Category: Mobile

Mobile ad campaign manager Adenyo has raised a large $26.9 million round, consisting of both institutional and private placement funding. The company, which has offices in Dallas and Toronto, plans to use the proceeds to promote an international expansion. Formerly known as Silverback Media, Adenyo provides a range of services, including marketing and mobile ad serving, mobile storefronts, coupons and payments, and analytics. The financing includes a $17.2 million institutional round led by Genuity Capital Markets as well as $9.7 million in private placements since July 2009.

The significant amount of capital is also designed to help it fend off an increasingly crowded marketplace, as mobile advertising starts to take hold. Just this past week, mobile ad network aggregator Mobclix  acquired iPhone app analytics provider Heartbeat from New York-based Enormego. Also on the analytics front, in December, Flurry merged with Pinch Media to combine the two mobile analytics companies. 

Meanwhile, the mobile ad network space is also pretty hot. At the start of the year, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) bought Quattro Wireless in an attempt, at least in part, to counter Google’s $750 million purchase of AdMob. With all that money in the bank, it’s very likely that Adenyo, which is trying to position itself as a one-stop mobile marketing shop, will pursue some smaller companies around the globe as well. Release (PDF)

Pretty much everything you’ve read about the U.S. mobile industry is true: The networks suck — some more than others — and the iPhone is still a king-maker. Yet according to data collected by Wireless Intelligence, during the quarter ended Dec. 31 2009, 5.9 million net new subscribers signed up for wireless services, the highest number of new adds made during a three-month period in three years.

The battle for subscribers among carriers is best reflected in the recent moves made by Verizon and AT&T. Verizon, which ended December 2009 with 91.2 million subscribers, has launched a slew of smartphones, including the much-hyped Motorola Droid. The company also launched a nasty ad campaign to highlight AT&T’s network weakness. The net result: it added 2.2 million net new subscribers during the most recent quarter, the most since the third quarter of 2008. As Jon Groves, analyst with Wireless Intelligence, writes in the report:

In comparison, thanks in part to Apple’s iPhone, AT&T added 2.7 million net new subscribers, taking its total to 85.1 million.Head-to-head after stripping out reseller and wholesale net additions, Verizon reported 1.2 million net additions in 4Q09 against AT&T’s 900,000…However, the iPhone yet again remained a very strong proposition for AT&T, with 3.1 million iPhone account activations reported in the fourth quarter — the second-ever highest quarterly total – of which more than a third were new AT&T subscribers…The remaining operators continue to feel the squeeze outside of the device exclusivity and coverage available from AT&T/Verizon in the contract market and the ‘unlimited’ offerings from the likes of Straight Talk in the prepaid segment.

You can drill down into individual wireless carriers numbers by checking out the GigaOM Q4 Wireless Scorecard.

The growth during the quarter also masked some dangerous trends, however. As Chetan Sharma, a contributing analyst for GigaOM Pro, recently pointed out, during the last three months of 2009, “voice ARPU declined by a substantial 98 cents for U.S. carriers” and “data ARPU increased by a mere 4 percent to 53 cents as overall ARPU decreased 45 cents on the year.”

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Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Rennett Stowe

Zoompass, a mobile payment service launched last year by a consortium of Canadian telecom players, is branching out with the introduction of a wireless payment sticker that can be attached to a mobile phone, effectively turning it into a “tap-and-pay” debit card system. Zoompass was developed by EnStream, a partnership among Canada’s three major telecom companies: Bell Mobility, Rogers Communications and Telus Corp. The service allows members to send money to friends or family with their handheld device via an iPhone app, BlackBerry app, etc., and to pay for products and services through a credit card linked to their Zoompass account.

Now, the service has launched a sticker that attaches to a phone or other handheld device and works as a “contactless payment tag.” The sticker can be scanned by any mobile payment system that supports it, including many that are already in use across Canada at coffee shops, gas stations and other retail locations. Both Mastercard and Visa have also been doing trials of special credit cards that allows for contactless payment, which involves waving the card near a payment terminal rather than having to insert or swipe it through a slot.

