Mereja

Category: Mobile

  • Virtualization Is the Trojan Horse to Take the iPad Beyond Apple’s OS

    Citrix’s quiet announcement that its Receiver software will allow Apple iPad users to run Windows 7 sessions via virtualization has caused some to suggest that the iPad may have much promise as a business tool. But why stop at Windows? The iPad will reach beyond Apple’s iPhone OS and Windows.

    As Citrix vice president Chris Fleck has noted in a blog post:

    “It turns out the 9.7 inch display on the iPad with a 1024×768 screen resolution works great for a full VDI XenDesktop. Windows applications run unmodified and securely in the data center, and even multiple applications at once. The advancements that were made for the Citrix Receiver for iPhone will carry over to the iPad, however the iPhone restrictions of screen size and small keyboards are overcome with the iPad. It’s a beautiful thing!”

    One of the primary details to note there is that multiple Windows 7 applications can run in a session on an iPad via Citrix Receiver and Xen virtualization. Of course, it’s also important to note that Fleck is describing applications housed on remote servers — not running locally. Apple has already announced that it will have its iWork applications available for the iPad, but why won’t many Windows 7-centric users and businesses want access to Windows applications that they can run concurrently as well? Doing so could eliminate multitasking limitations inherent to the iPhone OS, and a larger screen than the iPhone’s will only help encourage such usage.

    PC World’s Randall Kennedy argues that the iPad’s limited connectivity and lack of a keyboard and a mouse will keep many business users from adopting it, even if it does Windows 7 sessions. I, too, have expressed my doubts about whether Apple will even market the iPad toward business users, and many Windows 7 users may favor Windows tablets over the iPad. Still, the more I think about it, the more it seems inevitable that the iPad, through virtualization, will reach out to other operating systems featuring myriad types of applications.

    Also, why stop at Windows? Many businesses run on Linux platforms with robust virtualization options. Lots of Linux users are used to running Linux in conjunction with other operating systems, and they may reach for virtualization as a way to extend what their iPads can do, too. Despite its cloud-centric focus, users of Google’s upcoming Linux-based Chrome OS may end up wanting to add virtualized sessions to their iPad arsenals, too, especially because of the strong security it promises to have.

    Years ago, virtualization implied performance hits and other problems that made it impractical for many users, but that has changed. Even though the iPhone OS doesn’t include it natively, the writing is already on the wall that other players will deliver virtualized solutions for the iPad. They’ll be available for free, too. One of the key drivers for all of this is that, as always,  rich applications are what solidify the future of hardware devices. For that reason alone, the iPad will reach out to other operating systems — and apps for them –whether Apple likes it or not.

    Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):

  • With the iPad, Apple Takes Google to the Mat
  • Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes

  • Bubbly: A Voice Twitter for the Billions Who Don’t Have Internet

    With more than 4 billion mobile phone users and some 1.7 billion Internet users, there’s a market opportunity to provide web-style services for people who aren’t online. That’s what Bubble Motion, a Mountain View, Calif.- and Singapore-based startup with some $30 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Palomar Ventures and Comcast Interactive Capital, wants to do with its new service Bubbly.

    Bubbly is an extension of 4-year-old Bubble Motion’s BubbleTalk, which helps users leave short voice messages for each other (like a text, but with voice). For Bubbly, the company is going from one-to-one communication to a Twitter model, which allows users to follow celebrities and friends alike, receiving SMS alerts when they’ve dialed in a new voice update.

    Bubbly is being released in partnership with mobile operators, starting last week in India (Bubble Motion declined to identify its carrier partner, but it has previously worked with Bharti Airtel). Inspired in part by participation from Indian celebrities, Bubbly already has some 150,000 users in the country, according to David Still, VP of product management.

    The benefit of working with mobile operators directly — and more are coming soon in Southeast Asia, said Still — is that the service is tightly integrated and charged through users’ normal billing. Bubble Motion takes a cut of revenue directly from the carriers. That’s different from the standard practice of buying text messages in bulk. On the consumer side, in order to leave a Bubbly message, people just dial *7 and speak on a live phone call and hang up. Then subscribers get an SMS message and dial *2 to listen. All of this can be done without a Bubbly account, and at the cost of text messages or slightly more.

