NTT DoCoMo Buys Stake in UI Middleware Supplier.

"Japan-based mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo has announced that it will form a business and capital alliance with Tokyo-based user interface middleware provider Acrodea to embed Acrodea's products in its handsets."

Jason Langridge: Presentation for MS SCMDM.

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Michael Gartenberg - Death of the Smartphone.

"There's simply no good definition of a Smartphone. Any definition is either going to exclude devices that clearly are part of the category or include devices that should be left off. In our last forecast in the US, we did not use the term at all and instead used a set of overlapping categories with hierarchal super-set of features. So you'll hear me talk a lot about Media and Entertainment Phones and Productivity Phones. But for me, the smartphone is dead!"

What's Apple's Enterprise iPhone Play?

"For weeks rumors have swirled that Apple may miss the February delivery date of the iPhone SDK. Today the company sent out a media advisory announcing an event March 6 at Apple headquarters. The Apple e-mail said the focus of the event would be the iPhone road map including the SDK, new enterprise features and a 'Software Update.'"

Sprint Writes Down Nextel, Posts $29.5 Billion Loss.

"... the company made some money, but things aren’t all that great for Sprint. Bloomberg reports that it is the fifth-largest loss among S&P 500 companies since 1990. In other words, there have been four other disasters bigger than this."

Ian Fogg - Mobile Web vs Applications/Widgets.

"The number of mobile platforms in the market now or soon is, and I'm sure I'm not listing all of them:

• Nokia's Series 60.
• UIQ.
• Windows Mobile Professional (v6) / Window Mobile 5 Pocket PC.
• Windows Mobile Standard (v6) / Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone.
• J2ME.
• Brew.
• Google Android.
• Apple iPhone / iPod Touch (announcement due any day now on the SDK).
• Palm OS.
• Yahoo! Go Widgets.
• Nokia Widsets.
• Blackberry.
• Nokia Internet Tablets (OS2008 vs OS2007 etc).

And, worse, within most of the above handset platforms, there are different versions of each platform which leads to issues for application developers. Plus, many users will have no idea what platform, precisely, is on their phone as the mobile industry chooses not to communicate those details, and so users have little clue about which applications will work on their phone model."

1 billion phones sold globally in 2007.

"Worldwide sales of mobile phones ended up surpassing 1.15 billion units in 2007, a 16% increase from 2006 sales of 990.9 million, according to figures from Gartner Inc."

What's a Normob?

"Normob = Normal Mobile User.

Basically a non-geek, non-mobile industry person who wants to use their handset to make calls, send SMS's, take some photos and maybe play a built-in game. Maybe they use the MP3 function, and occasionally they'll Google on the phone to cheat in a pub quiz. But someone who doesn't know what a smartphone is, and doesn't care. Not interested in 'finding' things, downloading applications, using GPS, changing the softkeys, customising the menus or anything else. Someone probably on prepay, and who chose the phone either because it looks nice, or it's an update of their old one.

About 90% of people, in other words."

Mobile Opportunity: Mobile applications, RIP.

"Summary: The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices. The problems are so bad that the mobile web, despite its many technical drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new functionality to mobiles. I think this will drive a rapid rise in mobile web development, largely replacing the mobile app business. This has huge implications for mobile operators, handset companies, developers, and users."

Standalone Mobile Apps vs Web Apps on Mobile.

"In particular, the following use cases remain for native (or virtual machine) device applications:

* Pre-installed applications at the factory.
* Pre-installed applications by the operator or other service-provider (eg RIM)
* Pre-installed applications by the retailer or distributor
* Certain markets are a bit more application-savvy (eg the US, with its history of PDA users), although other markets still view installing (or even thinking about) handset software as a geek-only activity.
* Applications installed by enterprises for their end users
* Applications like VoIP that need access to underlyig device APIs and capabilities like codecs.
* Applications (maybe IMS apps) for which carriers are able to design & enforce a complex over-the-air automated download & install process. Likely to only work in situations where the user has a deeply-customised phone, rather than a 'vanilla' device.
* Games, and even then only by certain demographics.
* End-to-end services coupled to specific devices or a limited range, rather than generic handsets (eg BlackBerry, Amazon Kindle)

Bottom line - I totally agree with Michael that web-based applications are becoming much more important relative to 'installed' mobile apps. But I think it's a little early for the obituary, deeply amusing though it is."

