Category: Mobile

Citrix’s GoToMyPC, among the most widely used applications for controlling remote computers, has always had a glaring hole: an inability to connect to Mac systems from anywhere. That’s changed with a free version of its remote control software for use with Macs and is favored by many users and IT administrators. LogMeIn is also Apple-friendly enough to offer a remote control application that works on iPhones and iPod touches. WebEx’s PCNow also offers iPhone control of remote Mac computers. (Citrix still doesn’t offer a version of GoToMyPC for the iPhone.)

GoToMyPC is available for $19.95 a month for use from one computer; the plan for two computers runs $29.95 a month. Businesses can take advantages of volume pricing deals, which vary. You can watch a demo of how GoToMyPC works here.

LG says it’s betting heavily on Android to help the handset maker build its smartphone business, a move that contrasts starkly with last year’s vow to make Microsoft’s Windows Mobile its primary operating system. But in doing so, LG joins a small army of fellow manufacturers that have shifted their focus away from Microsoft’s mobile OS — among them HTC , Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Palm — and, with the lone exception of Palm, toward Android. And the revelation comes on the heels of rumors that the launch of Windows Mobile 7 may be pushed back yet again, to 2011.

In the meantime, as the mobile skies continue to darken over Redmond, we’ve compiled a few ideas that could get Microsoft back in the game:

• Make Windows Mobile free to manufacturers. That’s a strategy our friend Chetan Sharma examined more than a year ago; since then Microsoft has continued to lose market share as open-source OSes gain traction in mobile. Making WinMo free — but not open source — might encourage some manufacturers to at least reconsider moving away from the platform.
• Acquire (or adopt) another operating system and ditch WinMo. Building a mobile OS from the ground up is a Herculean task, but Microsoft has the deep pockets to pick up a newer platform and throw WinMo on the scrap heap. While rumors of a takeover of RIM seem outrageous given the price tag, Microsoft could pick up Palm’s webOS for substantially less. And while Microsoft has historically feared Linux — upon which webOS is based — it last year began indicating it may be softening its stance regarding open-source software.
• Build a top-notch app store designed for business users. Consumer-focused mobile app stores have quickly become a kind of Moroccan bazaar where users are confronted with a dizzying number of offerings on the cheap. Microsoft — like RIM — could set its Marketplace for Mobile apart from the crowd by combining high-end enterprise and productivity apps with a small library of the best entertainment titles.
• Make Windows Mobile 7.0 a worthy competitor with a focus on the enterprise. Mobile malware is sure to cause more problems as the popularity of the iPhone and Android-based devices continues to surge. In addition to making WinMo more user-friendly, Microsoft should position it as an ultra-secure platform designed to ensure the safety of mobile data for high-end executives. To sweeten the deal, maybe it should give out a free golf shirt with every WinMo device sold.

As we’ve said before, it may simply be too late for Windows Mobile to re-emerge as anything but a niche play for a small number of business users. If the gang in Redmond has begun taking mobile seriously, though, it should consider some of these ideas as a way to regain relevance in the increasingly competitive smartphone space.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: As Windows Mobile Stumbles, Which Smartphone OS Will Seize the Lead?

Nokia  yesterday extended support for its Ovi Store to its N900 via a firmware update, enabling users of the Maemo-based gadget to browse the shelves and download applications. It’s a move that may finally help the manufacturer score the carrier deal it needs to gain traction with its flagship device in the U.S.

The N900, which is Nokia’s first device to run the Linux-based Maemo 5 operating system, debuted late last year to positive reviews (which Om took as a sign that the Finns were beginning to get things right). Nokia has staked its future to Maemo — at least on high-end devices — in an effort to better compete with Apple’s iPhone, RIM’s BlackBerry and the Android OS. But while the N900 is supported by T-Mobile USA’s 3G network, the carrier doesn’t subsidize the gadget, leaving it with a price tag of $550-$700 — far out of the range of most consumers.