    Right now the key is to grow Bubbly by partnering with more carriers, said Still, but other future projects for the 40-person Bubble Motion may include a web interface or video support. I can see how inbox management, archived history and search functionality could really help — while voice may be accessible and expressive, parsing through piles of voice mails is not my idea of fun. But I’m not the target market.

  • Novatel Claims First LTE Data Call

    Wireless Networks, Mobile, LTE

    Novatel logo
    Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

    In what may be a pre-emptive announcement before next week’s GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, San Diego’s Novatel Wireless (NASDAQ: NVTL) says it has successfully made a data transmission call using Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G technology.

    LTE is one of several next-generation wireless technology standards that promise increased capacity as cell phone users increasingly download data, photos, and video from the Internet. Novatel says LTE can provide data rates as high as 50 megabits per second on the uplink and 100 megabits per second on the downlink and “an enhanced user experience by leveraging new, wider bandwidth spectrum.”

    But as Phone Scoop blogger Eric M. Zeman notes, “Novatel didn’t state what speeds it attained, nor whether or not the equipment used was standards compliant.”

    Novatel says that many wireless system operators are planning to overlay fourth-generation LTE systems on their existing 3G networks to augment data capacity in important areas. The company also says it is working with operators, which it did not identify, and plans to launch commercial data services later this year. In the statement issued by Novatel, CTO Slim Souissi says, “We believe our aggressive development efforts will enable us to deliver these innovative solutions with the fastest possible time to market.”

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  • Cisco: The Mobilpocalypse Is Coming!!!!!

    Cisco forecasts that by 2014 we will be using 3.6 exabytes a month on mobile networks worldwide, according to its Visual Networking Index figures released today. (For those pondering an exabyte, it’s equal to 1 billion gigabytes or half a trillion MP3 files.) And by 2014, we’re apparently going to be sucking down 40 exabytes annually from our mobile broadband networks, up from a total of 1.08 exabytes in all of 2009.

    A desire for always-on connectivity is behind Cisco’s incredible predictions for growth as well as the increasing number of devices that allow us to surf the mobile web with wired-Internet ease. If the mobile web is a cocktail served at a bar, our devices have moved from being thin cocktail straws to data-quaffing iPads. Plus, more of us are now able to drink legally, which means more bar patrons and more consumption by those bellying up to the mobile broadband bar. It’s both a nightmare and dream for mobile operators, and a clear opportunity for equipment vendors like Cisco and gadget makers like Apple.

    For example, today, the average mobile broadband connection generates 1.3 gigabytes of traffic per month — while consumers using mobile broadband via a data card pay around $60 a month for a 5 GB-chunk of access. By 2014, the average mobile broadband connection will generate 7 GB of traffic per month, which means that operators are going to have to revamp their pricing plans while also lowering the costs associated with sending bits through their networks in order to keep margins up.

    I’ll have more analysis on the numbers later, but here are the bare bone stats, which should be enough to knock your socks off — or strike terror into the hearts of mobile operators — some of which can’t even handle the data deluge caused by the iPhone.

    • Global mobile data traffic has increased by 160 percent over the past year to 90 petabytes per month — the equivalent of 23 million DVDs.
    • Global mobile data traffic today is growing today 2.4 times faster than global fixed broadband data traffic.
    • Smartphones and laptop air cards will drive more than 90 percent of global mobile traffic by 2014.
    • Of the anticipated traffic, Wi-Fi offload and other offload will only reduce mobile data use by 25 percent by 2014.
    • Global mobile video traffic is forecasted to be 2.3 exabytes per month by 2014.
    • By 2014, more than 400 million of the world’s Internet users will access the network solely through a mobile connection.
    • Today, smartphones are only 10 percent of all handsets in use, but generate over 50 percent of global mobile data handset traffic.

    Related GigaOM Pro report (subscription required): 


    How AT&T Will Deal With iPad Data Traffic

  • Prepaid Cellphone Users Less Likely to Return Calls [Data]

    Some folks decided to study the calling habits of 5.3 million people over an 18-month period. 350 million phone calls later, they came to an almost obvious conclusion: Prepaid cellphone users make and return fewer calls than their postpaid counterparts.

    You can click on the image to take a closer look at the graphs.

