inferior network. Wireless Intelligence reported a few weeks ago that AT&T saw 3.1 million iPhone activations in the most recent quarter — the second-highest quarterly total ever — more than one-third of which were new subscribers. And although rumors of a Verizon Wireless iPhone have long floated about, there are no real signs that Apple will loosen AT&T’s exclusive hold on the gadget soon. Among the large U.S. carriers we’ll call AT&T the fanboy.
The Middle Manager: Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, has thrived by maintaining as much control as possible over its rock-solid network. Despite promising two years ago to support “any app, any device,” the carrier’s certification process has been notoriously slow, and Verizon has said that its upcoming app store will be the sole marketplace on handsets it sells — meaning customers looking to shop at Research In Motion’s App World or Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace will have to download the storefronts. The company’s recent embrace of Skype is a positive step in the right direction, but as Om noted the partnership is a grudging one that underscores Verizon’s strategy of opening up just enough to stay competitive. With its stable network, and its politically savvy efforts to open up right before being closed becomes an issue, we’re going to dub Verizon the middle manager.
The Price Cutter: Sprint’s primary strategy to turn around its flailing business has been a simple one: undercut the big guys and shore up what was a woeful customer-care operation. The carrier threw the first grenade with the all-you-can-eat price war two years ago with its “Simply Everything” offering and recently launched a campaign citing the differences between its unlimited plans and those of the competition. Sprint also continues to pursue the prepaid market aggressively through its Boost Mobile and Virgin USA businesses, and it hopes to tap the WiMAX market later this year before LTE networks come online. So far, those moves appear to be working — slowly.
The Underdog: T-Mobile USA hopes later this year to leverage what could be the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network in the country. The company is rolling out HSPA+ upgrades across its network this year, giving it theoretical speeds of 21 Mbps down. That kind of performance could give T-Mo an effective way to hook customers before Verizon and AT&T flip the switches on their LTE networks, and that would help T-Mo keep some of those postpaid subscribers it’s been losing to its bigger counterparts. It also has been pretty savvy about trying new business models and services such as UMA phones and letting the Nexus One launch with its network. Like anyone who is behind, but keeps pulling out some crazy moves that show some heart, we’re going to call T-Mobile the underdog.
Related Research from GigOM Pro:
Image courtesy Flickr user lincolnblues.
Have you ever found yourself wondering why your friend hasn’t called – even though they promised – only to realize you’ve been sitting in the cellular equivalent of the Dead Sea for the past hour and a half? Sometimes, it just happens that the spot you decided to wait out an important call had no coverage and now, you could know that beforehand. Even better, you can look at your city’s coverage before you even choose a wireless service in the first place.
Root Wireless today released its Root Mobile crowd-sourcing app for Blackberry and Android phones, which pulls data from phones and aggregates it into a street-level coverage map.
Sponsor
According to the company, the app is “a free beta application utilizing smartphones as network monitoring devices” to help people choose which cell provider to go with. Currently, the mash-up map, which is offered on CNET, provides information on 17 different areas for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.
From the company on the specifics on the network testing:
Root Mobile conducts tests that measure signal strength, data transmission speeds, network connection failures and other performance indicators. It is noteworthy that these tests differ from data transmission speed tests conducted by others using PCs, precisely because Root Mobile is engineered to determine real-world network performance as experienced by people using smartphones – findings that for the first time objectively measure and map true, real-world performance from the perspective of the smartphone consumer. Users can choose to run a network test when they want. The application otherwise runs unnoticed in the background.
Apps for Blackberry and Android phones are already available with one for Windows Mobile phones on the way before the end of the second quarter. An iPhone app is said to be in development.
We have to wonder if differences between handsets and reception have been taken into account or have we moved beyond that? The map lets us choose between what type of reported info we would like to see, whether “Signal”, “Data” or “Network”, but there is no device category. We can also see the number of zones reporting “No Bars”, “Access Failure” and “Hot Zones” (such as dropped calls), but no information on how many people have reported these issues. With a crowd sourced app and mash-up like this, we’d love to know if the problem is widespread or if, in reality, there’s been one person who’s been there and not gotten any reception. Maybe they’ve dropped their phone one too many times? We don’t know.
