Can We Close The Book On MVNOs Now?

"And, now, Helio has basically given up the ghost as well, selling off to Virgin Mobile -- about the only mobile phone MVNO that has managed to hang in there... So, with this, can we officially declare the era of the MVNO over? Or will we see breathless reports a year or two from now from new analysts in the space claiming a great new market in 'branded' mobile phone services?"

Lost cameras "phone home" to catch thieves.

"GadgetTrak, of Beaverton, Oregon, sells software that can be loaded onto any of those devices. If a BlackBerry, for example, falls into the wrong hands, the software grabs information from the new user's SIM data card and e-mails it to the rightful owner. With an Apple Mac computer, the software instructs the built-in camera to take video of the thief and sends to the owner, along [with] information about nearby wireless networks."

also see: GadgetTrak AT&T Enterprise Certified
"Through rigorous testing on many different devices, AT&T has approved GadgetTrak’s anti-theft software for mobile phones for use on their network, as well as for their Enterprise customers."

Mobile Linux groups join forces.

"On Thursday, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum plans to announce that its activities will be folded into the LiMo Foundation starting in July."

Barron’s Online: Microsoft To Buy MobiComp, Mobile Data Backup Provider.

"Microsoft (MSFT) this morning announced plans to acquire privately held MobiComp, which it describes as 'a company that helped pioneer technologies allowing the backup and restoration of mobile data and mobile posting of social content to Web sites such as Facebook.'"

also see: Microsoft To Buy Mobile Backup Company, MobiComp
"The acquisition price was undisclosed. MobiComp is based in Braga, Portugal. Some of MobiComp’s partners include Ericsson, Gemalto, HP, mFormation Technologies, Nokia, and IBM."

Symbian, iPhone & the New Mobile Reality.

Om Malik writes: "Over the past year or so we’ve seen the emergence of many platforms. Here is a list of some (not all) of the platforms vying for a dominant position, including my personal odds, based on talks with mobile industry insiders."

Handset sales sluggish thanks to weak economy.

"Specifically, Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff cut his handset shipments to the lowest level in six years. He said that mobile phone shipments will grow no more than 6 percent this year, down from his original forecast of 11 percent at the beginning of 2008."

Nokia acquires Symbian.

see: Symbian Goes Open Source - Courtesy of Nokia
"Nokia have today announced that they will be acquiring the remaining 52% of Symbian they don’t own and will be releasing the complete Symbian platform under the Eclipse open source license. Nokia have also announced the creation of the Symbian Foundation, which is an alliance of mobile vendors and application providers that any company can join... Current mobile handset market share statistics depend very largly on who you ask and which classification is used, but the ranking is currently approximately:

* Symbian (60%)
* Windows (15%)
* RIM (10%)
* iPhone (7%)"

also see: Nokia and Symbian to become one; royalty-free, open source roadmap
"This disruption is now creating three centres of gravity around mobile software: LiMo, Android and the Symbian Foundation. Watch this space, as we analyse the aftershocks of the announcement to the industry."

also see: Check Mate for Google’s Android?
"Hard on the heels of yesterday’s announcement from Google that the launch of Android would be delayed from the second quarter to the fourth, is a potentially huge one from Symbian that could make Android completely irrelevant when devices eventually do start to ship."

Google’s Android Hits Snags With Mobile Carriers.

"Google is finding that launching an entirely new cell phone platform is taking longer than expected. When it first announced its Android mobile operating system, Google said the first Android phones would be available during the second half of this year. Now the mobile carriers that signed up as Android partners are pushing out their launches, with only T-Mobile still trying to get an Android phone out by the fourth quarter of this year. All the other carriers are pushing out their deployments until 2009... By the time Android phones seriously hit the market next year, there will be more than 10 million iPhones and many more Blackberries and other smart phones to contend with."

Nokia to acquire Plazes.

"Plazes is a start-up providing context-aware social-activity service. The company headquartered in Zurich is quite small but its team has a good expertise in adding the elements of 'place' and 'time' to social networking."

Study says businesses aren't convinced of iPhone yet.