Will users want to stick something to the back of their iPhone or BlackBerry that lets them swipe and pay for things? A short video of the device in action (embedded below) makes it look relatively inconspicuous, but the reality is that you’re still sticking something to your phone, and it has to be thick enough to transmit a wireless signal. It remains to be seen how willing users are to do this, and whether they will trust the consortium to handle access to their bank and/or credit card accounts.

That said, however, Zoompass probably has a better chance of making contactless payment work than some other startups that have tried to do so — including one that also involved Bell Mobility and Telus. The two carriers partnered with two of Canada’s major banks (TD Canada Trust and National Bank) to launch a tag-based payment system called Dexit in Toronto in 2001, installing payment terminals in various coffee shops and other locations, but the service never took off and has since been shut down. That system used a separate keychain-style fob that users had to carry, however, while the Zoompass system uses a device that everyone already carries with them.

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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Andres Ruida.

—Apple’s iPad tablet is expected to hit store shelves sometime later this month, but now analysts are saying that recent checks with Taiwan indicate some slight production delays. Think Equity said iPad production was supposed to ramp up in February, but now volumes continue to be low in the first few days of March. Analysts at Canaccord Adams said the problems could limit initial availability to roughly 300,000 units this month (much lower than initial estimates of 1 million). [The WSJ]

—It’s still unknown what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) plans to do after acquiring Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising network, but a new job listing may shed some light on the matter. Apple is seeking a “Senior Interactive Web Developer” in Boston to develop a front-end Web user interface for the “development of compelling, interactive digital advertising experiences.” The developer will “be involved in client discussions, proof-of-concept coding, working with and adding to the existing framework, production deliverables and more.” The position will help the iPhone maker “redefine” ads on mobile devices. [Apple Insider]

—Apple has pulled multiple applications that help consumers find nearby hotspots from the iTunes App Store. Developers of the WiFi-Where application, the WiFiFoFum and yFy have all reported that Apple notified them that their apps were banned for “using private frameworks to access wireless information.” Reportedly, apps that use GPS—and not Wi-Fi—to find local hotspots are still in the store. [Softpedia]

The long-rumored Sony (NYSE: SNE) Playstation phone is now becoming a reality.

Sony is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smartphone that would be capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games, as well as connecting to Sony’s online media platform, reports the WSJ, which quotes people familiar with the matter.

The Japanese electronics giant is clearly feeling the heat from new consumer electronics, ranging from Apple’s iPhone to other devices like e-readers and netbooks. The project under way would create one device that would be capable of handling multiple functions, much like Apple’s upcoming iPad, according to the sources. Sony’s interest in building a smartphone doesn’t necessarily mean that its handset joint venture with Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) will be completely left out of the picture. In fact, the sources say Sony Ericsson will be working on the new handset, but that Sony will be taking a more active role, given how important smartphones are becoming to the company’s overall strategy.

The new products are expected to launch this year, although there’s still a lot of unknowns, including price or device specifications. A Sony spokeswoman declined to comment for the story.

Just recently, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs made a point to say that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is now a larger mobile devices company than Sony, Samsung and Nokia (NYSE: NOK). Indeed, Sony Ericsson has struggled recently, and has seen global shipments drop 41 percent in 2009. In addition, Sony slashed forecasts for PSP shipments last month.

Sony’s media platform, which for now is called Sony Online Service, is expected to launch in the U.S. later this month. The iTunes-like service will offer movies and TV shows and older game titles originally released for the PlayStation console.

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More apps for the non-smartphone set: mobile operator Orange has announced a deal with Netvibes, the France-based widget developer, to roll out its library of 200,000 widgets covering brands like Facebook, Twitter and BBC, to most of its portfolio of signature feature phones. These pared-down “apps” are all free to download, but Orange says that in future they will also include paid widgets, and those with in-widget charging options.

Orange, which this week also had its merger approved with T-Mobile in the UK, also said that it is already working with Netvibes on services for other screens: these include the operators’ IPTV service as well as future services for tablets—Orange has been among the operators rumored to be in talks with Apple over supplying the iPad in European markets. “We’ve been focussing first on mobile and having that ready but we’re also looking to develop and test what widgets would mean on other channels like tablets and set-top boxes,” says David Nahmani, director of business development and partnerships at Orange.

