Category: Mobile

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at a conference in Abu Dhabi this week, confirmed that the Chrome OS operating system is on track for delivery in the second half of this year. While we already know that it’s headed for netbooks, there are new reasons to believe that its brightest future may be as an adjunct OS on netbooks and tablets.

Google is taking several big gambles with its upcoming OS, not the least of which is that it will require users to work with all data in the cloud. That will rule out countless applications and utilities that are, in some cases, beloved to users, and there is a good chance that Google’s cloud-only gamble could backfire.

But what if Google adopts an “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy with its Linux-based operating system, and oversees its shipment on netbooks and tablet devices alongside other OSes? If the idea sounds far-fetched, check out the video below from Mobile World Congress, in which Freescale shows a $199 tablet computer concept that runs Chromium OS (the open-source core of Chrome OS), Linux and Android.

If you think about it, a tablet or netbook running the cloud-focused Chrome OS alongside one that caters to local applications could offer a lot of flexibility. And Freescale’s demo shows that very low price points could be achievable for these types of devices.

Linux-based operating systems are already used on many devices in conjunction with OSes such as Microsoft Windows, sometimes through virtualization, and sometimes via lightweight Linux-based platforms such as Splashtop. There are also brand-new operating systems that are designed from the ground up to run alongside other ones, such as Jolicloud.

Google has already witnessed its Android mobile OS being forked into numerous new incarnations, and seen it running as a secondary operating system on some devices. The company has undoubtedly envisioned scenarios in which Chrome OS accompanies other platforms. Remember that in the operating system business, you don’t have to be the top dog to succeed — just ask Apple.

In the end, it won’t even matter whether Google delivers or encourages dual-OS devices based on its new platform. Let’s not forget that Chrome OS is open source and malleable, and is already showing up out in the wild alongside other operating systems–even before it’s launched.

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

Google Chrome OS: What to Expect

Twitter client HootSuite, which recently raised $1.9 million in funding, has now made an acquisition, buying up Android app developer Swift App. HootSuite says that Swift App was behind the development of HootSuite’s own Android app, which was released last week. The company says the acquisition “means quicker development for the growing Android market.”

HootSuite’s dashboard—which is also available via the web and an app on the iPhone—lets multiple people manage a single (or multiple) Twitter accounts and drives about 3.5 percent of all Tweets, according to Twitstat. Financial details of the deal were not released.

Related

• HootSuite Raises $1.9 Million For Popular Twitter Client

Despite doubts about Clearwire’s ability to compete against the coming rival 4G network of Verizon and AT&T, its users are apparently pleased with the service. Mike Sievert, chief commercial officer at Clearwire, said the company’s mobile users (those on laptops and dongles outside the home) consume more than an average of 7GB per month of data. That’s a shocking amount of mobile data consumption, especially when all we’re hearing is how scarce spectrum is and how operators can’t keep up with the mobile demand.

But slaking that thirst for mobile data, and doing it cheaply, underlies Clearwire’s overall strategy. For now, that’s why it’s bet on WiMAX, but WiMAX plays only a small role in Clearwire’s cost benefits, which means that it’s not beholden to the technology after 2011, when an agreement with Intel that kept Clearwire and WiMAX together will expire. Sievert was coy when asked directly about the Long Term Evolution standard that the two largest U.S. carriers are experimenting with, but rather than obsess about the radio access technology, let’s look closer at the real disruption Clearwire offers.

Sievert said it cost Clearwire “somewhere in the mid-$20 range” per person to build out its WiMAX network, an estimate that relies on several things, from the cost of the spectrum to the number of the towers Clearwire needs to deploy. In contrast, analyst Chris King at investment bank Stifel Nicholas, has put the per-person cost near $20 for Verizon’s rival LTE network build.

But it’s once the network gets humming when Sievert believes Clearwire starts looking good, both because it will be cheaper to send bits across and enable the company to provide more capacity to data-hungry users, something that may play a larger role as rivals introduce tiered pricing plans, as both Verizon and AT&T have talked about doing.