Cellular Biz & Its $99 Problem.

"These moves remind him of the crazy 1990s, when Sprint, MCI and AT&T fought over long-distance minutes by offering lower prices and thus slowly destroying their ability to make money to support their bloated infrastructure. It’s pretty much the same situation here — but the pain is going to be felt much sooner."

Mobile device admin options leave IT shops wanting.

"Microsoft does not mention direct support of non-Windows handheld devices, but it has formed a partnership with mobile services company Enterprise Mobile Inc., out of Watertown, Mass., which offers integration services between the Windows Mobile OS and other platforms.

Symantec Inc. (Altiris), LANDesk and Novell Inc.'s mobile management products support Windows Mobile, Palm OS and RIM's BlackBerry. No vendor has the ability to support Apple Inc. iPhones, which are going to grow in popularity in enterprises, Mann said.

There is also Sybase Inc.'s suite that supports Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, but not BlackBerry, and Computer Associates that solely supports BlackBerry.

IT shops do not have much choice in device selection at this point, however. For the most part right now, the choice is up to employees, with IT left to figure out how to support iPhones, Windows devices, BlackBerrys, Palms and others."

Price War! Telcos Swoon As Analysts Chop Estimates.

"Underlying his call: worries that the introduction of new all-you-can-eat flat rate pricing plans from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile will trigger 'a wireless price war.' He’s also worried about macro factors. "

Mike Rowehl: Why I Don’t Care About LiMo.

"I don’t care because LiMo doesn’t seem to be an open source project at all. It’s a consortium meant to steward communal intellectual property and license rights... I’m not saying that LiMo isn’t a great effort. It might drive down the cost of manufacturing handsets and drive significant innovation back into Linux. But the project is really aimed at device manufacturers."

Users taste mobile outsourcing.

"Determined to utilize mobile applications to improve operational efficiency, food chain Au Bon Pain is taking the outsourcing route to save time and money in getting wireless tools into its employees' hands.

Faced with the prospect of managing the enterprise mobility equation on its own, from device acquisition to applications development, the company of more than 200 bakery and sandwich shops decided to hire an outsourcing specialist [Enterprise Mobile] to handle almost every aspect of its strategy...

At the core of the company's strategy is the development and distribution of a proprietary business management application delivered over Microsoft's Windows Mobile architecture."

Rumor Mill: Intel investing $2B in Sprint/Clearwire.

"Rumors are circulating once again that Sprint Nextel will spin off its Xohm WiMAX broadband unit and form a joint venture with Clearwire. The Street.com is reporting that the deal between the two firms will include a $2 billion investment from Intel Capital."

DotMobi database to help mobile developers.

"DotMobi will publish a list of specs for virtually all phones on the market to make it easier for developers and encourage more mobile development... Unlike the PC market, where most computers and widely used browsers comply with accepted standards, mobile phones each have different specifications and attributes. Developers must tweak their applications and content for different phones, even those running the same operating systems, so that the content fits onto the phone screen and so that applications work properly on phones that might not have certain capabilities.

In the U.S., the same phone might even have different requirements based on the operator that sells it, since service providers sometimes disable features. That makes it hard for developers to build applications that can be used by a very wide population of phone owners."

WDSGlobal launches DeviceUpdate, the mobile industry's 'first' fully managed, pay-per-use FOTA service.