"Our CIO survey suggests that corporate iPhone use will be driven by employees purchasing their own iPhones, rather than company-wide deployments... If this persists, it may ultimately limit iPhone penetration into the corporate space."

Analyst: 3G iPhone not ready for the enterprise.

"The issue has to do with the lack of on-board encryption on the iPhone compared with competing smartphones like RIM's BlackBerry and Microsoft's Pocket PC. Another glaring gap has to do with device management, of which Apple appears to have no credible solution at the moment."

Imagine: Giving TerraNet-enabled cellphones to 20% of the world.

The blog owner speaks!

Today I read that 80% of the world's population lives within range of a cell phone network. (source: AT&T CEO looks toward mobility for growth at CNET)

A while back I read something that suggested cellphones could help end global poverty. (source: Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? at the New York Times)

A while back I also came across a reference to a company named TerraNet. TerraNet has built an application for "areas without landline connection or mobile-network coverage, where mobile phones equipped with TerraNet technology will form their own network and communicate directly with each other."

Now then, I suspect that the 20% of folks living out of range of a cell phone network are living in poverty. I worry about poverty. And so I ask myself: why not give 20% of the world's population a mobile phone equipped with TerraNet technology? What might happen then?

Just something to think about.

Alcatel-Lucent buying Motive for $67.8M.

"Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent, a major manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, has had a relationship with Motive over the last three years. The two companies jointly develop and sell remote management software for home networking systems to about 40 clients."

Telco 2.0: Apple’s iPhone: Beware of Poisonous Pips.

"Apple have resisted calls to allow what are known as ‘background apps’ on the iPhone. Letting applications run continuously in the background can suck up battery power, deplete memory resources, and generally make things treacle slow. Instead, Apple have launched a Push Notification service to wake up the phone, and you have to initiate that request through an Apple platform.

Operators should tread very carefully here. Apple could easily offer to integrate with the paging feature of host networks (or kludge it with SMS) to increase the efficiency of this process. The telco then has no monopoly over reaching to the user and activating the phone using the paging service. Apple can bunch notifications from many applications, since they control the whole application ecosystem — and future presence-driven apps are likely to be very chatty. And you don’t have to be too bright to realise that one of the most likely things to be pushed to a phone in future is an advert, mediated again by Apple."

New Nokia phones targeted at enterprises.

"But it's not the design which will be Nokia's greatest asset when competing for enterprise dollars. Instead, built-in hardware support for encryption and the ability to switch between personal and work e-mail at the push of a button will make it possible for the company to one up competitors... The encryption of both the device memory and the memory card will help companies protect its phones without losing performance, and the built-in chip can also be used to store certificates and keys. In this field Nokia is years a head of the competition."

Mformation and Bridgewater Systems Partner to Support Seamless Service Delivery over WiMAX Networks.

"Through this integration, WiMAX operators will be able to automatically detect, provision and manage WiMAX devices over the air using industry-standard IP and OMA DM protocols, thereby reducing service introduction costs, enabling new flexible supply channels for WiMAX devices, and immediate subscriber access to WiMAX services. This integrated solution is being implemented with a tier-1 WiMAX service provider in North America."

Apple's App Store vital to iPhone success, say analysts.

"Developers set the price for their wares -- or if they want, tag them as free -- and receive 70 percent of the revenues; Apple keeps 30 percent but provides all the marketing muscle and the bandwidth.

iPhone owners will be able to reach the App Store directly via either a cellular data connection or a Wi-Fi hotspot, pay for (if necessary), and download an application. In addition, users will be able to reach the App Store from iTunes on a Mac or PC; the computer will later push the downloaded applications to docked iPhones."

Skydeck: Will It Be The First Billion Dollar Social Graph Company?

"Skydeck. It's a mobile web startup built on the premise that 'you ought to be able to manage your cell phone records the same way that you manage your email.' The second big idea of Skydeck is that your true social network is hidden in your communication records...

Your true network is not the list of people that you 'friend' on Facebook or LinkedIn; it's the people that you call and text and email and IM every day. Those friends are not created equal. The ones you speak to most often are important, and the guy that you exchanged one email with in 2001 is not, even if he tags you on every new social site online. Skydeck maps your true social network using your cell phone data. Straight away you can see who you call most often, who you need to call, and who never calls you back. If you make a lot of phone calls, this can change your behavior."