Sievert credits the all-IP architecture of the Clearwire network for its ability to deliver bits cheaply, pointing out that Verizon and AT&T both will have more expensive legacy networks to run that include equipment for dealing with circuit-switched voice. In the short term this is an advantage for the LTE crew, because they can offer data across their 4G networks and keep voice on 3G — ensuring a consistent level of quality.

But long term, Sievert thinks the advantage is Clearwire’s, especially after it introduces handsets in 2011 that will use Sprint’s 3G network for voice (see video) and will then transition to VoIP. Sievert did not give a time frame for the all-4G phone. Eventually, however the LTE providers will also move to VoIP but aren’t likely to abandon their older networks for decades.

But the biggest advantage is Clearwire’s deep spectrum resources. If nothing else, the last few months has focused the tech world’s attention on the scarcity of available mobile spectrum. Well, Clearwire has a lot of it — about 150 MHz in many markets, while the other major carriers claim just two-thirds or less of that amount.

It also has 30 MHz chunks of spectrum that it can use for WiMAX, while Verizon, for example, has 20 MHz for LTE. Spectrum can be used to increase both speed and capacity, so while Clearwire’s current speeds of 3-6 Mbps down aren’t going to compare to Verizon’s 5-12 Mbps for LTE, Sievert says Clearwire could allocate another 10 MHz to match speeds and still have another 10 to spare to boost capacity.

So Sievert is content that he can profitably meet the needs of mobile broadband customers with his existing resources without having to resort to pricing gimmicks that may anger customers. And since, as I’ve argued, the average consumer isn’t too worried if their mobile wireless is LTE or WiMAX, Clearwire does have a chance. Add to that a relationship with the cable providers and Sprint, and Sievert claims he has access to 100 million customer relationships through his partners. In other words, if consumers decide they want unlimited wireless broadband from their existing cable provider, rather than a constrained offering from their wireless provider, Clearwire may succeed.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Metered Mobile Data is Coming and Here’s How

Hearst has about 70 apps under its LMK banner in the iTunes App Store right now and it just plans to keep adding more and more. Most of the LMK apps sell for about $1.99, while a handful cost $0.99 per download. The LMK initials stand for “Let Me Know” and are devoted to news and photos about a single Hollywood stars and sports teams and figures, as well as hobbies and general topics like cupcakes and Barbie dolls. The apps run the gamut from Lady Gaga to Metallica to Tiger Woods to the NY Yankees and feature photos and news updates.

Back in the fall, Hearst Entertainment EVP George Kliavkoff and LMK head Michael Gutkowski unveiled their plans for the LMK.com aggregation site, which were predicated upon the idea that SEO tactics will get searchers to visit the special topic sites, while the constant flow of updates would drive return visits. As it expands the LMK strategy to mobile, Kliavkoff tells the WSJ that he believes users obsessed with their favorite stars or teams will be willing to pay to get these automated updates on their phones.

In immediately charging for the apps, Hearst also believes it can avoid what major online publishers now perceive as an early mistake; that is, relying primarily on ad-support instead of transferring the newsstand price structure to the internet. “Unlike the web, we’ve always trained people that everything on the mobile device costs money,” Kliavkoff says. While the iTunes Store has sold more than $2.7 billion of apps, the WSJ says, citing stats from mobile measurement firm Flurry, it’s unclear how much the sales of the apps will mean to Hearst’s business. All the the downloads provide a one-time charge that Hearst can benefit from, the company will slowly begin adding advertising once it feels the individual apps have reached enough mass.

In terms of creating so many apps for a single topic, Hearst believes that with a haystack as large and growing as the App Store, you’re going to need a lot of needles if you want consumers to find your product. Plus, it allows for greater ad targeting later.

The focus on the apps also shows Hearst’s increasing emphasis on mobile. It followed Conde Nast’s paid app representation of GQ magazine by putting an app version of Esquire for sale on for $1.99 per issue in the App Store as well.

Also, at the start of the year, Hearst promoted Sophia Stuart from her role as head of Hearst’s mobile unit to the post of executive director, digital for Hearst Magazines International, a move that was seen as giving mobile a more central role in the company’s thinking.

