In this issue

• I buy you, you buy me. We’re a mobile family!
• Google Android may be late? Oh no!
• How does Apple cut these deals?
• Rim loses share value while doubling earnings
• The mobile influence on society
• Masthead

I buy you, you buy me. We’re a mobile family!

Acquisitions and mergers (which are acquisitions that don’t specify which party is which) are all the rage in the news this week. To start, last week Verizon announced that it would buy Alltel. Alltel now has revealed that it made unsuccessful attempts to buy Sprint/Nextel, AT&T, and T-Mobile in an effort to establish the national presence that it knew it needed. Tip of the day: never attempt to swallow something bigger than your head. http://tinyurl.com/5jd37d

This week the acquisition news was headed by Nokia’s bid to acquire the 52% of Symbian that it did not already own, then to transform it into an open source platform with the backing of the Symbian Foundation, a group of ten companies that will cooperate in defining the product. Popular analysis paints this as a big win for the world’s largest handset maker, positioning them to effectively compete with Google Android, LiMo, Apple, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Ben Wood, analyst with CCS Insight, sees the move as a shrewd response to growing threats from other providers of mobile phone software. "Over the last ten years, Symbian has grown into the dominant supplier of smartphone operating systems, but it's being challenged by a variety of new contenders," said Wood. CCS believes that the involvement of nine other companies on the Symbian Foundation's board offers an elegant way to keep other Symbian licensees committed to the platform. And ironically, today's move might even make Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Google's Android look overly proprietary and dominated by a single player.

But the Wireless Federation’s “News” did some of its own analysis and came up with these seven things you should know about the Nokia Symbian deal:

1. It’s going to be a long process. It will be years before Nokia can migrate all the associated properties and assets into the Symbian Foundation and then make its offerings available under the Eclipse public licence model.
2. No night at the Opera. Despite all the talk about open-source development and freedom to add or differentiate on a platform, the Symbian Foundation’s offering may end up with just one target browser for smart phones.
3. It’s all about “simplifying the software supply chain.” The biggest issue with current mobile application software and service development is “fragmentation” of the platform. There are too many implementation paths, experts say. “We need to simplify a software supply chain and extend more value to our own products,” said Nokia’s Williams.
4. Is Facebook coming to mobile handsets? Ideally, implementing popular applications such as Facebook in the open-source model promoted by the Symbian Foundation should be simple—at least in theory. Although Nokia’s Williams noted that the Facebook example is hypothetical, he added, “It should be very interesting.”
5. The power of semiconductor companies. According to Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer at MultiMedia Intelligence, “The major chip vendors will want to support every major OS as they cannot afford to be excluded from a significant group of new handset designs.” Obviously, OS vendors need semiconductor company support. However, he added: “The chip vendors will not define the success. Chip companies will define protocols and standards to enable efficient implementations.”
6. Why is this open source mobile platform better than others? The foundation is “grounded with handset vendor DNA. This will be its greatest strength, Dickson said. “The handset vendors are highly motivated to insure that they control their own destiny and thus have a vested interested in success of the Symbian Foundation.”
7. What’s the bottom line? The Symbian Foundation is a huge development for the handset business. Dickson said “the implications for today are much less relevant than the implications for tomorrow.” He sees the deal as indicative of “the movement of handsets to replicate the PC model.” This may not be exactly what all stakeholders wanted to hear, but the truth is that differentiation will be less about proprietary implementations. “Handsets will be standard platforms that run a standard OS,” said the analyst. “Differentiation will occur in form factors and applications that run on the OS.”

http://wirelessfederation.com/news/seven-things-about-the-nokia-symbian-deal/

What is Microsoft’s stake in all this? "Microsoft is absolutely going to have to justify the cost (of its operating system)," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at technology research firm Current Analysis."It's going to have to either prove the value or potentially lower the licensing fees itself." For its part, Microsoft doesn't expect the licensing fees to change, noting that the development costs for a phone running on a new operating system would be much higher, said Scott Rockfeld, group product manager of the company's Windows Mobile division. Plus, despite its current licensing fees, Microsoft still owns the leading operating system in the U.S. smartphone market. http://tinyurl.com/4vseye