Orange says that it is the first mobile operator to partner with Netvibes, although Netvibes already offers access to its widget catalog directly through its own wap portal for basic phones as well as portals for specific devices such as Apple’s iPhone.

Orange has been offering widgets on mobile handsets since July 2009. The hope is that widgets will boost mobile data usage among their 130 million subscribers, most of whom do not use smartphones. This deal will give that strategy a big boost: Orange had only rolled out widgets to 25 of its handsets on devices like the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 6500 and the LG (SEO: 066570) 505 but now plans to make widgets available with a pre-installed link on 80% of its devices by the end of this year.

“We still have a lot of people who are heavy users who are not on smartphones that would like to access applications,” says Nahmani.

It looks like widgets may be coming of age here. Orange plans also to make the widgets available on smartphones by linking the Netvibes catalog to its own Orange App Shop, and presumably when a widget is accessed from a more enhanced device, it will give a user a more enhanced experience.

And in an attempt to attract more developers to the widget platform, Orange also said that it is releasing tools for developers to create apps that can be sold for a fee, or include the functionality to charge for the service within the widget—the service would link up with Orange’s own billing system. These areas, says Nahmani, are still in development. They would have a “classical” revenue share model behind them, he says, although he would not reveal more specifics.

Apple has once again infuriated iPhone developers by dumping offerings from its App Store. This time Wi-Fi hotspot-sniffing apps are the problem. The company yanked all apps that actively scan for Wi-Fi connections, according to this blog entry posted last night from 3 Jacks Software, which makes the WiFi-Where app (hat tip Softpedia):

We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi-Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information. It also appears that all other competing WiFi enabled apps have been removed as well. This is very unfortunate as the past 2-3 months have seen a handful of new WiFi apps get approved. Hopefully Apple will allow this functionality in a future SDK.

The iPhone comes with basic a basic scanning feature that helps users connect to Wi-Fi networks, of course, but Apple’s new policy bans the handful of new apps that had come to market featuring more sophisticated offerings and technical information for finding and connecting to hotspots. Tonchidot, a Tokyo-based developer, said its augmented reality app Sekai Camera was also booted from the App Store after Apple changed its policy regarding “the way apps access Wi-Fi devices.” Applications that use location information to search through databases of hotspots weren’t impacted by the purge. I’ve pinged Apple for comment and will update the post if I hear back from the company.

The move is especially odd because AT&T — perhaps more than any other carrier — has actively embraced Wi-Fi, and iPhone users have driven much of its Wi-Fi traffic. Of course, Apple has been heavily criticized for App Store policies many view as heavy-handed or arbitrarily enforced. The company last month banned some apps from smaller publishers that featured bikini-clad models, for instance, but inexplicably kept similarly prurient offerings from Sports Illustrated and other well-known media brands.

I’ve long argued that Apple — like Wal-Mart or any other retailer — has every right to decide which items to sell and which to keep out of its store. But suddenly banning an entire category of apps on a whim is a sure way to incense the developers, who are the foundation of the App Store — and have an ever-increasing number of attractive platforms on which to build their offerings.

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Image courtesy Flickr user therubberduckie.

With Apple’s iPad not shipping for another three weeks or so, and the 3G version more than a month out, it’s hard to know how well the tablet will sell, or how people will use it.

Despite the unknown, AT&T (NYSE: T), which is the exclusive carrier for both the iPhone and iPad in the U.S., has come out and said they don’t believe it will drive a lot of subscriptions on its network. “It will be interesting to see customer reaction to the iPad,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at a Morgan Stanley event on Tuesday. “My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription. We think it’s going to be a largely WiFi-driven product.”

If that’s the case, it will be of some relief to current AT&T subscribers that the iPad will likely not congest AT&T’s network further—although we all know, AT&T’s underestimated data usage once before.

So will the network be overwhelmed once again? If Stephenson is right, it’s unlikely. In fact, the price points and device’s presumed use case almost rules it out.

The most expensive model comes in at $829 for 64 gigabytes and 3G access, but the lowest-end model costs only $499 for 16 gigabytes and WiFi only. In all cases, the 3G model makes the iPad more of a commitment. Data plans start at $15 a month for 250 megabytes and unlimited access costs $30. While that’s half as much as what carriers typically charge for a laptop, Stephenson is right: how many people will be willing to pay that on top of what they already pay for the cellular data connection?