Seven Overlooked iPhone 3G Details.

[the entire post by Carl Howe at the Yankee Group is worth reading; summary follows...]

1. "More upfront payments to Apple in exchange for no subscription payments...
2. In-store activation required in the US...
3. Multiple carriers in some countries...
4. iPod touch is poised for a price cut...
5. Apple’s toe dip into running an iPhone NOC... Apple is providing a centralized push application service that can present badges, sounds, and text alerts on any number of phones at the same time. What Apple has actually created here is a poor man’s Blackberry Enterprise Server and Network Operations Center, complete with the associated single point of failure too. It’s too early to know how much developers will embrace this service, but it in essence makes the iPhone a cloud computing client.
6. Multi-mode location-based services...
7. Jobs served notice that the Apple iPhone is not just a consumer device, but is Apple’s third big developer platform, following the Mac and the iPod. And while it isn’t yet a third of Apple’s revenue, just wait. It will be — and sooner than you think."
   

InnoPath Extends Mobile Device Management to WiMAX Networks.

"InnoPath Software... announced that it has extended its iMDM mobile device management suite to include support for WiMAX devices. This announcement marks the second phase of InnoPath’s network-agnostic MDM evolution strategy, as previously iMDM was the only MDM server supporting CDMA and GSM from [the] same platform."

Five mobile social networking services you should get to know.

"Here are five fledgling mobile social networking services worth watching.

* Meet Now Live
* sniff
* Trapster
* Whrrl
* Xumii"

Jobs unveils 3G, $199 iPhone.

"Pointing to enterprise interest in the iPhone, Jobs said new features include Microsoft Exchange support out of the box, providing push e-mail, contacts, and calendars as well auto-discovery and remote wipe. The phone, once updated, also offers location-based services that could, for instance, be used to allow a person to find the people in their address book based on location."

related: The New iPhone Is Apptastic!

Apple Relaunches .Mac as MobileMe: Sync Everything.

"Apple is relaunching its .Mac service as MobileMe. The service syncs emails, photos, contacts, calendars, and other information between your iPhone and different computers. It works not only on Macs, but also on Windows. It will cost $99 a year, with 20 Gigabytes of online storage. The service, which will replace .Mac, will be available in early July."

New iPhone unveiled today?

"But the widely praised and wildly publicized gadget is still a work in progress, and most experts say it has far to go before it really transforms the wireless industry. Nokia, for instance, sells more phones in a week than Apple sold in 10 months, and experts say the iPhone's high price limits its appeal."

Location-Tracking Startup Sense Networks Emerges from Stealth To Answer the Question: Where Is Everybody?

"The company ingests billions of data points about people’s location from cell phones, GPS devices, WiFi, and even taxis. The company also collects geo-location data from everyone who downloads Citysense, or any future app (although, the company considers the data to be yours, and you can delete it from the database at any time).

Using machine-learning algorithms, it then indexes all of this location data and ranks places in the real world much like a search engine ranks Websites. But instead of looking at Web links, it looks at how much data (i.e., people) are moving between locations. The company makes money by selling this data in the aggregate to professional investors and financial institutions, who are keen to find out things like where people are shopping."

In Japan, Cellphones Have Become Too Complex to Use.

"Steve Jobs' new iPhone, expected to be unveiled Monday, is headed to Japan by the end of the year. But the device's famed ease of use may actually be a turnoff in Japan, where consumers want features, not simplicity."

Microsoft wants to turn your phone off.

"Microsoft has applied to patent something they’re calling 'Device Manners Policy', or DMP. Business owners can establish these policies, emitting them to your device. Don’t want anybody taking pictures in your museum? Place a 'No Photos' RFID in the exhibit. Don’t want any bleeps and bloops going off in your movie theater? Set the 'No Noise' policy on the DMP server...

Business owners have a right to request patrons follow reasonable guidelines, but this is a giant leap outside of that realm of authority. It’d be like a business owner duct taping a patron’s mouth. First thing I’d do with a DMP enabled device is attempt to disable the receiver; if all else fails, I’d fix it with a hammer."