It’s official: Virgin will take over Helio. Virgin Mobile USA’s purchase of fellow MVNO Helio L.L.C. allows Virgin to evolve beyond its low-ARPU customers to higher-paying subscribers, as well as gain a sophisticated handset portfolio, improve its debt levels and cut a better deal with network operator Sprint Nextel Inc. http://tinyurl.com/3mrqkq

It must be in the water. The mobile Linux trade bodies have agreed to merge. The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum has announced that its activities and membership are to be folded into fellow Mobile Linux forum, the LiMo Foundation from the end of this month. In a joint statement, they said that this pooling of efforts and resources reflects the industry-wide trend towards unification of Linux-based mobile telephony platforms and will serve to accelerate the emergence of common mobile Linux specifications and implementations. http://tinyurl.com/5473ub

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest wireless operator, said it's in talks with Middle East carriers including Qatar Telecom QSC, Emirates Telecommunications Corp. and Saudi Telecom Co. as it seeks to expand overseas. http://tinyurl.com/499j9a Not to be left out of the overseas acquisitions base, Microsoft announced it has agreed to buy Portugese mobile software company MobiComp. Microsoft's head in Portugal, Nuno Duarte, said Microsoft intends to turn MobiComp into a research and development unit in Portugal after the acquisition. http://tinyurl.com/3u92rl

And can a company buy itself? Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, owner of 55 per cent of Verizon Wireless, told the Financial Times he would like full ownership of the US mobile operator Verizon Wireless. Verizon Communications has stepped up the pressure on Vodafone to sell out of Verizon Wireless, their mobile joint venture, saying that the second largest US telecoms company intends to be “the hunter” in future industry consolidation. http://tinyurl.com/6r5qn5

If anyone else is for sale, I’ve got a buck two eighty-five in the bank I’d like to invest.

Google Android may be late? Oh no!

Google, Inc. is learning that changing the cellphone industry isn’t easy according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Google now says that the handsets won't arrive until the fourth quarter. And some cellular carriers and makers of programs that work with Android are struggling to meet that schedule, people familiar with the situation say. T-Mobile USA expects to deliver an Android-powered phone in the fourth period. But that launch is taking up so much of Google's attention and resources that Sprint Nextel Corp., which had hoped to launch an Android phone this year, won't be able to, a person familiar with the matter said. Google responded clarifying that it wasn’t by the second half of the year that it expected to launch, but in the second half and December is still in the second half of the year. http://tinyurl.com/46t28b

How does Apple cut these deals?

According to the boutique investment firm Oppenheimer & Co., AT&T will underwrite as much as $325 for every iPhone it sells in subsidies. That makes Apple’s take on the devices between $525 and $625 per phone sold when the iPhone 2 is released next week. According to iSupply who did a preliminary virtual teardown of the device, the Bill of Materials for the iPhone should come in at around $175. If my math is correct, that comes out to $350-$450 profit on every device sold. Of course Apple has agreed to forego their earlier concession of a percentage of the monthly billing, but AT&T still figures it will make back the cost over the course of a two year contract at $70 a month, about $10 higher than the earlier contracts. http://tinyurl.com/5begl9 and http://tinyurl.com/3et5pg

Rim loses share value while doubling earnings

Yes, Research In Motion’s stock fell about eleven and a half dollars or over 8% in after hours trading Wednesday after posting a first quarter earnings that only doubled over the first quarter a year ago--$482.5 million from $228.2 million to be exact. Why? Well that sacred bully the analysts predicted that the company would earn $.85 per share instead of the measly $.84 the company posted. RIM projected earnings of $.84-$.89 per share for the second quarter. Now if you ask me, it’s the financial analysts who should lose value. But no one asked me.