"WDSGlobal, in partnership with... InnoPath, has today announced the launch of DeviceUpdate, the mobile industry's first fully managed, pay-per-use FOTA (firmware over-the-air) service. As a hosted solution, including full firmware management, testing and update delivery, DeviceUpdate dramatically lowers the cost of entry for organizations looking to benefit from FOTA capabilities."

Companies abandon LiPS for LiMo.

"Several more members of the mobile Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) are switching allegiance to the LiMo Foundation, this time including board and executive committee members, indicating that LiPS is losing steam... LiPS and LiMo operate in addition to the Open Handset Alliance, the group Google started with its Android mobile software platform. Some companies have membership in both OHA and LiMo. So far, there isn't any indication that Google might try to align its efforts with LiMo."

Meanwhile, Microsoft Buys Danger.

"If this acquisition was made to keep Windows Mobile one step ahead of Android, it was a smart move. (Of course, the irony here is that one of Danger’s founders, Andy Rubin, is now working at Google and is the man behind Android). If Microsoft is going to use Danger as its entry into the mobile device business, the chances that it will keep losing money in its hardware division are dangerously high."

Modu Revealed.

"[Modu] is a tiny modular phone that can be slipped into different device 'jackets' -- like an MP3 player, a GPS device, a bigger cell phone, car stereo, or a digital camera. It will launch on October 1 with mobile carriers in Russia, Italy, and Israel. There are no plans for a U.S. launch at this point.

You can think of Modu as an expanded SIM card. It can make a call, send text messages, and hold a contact list -- the bare minimum required to be a mobile phone. That is why it is so small -- about the size of an iPod Nano. Consumers will be able to carry it around and stick it into different device jackets, depending on the functionality they want. In a camera, for instance, Modu can be used to send pictures over the wireless network."

Motorola Announces Management Solution for WiMAX and Mobile Devices.

"Motorola, Inc... today unveiled its next generation NBBS device management system. With the new 5.0 version of NBBS, Motorola has extended its industry leading device management solution to serve wireless carrier needs – enabling broadband customer premises equipment (CPE), femtocell and mobile device management for WiMAX, GSM/UMTS and CDMA operators. With the new version of NBBS, carriers can accelerate the introduction of new services and devices."

InnoPath Software Announces Major Initiatives to Accelerate Deployment and Use of MDM.

"At the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, InnoPath Software... will introduce three major initiatives that will accelerate the deployment of MDM globally. Through programs that deliver advanced customer care, enterprise device management, and the removal of barriers to MDM adoption, InnoPath is driving the global uptake and rollout of mobile device management services."

Build-to-order cell phone store launched.

"A company called zzzPhone offers cell phone handsets that you can customize during your order on their Web site -- just like you do when buying a PC from Dell. You choose a 'base model' and color, then hand-pick components like GPS, high-rez camera or additional storage."

LiMo Foundation to Launch Phone Platform in March.

"The LiMo Foundation will publish a beta version of the software’s APIs (application programming interfaces) today so that developers can begin writing applications to run on it. The API’s will remain beta versions because there may be minor changes made to the software before it is launched in March.

The LiMo Foundation is focusing on phones’ middleware so mobile phone manufacturers and operators can write their own user interface and content applications...

LiMo is in competition with Google’s Android code, which is supported by the Open Handset Alliance. This year could see the opening shots of a battle for market share between the LiMo foundation and the Open Source Handset Alliance."

Google’s Android Is Already Delayed.

"Google’s Android mobile operating system is already hitting snags. It is not even out of the gate yet, and the software development kit that programmers need to create applications for Android is being pushed back a few weeks. Because of this delay, the deadline for the $10 million Android Developer’s Challenge is also being pushed back a month from March 3 to April 14."

Red Bend Software Selected by ZTE Corporation to Enable MSM for WiMAX Devices.

"Red Bend Software... today announced that it has been selected by ZTE Corporation, a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, to provide device management and firmware over-the-air updating software for ZTE's mobile PC modem and home gateway modems for WiMAX networks."