Carlo Longino at MobHappy tells us about his Wednesday morning...

"Ewan’s post about his ongoing love-hate relationship with Nokia reminded me that I wanted to tell you all about my Wednesday morning: two and a half hours spent installing the Nokia N-Series PC Suite and Software Updater, and using them to backup my phone, upgrade its firmware, and restore it. Good times!"

Cisco Makes an Enterprise MDM Play.

"Cisco has launched a heterogeneous mobile device management capability for enterprise IT departments, becoming only the second major vendor, after HP, to target corporate users rather than carriers with such technology. While Cisco's first target will be companies running its data to and from phones over its WLAN infrastructure, the technology is equally applicable to mobile/cellular networks...

Unlike HP, which offers its MDM server as a dedicated device, Cisco plans to offer Secure Client Manager, when it starts to ship in the first half of 2009, as software to sit on the 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine (MSE), an appliance for installation in the corporate network, which starts shipping next month. Other modules planned in what the company is calling the Cisco Motion architecture are:

- Context-Aware Software for location-specific information applications, including things like temperature, time, pressure and movement, which will start to ship at the same time as the MSE;

- Adaptive Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (wIPS) for defense against rogue APs and endpoints, as well as malicious activity and malware on the network, and

- Mobile Intelligent Roaming for the seamless handoff of dual-mode mobile devices between WiFi and cellular networks. These last two are scheduled to ship only in the second half of 2009.

The MSE appliance has prices starting at $19,995, which go up according to the number of devices supported, and the software packages, when they come out, will have similar pricing models. It has not announced pricing for the software modules, but does say that the entry-level price of the MSE will provide support for up to 18,000 clients or locationing tags used with the Context-Aware package."

InnoPath’s Customer Service Portal Receives Product of the Year Honors.

"InnoPath’s Self-Care Portal is easy to use and comes with ready to use services for firmware updates, device protection, and device configuration, giving the operator a new front-line weapon for simplifying services for its subscribers. By extending interactive device management functionality to this new audience, InnoPath provides a fast and efficient way for mobile network operators around the globe to resolve support calls, thereby increasing subscriber satisfaction and reducing churn, in addition to enhancing the productivity of their customer care organizations... The solution may be deployed by the operator in support of both consumers and enterprises."

Seybold: Intel's WiMAX Exit Strategy?

"Rumors are swirling around the analyst community that Intel is losing its patience, and money, with WiMAX. Some believe that it is looking to pull the plug on its involvement as it has done with other wireless initiatives. Now comes a statement by Sean Maloney, Executive Vice President, General Manager for Sales and Marketing, that LTE and WiMAX should be combined into a common 4G standard. While he is not the first one to suggest this--it was suggested by Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone more than a year ago--it is clear to me that this is the beginning of Intel's exit strategy for WiMAX. Once again, an industry that has grown up around Intel is likely to be stepped on as Intel heads for high ground."

FSTC announces m-payments standards initiative.

"Not-for-profit research organization the Financial Services Technology Consortium announced an initiative to study the various mobile payment technology platforms, promising it will make recommendations on an approach best suited to enable the future introduction of an interoperable m-payments infrastructure."

also see: Financial Services Technology Consortium: Technology Vendors

Verizon Wireless buys Alltel; Becomes largest Wireless Operator ahead of AT&T.

"The rumors are true. Verizon Wireless announced this morning that it will purchase Alltel Corp. in a cash merger valued at $28.1 billion... This will make Verizon Wireless the No. 1 wireless operator in the U.S. with nearly 80 million subscribers. Verizon currently has more than 65.7 million customers while Alltel has about 13.2 million subscribers in 34 states. AT&T will move to the No. 2 position with about 71.4 million customers."

Barron’s Online: Verizon Reportedly In Talks To Buy Alltel For $27 Billion.

"There are reports this afternoon that Verizon (VZ) is in talks to buy Alltel for $27 billion."

Brick-and-mortar kiosks sell mobile content.