The mobile influence on society

T-Mobile unknowingly provided housing for a homeless man for six months this year, but police evicted the squatter last week. A man in Boulder, CO has been arrested after he was found to have been living on the roof of a T-Mobile retail store. He has apparently been living there unnoticed by T-Mobile staff since last December. The police report says that they spotted Luke Barrett, 25 climbing onto the shop roof at around 10:40pm last Friday and suspecting a burglar, called for assistance. Following a brief attempt to evade the police, he was arrested without resistance and told the police that he is homeless and had been living on the roof for some months. http://tinyurl.com/4w8sso

A 3-year-old girl the used simple song lyrics her mother taught her to call 911 and get help for her unconscious mother when Jessica Eaves fainted due to a medical condition called vasovagal syncope (vayzo-vay-gal SIN'-kuh-pea). When the 24-year-old and 3-months-pregnant Eaves fainted, her daughter Madelyn picked up her mother's BlackBerry phone. She pressed 911 and the green button and was connected to a dispatcher. She was able to give the dispatcher enough information, including what cars were parked in front of her house for emergency aid to get their quickly. http://tinyurl.com/4wmpoh

31 states have considered some form of cellphone driving legislation. But a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety should come as no surprise. Teen drivers tend to ignore bans on using phones and texting while driving, even though they profess to support such restrictions. It’s not a promising revelation, given that teens inherently lack driving experience and tend to be more vulnerable to distractions than adult drivers. Moreover, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of teen deaths, according to statistics cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of course, as we all know, accidents only happen to other people who don’t know what they are doing. I wonder where they learn that? http://tinyurl.com/4ny39k

Finally, in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, China has banned the sale of new mobile phone and Internet accounts during August so carriers can focus on ensuring service for the Beijing Olympics. This is added to sweeping measures including bans on traffic and factory shutdowns to make sure the services are available for the visitors coming for the quadrennial event. But don’t assume that means you will have flawless connectivity if you are among the fortunate who will cheer their favorite athletes in Beijing. China will have plenty of 3G highspeed access in August. But it will be based on the locally produced standard Time Division Synchronous CDMA and will not have the standard HSDPA and HSUPA of the rest of the world. People using WCDMA phones or laptop cards will get shifted down to 2.5G Edge speeds. So you won’t be able to buy phone service while you are visiting, but you won’t be able to use your own phone at high speed either. http://tinyurl.com/44zbz5 and http://tinyurl.com/3mrqkq

Masthead

There was more, but I already said “Finally” and besides, I’m on vacation.

This is issue #19 of Going Mobile. The stories that I refer to are all among the 200+ publicly published articles I scan each week, but the commentary is entirely my own and does not represent the views, opinions, or official position of Microsoft or the Windows Mobile management team or any of the sites or companies referenced herein. You can refer stories to me or make other comments below. I'd like to make this better each week. 

Thnx,

Nathan Everett

In this issue

· WiMAX? Why not!

· New devices in the market

· Can you find me now?

· Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

· The end of small talk

· Masthead

WiMAX? Why not!

This week merits an update and revisit to WiMAX technology since it was the historic timing of the world’s first Global WiMAX Forum. In case you need a refresher on exactly what WiMAX is, suffice it to say that it is a wireless broadband technology governed under IEEE 802.16e-2005. Wi MAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, and in our context it is cited as a contender for 4G mobile communications with data rates as much as 2 to 12 Mbits/s depending on the distance and line-of-sight availability. It’s chief competitor in the 4G space is Long Term Evolution, a CDMA spec still evolving with estimated first deployments out in the 2010-2012 timeframe. WiMAX deployments in the US are currently being developed by Sprint/Clearwire, and around the rest of the world WiMAX is often seen as an immediate build-out in emerging markets where there is not already a strong wired or cellular infrastructure. Both WiMAX and LTE require full hardware and software retooling on the part of the service provider over either 2.5G or 3G networks.