As Kevin noted over at jkOnTheRun, the store is a substantial improvement over the handset’s embedded Application Manager, which requires users to add software repositories in order to download new apps — a time-consuming process that many mainstream users don’t know how to do. While the selection of Maemo apps in the Ovi Store is still pretty thin, that is sure to change as Nokia expands its portfolio of Maemo-based devices later this year and beyond.

Nokia’s carrier relationships have never been its strong suit, but support for the Ovi Store may just be enough to entice T-Mobile to pony up some cash to defray the cost of the N900 and give it more mass-market appeal. And that would go a long way toward helping Nokia get back in the game in the U.S.

In-post image courtesy Flickr user SpeednutDave.

When I spoke with Google’s mobile boss, Andy Rubin, he said that Google would be happy to sell about 150,000 Nexus One devices. That number, he said, would be enough for the Google Phone to get in front of a majority of American phone buyers who might want to take a look at it. Well, let’s just say a fraction of the job might be done. According to Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile application analytics company, Google may have sold about 20,500 units of the Nexus One, which if you read my review is the best Android phone on the market.

In the past, Flurry has been fairly accurate in giving guesstimates as to first-week sales, thanks to its relationships with 10,000 app developers. They estimate that the “Nexus One was outsold by Droid by more than 12 times, myTouch 3G by 3 times and iPhone 3GS by a staggering 80 times.” Of course, Google didn’t spend a lot of money on marketing — that isn’t part of the plan — as Rubin explained to me.

Cannibalization may also be playing a role as the Nexus One competes against the myTouch 3G for any new T-Mobile customer. In effect, sales are now split between the two handsets. And while Google, in an effort to avoid channel conflict with T-Mobile, appears to have set the direct-to-consumer price for the handset at over $500 dollars, the high price point combined with the fact that the handset is only considered an “evolutionary” improvement over previous Android devices, indicates that Google did not take the steps to maximize first week sales. (Flurry Press Release)

I think 20,500 Nexus Ones sold might be a tad on the high side, considering Google has been giving away the phone to its employees and has seeded the market with giveaways. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Google carries on pushing this device in the coming months. The company is experiencing a backlash over customer service issues and more recently about confusion over service cancellation charges.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:
Google’s Mobile Strategy: Understanding the Nexus One

Verizon Wireless next week will begin requiring a minimum $10 data plan with some new feature phones, according to information obtained by Boy Genius Report. The move not only appears to mark the carrier’s most expensive data plan yet, it could be a sign of things to come with LTE. Verizon declined to confirm the report to GigaOM.

It appears that users who buy one of nine phones — dubbed “3G multimedia” handsets — will have to sign up for one of two data plans: 25MB a month for a whopping $10 (that’s 40 cents a MB) or an unlimited option that will reportedly replace the current 75MB plan for $30 (also 40 cents a MB). That’s right, Verizon thinks 1 MB is worth slightly less than a 44-cent postage stamp. The plans are substantially pricier than AT&T’s $15-a-month unlimited web add-on for feature phones  — which, of course, is optional — and follows  moves by both Verizon and AT&T to require data plans with all new smartphone purchases.

More importantly, the requirement and suggested data plans may signal Verizon’s plans to raise data fees for users on the LTE network it will begin to deploy this year. Verizon last week said LTE users will incur a basic subscriber fee plus usage charges based on bandwidth consumption. If the rumored price hike is any indication of what it will cost to use the 4G network, the carrier may not ever have to deal with the kind of congestion issues that AT&T has suffered due to the iPhone simply because no one will be able to afford it.

Image courtesy Flickr user abbyladybug.

Google on Tuesday announced that it will be supporting uploads of many more file types on Google Docs, and is ratcheting up the size of allowable individual uploads. There are also new online storage options. The moves are aimed at both enterprise and individual users.

According to Google product manager Vijay Bangaru:

“Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You’ll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year.” Google Docs users will now be able to upload and store photos, movies, music and many more file types. Combined with shared folders, Google is positioning the the new upload and storage options as a potential replacement for USB drives and other fixed storage options commonly used to share files between computers.