    Initially the study done at the Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Finland, was intended to analyze reciprocity—the likelihood of an individual receiving as many calls in return as he or she makes. But during the course of the research, a clear difference was discovered in the calling habits of prepaid and postpaid users:

    Postpaid users tend to be more prolific, having on average 5.41 people they call. Prepaid users, by contrast, have only 3.41 contacts on average (although the notion of “average” is a little strange here since there is a very long tail on these distributions).

    Postpaid users also made about 10 times as many calls as prepaid users while 25 percent of prepaid users had odd relationships in which “one participant makes more than 80 percent of all calls.”

    Technology Review suggests that the differences in calling habits could be explained by the fact that prepaid users are more likely to be younger individuals, but I’d go as far as considering that the unlimited mobile-to-mobile or weekend benefits of postpaid plans may play a role as well. [Technology Review via NY Times Bits]






  • 10 Unsung Collaboration Tools — Many of Them Free

    Collaboration is in full swing on the web, for both social and work-oriented purposes. Most of us can rattle off the well-known applications that are available, but there are many targeted, useful collaboration apps that are more offbeat. Here are 10 of them, many of them free.

    Redliner. If you’ve ever tried to collaborate with others on documents over email, you know that version control problems and many other issues can arise. Redliner is becoming one of the more popular online tools to get around these problems. Unlike, say, Google Docs, it offers a complete commenting and revision system. Check it out in the screencast here. Redliner is currently being beta tested and you can use it for free, although it will eventually move to a paid monthly model.

    doingText. Also on the document collaboration front, doingText has steadily grown into a robust, hosted platform. It’s available in a version for $5 a month, and you can share documents via randomly generated, unique URL.

    Kablink. Kablink is a free and open source collection of collaboration components that lets groups work offline and online. When work is produced offline, it can automatically be synced with other users’ work online. Conferencing and wiki-like features are available.

    Collanos Workspace. The motto of the Collanos Workspace free, open source collaboration platform is “Think outside the inbox.” To set up a team work environment, you click Create Space and begin inviting people. You can post files of many formats to collaborate on, instant message while you work and track pending tasks.

    PBworks. At November’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco, the folks behind PBWiki announced the addition of real-time collaboration tools to their wiki platform. The new PBworks suite of tools includes in-app instant messaging, live notifications of changes to an organization’s workspaces, live editing of documents and voice collaboration. There are also business and legal document templates available in an online store. Businesses, legal firms and schools pay just a few dollars per month per user (pricing varies by package) for PBWorks’ hosted collaboration apps.

    Drop.io. The free file-sharing service Drop.io is used by many editors and writers across The GigaOM Network to easily upload files that can be shared with collaborators by simply providing a short URL to visit. Drop.io also now offers real-time collaboration features for tasks such as sharing files during phone conferences.

    Socialtext. Based on the concept of combining a wiki with a blog, Socialtext provides an enterprise-level group collaboration platform. Every person who is a member of an organization’s Socialtext account gets their own dashboard –- or personal homepage –- where they can embed and arrange via drag-and-drop both personal and work information, images, and widgets. Email and microblogging are also integrated with the platform in useful ways. Socialtext is free for groups of 50 users or fewer who want basic features, and reasonably priced fee-based packages with all the bells and whistles are available.

    e-tipi. e-tipi incorporates elements of Twitter, Digg, wikis and blogs to create a shared workspace through which ideas are fleshed out. Each user page is called a tipi, and it contains various ideas submitted by the tipi’s users. You can export data to HTML for sharing on web pages, too. You can watch a demo here, and free accounts are available.

    MemberHub. Group management and communication service MemberHub equips users with dashboards, discussion forums, shared calendars and many other tools for sharing ideas and collaborating. You can see how it works in this video, and pricing is found here, including a free version. 10 cents per person per month, purchased in blocks of 100.

    Colaab. If you want a very feature-rich collaboration platform with a slick user interface, check out Colaab. Once you sign up for an account, you begin by creating a workspace. As Pamela over on WebWorkerDaily notes, “the workspace includes an integrated IM feature, and discussions are displayed in the upper part of the right-hand panel, while the lower part shows which users are participating.” Colaab is available in a starter version for $24 a month, which includes 1GB of storage and 10 workspaces.

  • Stat Shot: How the iPhone Changed the Handset Market

    The change in the mobile phone market caused by the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 has slightly cut the profits for the handset industry overall, but has most severely affected Nokia and Sony Ericsson, according to data released today from Deutsche Bank. The investment bank issued a note showing how Apple and Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, garner most of the profits in the handset industry despite their relatively small market share.