Now about what’s happening this week. First of all, Sprint/Nextel CTO Barry West, speaking at the WiMAX conference announced that the first Xohm mobile WiMAX deployments will roll-out in September in Baltimore and before the end of the year in Washington DC and Chicago. Xohm is Sprint’s branded form of WiMAX which is now part of the new Clearwire network. In conjunction with the rollout, Nokia will be rolling out it’s WiMAX tablet, a mobile internet device (MID). Originally slated to roll out the network in April, Sprint lost some credibility with the delay, so missing the September date would be serious indeed.

Clearwire, the new organization formed by the combination of Clearwire and Sprint Nextel along with about $5 billion in investment from Intel, Comcast, Google, and others, expects to have some 1.3 million subscribers by the end of 2009 and 4.6 million by the end of 2010. Clearwire CEO Benjamin Wolf made the forecasts at an investor presentation last week, going on to say that he expects the company to have around 31 million subscribers by the end of 2017, representing about $17 billion in revenue. The company is quick to point out that WiMAX will have at least a two year market advantage over LTE roll-outs. What remains to be seen, however, is whether consumer and corporate demand for faster mobile internet will keep up with the technology rollout. Sprint has bet the farm on WiMAX while Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile will not begin building out 4G networks until 2010.

Nadine Manjaro of ABI Research projects that there will be 32 million subscribers worldwide on LTE networks three years after the networks start building out in 2010. She projects that a third of those will be in Asia-Pacific countries while the remaining two thirds are split between Western Europe and the Americas. But will network build-out keep pace with this aggressive forecast for 4G? Well, I suppose that if Apple finally builds a 4G LTE iPhone sometime between 2010 and 2013, that will settle it, eh?

According to WiMAX kit vendor NextWave Wireless, WiMAX installation will be driven by two market forces. The first is developing countries which feature heavily in analyst reports. WiMAX is technology available now to connect the unconnected. But to drive adoption in the Americas and Western Europe, multimedia may prove to be the main battleground. NextWave has set up a join trial with Global Mobile Corporation in Taiwan that will offer next generation mobile multimedia experiences, including mobile TV, interactive media services, and digital audio. Somehow it seems I’ve heard this story before.

Nokia Siemens Networks, another kit vendor, holds a similar view, stating that it isn’t an either or situation between emerging markets and mature markets. “Multimedia is not so significant yet,” said Markku Hollstrom, head of broadband wireless product management, “although once the technology is in place there is nothing to stop innovation.” And we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Here are the links:

http://tinyurl.com/55owqg

http://tinyurl.com/5x6ufk

http://tinyurl.com/5sl24g

http://tinyurl.com/5kmbf3

http://tinyurl.com/42w54t

http://tinyurl.com/699ddq

http://tinyurl.com/6af8do

New devices in the market

Apparently trying to get a word in edgewise before Apple monopolizes all media attention with the iPhone release next month, device manufacturers are announcing products right and left. If nothing else, the hoopla has provided a lot of eye-candy in the technical journals. First we have Hewlett-Packard which announced the newest in its line of smartphones, the iPAQ910 Business Messenger, slated to ship June 30. This new Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional device features a qwerty keyboard below a 2.5-inch QVGA touchscreen. It includes 3G capability and a 3 megapixel camera and GPS. The price given on HP’s U.S. website is $500. The bad news, says Mobigasmic, is the placement of the USB port. It is on the side and not on the end which means it might be hard to find an elegant cradle or dock.

http://tinyurl.com/5tfa2f

http://tinyurl.com/58s2v2

Sony Ericsson has launched what it calls its most advanced camera phone yet. In fact you may have trouble deciding if this is a phone or a camera since Sony Ericsson calls it their C905 Cyber-shot. It has a 2GB Memory Stick Micro and scratch-resistant mineral glass display. It’s built-in GPS allows geo-tagging of photos and navigation support. On the lower end, they announced the 2 megapixel S302 Snapshot. Its ready to go with easy photo transfer via USB or Bluetooth.