As seen on its Enterprise blog, Google is aggressively positioning Google Docs as a replacement for Microsoft Office in enterprises. Organizations including electronics manufacturer Sanmina-SCI and the city of Los Angeles have recently converted thousands of users from Office to Google Docs, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt has called enterprises the company’s “next billion-dollar opportunity.”

Google also potentially faces backlash from users as it releases its Chrome OS later this year, due to its lack of flexibility with working with data locally. It will require data and application storage to take place in the cloud, so it’s in the company’s best interests to make its handling of file types and storage as flexible as possible online. The company’s latest moves may also fall in line with the long-term GDrive strategy that Google is reported to be focused on, surrounding online storage. Look for more file-type support and increased cloud storage options as Google gets closer to the launch of Chrome OS.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Social Media in the Enterprise
Google Chrome OS: What to Expect

Forrester issued an optimistic report today claiming that the economic downturn of the last year and half is over, and forecasting that tech spending in the U.S. will grow by 6.6 percent in 2010 (though not as fast as the firm originally forecast back in September.) Now that growth rates have stopped falling, the beneficiaries of the hoped-for rise in fortunes will first be the server makers, followed by communications vendors and software providers.

The recovery will be a function of spending on the part of companies that need to upgrade their equipment for the first time in some 18 months, a lessening of the overall economic gloom, easier credit thanks to a more stable financial market and a new wave of technology arising out of the addition of connectivity to everything. From the report:

With these four factors looking positive, we expect that the 2010 tech recovery will be much stronger than the economic recovery. Measuring nominal GDP and tech investment on a year-over-year basis (as vendors measure their revenue growth), we forecast that in 2010 US business investment in technology goods will grow by 6.6% in Q1, 6.3% in Q2, 9.6% in Q3, and 8.6% in Q4 — more than twice as large as the nominal GDP growth rates of 2.6%, 3.4%, 3.4%, and 3% for the same quarters (see Figure 8). That will be a recurrence of the pattern of growth from Q4 2007 to Q2 2008, when tech investment also grew at almost twice the rate of growth in nominal GDP. The tech boom that started in late 2007 and early 2008 will be back on track.

Let’s hope we’re not entering another bubble, perhaps one tied to adding connectivity to everything. Already we have more e-readers than the market can handle. Add to this an influx of iPhone clones,  3-D television (GigaOM Pro, subscription required), smart grid funding, tablet frenzy and the potential for huge increases in connectivity costs that might derail such innovations before most people ever get to try them, and I’m sure that amid the good news there will still be some bad.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Lepiaf.geo

Google’s Nexus One phone is a heap of fun to play with, but so far in the U.S. the only 3G network you can access it on is that of T-Mobile. There are two issues at play here: the underlying technology a cell-phone network runs on, such as HSPA for 3G or EDGE for 2G, and the frequency the radios in the device use to communicate. In the case of the Nexus One, it uses the 900MHz, 1700MHz and 2100MHz frequency bands for 3G data and the GSM 850MHz, 900Mhz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz bands for 2G. Because the T-Mobile 3G network in the U.S. is listening for 3G data in the 1700MHz and 2100MHz bands, it’s the only U.S. network with which the Nexus One phone can communicate.

AT&T’s 3G network listens for phones transmitting 3G traffic in the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands, which the Nexus One cannot do. All it can do is send 2G traffic in those bands, so it does, making a slower data experience for those using the Nexus One in Ma Bell’s mobile network. As the world moves to services like Long Term Evolution, which carriers will roll out this year and will be widespread in 2012, it will be easier to share devices across networks, but frequency bands will still be an issue.