    The report also shows an incredible loss for Nokia, which saw its share of handset profits cut in half by the shift in the handset market that occurred after the iPhone was released. In 2007 Nokia made about 60 percent of the profits in the industry, and in 2009 it had about 31 percent. Meanwhile the adoption of mobile broadband (and likely the fact that the iPhone is a consumer-focused device only available from one carrier) has helped RIM take about a fifth of the overall industry profits in 2009 as more corporations and people tried to access email and the web on their phones.

    However, 2009 represented a bad year for the average industry profits, which the bank believes will rise in 2010 and 2011. Part of that might be a better economic climate, but it’s also likely that after a few years of playing catch-up with the iPhone, the handset makers now have something that can compete with it thanks to Android and more web-friendly phones. The real questions ahead for handset makers are which ones will fall by the wayside thanks to the overall shift in the market? Palm and Sony Ericsson aren’t due for a comeback based on this data and Motorola’s overall share of the profits isn’t much to build a business on.

  • New CEO at Sand 9

    IT, people, Mobile

    Wade Roush wrote:

    Boston-based Sand 9, which is developing microelectromechanical resonators that could replace quartz crystal frequency sources in 3G phones, GPS devices, and other applications, said today that Vince Graziani, a board member and former CEO of VBrick, has been appointed chief executive officer. Founded in 2007, Sand 9 is backed by Flybridge Capital Partners, General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures.

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  • Sack Ballmer? Break Up the Company? How Microsoft Could Innovate

    Software, culture, Analysis

    Microsoft
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Outside of official circles in Redmond, WA, the term “Microsoft innovation” is often thought of as an oxymoron, sort of like “Army intelligence.” People have been actively debating the issue of whether and how Microsoft can truly innovate in the tech world for at least the past decade.

    Enter Dick Brass (great name), who was a Microsoft vice president from 1997 to 2004. His op-ed in the New York Times yesterday sharply criticized Microsoft’s lack of innovation and has stirred the pot considerably, even prompting Microsoft to post a response. But I haven’t seen many people talking constructively about how to fix the problems. And Microsoft doesn’t seem to admit that there are any problems, at least officially.

    Brass used the peg of Apple’s iPad tablet announcement to highlight what he sees as Microsoft’s failings in tablet PCs, e-books, digital music, and mobile software. He calls Microsoft “a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator” that is “failing, even as it reports record earnings.” And he points to two problems with the company’s culture—problems that threaten Microsoft’s future, if not its present.

    One is widespread political infighting that can doom innovative people and products that compete in some way with existing product groups. (The current Ray Ozzie situation comes to mind.) I’m sure there are benefits to this kind of competition, but you have to wonder whether the volatile mix of personalities and agendas at the company is stifling some of its more creative projects.

    The other problem is a software mindset that Brass says is stuck in the 1970s. “Part of the problem is a historic preference to develop (highly profitable) software without undertaking (highly risky) hardware,” he writes. “This made economic sense when the company was founded in 1975, but now makes it far more difficult to create tightly integrated, beautifully designed products like an iPhone or TiVo.”

    In his response, Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s vice president of corporate communications, gave the usual spiel about “innovation at scale”—the idea that the company reaches a huge …Next Page »

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  • Nexus One Sales Continue to Lag: Just 80,000 in First Month [Google]

    The early outlook on the Nexus One—just 20,000 sold in its first week—hasn’t gotten any better. After a month on the market, Google’s moved just 80,000 phones. Compare that to the original iPhone and Droid launches.

    The relative sales results, shown above and using estimates by Flurry Analytics, aren’t pretty for Google. Granted, it’s not an entirely fair comparison. Droid and the iPhone were marketed within an inch of their lives, and had better carrier support than the Nexus One does on T-Mobile. But even taking that into consideration, 80,000 phones in a month? That’s borderline embarrassing.

    If nothing else, it’s a reminder that as much as we care about Google’s entry into phone hardware in these parts, to the public at large they’re still a niche player at best. I also wonder, though: that few units, and they still can’t handle their volume of customer support complaints? Yeesh. [WSJ; Furry Analytics ]






  • It’s Official: Ontela Bought Photobucket from News Corp.

    deals, Software, Analysis

    Photobucket
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Back in December, we reported that Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela merged with Photobucket, the Denver-based photo sharing site previously owned by News Corporation. Financial terms of the deal weren’t released, but News Corp. ceded some control of Photobucket to Ontela’s investors while retaining an equity stake in the merged company, which retains the Photobucket name.