Related

• Hearst Debuts Automated Topics Site LMK.com
• Esquire, GQ Apps To Be Sold Monthly; Hearst, Condé Nast Look To Apple As Another Virtual Newsstand
• Hearst Moves Mobile Head Stuart To International Digital-Mag Post

Wade Roush wrote:

Today is the first day that consumers can put down money for an Apple iPad. If you pre-order a Wi-Fi model now, you can avoid waiting in the inevitable around-the-block lines when the gadget hits Apple Stores on Saturday, April 3. (If you want the Wi-Fi + 3G model, though, you’ll have to wait until late April.)

I know I’m going to buy an iPad sooner or later, but I don’t think I’ll pre-order one, mainly because of three big questions that haven’t yet been answered to my satisfaction. One of these is a matter that Apple could clear up, but hasn’t. The other two are questions that may not have definitive answers until the device has been out for a while and people have had some time to use it, and developers have had some time to figure out the best business models.

1. What will it feel like to use the iPad? I want to test-drive the device in a store before I decide which version to buy. In part, I’m concerned about the iPad’s ruggedness. If it strikes me as an all-purpose device that I can throw in my backpack and take everywhere, I’ll probably spend the extra for a 3G version. On the other hand, if it seems more like a delicate accessory that I’m only going to use on my couch at home, then one of the Wi-Fi versions will be perfectly sufficient.

Just as important, it’s still not clear to me how people will actually hold the iPad. In ads like this one, Apple almost always shows iPad users reclining with their knees raised, with the device positioned against their legs. If this is the only posture that makes ergonomic sense—that is, if the device has to be perched upon some kind of surface, such as your lap, before you can use it to full advantage—this could limit the machine’s usefulness, skewing it more toward recreation than productivity.

I’m hoping that it will be possible to hold the iPad with one hand while operating it with the other, but that all depends on how heavy it feels, how much gripping friction its glass and aluminum surfaces provide, and what kinds of accessories are available. All reasons that I want to try an iPad before I buy one.

2. Which existing iPhone apps will work on the iPad, and which will not? Apple has been careful to say that the Pad will run “almost all” of the more than 150,000 apps already available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch in the iTunes App Store. That “almost” is what I’m curious about. It’s a critical issue, because …Next Page »

Comments (12) | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

There’s no crying in baseball—or in innovation. Yet I’ve been hearing a fair bit of lamenting around town about how Seattle startups or venture capitalists are not making the top-whatever lists (Wall Street Journal, Technology Review, you name it) of most innovative companies or investors around the country.

Who cares? The city that brought the world Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, McCaw Cellular, RealNetworks, Starbucks, and any number of other game-changing companies, should not be too worried. It should, however, be motivated. And it is.

That’s why we’re gathering an elite group of technology and life sciences leaders to talk about how to spot the biggest, most promising ideas in their fields, and how these ideas could really change the world, at our half-day Xconomy Forum, “What’s Your Breakthrough Idea?” on March 29 at the University of Washington. (Tickets are going fast, but there are still a few left at our special saver rate—you can register here.)

This is about thinking big as a community. But it’s also about the realities around making the biggest ideas work—building the right teams for the right companies, understanding who the customers are, handling competition, and so forth. And although the focus will be mostly on Seattle-area companies and leaders, the impact that we’re talking about here is decidedly global.

Here’s a little more about the program and speakers for March 29 (topics are subject to change):

—Nick Hanauer of Second Avenue Partners will open with a keynote about the mental calculus behind identifying a true breakthrough idea, versus a really, really good idea that probably won’t get traction. Nick doesn’t think of himself as a technology guy, yet some of his blockbuster investments happen to be in tech—Amazon, aQuantive, Insitu. (There’s a lesson already: don’t think in terms of your specialty area, think about an aspect of society that could be radically changed.)

—Christina Lomasney of Modumetal will talk about how growing the right kinds of “nanomaterials” could help reinvent the steel industry—and how this will impact energy efficiency, transportation, and defense. She might also tell us a thing or two about what she learned from her time at Boeing.

—Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems (from the Boston area) will discuss how mobile robots are transforming the logistics and operations of warehouses, especially in the e-retail business. Kiva’s robots move shelves of inventory around automatically and are able to help staff distribution centers for companies like Staples and Zappos (now part of Amazon).

—Steve Seitz of the UW’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering will talk about a breakthrough idea from computer vision (and maybe about creating 3-D virtual worlds …Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Looking for real-time data of its own, the FCC (yes, the regulatory body in Washington, D.C.) has released a mobile app for iPhone and Android. Don’t worry, the feds aren’t interested in listening to your phone conversations, rather they say the purpose of the app is to provide “Americans with additional information about heir mobile data connection and to create awareness about the importance of mobile broadband connection quality.”

Essentially, the app clocks how long it takes to download and upload data to the phone. The release of the two apps come just days before the Commission is set to release its new national broadband plan on March 16, which will heavily stress the need for mobile data networks.

The FCC says it may use the data collected from the apps to “analyze coverage and quality on a geographic basis in the U.S.” That means, it may start to have its own information to fact-check the data that carriers give them. While the random tests conducted by random citizens probably can not be considered scientific, it may do just what the Commission intends—make citizens more aware of the speeds they are getting.

When conducting the test on a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Nexus One on T-Mobile’s network in Seattle, results indicated that the 3G network performance was .29 mbps down and .35 mbps up. Tests by an iPhone in Los Angeles and a Verizon Wireless Droid in Seattle blew those results away. The iPhone registered 3G speeds of 1.35 mbps down and .21 mbps up. Verizon’s Droid clocked in at 1.71 mbps down and .82 mbps up.

The tools are also available at Broadband.gov for measuring fixed broadband connections, although to test mine, I just turned WiFi on in my phone. In the future, Digiphile.com reports that the FCC says it will make additional broadband testing apps available for consumer use.

Martin Cooper knows a thing or two about cellphones, having invented them and all. And while he’s owned an iPhone before, he revealed in a recent interview that his current handset of choice runs Android. Guess which! More »

Leading up to South by Southwest my inbox has been littered with friend requests on Gowalla, a check-in service that I can use to show those friends where I am at any point in time. Underneath each request is a line that reads: “We recommend you accept friend requests only from people you know and want to share your travels with.” I confess, I read these friend requests from folks I have never met, talked to, tweeted with or emailed, and I don’t really know what to do. Accept them? Ignore them? Bemoan them on Twitter?

I have included a poll below asking when and with whom you guys share your location, because as a shy and privacy-focused person I tend to err on keeping my digital presence online and my real-world presence, not…anonymous, exactly, but I certainly don’t broadcast it to the world. And I think that will eventually mean I lose out on those serendipitous connections that location services can provide. For example, I might miss out on meeting the stranger sitting next to me in a coffee shop who reads the site and could offer a great conversation on the future of semiconductors.

With more than 400,000 users of Foursquare and Gowalla already, there are plenty of interesting connections I or anyone else could make. But there are also plenty of people who, like me, are clearly waiting to see how this check-in concept — and by extension, always-on location services like Google’s Latitude or Loopt — plays out. I’m hoping that at SXSW we’ll start seeing tools that use the check-in concept, not to award points or badges, but to facilitate useful interactions among relative strangers, such as, if you see a neighbor checking in at your kid’s school every afternoon, then maybe you can meet them and set up a carpool.

Much like it took time for people to see use cases and value in Twitter, which was an entirely new means of communicating, it will take time and a display of beneficial results before folks will see the value in displaying their location rather than focusing on the loss of anonymity. Until that happens, many people, when faced with an unfamiliar friend request, will likely hit delete. And without that large network of strangers, then the idea of machine-mediated serendipity remains just that — an idea.

Related research from GigaOM Pro:

• Location: The Epicenter of Mobile Innovation (sub required)

Verizon Wireless will bring its first 4G handsets to market by the middle of 2011, CTO Anthony Melone said in a Wall Street Journal piece (hat tip Engadget). But using those super-fast Long Term Evolution phones is going to cost you.