There’s no denying Android’s momentum: Droid sales are strong, the Nexus One is drawing positive (if not fawning) reviews, and the operating system is quickly expanding beyond phones to tablets as Google works toward its vision of the Androidification of everything. But the land of Android isn’t always wine and roses for consumers, some of whom are sharing Google’s growing pains in mobile. And while such hiccups may have been predictable, they’ll need to be addressed as Android begins to get legs with mainstream users. In just the last few weeks:

• Users of the new Samsung Galaxy have learned that they’re not in line for an upgrade to Android 2.0, which first came to market with the Droid a mere two months after the Galaxy became available. The revelation highlights the double-edged sword of open-source software, which is fertile ground for fragmented versions of the OS from different manufacturers and carriers. And as Sebastian pointed out last week, questions are beginning to emerge about just how open Google is with Android given that the Nexus One runs version 2.1 while the Droid still runs 2.0. Those scenarios can leave consumers in the dark regarding which version they’re using — and what kind of update they can expect.
• Predictably, Google has experienced a rash of complaints from customers as it takes on the role of mobile retailer. Message-board comments were being posted almost by the minute by Friday afternoon, according to one report, as consumers tried to get information ranging from T-Mobile USA’s upgrade policies to technical help. Google, in turn, encouraged Nexus One users to call HTC or T-Mobile — a suggestion that may have irritated Google’s partners.
• A rogue Android Market app was identified that tried to glean bank log-in details from users. The offering was disguised as a legitimate banking application but — in a twist on an old Internet ploy — was an effort to get people to divulge their log-in information. While such an app could make its way into Apple’s App Store — which is notoriously, if arbitrarily, policed — it underscores the downside of the less-regulated Android Market.

No player in the mobile space bats 1.000 when it comes to customer service, of course, and Google will surely experience many more headaches as it continues to expand beyond search and advertising into the world of mobile retailer and operating system developer. But wireless consumers now have several attractive options when it comes to smartphones and the software that runs on them. Early adopters may not mind helping Google iron out the wrinkles, but as Android goes mainstream the company will have to convince users it’s not the wild, wild West of the smartphone space.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Lisa Brewster.

Earlier this morning, when I got on a plane to visit Orlando, Fla., I thanked my stars when I found out that I was on a Delta flight with GoGo in-flight Wi-Fi. I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m. to get to the airport and as a result was behind on my emails, tweets and blogging. A live connection would allow me to do it all. Once the plane was at cruising altitude, I signed up for the year-old GoGo service via a 30-day pass that cost me $30. Being the first one to sign on, I enjoyed a decent speed for the first 30 minutes or so, at which point the connection became unusable. GoGo became Oh no!

Why? Because more than two dozen people are sharing what is essentially a 3-megabit connection. I’m getting download speeds of 390 kilobits/second at best, and the upload speeds are even worse. I could handle slow speeds if the latency wasn’t so dismal; in various tests it ranged between 165 milliseconds and 275 milliseconds. I wonder how GoGo is going to offer movie downloads on its pokey little network. The arrival of LTE-based wireless broadband could change everything, of course, but I’m not holding my breath.

And therein lies the Achilles’ heel of in-flight broadband — for GoGo in particular. As more people start using the service more often, the end-user experience is going to degrade. And because GoGo uses cellular connections for backhaul, it can’t really go faster than the speed of cellular networks, which are notorious for their lack of latency. I think as more and more of our applications start demanding a semblance of “symmetric” broadband, services such as GoGo will start to lose their usefulness.

OK then — back to reading. This Wi-Fi thing clearly isn’t working out.

For most of the first decade of the new century, we all talked about the emergence of location-based services. These services, leveraging GPS chips, were going to revolutionize the world. I remember hearing numerous pitches that envisioned Starbucks offering coupons when you walked by the store. But the future, it seemed, was taking its own sweet time, with the LBS dream constantly being deferred. Fast-forward to today — thanks to new services such as Geodelic, Where and FourSquare, we’re beginning to see that mythical future become an actuality. (Related: our posts on Geodelic, Where)

If 2009 was the year when “geo” became a buzzword and gathered momentum, then 2010 is going to be the year when location-based functionality is going to become commonplace — from mobile apps to consumer devices, even to web services are all going to be geo-enabled. Like me, one man who has been patiently waiting for the future to arrive is Ted Morgan, chief executive of Skyhook Wireless, a Boston-based company that provides location-based service as an infrastructure. His company keeps close tabs on the location ecosystem. (Related: “The Dawning Age of Social Navigation“)