    Yet the full story, and its significance, never really came out. Before the companies announced the merger, rumors were swirling that Ontela was buying Photobucket. Well, I’ve done a little sleuthing, and can now confirm those rumors were accurate. Ontela did in fact acquire Photobucket, according to a Form 10-Q that News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) filed with the SEC yesterday.

    The statement in the form (on page 9) reads: “In December 2009, the Company [News Corp.] entered into an agreement to sell its Photobucket subsidiary, a web-based provider of photo- and video-sharing services, to a mobile photo uploading platform in exchange for an equity interest in the acquirer. A loss of approximately $29 million on this transaction was included in other, net in the unaudited consolidated statements of operations for the three and six months ended December 31, 2009. As a result of this transaction, the Company’s interest in the acquirer, which is not material, was recorded at fair value and is now accounted for under the equity method of accounting.”

    In any merger, of course, one company holds more cards than the other. In this case, it was Ontela, which is a bit surprising. The significance here is that a small Seattle startup has acquired a top-50 website (according to comScore) at what sounds like a pretty good price. TechCrunch reported the sale would be worth $60 million; News Corp. originally acquired Photobucket in 2007 for $250 million plus a $50 million earnout. Whatever the price for Ontela’s investors—which include Steamboat Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, Covera Ventures, and Voyager Capital—it was apparently $29 million less than what News Corp. had valued the subsidiary at. So maybe it’s time to call Photobucket a Seattle company.

    As of December, Ontela had 23 employees. The company was formed in 2005 and was backed by about $15 million in venture funding. Earlier this week, Ontela co-founder and former CEO Dan Shapiro said he is leaving his role as chief technology officer of Photobucket in the next month, but will remain an advisor to the company. Photobucket went through a round of layoffs last June, leaving it with about 85 employees at that time.

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  • My Austin WiMAX Experience Was Good, But Not Good Enough

    I spent the last few weeks roaming around Austin with a dual-mode WiMAX modem from Sprint in order to see how well it works here. The verdict: It’s not strong enough to be a wireline replacement, but if I didn’t have a contract to fulfill on Verizon I’d ditch my MiFi and pick up the Overdrive 4G/3G personal hotspot and use that as my primary data connection.

    Sadly, the truly fast 4G service is only available in a limited area and the upload speeds are only so-so, which means I’m not going to go out of my way to make WiMAX happen for me. But anyone who doesn’t already have a data card should take a hard look at it. Data service from Sprint costs $59.99 a month and the personal hotspot will set you back $349 for the device without a contract or $99 with one. The cost of data service and the contract price on the device is comparable to that of the MiFi.

    However, my overall experience  with WiMAX bums me out because I had high hopes for the 4G wireless service as a way to fill in some of the broadband black holes in town where cable or DSL doesn’t reach. Unfortunately, WiMAX doesn’t seem to reach those areas, either.

    WiMAX speeds downtown

    The best speeds I noted were 4 Mbps down and never more than 500 kbps up. I was really disappointed with the upload speeds until I spoke with someone from Clearwire, who said that upload speeds are limited to 1 Mbps in order to allocate more downlink capacity, which most people value over the upload speeds.

    Capability-wise, I was able watch Hulu, stream music and make decent VoIP calls. Skype video was iffy, but I even have issues with that on my cable modem at home, so I’m not prepared to draw too many conclusions from just one test. Surfing the web was no problem — in fact in some areas where WiMAX coverage was strongest, it was just like surfing at home.

    WiMAX at Zilker Park

    Verizon EVDO at Zilker Park

    However, in many areas of town I had a hard time getting a 4G signal at all, such as when I was being driven down MoPac and around the 360 in the western part of town. And the modem I was testing had a hard time transitioning between 3G and 4G signals, so VoIP in a moving car isn’t really possible. Some of this may be Austin’s hilly geography and part of it may be that the network in Austin, according to Sprint spokesman John Taylor, is still not 100 percent built out (he didn’t know how long that would take). In other areas, such as around Zilker Park and in the West Lake Hills, I got speeds of 2.5 Mbps down and 220 kbps up. The University of Texas campus isn’t covered by WiMAX at all since the university has its own Wi-Fi network.