We learned last year that Verizon would launch its first LTE phones sometime in 2011, but the new ETA is several months earlier than the company had previously forecast. The phones will support promised speeds of 5-12 Mbps on download and 2-5 Mbps on uploads on the LTE network, which will launch in 25-30 markets this year.

But Melone also said that all-you-can-eat data plans are “the big issue that has to change.” (AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega made similar comments in December, pointing the finger at data-hungry iPhone users.) Verizon Communications CTO Dick Lynch in January told the Washington Post that LTE pricing would likely involve a base subscriber fee plus usage charges for bandwidth consumed.  That scenario could apply to several different pricing models, as Stacey has noted. Regardless of how, exactly, Verizon chooses to bill for 4G service, one thing is clear: High-end users are going to pay substantially more than they’ve been paying for 3G.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Metered Mobile Data is Coming and Here’s How

Image courtesy Flickr Hector Milla.

Wade Roush wrote:

Though it was just one small part of Mass Mobile Month, a multi-week series of mobile technology events around Boston, Tuesday’s Mobile Madness forum at Microsoft was the highlight for us here at Xconomy.

Today it’s time to share some of the images captured by our volunteer photographer Kevin Vogelsang. Kevin wasn’t able to arrive until after the mid-afternoon coffee break, so we don’t have images of our opening keynote talks by Jhonatan Rotberg and Kate Imbach or our executive panel featuring leaders from AT&T, Jumptap, uLocate, and Raizlabs. But we do have plenty of shots from the Mobile Smackdown—a raucous session feature passionate proponents of competing mobile platforms like Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Phone—and from the Mobile Showcase portion of the program.

CLICK HERE FOR SLIDE SHOW (23 images)

We’d like to extend a big thank-you to all of our speakers and attendees at Mobile Madness, as well as a long list of other key supporters. These include our event host Microsoft; our event sponsors AT&T, Cisco Systems, Hosted Solutions, Invest Northern Ireland, McCarter & English, and UK Trade & Investment; and our event partners, including Mass Technology Leadership Council, MITX, the Massachusetts Office of International Trade & Investment, and Mobile Monday Boston.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Google’s proposed (and now delayed) acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob appears to be drawing even more regulatory scrutiny from the FTC. Bloomberg cites sources who say that regulators now want “sworn declarations” from Google (NSDQ: GOOG) competitors about the $750 million deal. The key sentence in the Bloomberg report comes from a former FTC general counsel, who says that “agency officials typically collect declarations ‘when they think there is some significant chance’ the agency will ask a court to block a merger, or seek to modify a deal.”

Google announced it was buying AdMob in early November and said at the time it expected the purchase to close within “the next several months.” Soon afterwards, there were reports that the FTC was reviewing the deal, and in December, Google said it had received a “second request” from the FTC—meaning that regulatory officials wanted more information about the buy and that it would therefore not be closing right away.

The consensus was that the deal would close in February—although there have been no updates from either the FTC or Google. Here’s Google statement: “We’re continuing to talk with the FTC and provide the information that they’ve asked for, but we’re not going to discuss the details of that process.  We’re confident that they’ll conclude that the rapidly growing mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive after this deal closes.”

Related

• Google To Acquire Mobile Ad Network AdMob For $750 Million In Stock
• Sources Say FTC Is Reviewing Google’s Acquisition Of AdMob
• Google’s Acquisition Of AdMob Delayed Pending Further FTC Review

In Rob Glaser’s first public appearance since stepping down as CEO of RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), he implored that it is incumbent upon companies to work together in order for the wireless sector to continue its break-neck pace of innovation.

Glaser did not hint at what he might do next, but instead, he stuck to his usual routine of talking fast and making as many points as possible in his time allotted. One theme in particular was exceedingly clear: he believes closed operating systems are a threat to the mobile industry. In the words of Ben Franklin, he said: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Glaser, who remains the chairman of Real Networks, said the digital media and wireless industries are at an inflection point, and the greatest opportunity is still in front of us. By 2013, he said the install base of smartphones and so-called “superphones” is expected to exceed the install base of PCs. He provided eight ways a superphone is different than a smartphone, but essentially what you need to know is this: superphones run applications. (His slides are here.)