Last week when we were chatting about the industry, Morgan pointed out that he was “surprised how many people were talking about location.” That’s a polite way to say that location finally got buzzy. Or maybe that’s how it seems to me, given that I have been writing about location for nearly a decade. Morgan pointed out that slowly and surely, location has “become part of the mobile nervous system.” (Related: “State of Location Apps“)

Agreed! I think that’s why I’m confounded by some of the offerings of startups that have cropped up. Ask any of the mobile industry insiders and they all say that enhanced location and location-related APIs will become core offerings of major platforms — be it iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or the web. Twitter’s decision to buy Mixer Labs, parent company of GeoAPI, is one such example. (Related: “Who Will Foster the Great Location API?)

Today we “check in” to places, but soon it will become part of the platform, and when that happens we’ll shift focus to applications and services that build upon the concept of checking in. Imagine using the Flixster app in a movie theater, which automatically checks you in when you watch “Avatar” at the IMAX Theater in San Francisco and then offers a 140-character review. Or an UrbanSpoon app that automatically checks you in at the greasy spoon of your choice.

As Morgan explained — we’re going through a phase in the mobile ecosystem where folks are getting excited about location-specific applications. Eventually, all apps will have location-based functionality built in. For now, it seems all the industry is abuzz about apps such as RedLaser, Foursquare and SCVNGR. Investors are happily investing millions of dollars into location-based services such as Gowalla, Outside.in and Hot Potato. (Related: “Why I Love Foursquare” and “Hot Potato Turns Events Into Social Streams“)

Morgan, who in the past has been pretty prescient about location-based services, believes 2010 will see the emergence of two major trends that are going to gain traction in years to come:

• Location-based ads will become mainstream as advertising and the mobile web become location-aware.
• Brands will start to use location-based apps to drive sales and marketing efforts.

These two topics were hotly discussed at our Mobilize 09 conference in September. We’ll be keeping you posted about location-related developments as the year unfolds. Both Liz and I are ramping up our coverage of location and mobile apps. If you want to chat with us, drop either one of us an email: om + tips at gigaom dot com or liz + tips at gigaom dot com.

Paris Aerial View: Photo Courtesy of Naserversiontwo via Flickr.

Related from GigaOM Pro:

Free company profiles/analysis: Apple, Google, HTC, Nokia
For GigaOM Pro subscribers: “Surveying the Mobile App Landscape” (Subscribe to GigaOM Pro for $79 a year.)

Verizon’s pricing for its next-generation Long Term Evolution Network will likely involve a base subscriber fee plus usage charges for the bandwidth consumed on devices that need a cellular connection, Verizon CTO Dick Lynch told the Washington Post. So the question now is whether the pricing model will resemble that of cable services, with a high base rate and then smaller charges for premium channels, or that of a utility bill, which see users pay a tiny charge each month and then a set rate for each kilowatt consumed. Or will it be closer to that of existing cellular pricing plans, complete with high base rates and punitive overage fees?

Also, how will the subscriber be billed for myriad connected devices? I’ve talked about carriers and consumer device makers looking at personal hotspots such as the MiFi to enable consumers to subscribe to one plan while still providing cellular connectivity for multiple devices. Yet Verizon showed off cameras embedded with LTE, which would seem to require a separate subscription from a consumer.

Whatever Verizon does, the announcement isn’t a surprise given that Lynch said eventually the wireline side of Verizon’s business would moving toward usage-based billing as well. Although at the time he held the cell phone industry up as a model for what usage-based billing for wireline service might look like. Perhaps the LTE plans will be a model for all broadband billing in the future, especially since wireless carriers are desperately trying to move away from flat-rate pricing (GigaOM Pro subscription required) amid a data tsunami.

I like the idea of proving a true metered service for mobile networks (for more on what I view as a true meter, read this), and given how competitive mobile data access could be across multiple cellular providers, Wi-Fi and WiMAX, I think we could actually get reasonable pricing.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user this lucid moment. In-post image courtesy of Flickr user meddygarnet.