Not to mention, the use case of the device is not exactly mobile. Portable, yes, but not mobile. The 9.7 inch display does not fit into your back pocket or even very easily in a medium-sized purse. It’s doubtful people will bring it into the car to stream music through the radio, or use Google (NSDQ: GOOG) maps while on the road, or bring it to the ballpark to look up a player’s stats during the game.

However, there’s a couple of exceptions for this: A a child in the backseat of a car with two free hands could easily gobble up data by streaming TV, or surfing the internet. And, potentially some consumers will choose the iPad as a laptop substitution in the home. At the starting price of $630 with 3G and $30 a month for access, it becomes a competitive package to buying a laptop and signing up for cable or DSL. In urban areas, multiple iPad users could definitely bring the network to a crawl.

At the Morgan Stanley event yesterday, Stephenson also addressed rumors that AT&T’s exclusive hold on the iPhone was ending soon. He said that he expects the smartphone to be an important part of its line-up for “quite some time,” according to Dow Jones Newswires. Analysts most recently guessed there’s a good chance that AT&T will keep its exclusivity through 2010. Stephenson was not any more specific, but many believe that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and AT&T are content given AT&T’s new iPad exclusivity.

—Vodafone/Foursquare: A European operator deal for the location-aware mobile social media app. Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) UK customers can now “check-in” to Foursquare, through Vodafone’s live! portal, through the MyWeb sign-on, or by texting Foursquare to 97886. Normal data charges still apply to use the app, though.

—FoneStarz/Disney: More content deals for Vodafone…the Vodafone 360 app store will now feature apps for various Disney (NYSE: DIS) brands. They are being developed by FoneStarz, which had a pre-existing relationship with Disney, building and managing its mobile content portals in the UK and eight other countries.

—3UK/Warner Bros.: The mobile operator has now added WarnerTV to its subscription VOD service, which it launched back in November 2009 in partnership with Mobix Interactive (part of the On Demand Group division of SeaChange). The deal gives 3UK subscribers access to full-length episodes of Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) TV shows such as “Two and a Half Men,” “The Mentalist,” and “Friends.”

The International Trade Commission will have first dibs on deciding whether Nokia (NYSE: NOK) or Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) are infringing on each others’ patents, a federal judge has decided.

Yesterday, a Judge in Delaware agreed to put the patent claims between Apple and Nokia on hold, pending a resolution before the ITC, reports AP. But just because the lawsuit has been put on hold, doesn’t mean that the fight is over. Nokia has asked the ITC to consider banning imports of Apple products, including the MacBook and iPhone. The ITC hears cases involving imports that allegedly infringe on intellectual property rights, and then facilitates a resolution.

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More funding going to middleware that aims to help mobile content make money: July Systems, which develops a platform for content companies to publish, distribute and monetize mobile internet content, has raised $7 million.

The funding round was led by Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Capital, with Sequoia Capital (an existing investor) and Footprint Ventures also participating. The company says it is now cash-flow positive after seeing a 300 percent increase in revenues over the last year.

July Systems today also announced three new customers—ESPN (NYSE: DIS) Cricinfo, Univision and Discovery Networks. This takes its total customer number up to 80. Existing clients include a number of media companies in the U.S. such as CBS (NYSE: CBS) Sports, Vh1, Fox Entertainment Group and other News Corp (NYSE: NWS). properties, as well as Comedy Central and NBC Sports.

In India, the company works with NDTV, Zoom TV from the Times of India group, and CricketNext, among others.

July says that it will use the new funds announced today to expand its operations in both Asia Pacific and North America, as well as invest in R&D around its Mi mobile platform.

In particular, it will focus on enhancing its cross-platform publishing (between the mobile web and apps), mobile advertising technologies, and micro-payment systems. It is also investing in enhancing its real-time interactive video services—which fits in with the fact the company already has several TV and sports media companies on its books.

The company has offices in Bangalore, Los Angeles and New York.