http://tinyurl.com/5cy3up

Nokia unveiled two new business phones, the E66 and E71. The E66 is a slider phone and the E71 has a full keyboard. Both will start shipping in July for around $530. "The business market is becoming increasingly competitive and highly segmented so these new products are critical new additions to Nokia's E series line up," said Geoff Blaber, an analyst at research firm CCS. Both phones have 3.2 megapixel cameras and built-in GPS receivers for navigation.

http://tinyurl.com/553ure

LG’s new Decoy, now available from Verizon Wireless has gone to the extent of actually hiding a Bluetooth headset in the phone itself. The tiny headset detaches from the back of the phone when in use and pops back into its cradle to charge when not in use. The phone hit the shelves last week and sells for $180 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract. It includes the carrier’s Vcast Video and Music services.

http://tinyurl.com/553fsk

Not to be left out, cookie-monster Google has taken the wraps off a working prototype of its Android operating system and has previewed a series of applications, (most of which are still under active development), that, the company claims, will "revolutionize" the future of mobile comms technology. Andy Rubin, Google’s Senior Director of Mobile Platforms and father of Android, said that while the number of mobiles globally now exceeds the number of cars, TVs, PCs and internet connections on the planet, the development of the full potential of mobile technology has been hampered by fragmented operating systems. He did not make it clear how introducing another OS would remedy that situation.

http://tinyurl.com/5p7gtq

Finally in device news, Samsung Electronics has expanded its going green initiative by releasing the first phones made from corn-based plastics. The new W510 does not use any heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, or cadmium in the handset either. Samsung plans to expand its eco-friendly handset line-up. This may be a solution to both communication and world hunger.

http://tinyurl.com/55pljy

Can you find me now?

Perhaps the least surprising news of the week was that Google dominates mobile search, according to Nielsen Mobile, with up to 61 percent of the mobile searches in the U.S. during the first quarter. Yahoo! Ranked second with 18 percent and MSN third with only 5 percent. One of the questions that has reported plagued the search guys was whether people would use the same search engine on mobile as they do on the desktop. This apparently answers the question. However, only 40-44% of users reported high satisfaction with the results of their searches. It just goes to show that people will continue to do the same thing that failed before under the belief that the results will be different the next time.

http://tinyurl.com/6ou4ko

Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

Happy Birthday, in all its guises, is reputedly the most sung song in the world. Now a new initiative to text birthday greetings to 91-year-old Nelson Mandela in 20 countries may make it the most texted message in the world. Managed by Mandela’s HIV/AIDS global awareness campaign 46664 and strategically live for 46,664 minutes, all profits received from text charges will go to the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust and other charitable organizations supported by Mandela. If you text a message, you will receive a thank you and a PIN allowing you to view the message online at www.happybirthdaymandela.com.

http://tinyurl.com/6bemg7

Of course, if you are texting that message from Sacramento, California, you may be paying tax on it. Voters living in the city will be given the opportunity to vote on a measure which will extend an existing utility tax that already applies to voice calls from mobile phones, to include SMS messages.

http://tinyurl.com/5mbsaw

While we are peripherally on the subject of Africa, APA-London reports that Africa now has 300 million mobile phone subscribers with a penetration rate fast approaching 30 percent. A highly mobile market that disdains traditional offices, many pay-as-you-go mobile phones are attached to bikes and boats and taken to where the business is. In Uganda these bikes, known as boda bodas, are hooked up with spare batteries and desktop mobile devices to create what are affectionately known as “Bodafones.”

http://tinyurl.com/69ox6v

The end of small talk

Our last article for today comes from Debora Klosky of www.spot-on.com. She claims that the iPhone and other smart devices will make television shows like Seinfeld and the small talk that the sit-com market banks on a thing of the distant past. The intimate conversation now has a third party: the mobile phone. “Web access,” says Klosky, “makes pointless conversation even more senseless, and tough to sustain just for its own amusing sake. No need to wonder if there really aren’t any houses available in Tuscany, as Seinfeld did in one episode. Instead sitting right at the table of the diner, he’d Google Tuscany rental villas, while George, what?, stares into space and plays with the sugar packet?” So much for entertaining conversation.

http://tinyurl.com/5o4blb

Masthead

This is issue #18 of Going Mobile. The stories that I refer to are all among the 200+ publicly published articles I scan each week, but the commentary is entirely my own and does not represent the views, opinions, or official position of Microsoft or the Windows Mobile management team or any of the sites or companies referenced herein. You can refer stories to me or make other comments below. I'd like to make this better each week. 