As day two of CES unfolds, lots of innovative new products and initiatives are showing up, including as-yet-unseen concepts for netbooks and mobile displays, numerous type of tablets and more. Here are some of the most notable debuts.

Lenovo and others are demoing portable computers equipped with new PixelQi display technology.  These LCD displays operate in two modes — a normal color mode like most laptop displays and a non-backlit mode that allows viewing in bright light. Once the backlight is turned off the display is viewed in a black-and-white mode like that used in traditional e-ink readers.

Yahoo has announced that it’s releasing a kit to allow developers to create their own TV widgets. It’s aiming to put “ConnectedTV” widgets on living room media devices, Blu-ray players, and cable and IPTV set-top boxes.

Rovi (formerly Macrovision) arrived at CES this week armed with its new TotalGuide digital programming guide (formerly “Liquid”) and a slew of new content partners, hoping to win over the hearts and minds of CE manufacturers looking for a way to integrate traditional TV content alongside broadband video. Check out NewTeeVee’s take.

ASUS has debuted a number of new notebooks and netbooks. Its EEE PC Seashell KR Collection features glitzy designs done in collaboration with designer Karim Rashid. The pink-and-black systems run Intel N450 processors, are 802.11n-ready, and have up to 250GB hard drives, but it looks like the cases are the real selling points. ASUS also showed off a concept netbook that unfolds into a big-screen tablet, and there were lots of other interesting portable computers shown.

Meanwhile MSI is demoing a dual-screen netbook prototype with touchscreen features and no physical keyboard. The 10-inch screens are capable of 1024 x 600 resolution, and a displayed keyboard provides tactile feedback as you type on it.

Ford’s new MyTouch platform, which will appear in the 2011 Ford Edge, puts an 8-inch touch-screen in the center of a dashboard. It provides for navigation and climate controls and more. You can also plug in a 3G modem and connect to the Internet. GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d) also has an analysis of Ford Sync, a new communication and entertainment platform for cars that responds to voice commands.

Dell has showed off its first-ever tablet, based on the Android OS, with a 5-inch screen. It joins numerous other tablets, including an HP-branded one that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer displayed during his keynote, and another Android-based tablet, with a 7-inch screen, from Motorola.

And Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced last night that the company is bringing the Moblin mobile Linux operating system and the Moorestown chip to smartphones. He showed the LG GW990 phone running both and performing complex multitasked chores. LG and Sprint also unveiled new Lotus Elite and Rumor Touch smartphones. The Lotus Elite can play voice mail messages without the user having to open up the phone.

MSI netbook image courtesy of Gizmodo.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer disappointed those looking for news about Windows Mobile at CES this week, leaving onlookers to speculate that the company will unveil version 7 of the aging operating system at Mobile World Congress next month in Barcelona, Spain. But I’m beginning to think that without a new operating system, it’s already too late for Redmond to get back in the smartphone game.

Microsoft’s winnowing importance in mobile is well documented, of course. WinMo has lost nearly a third of its market share over the last year, according to recent figures from Gartner, and AdMob traffic indicates that traffic from the OS on the wireless web has dropped off 70 percent during that time. Meanwhile, the iPhone continues to gain traction worldwide, Research In Motion is seeing strong demand for the BlackBerry and Google has built on Android’s substantial momentum with its own branded handset (which, notably, is manufactured by HTC — a company whose focus is clearly shifting from Redmond to Mountain View). To make things worse, Palm will soon make its webOS-based handsets available through both AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

WinMo 6.5 drew scathing reviews following its October launch, making it clear that the OS desperately a complete overhaul. But the mobile world has moved very quickly in the last year, and WinMo may simply be outdated beyond repair. Microsoft might regain its relevance in mobile with a brand new OS — I think Palm’s webOS is a great fit (GigaOM Pro, sub. required) — but anything less is likely to seal the company’s fate as a niche enterprise player. And that’s a lonely place to be in a smartphone space that is now all about the consumer.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Tijs Zwinkels.