    Taylor told me the thought was that students getting Wi-Fi for free wouldn’t pay for coverage, so Clearwire didn’t put up the towers. Which indicates that in the rush to keep its first-mover advantage over the coming Long Term Evolution networks being deployed by the large carriers, Clearwire is cutting some corners. Depending on how well and where Verizon implements LTE by the end of this year, this could come back to hurt Clearwire and Sprint.

    So overall, I think if you live in an area where the coverage is strong, WiMAX is a decent alternative to basic DSL or non-DOCSIS 3.0 cable service. If you don’t have access to either of those, even getting the 3-4 Mbps down speeds via WiMAX is a no-brainer. As a mobile broadband user, however, having a dual-mode device is a nice-to-have option, but isn’t really something I’d go out of my way for, especially since the area where the 4G service is significantly better than my current EVDO modem is small. What the WiMAX test really does is whet my appetite for a day when 4G is more ubiquitous.

  • iPad Launch Spawns a Tablet AppFund

    In the hopes of another platform gold rush, today comes word that there’s already an “AppFund” for developers looking to make applications for the iPad and other tablets. The New York City-based AppFund doesn’t have quite the resume of the Kleiner Perkins-backed and Apple-supported iFund, but it’s jumping in at a time when tablets are top of mind. The “multimillion-dollar” fund will be led by CNET, E! Online, IFILM and Fox Broadcasting Co. co-founder Kevin Wendle, along with Music Nation, Original Signal and Fabric Group co-founder Daniel Klaus.

    Wendle and Klaus are currently accepting applications for release this summer, including apps ported from the iPhone and ones from outside the U.S. They are promising $5,000-$500,000 per investment. A list of what they’re looking for includes most everything but the kitchen sink: enterprise and small business apps, collaborative entertainment consumption, content distribution, social networking, location-based connections including shopping, and everyday utilities.

    Developer funds and bounties come along with any good platform these days; other examples include the Android Developer Challenge and Facebook’s fbFund. And meanwhile, the KPCB iFund, which has been around for a while, is a $100 million project with only six public investments — it’s safe to assume it will soon be updating its criteria to include development for the iPad as well.

    Related GigaOM Pro Research:

  • Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes

  • AT&T Seen Keeping the iPhone Through 2011: Analyst

    AT&T will likely keep its exclusive hold on the iPhone for the next 12-18 months, rather than ending its exclusivity in mid-2010, writes Jonathan Chaplin of Credit Suisse in a note issued today. And because he thinks AT&T will have so much more time as the sole provider of Apple mobile phone goodness, he figures Ma Bell will have the chance to make the last year and half’s network problems a thing of the past in the minds of consumers as it pulls out all the stops in boosting network capacity.

    An improved AT&T experience means consumers are less likely to run to another network at the end of the exclusivity period, leaving AT&T fat and happy and other carriers seeing marginal gains. From the report:

    We believe there is a 75% probability that AT&T keeps exclusivity in 2010. We arrive at this probability through a two step process: First, we try to determine whether the Apple / AT&T agreement expires in 2010. The consensus view is that it does; however, we couldn’t find compelling evidence that this is the case. We conclude that there is only a 50% probability that it ends in 2010. Next, we try to determine whether AT&T bids for another year of exclusivity if exclusivity does end in 2010. We conclude that they would and that they can afford to compensate Apple such that Apple would be economically indifferent. Our approach yields a 25% probability for this outcome. Taken together, we see a 75% probability that AT&T keeps exclusivity for another year.

    However, at the end of the exclusivity period he believes AT&T Apple will make a CDMA device for Verizon and Sprint, which means anyone can can pick up an iPhone if that’s their heart’s desire. Personally, I’m happy enough with the Nexus One from Google  and HTC, and I wonder after four years of waiting how many others will rush out to buy the hallowed iPhone. Chaplin also downgraded Verizon in light of his thesis and upgraded Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry.

    Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

    How AT&T Will Deal With iPad Data Traffic

  • Samsung’s First Phone With The Bada OS Will Be Released As Early As March [Phones]

    Samsung’s barely released details about its new operating system Bada (indeed, for a while there we weren’t even sure it was an operating system), but they’re already talking tough.