Either way, it looks like a neat idea that we think we would like to compare with those carrier-provided coverage maps. Let’s see if your map gets in the way of the game now, Verizon.
Every so often, we run up against a harsh reminder that not all iTunes stores are created equal. Rights issues—as in carriers other than AT&T (NYSE: T) have exclusive rights—will keep North American hockey fans from access to NHL Ice Time 2010, a new freemium iPhone app (slide show) being launched by the National Hockey League this week in the UK and Europe. Why there? Simple math: nearly one-fifth of NHL.com uniques come from Europe—and nearly one-third of European mobile access comes from an iPhone/iTouch. That tracks with the 26 percent of NHL players who come from outside North America. Europeans are also the heaviest video users on NHL.com, says Perry Cooper, SVP-direct/digital marketing & fan analytics.
Cooper explains: “You literally have countries like Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Slovakia consuming video on NHL.com at double the rate in most cases to the North American consumption rate, which is 20 percent. It does start to identify a real need.” That perceived need is time shifting for fans who are sleeping while the NHL is playing and want to wake up to scores. The paid version matches that interest with the heavy video use by offering condensed games and highlights, not live video of full games. The league’s research also shows willingness to pay for the right app.
What about the U.S.? Verizon holds the exclusive mobile rights and already offers some video through its deck. But the NHL also will have a presence in Verizon’s new app store, with a free stat app coming soon and a video app to follow. (Bell Mobility has exclusive rights in Canada and offers live game video and audio.)
Cooper isn’t concerned about cannibalization from the NHL’s other offerings. “We’re nowhere near saturation when you just look at penetration rates across a lot of metrics of consumption against our avid fan base. We need to be more widespread through more channels.”
Bundling: “It’s something we’re definitely looking at in the future, going to live on every platform accessible to a fan or consumer.”
iPad: This app would seem to lend itself to an iPad version. Is the NHL exploring the possibility? “We are and I think any active and forward looking publisher is. Absolutely.”
NHL Ice Time (NYSE: TWX) 2010, developed with NeuLion, follows the increasingly popular freemium model:
—the rather robust free “basic” version comes with schedules; live in-game stats; a live-ice tracker (shows location of hits, goals, saves and even fights on virtual rink); player profiles; search and some personalization.
—the in-app upgrade adds video, including condensed versions of every game; highlights after every period; clips linked to the ice tracker; video woven into player profiles; and a video archive. No live video but it has live game audio. The cost: $7.99 U.S. (€5.99, £4.99, AU$9.99) but that’s only for a partial season through the playoffs. Cooper said the league will explore installment billing and higher rates next season.
First look: Because my iTunes account is U.S., the NHL loaned me an iTouch with the app loaded so I could try it out. Because the iTouch is Wi-Fi only, I can’t tell you how it operates on 3G. My partner detected a slight lag time listening to audio of a game he was watching on TV but that’s not unusual for audio or video delivered on mobile devices. I’d prefer it to include live game video but then I’m not the target audience.
Does it serve the time-shifting trick? Yes. I was able to check in quickly on games of interest, catch highlights and track stats. One particularly deft touch: I could go right to the clip of Teemu Selanne scoring his 600th NHL goal tonight—and it was up as soon as the period was over. That would be an instant hit in Finland. I checked Selanne’s profile for links to his most recent plays and this goal was already up. These are the kinds of features that let a fan track a player the way some people track teams. It would have been even better if the milestone was marked somehow.
Increasingly, the most popular iPhone apps are the free or lower-priced ones, according to mobile app store trend monitor Distimo.
Despite Apple’s keenness to put high-ticket downloads like satnav apps on its Featured area, the average price of the most popular iPhone apps fell by 15 percent between December 1 and February 28, its monthly report says. The sharpest fall was in Australia (27 percent).