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This morning, everyone is looking agog at the words of Google Europe boss John Herlihy, who’s quoted in the Silicon Republic predicting the demise of the desktop computer.

“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” Herlihy said. Is this proclamation taking it one step too far or will we be keyboard-less and fancy free by the time 2013 rolls around?

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The Silicon Republic writes that Herlihy’s comments echoed “comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent GSM Association Mobile World Congress 2010 that everything the company will do going forward will be via a mobile lens, centering on the cloud, computing and connectivity.”

If, in fact, Herlihy is predicting the dominance of smartphones, and not just mobile technology, we have a few numbers for you.

According to an October 2009 Forrester report on technology adoption in the U.S. information workforce, only 11% use smartphones, while 76% use desktops and 35% use laptops. And these numbers are looking at workers in the information industry, a sector we would expect to be on the razor’s edge of mobile technology adoption. A January report on the mobile workforce indicates that just over 30% of companies report that at least one quarter of their employees work in the field for more than half of their time. According to the article in Enterprise Mobile Today reviewing this report, “in the next three years, more than half of employees will be using smartphones in the enterprise”.

At a recent event with our technologically savvy peers, we took an informal poll of everyone’s work stations. Only one out of nearly 10 of us said we used a desktop computer. But are we working from our smartphones? No. Laptops and netbooks rule.

We’re thinking that if Google is predicting desktops to be irrelevant and including laptops and netbooks in this category, they might be undervaluing our keyboard addiction. When we look at the iPad, do we really see something we’ll use to manage databases, code, write or otherwise really create information?

Smartphones are obviously gaining speed with every day but they are far too limited to completely replace their keyboarded friends in three years time. But, if included in this definition of “mobile” are the ever-shrinking laptops, netbooks and tablets (with their accompanying keyboard docks) then we’d have to say we’re nearing this future daily. Look around your local college campus and you’ll see the next generation of computer users, each with a smartphone in their pocket and a laptop or netbook in their backpack. Look in some of the younger offices and you won’t even see a desktop anymore, but instead desks with laptop docking stations.

When we take into consideration, however, developing and third-world nations, where the only web is mobile web, the situation may be completely different. We think that we can be sure of one thing though – outside of very specific uses, the age of the 30-pound clunker humming away beneath your desk is indeed coming to an end.

Discuss

New statistics about baby boomers’ usage of the mobile web are here, and the news, sadly, is not surprising. This generation of users (ages 45 and older) has been slow to adopt mobile Internet technology. However, that’s not to say they aren’t getting on board with the mobile web revolution – they’re just taking a little more time to get here than the other demographic groups surveyed.

Today, only 55% of boomers consider their mobile phone a necessity, a number which likely shocks younger generations whose attachment to their handheld device is so strong, they claim to “feel naked without it.”

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Boomers: Slow to Adopt New Technology

The delay with which baby boomers embrace new technologies isn’t limited to the mobile web – this is just the next item in a series of technology trends where boomers seem to lag behind. Outside of the pro-social media analyst group Forrester (whose reports we desperately want to believe), most studies show boomers have been slow to adopt new technology, be it social networks or smartphones.  

Although as of summer 2009, older users were joining Facebook in record numbers, even outnumbering high school students on the site, it took a long time for them to get there. This group of technology users is definitely not filled with early adopters. Instead, boomers need to wait and see the benefits of a new technology before signing on, or so says eMarketer, the analyst firm who released this latest mobile web report. On Facebook, that benefit was likely the “network effect” – enough of their friends urged them to join at the same time as their younger family members were busy posting photos and videos of the boomers’ grandchildren, something boomers didn’t want to miss out on.

Stats on Boomers and the Mobile Web

As for the mobile web, although the technology in question is different, the desire (or lack thereof) to participate is the same. Until the boomers see a real need for the mobile web, smartphones and the accompanying mobile apps, they’ll get by just fine without it, thank you very much.