Thnx,

Nathan Everett

In this issue

· Extra! Extra! Apple invents 3G

· Reactions?

· Palm Centro on track to sell 2 million by year end

· Changing market and changing society

· Proper phone etiquette

· Big brother is watching

· Masthead

Extra! Extra! Apple invents 3G

Steve Jobs’ announcement last week of version 2 of the Apple iPhone makes use of amazing new 3G technology for faster downloads and Internet access. If you weren’t a savvy mobile user, you would think from the media that no one had ever heard of 3G before, or at least that there was no reason to care before the Apple iPhone 2, instead of it being one of the chief criticisms of the first iPhone. Yes, that’s right. Apple brought out the first iPhone after 3G was already in the market, but without support for the technology that most other manufacturers had already moved to.

You might also be under the impression that the iPhone 2 will cost less than the version 1 device. Not so according to Suzanne Choney of MSNBC. She took the time to do the math. The new iPhone with a two year contract comes out costing just a little more than the previous version with the same term at AT&T. This is because the new contract separates the voice and data. The basic voice service will still be 39.95 per month but instead of a $20 data plan for the iPhone, the price has gone up to $30. So increased monthly fees will raise the cost of ownership of the phone instead of lower it.

Apple also agreed to drop its revenue sharing requirement with mobile operators, causing Apple share prices to drop. But, AT&T, subsidizing the phone for the first time, also lost share value after the announcement. And, you will have to activate your AT&T phone service before you leave the store this time around. The phone will not be sold on the Internet (officially) so no new phone will go out the door ready to be hacked and auctioned off on eBay. We’re wondering just how deeply that will cut into the phone sales.

If you currently own an iPhone (one of the old, not-so-shiny-anymore models) you can’t trade up until your two year contract has expired. If you choose to buy a new phone and want to sell off the old one, it will be dead and usable only as a nice, very expensive, WiFi iPod. However, if you choose to buy the old model now and trade it in on July 22 when the new ones come out, AT&T has offered to take those in trade at value less a small fee. There’s no picture here of the new iPhone, because it looks just like the old one, just harder to use.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9717097-1.html?tag=blogFeed

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9964230-37.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121302962502757705.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/10/financial/f142249D00.DTL

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25102522/

Reactions?

Robbie Bach, Vice President of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division had this to say about the remarkable new Apple technology. "We ship lots of 3G phones already on Windows Mobile. ... We will outsell the iPhone. We will outsell the BlackBerry." But, don’t look for those sales figures to show up in any of the stories that compare who is in the lead. According to the press, only Blackberry and Apple are in the race for converged smartphone dominance. That’s because Windows Mobile and Nokia’s Symbian operating systems are used on a wide variety of devices of which no single device matches the volume of iPhone or Blackberry.

Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, sees a new 3G version of Apple's iPhone boosting sales of multimedia handsets. Senior Vice President of Nokia Markets, Anssi Vanjoki, said technological convergence, where consumer electronics, information technology and various internet services are integrating into one platform was happening fast, even as some economies slowed.

Vanjoki said Nokia has estimated the market this year for multimedia handsets, or what it calls converged devices, to be 180 million units.

Nokia is set to launch a touchscreen handset, a prominent feature in the iPhone, in the latter half of the year, Vanjoki said.