Europe spends most on its leading apps on average. The average price of the most popular apps there was $3.86 in February; the U.S. has the lowest average price of the most popular apps, $2.43. “This is due to the large number of turn-by-turn navigation applications covering different regions in Europe.”
That could change over time, with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) starting to offer free turn-by-turn navigation.
Some apps are beginning to drop the download fee in favour of in-app subscriptions. But there’s still an interesting and growing market for high-priced downloads – I recently coughed up £19.99 for the official F1 2010 live timing and track position app.
The speech recognition field has quietly gotten a little more crowded. Yap, a Charlotte, N.C.-based startup, today said it has been tapped to power Microsoft’s Talk-to-Text mobile application, which Sprint offers to BlackBerry users. The app uses Yap’s web-based speech recognition technology to automatically transcribe users’ spoken words into texts and e-mails, much like services such as Vlingo.
Yap pocketed $6.5 million in a Series A round led by SunBridge Partners two years ago, and several months ago it replaced SpinVox as Cincinnati Bell’s voicemail-to-text service provider. Cincinnati Bell’s move was something of a shot across the bow of SpinVox parent Nuance, which last week pulled the plug on SpinVox’s consumer service to focus more intensely on its carrier business.
Microsoft’s decision to license Yap’s speech recognition technology instead of using its own is interesting considering the software behemoth bought its way onto the field three years ago with the acquisition of Tellme Networks for a reported $800 million. But it’s a clear sign that a legitimate new player has joined the giants — Microsoft, Google and Nuance — in the speech recognition world.
Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):
How Speech Technologies Will Transform Mobile Use
Image courtesy Flickr user DJOtaku.
Opera Software, developers of web browser technology for PC, Mac, Linux and mobile, have just announced that their Opera “widgets” will now work on nearly any mobile phone. The widgets in question are small mini-applications that can run in Opera’s web browser itself, on the desktop as standalone apps and now, as standalone apps on mobile phones, too.
Built with standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the widgets are easy for web developers to create since they don’t require knowing a vendor-specific technology in order to do so.
Sponsor
According to the company’s announcement, the new widgets take advantage of Opera’s recently launched cross-platform UI framework, a framework that’s intended to “help operators and manufacturers efficiently distribute a single browser UI across a wide range of devices.”
That change to browser distribution technology now applies to the Opera Widgets too. Already, there are hundreds of widgets available in Opera’s online gallery, including everything from games to media players plus widgets for accessing Facebook, Twitter and more.
However, it appears that these widgets for mobile aren’t being offered directly to consumers in the way that the company’s web browser widgets are. Instead, Opera intends to provide their widget lineup to operators and handset manufacturers who can then choose which widgets they want to include with their phones. Interested businesses are asked to request more info here: http://www.opera.com/business.
In other words, just because these widgets are built with “open web standards,” it doesn’t mean you can just start installing them on your iPhone right now.
That’s OK, though – the company probably doesn’t intend for that to happen anyway. The Opera mobile browsers have become popular alternatives to the basic browsers included on many of today’s “feature phones” because they speed up browsing by proxying access to the web through Opera’s servers while also offering some advanced options like pinch-and-zoom and tabbed browsing. For feature phones, the Opera browser can offer a better web surfing experience, but on today’s smartphones, the built-in browser is usually just as good (if not better) and doesn’t have to rely on proxies for fast web access.
Similarly, the new mobile widgets are likely intended to be the speedy apps missing from most feature phones – phones which, unlike the iPhone and Android devices, don’t have their own built-in “App Stores.” By providing carriers and manufacturers access to the Opera widget lineup, now even the most basic phones can tout some of the same features that modern smartphones do (“access Facebook with an app!,” “update Twitter on the go!”). Whether or not any businesses go for these new widgets still remains to be seen.
Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
We had an interesting mix of high-tech news last week, as several efforts to raise capital took shape, and famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s grandson announced an electrifying new incentive prize. Read on to learn what it’s all about.