A few key stats from eMarketer’s report:

• 85% of baby boomers own a mobile phone, but the majority own feature phones (non-smartphones)
• 55% consider their mobile phone a necessity
• Boomers make up only 19.6% of touchscreen phone users
• Boomers make up only 21.1% of smartscreen phone users
• Younger boomers (ages 45-54) are more likely to own a smartphone or touchscreen phone than older boomers

Things are Changing

As Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst, kindly puts it, “boomers are underrepresented among smartphone users.” The good news is that’s starting to change. Slowly but surely, boomers are becoming more interested in smartphone devices. Phillips notes that their interest is influenced by the prevalence of smartphones in the marketplace combined with a down economy which is forcing boomers to forgo retirement. Because many smartphones have a business aspect to them, boomers are starting to see the appeal of these devices.

However, the most important factor slowing their adoption is price. As carriers reduce prices for both phones and data plans, many more boomers will join their younger counterparts to become mobile web users themselves.

Discuss

John Herlihy, Google Europe’s big chief, says that desktops will be irrelevant in three years. Which is precisely why Apple and Google are trying to kill each other, fiercely fighting for the domination of the mobile device world.

Both companies know that mobile computing is where the action is now and where it will be forever. At its presentation, Steve Jobs was adamant that the iPad was the continuation of the battle that started with the iPhone, and repeatedly said that Apple was a “mobile devices company.” Google’s agreed, which is why Herlihy echoed Schmidt’s words at Barcelona’s GSM 2010: Everything that Google is doing and planning is centered on the mobile, the cloud, and ubiquitous connectivity.

They are both right: Your desktop computer will disappear, no matter how much the geekdom cries, unless you are an engineer or someone who requires a big screen to work on—and, even then, the idea of the desktop as we know it will change too. The mice will go extinct, and every John and Jane will do their work and their pleasure using mobile devices like phones and tablets. As it should be, because computing has to become invisible, not complicated and cumbersome, like it is today. In a few years, the computing world will be like Star Trek: The Next Generation, but without the Enterprise. [Silicon Republic]

Apple’s patent theft accusations against HTC got a lot of press this week, as they should! But it’s just the most recent case in a gun-slinging mobile landscape riddled with patent lawsuits. This’ll end about as well as Reservoir Dogs.

The NY Times breaks it down today with this handy chart of who’s suing whom. Nokia has been particularly active, along with Kodak. The biggest target? Apple.

Companies sue each other over intellectual property all the time, of course. But this volume of mobile technology patents is unusually high. According to the Times:

Although patent litigation is not new in the technology world, these suits, specifically around mobile, point to the drastically changing mobile landscape. Lawyers I spoke with explained that mobile technology is still in its infancy and these large computing companies are trying to stake their claim to the future of computing.

Basically, it’s a land grab. Companies that know they’re being left in the dust (Nokia, Kodak) are scrambling to assert any claims that they can, while market leaders (Apple) become fat targets.

Where does that leave the us? For now, nowhere. Business as usual. But if things keep escalating, the consequences could range from companies passing legal fees onto the consumer to ITC-imposed product bans. In these kinds of gun fights, it’s rare that anyone wins. [NY Times]

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has unveiled a new way to search on Android-powered phones: Gestures.

According to a post on the Google Mobile Blog, the experimental application is available on Android-powered devices running Android 2.0 or higher in the U.S.

Essentially it works like this: Start a search by drawing a letter from the alphabet on the touch screen. For example, if you want to call your friend Anne, you would open Gesture Search and draw letter “A.” The application would start returning a list of items that have words starting with “A” on your phone. More letters would refine the query. A horizontal gesture from left to right erases a query and right to left removes the last letter or space in the query.

This application would work well when it’s too loud, or perhaps too quiet, to conduct a voice search Gesture Search is now available in the Android Market, and given that this is from Google Labs, you can’t expect it to be perfect. However, it’s important for new input methods to be developed given a phone’s limited screen size and keyboard capabilities.

A few hours after Steve Case tweeted that Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) CEO Don Graham told a hometown crowd Tuesday the paper wouldn’t charge for online news, the company told paidContent it was launching its first paid iPhone app today. With that, the Washington Post joins a small but growing number of publishers who refuse to build pay walls or run meters but are willing to charge for mobile apps. It’s a switch from the usual browser-based mobile strategy for news outlets that mirrors their ad-supported websites. (The most notable exception is the Wall Street Journal, which started with a free WSJ.com WAP site and apps despite its emphasis on online subscriptions and is moving to a premium app model.)