He said with those “super” abilities, mobile has a great potential, but if Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) gets its way, the wireless industry could end up like the MP3 industry. The other option is for things to go the way of the PC, which he considers more horizontal. “As of today, Apple is the clear winner. It’s incredible what they’ve been able to do in a vertical paradigm,” he said. “But if that’s the way the industry pans out, we’ll have a much slower pace of innovation, and there will be a tremendous loss in value creation. It’s incumbent for those who don’t want that—carriers, handset-makers, etc.—to work together. Otherwise verticals will stand.”

Of course, there’s plenty of challenges in making horizontal work. Verticals, where one company is responsible for making sure that all the services work on the phone, is easier. As an example, Glaser mentioned Google’s Nexus One, which the company is marketing and selling on its own without a ton of help from the handset-maker and no help from the carrier. Glaser said he couldn’t get the phone to work until he realized he was putting the SIM card in backwards. While that’s human error, he said: “The Nexus One Google (NSDQ: GOOG) experiment is a proof point of that….It’s a lot harder to make horizontal easier.”

In light of that, you see a lot of verticals developing in mobile. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will integrate Xbox, Bing and Outlook. Google’s Android does a better job of integrating Gmail, Maps and Search, and Apple is the ultimate example. So, what is the solution to getting horizontal to work in mobile? Glaser suggests that the carriers might be able to play a role, but “it’s not preordained. The PC went horizontal and the MP3 player went vertical. It’s an open question.”

The Next Mobile Revolution

Here’s why Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is launching a “completely new smartphone OS.” The latest smartphone platform market share figures were released today by comScore and Microsoft posted the steepest drop. The new Windows Phone 7 Series—due later this year—can’t come to market soon enough.

The future of media will be information consumed on superphones while on the go, said Rob Glaser, chairman of RealNetworks, today in his first public speech since stepping down from his CEO position. In the speech, given in Seattle at a Mobile Broadband Breakfast event, he forecast that by 2013 the installed base of smart and superphones (see chart for Glaser’s definition of each) will exceed the installed base of PCs, and those web-surfing devices will be mobile. In this world he sees five big opportunities:

1. People want digital persistence: They have an expectation that their content will be available everywhere at any point in time.
2. People want universal access to content across all devices.
3. The industry needs to make discovery easy, which means once people have access to digital content, they need to be able to find their stuff and new stuff they will like using semantic data.
4. There will be new ways to empower social expression and engagement, much in the same way Twitter created a new category of expression and a way to communicate.
5. The digital revolution will be a global phenomenon.

In an appearance this morning at a Seattle breakfast event, former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, now a partner at Patton Boggs, was careful not to offer any jabs at the current administration.

Instead, he focused on the current administration’s plans for rolling out a new national broadband plan, scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday. One subject that came up was the fight for open access to wireless networks, a key platform issue of his. In particular, he noted how the government is now more concerned about the obstructionist role that handset makers like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) or Google (NSDQ: GOOG) play, than it is about the behavior of the wireless networks. But regulators have less control over the former.

Open access is a term Martin knows all about. During his stint as FCC Chairman, he helped push through rules in a spectrum auction that would require the winner—in this case, Verizon Wireless—to ensure open access to its network. While vague, it means that Verizon won’t be able to limit users, devices or applications on the network. However, Verizon has just started to build-out its 4G network, so it’s still unclear how that will be practiced. Martin said.

Martin: “I think what the commission did with the open access piece was an important step…Prior to 2007, there was resistance from the carriers to any kind of open architecture, including the inclusion of WiFi chips in devices, even though today that’s perceived as a helpful thing….But I think we haven’t been able to see the ultimate impact because they [Verizon] are still deploying it, I think it did contribute to the shift of the wireless industry, in general, and ultimately will benefit consumers.”