    We do know now at least that the first Bada phone will be released in late March/early April, with Samsung’s mobile division President, Shin Jong-Kyun boasting “we seek to make a big success with Bada…The portion of Bada devices will rise significantly this year.” The jury’s still out on whether we actually need another low-end phone OS, with Bada’s biggest rival no doubt being Symbian, but the early screengrabs we saw at least looked…colorful. [The Korea Herald]






  • New, Open Symbian Looks Beyond Smartphones

    The Symbian Foundation said today that it’s completed the migration to open source — and that it’s hoping to take the mobile operating system far beyond smartphones. The transition to open source — which the Symbian Foundation crows is “the largest in software history” — enables developers and organizations to access the code for use on any platform, not just phones but tablets and a wide range of other connected devices, according to Larry Berkin, Symbian’s head of global alliances and U.S. general manager.

    “If you look at eras of computing, from the desktop to the laptop to cellphones, things have grown in an order of magnitude,” Berkin told me. “My anticipation is that over the next 5-10 years you’re going to see all kinds of things. Unit volumes certainly rest in the phone space today, but we anticipate that morphing and changing.”

    Nokia announced plans to take Symbian open source in June 2008, a move that including buying the remainder of the company and establishing the Symbian Foundation. But while the conversion was completed four months ahead of schedule, the OS lost substantial ground during the transition to competing platforms from Apple, RIM and Google. The shifting landscape has led some to question whether it’s already too late for Symbian to capitalize on open sourcing the OS.

    But carriers are already looking to connected devices to shore up slimming voice margins, and a variety of new tablets will come to market this year. It may seem odd to hear that the 10-year-old Symbian platform is targeting the new wave of devices, but it’s a smart move for an operating system that continues to lose market share — especially now that Nokia’s long-term hopes for high-end handsets hinge on Maemo.

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

    Image courtesy Flickr user KhE 龙.

  • BlueKai Brings In Big Money, Siemens Licenses HealthVault, Intellectual Ventures Buys Avistar Patents, & More Seattle-Area Deals News

    Roundup, deals, VC

    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Deal activity picked up a bit in the Northwest this week. But most of the action was in two or three big deals in the software and Internet sectors, with a smattering of deals in biotech and clean IT.

    —Portland, OR-based Coaxis raised $10 million in growth capital from Updata Partners, based in Virginia and New Jersey. The money will be used to help Coaxis’s business, Viewpoint Construction Software, expand internationally. Viewpoint’s software, which is built on Microsoft’s .NET platform, is used by construction firms in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

    —SinglePoint, the wireless software firm based in Bellevue, WA, sold off its mobile aggregation business to Swedish giant Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) for an undisclosed amount. SinglePoint makes mobile marketing software, and its service will help Ericsson expand its reach in text messaging.

    —Bellevue, WA-based BlueKai raised a $21 million Series C round led by new investor GGV Capital, as Erin reported. Existing investors Battery Ventures and Redpoint Ventures also participated in the deal. BlueKai is a data exchange firm that enables websites to sell data on consumer demographics or buying behavior to companies that want to target their advertising more directly and efficiently. The company has raised about $35 million in venture capital dating back to March 2008.

    —Seattle-based Hemaquest Pharmaceuticals raised $6 million in equity financing from undisclosed investors, as Luke reported. Hemaquest is developing experimental treatments for sickle cell anemia and viral-related blood cancers. The company was founded in 2007 and is backed by Forward Ventures, De Novo Ventures, and Lilly Ventures.

    —Seattle-based SEOmoz has formed a partnership with U.K.-based Distilled to hand off its consulting business, which will be worth an estimated $1 million in the first year. As part of the deal, Distilled is opening a small office in Seattle. SEOmoz is now focusing solely on its search engine optimization and Web analysis tools and software.

    —Seattle-based Voyager Capital co-led a $14 million Series B investment in Coulomb Technologies, a startup focused on electric vehicle infrastructure, based in Campbell, CA. Rho Ventures is the other main investor in the round. Voyager Capital seems to be making a push in the “clean IT” sector.

    —Microsoft said that German giant Siemens has licensed its HealthVault technology platform, as Ryan reported. Financial details weren’t given. Germany will be the third country (after the U.S. and Canada) to adopt HealthVault, which enables people to store their personal health records in a secure online account and to share information with their doctors. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) released the technology in the U.S. in 2007.