"Although mobile content is something consumers can buy and download from virtually anywhere, Chinese start-up Duo Guo is banking on a different approach by selling such content through specialized kiosks in brick-and-mortar retail stores...

Each Duo Guo kiosk is staffed by a salesperson, who can help consumers as they browse for content. Once customers make their selections and pay, the content gets beamed to their phone via Bluetooth... Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Tesco are among the stores that have signed up to host Duo Guo kiosks in China, while the company also operates its own standalone stores in subway stops and Shanghai’s busy Zhong Shan Park area...

While it may seem counter-intuitive that consumers would want to buy mobile content in a physical setting, many Chinese consumers are reportedly wary of buying online, fearing that they'll be overcharged or end up paying for the wrong thing. There's also apparently a fair bit of uncertainty as to which products will work on which phones... While its cost structure is higher than those of the online services, Duo Guo also enjoys new ways to generate revenue, such as by collecting fees from mobile application companies for introducing customers to their services, he added."

InnoPath Software and NTT DOCOMO Sign License Agreement to Evaluate OMA-DM.

"InnoPath... today announced that it will be delivering to NTT DOCOMO an OMA-DM compliant Server Simulator. Based on OMA-DM (Open Mobile Alliance – Device Management) standards, the Server Simulator will be used by DOCOMO to evaluate OMA-DM service."

Mobile Security Market Wide Open.

"Symantec Corp Chief Operating Officer Enrique Salem thinks that the security market is worth a few hundred million dollars a year... Currently, most hackers aren’t interested in breaking into cell phones because there are such a variety of operating systems. "

Open standards drive growth of phone backup service provider.

"SIMchronise, a mobile technologies company based in Ireland, recently launched a mobile data backup service called PhoneBackup.eu that is built on the Open Mobile Alliance's Data Synchronization and Device Management standard (a.k.a. SyncML)."

Video: Google Android Live Demo.

Android to offer iPhone-like App Store.

"Google will offer an iPhone-like app store for Android, giving developers a central means of distributing applications on its soon-to-be-open-source mobile platform. At least, it looks that way."

Qualcomm follows Nokia into services arena.

"While not fully accepting that it was mimicking Nokia, Qualcomm executives have outlined plans for the company that will target increased revenues by working with operators at a data services and platform level."

Intel to re-enter mobile-phone market.

"Two years after selling off its XScale mobile processor unit to Marvell, Intel says it is now preparing to re-enter the mobile-phone market. Intel's CEO Paul Otellini told the Financial Times that as mobile devices become more powerful and adoption [of] computer-like applications rises, Intel is in a position to make inroads into the mobile-phone market."

Cisco announces open platform for mobile enterprise.

"The Cisco 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine, which will ship in June, is designed to give its enterprise IT customers one platform that will tie disparate wireless networks, mobile devices and applications into a single platform so that these businesses can manage their employees' mobile devices and applications across both wireless and wired networks, whether that's a large cellular network or a WiFi network."

related: Cisco Unveils Open Wireless Product to Boost Mobile Presence
"Cisco has for years sold network gear and desk phones, but lacks a presence in cellphones. The platform will allow corporate IT department to manage the security and services for employee cellphones. One such feature is the corporate management of phones switching between the office Wi-Fi network and the cellular network on the outside.

'Cellphones is what the rest of the world is basing its future on, not the office desk phone,' Dulaney said."

Google CEO: Mobile advertising to generate more revenue than today's web.

"In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the next major growth wave for Google in terms of search engine marketing is the mobile Internet... He predicted that within a few years, mobile advertising would generate more revenue than advertising on today's web."

Mobile device security an issue nobody wants to address.

"A new report shows that IT managers are reluctant to take responsibility for managing mobile devices that are increasingly being used with enterprise applications... IT managers need to begin implementing mobile device policies to ensure that devices are properly secured against data breaches when they are lost or stolen."

Apple could be looking at solar power for mobile devices.

"Apple hopes to tap into the use of solar power on mobile gadgets. A patent application detailing a method of integrating solar cells behind the LCD of mobile devices has turned up--and while Apple itself was not listed as an assignee, the parent was filed by Apple employees."