In one example of how the power over open access has shifted to the handset makers, the FCC opened an inquiry when Google’s voice-over-IP application was blocked from the iPhone. The blocking was initially blamed on AT&T (NYSE: T), but as it turned out, Apple was the one that vetoed it.

The FCC’s “direct authority is less and less the more it gets pushed out from the carriers. It has ways, but I think it’s more difficult…This was an issue when I was there, and there’s a balance between protecting a consumer’s rights and having access to the internet, and recognizing that carriers have to manage their networks…I think that you do need to find the appropriate balances and it gets more difficult the further outside the carrier you get.”

As for the national broadband plan, the commission has hinted at what may be included, but the strategy won’t be fully unveiled until March 16. One of the key issues is providing more spectrum to carriers to provide the fastest mobile broadband services in the world. Martin said that while he was Chairman, they almost tripled the amount of spectrum available for mobile broadband. He said the current administration is looking to double it. Currently, he said that all the U.S. carriers use 450 megahertz of spectrum, and the commission is looking to add an additional 500 MHz.

A little-known white-label mobile social network company is suing Google and Facebook for patent infringement. Wireless Ink, maker of Winksite, claims it owns the intellectual property for enabling users to join social networks from their mobile phones through a patent awarded in October 2009.

Wireless Ink claims the two companies had to have known about the patent, the application for which was made public back in 2004, “given the time and resources defendants have invested in their desktop and mobile Web sites as well as their strategic importance,” Bloomberg quotes the complaint as saying. Facebook has said the suit is without merit and Google said it’s busy reviewing it.

Wireless Ink is reportedly seeking cash damages and an injunction against use of the technology. You’d think — if the patent is found valid — the company would license it out, given that mobile sign-ups are compelling, and increasingly so as handset browsers become better and social networking reaches into regions and demographics where PCs are less common.

Here’s the patent in question: “Method, apparatus and system for management of information content for enhanced accessibility over wireless communication networks.” The lawsuit, filed in New York, does not seem to have appeared yet online as a public court document.

Facebook and Google also like to register IP themselves; most recently, Facebook was awarded a patent for its news feed, and Google a patent for location-based advertising.

Image courtesy of Walknboston on Flickr.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) may shed the ailing Fox Mobile Group, including the Jamba and Jamster brands, to focus on digital properties, like MySpace, reports The Financial Times.

A sale would not be a big surprise. After News Corp. acquired the company in two separate chunks from VeriSign (NSDQ: VRSN) for a total price tag of $381 million, it failed to do much with the asset. Last year, it created the Fox Mobile Group to roll out a new video service for smartphones, which was rumored to be akin to Hulu, but that project has been delayed several times. In addition, the group has been decimated over the past year, by layoffs and a mass executive exodus that led to the departure of the CEO, COO and CMO.

Bankers say Zed, a Madrid-based mobile content company, is the most likely buyer, but others point to Italian mobile media company Buongiorno (BIT: BNG), Dada.net, and Flycell, or even carriers, like Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) and Telecom Italia, as possibilities. In this environment, a sale could be tough. The mobile content industry is not as strong as it once was, and has struggled as consumer tastes have shifted away from ringtones and wallpapers to more sophisticated devices that run applications.

Revenues for News Corp’s ”Other” segment, which includes the Fox Mobile Entertainment, dropped 20 percent to $2.4 billion in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, The Financial Times reports. At the same time, operating losses at News Corp’s ”Other” segment widened to $363 million from $84 million in the year-ago period.

Related

• Fox Mobile To Bring Premium Video Service To Mobile; Hires Two Ex-Thumbplay Execs
• Executive Ranks Of Fox Mobile Group Gutted By Departures
• @ CES: Fox Mobile Delays New U.S. Branding Intiative, Blames Economy
• Fox Creates Mobile Group After Buying Jamba Stake; Will Launch A New U.S. Mobile Brand Next Year

The latest smartphone subscriber numbers are out, and the last three months have been kind to Google. Android’s still a relatively small player, but its usage base more than doubled since October. The iPhone, meanwhile, keeps on treading water. More »