WaPo is charging $1.99 for 12 months of customized access and offline reading, suggesting that a price change could kick in after it sees the first year’s results.  Looking at the paid mobile news landscape, The Guardian sold 101,457 downloads of its iPhone app in the first 10 weeks at $3.99 (£2.39). The cost limits reach but provides a new source of revenue. CNN, which has tried and dropped various premium online options, opted for a $1.99 one-time fee for its iPhone app. The free New York Times iPhone app has been downloaded 3.2 million times but will be tied to the metered model set to kick in early next year, as will the WAP site.

Update: The app was in the online iTunes store long enough for us to take screen grabs midday but then disappeared.. It’s back now—and in the mobile app store. too.

Disclosure: Our publisher ContentNext is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.

While no one wants to wake up to the news that Apple—one of the most successful consumer brands—has filed a lawsuit against you, in this case, little-known HTC must have celebrated just a tiny bit.

In 13 years, the Taiwanese has grown to more than 9,000 employees worldwide, including 3,000 engineers and 125 employees in North America. Last year, it hit its stride by releasing some of the flashiest non-iPhone devices on the market, like the Hero, the T-Mobile myTouch and the HD 2. That’s a far cry from the first iPaq personal computer it built for Compaq 10 years ago. Now HTC is in the company of Nokia (NYSE: NOK), which has also exchanged patent disputes with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL).

While the lawsuit may represent some well-deserved recognition, it will also present significant distractions for the small company and increase legal scrutiny it potentially wasn’t prepared for. “Yes, HTC is a significant player in the industry, but it’s a contract manufacturer,” says RBC analyst Mike Abramsky. “I’m not sure it has a big enough patent base with which to defend itself. It’s more vulnerable,” reports AllThingsD.

How immediate of an impact the lawsuit could have on HTC is not clear. Since the suit was filed both with the United States District Court in Delaware and the United States International Trade Commission, Apple could ask the commission to halt shipments of infringing HTC phones that are coming into the U.S.

HTC issued a short statement yesterday saying that it did not believe the lawsuit posed a short-term material impact to its business, or would affect Q1 guidance. It said: “HTC is a mobile technology innovator and patent holder that has been very focused over the past 13 years on creating many of the most innovative smartphones. HTC Corporation values U.S. and international patent rights and will work with in the U.S. Judicial System to protect its own innovations and rights.”

For perspective, here’s how HTC is David and Apple is Goliath:

—Manpower: In this lawsuit, Apple may, in part, be targeting the technical expertise of a small design office in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, where about 25 people have cooked up their own user interface called Sense. The user interface overlays on top of both the Windows Mobile and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android handsets that it builds.

—Market share: According to IDC, HTC had a 4.6 percent global share of the smartphone market in 2009, compared with Apple’s 14.4 percent.

—Financial standing: HTC’s 2009 consolidated revenue was 144 billion Taiwan dollars, or $4.5 billion, down 5.2 percent from the previous year. Gross profit in 2009 was down 9.5 percent, according to the NYTimes. That compares to Apple’s last fiscal quarter, which led CEO Steve Jobs to brag: “If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company.”

“This is what happens in Silicon Valley,“ Gary Chia, head of Greater China research for Yuanta Securities in Taipei told the New York Times. “When you’re big enough to become a threat, I’ll slap a suit on you sometimes just to slow you down.”

But a lot of observers have pointed out that the lawsuit isn’t about HTC at all. Instead, it’s about the threat of Google and its Android operating system, which is mentioned continuously throughout the lawsuit (See Engadget’s rundown here). Those suspicions gained some momentum today when unprompted Google sent out a statement about the lawsuit to press. A spokesperson said: “We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.”

More so, there’s a reason why Apple isn’t suing Google, or for that matter other handset makers that are building Android-based phones, like Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Samsung. Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, told the New York Times that Apple is simply going after a less powerful company first—a company with less resources, and a potentially smaller patent portfolio. “It clearly involves some form of litigation strategy of picking off the weaker members of the herd first. They can always add Google to the suit later on,” he said.

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• Apple Matches Nokia’s Latest Attack By Filing A New Patent Complaint Of Its Own
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