The day before Jobs made his iPhone announcement, Sprint and Samsung announced the Samsung Omnia, a Windows Mobile 6.1 device with a touchscreen and a remarkable resemblance to the iPhone. The Omnia boasts 3G, FM radio, GPS, WiFi, and Opera’s v9.5 Internet Browser. To cap things off, the Samsung Omnia will have a 5 megapixel camera and have both video and audio digital recording settings. Already dubbed by Informa Telecoms “Informer,” an iMetoo, the Samsung Omnia promises to be just one of a whole lot of new phones that make Apple look not so unique.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/08/BUPF11383J.DTL

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSL0919267720080609?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10001&sp=true

http://www.betanews.com/article/Will_Samsungs_Omnia_rival_Apples_3G_iPhone/1213032380

If you are still trying to figure out what 3G is, Slate ran a great condensed article that puts in simple terms what the technology is, how it differs from 2G and 3G, and why anybody cares.

http://www.slate.com/id/2193295/?GT1=38001

Palm Centro on track to sell 2 million by year end

Already a popular seller at AT&T with a million units shipped worldwide, Palm announced that the small, compact, Centro device will be sold by Verizon starting this month. The Centro is considered a low-end smartphone with both a touch screen and a qwerty keyboard. Now available from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon for just $99 with a two year contract, the Centro is popular among those who are just moving from a traditional cellphone to a smartphone and are interested in more than music.

Asked when the company expects shipments of the Centro to reach 2 million, Palm’s Sr. Vice President of marketing, Brodie Keast said: "We are confident we will get there in 2008."

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSWEN622020080612?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

Changing market and changing society

When information is available that looks interesting, I like to explore a little bit about how mobile devices are affecting our society.

If recent history is any guide, roughly a third of the people snapping up Apple’s new iPhone are likely to tote it in a purse, according to Laura M. Holson in the New York Times. Citing figures from Neilsen Mobile, a research organization, the number of American women using smartphones more than doubled to 10.4 million, growing at a faster pace than among men.

It could be that, like Carolina Milanesi, Research Director of Gartner Group says, “You are not seen as a geek anymore if you have a smartphone.” Or it could be that the manufacturers have simply woken up to the fact that 71% of the phone plan buying decisions in America are made by women, according to Verizon Wireless, and have started making and marketing devices that appeal to that demographic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/technology/10phone.html?_r=1&partner=MOREOVERNEWS&ei=5040&oref=slogin

Proper phone etiquette

It may be that cell phones are now nearly ubiquitous with over 3 billion in use in the world today, but for many of us, that just means that some annoying jerk behind us on the bus will be talking on it in a voice so loud that if he opened the window he wouldn’t need the phone. Into the breach rides the researchers at Microsoft with a new patent application for digital manners policy, or DMP. Another policy enforcement technology similar to digital rights management, DMP equipped devices would be capable of receiving and applying DMP orders given to them by an appropriate broadcast system. A theater, for example, could enforce all phones being turned to vibrate in the Cineplex.

The legislature, having too little to regulate already, I’m sure will jump all over the opportunity to enforce Miss Manners on the electorate.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080611-microsoft-patent-brings-miss-manners-into-the-digital-age.html

Big brother is watching

If that isn’t invasive of your privacy and freedom enough, then try on this new technology for size. A New York-based startup, Sense Networks hopes to glean location information from phones, taxi cabs and other on-the-move items to determine traffic patterns and uncover consumer trends in the physical world. The company plans to sell the information to hedge funds eager to discover the optimal site for a shopping center, say, or determine which new bar attracts the most affluent clubbers. Users who opt-in to have their phones tracked would also receive an application that allows them to use the information that is gleaned for things like finding out what the biggest hotspot is in town, where the traffic is worst, or where their spouses are going after work. In a general sense, that is. Of course, no personal information is ever collected. It’s all statistical.

http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080609/SUB/770589548/1012/newsletter34

Masthead

This is issue #17 of Going Mobile. It marks the first time that Going Mobile is available outside the halls of the mothership at http://goingmobile.spaces.live.com/. The stories that I refer to are all among the 100-200 publicly published articles I scan each week, but the commentary is entirely my own and does not represent the views, opinions, or official position of Microsoft or the Windows Mobile management team or any of the other product manufacturers or sources cited. You can refer stories to me or make other comments below.

Thnx,

Nathan Everett