    —Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures, the invention firm led by CEO Nathan Myhrvold, acquired the majority of the patent portfolio of Avistar, a video-conferencing technology firm in San Mateo, CA. The deal is worth $11 million upfront, with Avistar also to receive a full grant back license that protects its products under these patents.

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  • With Mobile, Firefox Buys Into the Browser and Scorns Apps

    Mozilla is hoping to create a seamless browsing experience regardless of whether you’re accessing the Internet on a phone or PC. But in the era of the native mobile app, is that a strategy that can win?

    Firefox for Maemo, which was released earlier this week, offers some undeniably cool features for Nokia’s new mobile operating system. The browser includes Weave, a tool that syncs bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open browser tabs with your PC, effectively minimizing the keystrokes that can be such a hassle on a phone. And Fennec, as the mobile browser is dubbed, enables users to choose from about 40 other browser add-ons, including an ad blocker and a YouTube interface.

    Those add-ons provide an impressive level of personalization, and they underscore the role that the browsers may eventually fill as a unifying force in the increasingly complex world of smartphone platforms. But the strategy contrasts with the OS-specific model pursued by Apple and a host of others. Even Google — whose business is the web — has followed in Apple’s footsteps with its Android OS and related app store, Android Market.

    For Mozilla to help reshape that paradigm, it will need to create a mobile footprint to match its presence on PCs, where it claims a 24 percent market share — and that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Nokia’s Maemo is on a tiny fraction of mobile phones, and while a Windows Mobile version of the Fennec browser is in production, the browser is incompatible with BlackBerry OS and would likely be banned from Apple’s App Store. That’s why Mozilla’s best near-term hope for traction in mobile lies in an Android version that is expected to follow the Windows Mobile offering.

    If Fennec is a hit with Android users, Mozilla could help mobile evolve beyond a landscape of OS-specific applications and toward a more PC-like environment where apps are largely web-based. That’s a very attractive scenario for developers who have long had to build a different version of each app for each mobile platform, but it’s also a long way off.

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

    Screenshot image courtesy Mozilla.

  • Mobile web may beat out mobile apps in the long run


    Taptu, the mobile search solution, has been keeping an eye on the mobile web — specifically what they’re calling the mobile touch web, which I guess is slightly different from the non-touch mobile web — and has produced a fairly comprehensive report of their findings. Of particular interest is the fact that “there are a higher proportion of shopping and services sites on the mobile touch Web (20%) compared to Apple’s App Store (3.6%).” According to Taptu, this is because “the mobile touch Web provides the opportunity for direct-to-consumer billing.”

    I think it goes beyond just the direct-to-consumer billing convenience, though. You can spend your time and energy and precious development resources to build a terrific platform-specific application, only to sit in frustration as it languishes in some opaque approval process. And then you get to do it all over again on the other major platforms, increasing your development costs and complexity. Or you can spend your time and energy and precious development resources making a terrific mobile-optimized view into your existing web presence. The latter choice allows you to target and receive visits from multiple mobile devices, both current and those in the works. It also allows you to push out updates that are immediately enjoyed by all your users, without requiring them to download the updated app to their device.

    My buddy Chris recently decided to write a mobile-friendly admin plugin for the blogging software he uses, rather than try to write a dedicated iPhone app. As he points out, “this plugin works on iPhone, iPod Touch, the Palm webOS and Android phones.” And it’s something that’s available for use now, without any approval delay.

    I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to create what amounts to an alternate mobile admin as a native app. There is very little, if anything, to be gained from doing that. On the contrary there is much more to gain by making something like this into a well designed web app.

    I think Chris is on to something; and I think we’ll see a pretty healthy adoption of touch mobile web sites as our devices continue to mature.


  • Ericsson Buys SinglePoint Biz

    deals, Mobile, Software

    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Bellevue, WA-based SinglePoint, a mobile software firm, announced it has sold its mobile aggregation business to Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) for an undisclosed price. The assets will give the Swedish giant connections to mobile operators that will bolster its text messaging reach in the U.S. SinglePoint is focused on mobile marketing and advertising; its messaging service enables publishers, brands, and ad agencies to connect with mobile subscribers. The company also announced that Gowri Shankar has been named CEO. Shankar succeeds Rich Begert, who has led SinglePoint, formerly called Wireless Services, since 2004.

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