—Carlsbad, CA-based chipmaker MaxLinear is expected to go public this week. The company, which specializes in designing wireless chips used to receive and process TV and Internet video signals, is expected to raise between $43 million and $50 million. MaxLinear plans to use the capital for general corporate purposes and acquisitions. The company’s shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MXL.
—Seattle-area resident Erik Lindbergh came to the Torrey Pines Glider Port Friday to announce the creation of the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize, or LEAP, which is intended to help launch the fledgling electric aircraft industry. Four LEAP awards, which have yet to be funded, will be awarded annually at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture, the air show held each July in Oshkosh, WI.
—San Diego’s EMN8, a maker of self-service kiosk technology, is raising more than $14.4 million in venture funding. EMN8 sells its touch screens for use in fast-food restaurants, theaters, theme parks, and other retailers.
—Ventana Capital founder Tom Gephart wants to rally support for a proposal to win $5 billion (with a ‘b’) in federal economic stimulus funding, which would be invested in startup companies throughout the U.S. Gephart’s plan calls for dividing the billions among a family of 20 venture capital firms, and which would provide $250 million for each firm to invest and manage.
—Tom Cassidy, the retired rear admiral hired to lead a DARPA-funded effort to develop a robotic spy plane in 1987, has retired from the company he helped create—General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of Poway, CA. The company has made more than 380 Predator and Reaper aircraft, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Cassidy, 77, will remain as nonexecutive chairman of the company that Neal and Linden Blue created as an affiliate of San Diego’s privately held General Atomics.
—Organizers said there was a record turnout for Roth Capital Partners’ 22nd Annual OC Growth Conference, which was held last week at Laguna Niguel, CA. More than 370 companies and 3,000 investors and analysts attended the event. There were 21 presenting companies from San Diego, including Qualcomm, Overland Storage, DivX, and Maxwell Technologies.
—Fallbrook Technologies spokesman Emile Barrios told me the San Diego cleantech company has partnered with China’s Tri-Star Group to manufacture Fallbrook’s proprietary design for a more energy-efficient continuously variable transmission bicycles and light electric vehicles. Tri-Star will make Fallbrook’s transmission at its plant near Shanghai, China.
Geo-local services were the center of attention before the recently concluded South by South West, an annual gathering of folks from technology, music and movie worlds. With the pre-event hype dubbing the competition between the various players as geo-wars.
It is not clear who really won the derby, one thing is for sure — all the hoopla helped Foursquare and Gowalla, the two major competing geo-location services snag tens of thousands of new subscribers following the event. Both companies had released updates to their apps ahead of the SxSW.
Dennis Crowley, co-founder of New York City-based Foursquare said that during the five days of SxSW, his company signed up approximately 75,000 new subscribers. The company has signed up 100,000 new users over past 10 days he said. The company is now said to have over 600,000 users.
Foursquare’s competitor, Austin-based Gowalla signed up tens of thousands of new subscribers, co-founder Josh Williams told me via an email. The company is likely to release new stats this coming week. Both Gowalla and Foursquare have benefitted handsomely from the popularity of the iPhone and the App phenomenon.
For example, nearly 88 percent of Gowalla users come to the service via the iPhone, while Android accounts for 10 percent of its user base. WebOS accounts for 2 percent of GoWalla users. Android and WebOS clients have been available for approximately two weeks.
Crowley told me that nearly 66 percent of his new sign-ups over the past ten days were using the iPhone. Blackberry accounted for nearly 16 percent of the total new sign-ups and Android accounted for about 10 percent of the total. Other platforms including the mobile web, third party apps, Palm and Nokia were about 7.5 percent of the total sign-ups.
In an unscientific shoot-out of 11 location-based services, LBS Zone, a blog devoted to location based services, ranked Gowalla as the most accurate while Foursquare came in at the 9th spot. As I said, this is not an accurate test, but still I thought it would be good to share the results with you.
Related:
Related research from GigaOM Pro:
