This isn’t such a surprising development, as Samsung has been moving this direction for a while. It has limited developer tools available for a few months, in the form of the Samsung Mobile Innovator site. More importantly, in late October Samsung joined the Join Innovation Lab (JIL) - a body founded by mobile operators to overcome fragmentation in the mobile OS, apps and services market. This was a big move. Before Samsung joined (along with three other manufacturers, including RIM) the JIL had been comprised only of operators.

What’s the new platform like?

It’s called bada, which apparently is Korean for “ocean”. The name was chosen for a reason - it is meant to convey the limitless nature of the service. After all, Samsung is part of JIL, so we can expect an overlap between the Samsung SDK and those of other operators and phone makers.

Samsung has held “user-friendly” to be an important aspect of bada. It claims that the UI is easy and intuitive to use, but allows the sophistication required for cutting-edge developers. We can’t actually judge that yet, unfortunately, as the SDK won’t be available until December!

Dr Hosoo Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Media Solution Center at Samsung Electronics said that “by opening Samsung’s mobile platforms we will be able to provide rich mobile experiences on an increasing number of accessible smartphones. bada will be Samsung’s landmark, iconic new platform that brings an unprecedented opportunity for operators, developers and Samsung mobile phone users around the world.”

The bada site is open from today, and the SDK will be shown for the first time tonight at a special event for developers in London.

What we think?

Man, people treat developers so nicely these days. It’s not like before, when being an app developer got you a haughty demeanor and a bag of crusty rinds (if you were lucky). These days it’s all workshops, APIs and dinner engagements. It’s almost like something has changed. It’s almost like manufacturers and operators alike have realised that people are more interesting in the content of a phone than the phone itself, and that developers are the best source of content you could possibly hope to tap.

What’s the plan?

The day after the Q3 losses were reported, releases came from Sprint about how it planned to attract customers next year - a concentration on Android devices, more investment in WiMAX, and it’s very own application store. But today we get the skinny on how the gap is really to be shored up: massive cost cuts across the board.

Sprint has announced that it will have to reduce internal and external labours costs by at $350 million each year - which includes axing between 2,000 and 2,500 employees within the company. That’s “internal”. Contractor and other outside labour will see huge cuts as well. The geographic disposition of the cuts hasn’t been decided yet, but Sprint lets us know in very PC terms that “many impacted positions will be eliminated by December 31, 2009″. Ouch. It’s tough getting fired over Christmas.

What we think?

Sprint has a reputation for being unreliable - and where it may have deserved that in the past, it certainly doesn’t seem to now. Metrics and analysis show that these days Sprint is the most reliable network in the US. Customer service calls have been greatly reduced. But it takes a long time to shake a bad name. The question is whether Sprint can do it before the recurring rumours about it selling up actually come true.

However, seeing as Sprint had almost $6 billion in cash sitting in its accounts at the end of Q3, it’s probably not in any immediate danger. Especially not when it’s being so liberal with the boot.

Transcode?

There’s no such thing as “the mobile web”, really - it’s just a catch all term for those sites and services that have been designed so that mobile users can see and use them easily on a small device. Most of “mobile web” pages are built from the ground up, but services like Mobify allow you to perform automatic optimization to your on-line page so that mobiles won’t have a problem with it. This is mostly achieved by automatically transforming the underlying code of the site into one that is mobile-friendly… or, transcoding.

We’ve had some experience with Mobify. Our own Val Halla created her own mobile site with it, and wrote about her experiences.

What are the updates?

I actually wasn’t expecting to be too impressed by this release, but there are some very good tools added in this update. Google Analytics has been built-in to the Mobify API - so you can get the same level of analysis for your mobile site as you would for an on-line site with Google support. API support has also been added for certain on-line page builders (including GoMo’s own home, WordPress) so that these pages will mobilize even faster than before.

Kevin Woolery, CTO of Jetpack Digital said “I’ve converted sites for mobile in the past, and it has always been difficult. With Mobify, we had a mobile version of VIBE up in no time. I’ll be the first to recommend Mobify to anybody who is looking to get a high-quality mobile presence without having to re-architect their site”.

What we think?

The true benefit in a service like Mobify lies in its speed and simplicity - as GoMo’s Val reported. For someone who isn’t a web designer (and even for some who are) the prospect of creating a mobile-optimized website can be daunting. Mobify won’t provide you with the in-depth mobile functionality that a mobile developer could, but it allows people who don’t have the time or resources to develop their own site/app to get some presence on mobile. And that is worth the price.

What is Nimbuzz?

Nimbuzz is a mobile service that uses VoIP and Instant Messaging to connect you and your friends as cheaply as possible. You can access it over you mobile browser, as a downloadable application or on your computer. The entire service is integrated into your contacts list, so when you search for one of your friends the option to contact them through a cheaper option is right there.

It also integrates with popular VoIP, IM and social networking clients - so you can use Nimbuzz to send a Facebook message to your friends, or Skype or Google Talk or etc. It’s a popular service: Nimbuzz claims to have 10 million registrations, and to be growing at a steady rate of around 40,000 new users every day.

For a closer look at the service, check out our video interview and demo here:

GoMo 1-to-1: mobile communications and the future of Nimbuzz from Cian Gomo on Vimeo.

What’s the news?

The news is called NimbuzzOut. You’ll need to put some money into this one, but a little cash will go a long way - and every other part of Nimbuzz is completely free. You can buy NimbuzzOut Credits at the website. International calls are pretty damn cheap - a call from the US to either the UK or China will set you back 2 cents a minute. The service is available through 3G and Wi-Fi on Symbian and iPhone OS phones at the moment, through more platforms should be support before the start of 2010.

What we think?

Nimbuzz is an extremely convenient service, so I couldn’t help but do a quick price comparison. I had a great experience with Skype recently, phoning my bank in Ireland. I wanted to know how much extra the convenience of Nimbuzz would cost me to phone a landline in my home country.

The answer surprised me. It’s actually cheaper. Not by much, mind you. Skype does calls to Irish landlines at 2.1 cents a minute. Nimbuzz does them for a flat 2 cents. Like I said, not much in the difference. But when something you expect to be more expensive turns out cheaper, it’s always a pleasant shock.

Shazam

Shazam is an app that recognises songs as they’re being played. If you’re in the store and you hear a song that you like, you activate Shazam and it will identify the artist and track. You can even user hum the tune you’re thinking of and Shazam will id it. Then you can tag the track for later purchase. It has consistently been one of the most popular apps on the iTunes stores, with over 10 million users worldwide.

And now it’s time for a big update. But rather than launching “Shazam v.2″, Shazam has released a slightly renamed version of the app with all the updated features called “Shazam Encore”. It’s a stand-alone app, retailing at $5 for download to iPhone or iPod Touch - or there’s the limited free version. What’s new? It now recognises and tags songs faster. A “discover” feature has been added so you can browse music similar to the track you’ve just tagged. And it has an “in-car” mode for when it’s placed in a car dock, that is optimised to more easily tag songs as they play on the radio (presumably so you don’t take your eyes off the road, crash and die).

Geodelic

Geodelic created a pretty exciting new location-based search application that launched this summer. Sherpa only runs on newer smartphone models, and provides hyper-localised responses. It will tell you what the most interesting things within a certain distance of you are - and those results can be filtered by category. One of the more interesting things about Sherpa was that it is one of the few high-end apps released for Android before iPhone. iPhone users can expect to see a free Geodelic app early 2010, but in the meantime, the updated Sherpa 2.0 app is available for Android users.

Geodelic claims the updated Sherpa app is almost twice as fast as the original version. The UI has been simplified, and has been more fully integrated with hardware buttons that Android caters for - so more of the applications functions will be one-click. It also allows more actions to be taken on the hyper-local search results. Making restaurant reservations, booking cinema tickets or accessing Twitter feeds from local retailers will all be built into the app.

Loopt

Loopt is best described as a social mapping application. It combines social networking, location and local search on mobile so that you can connect to both your friends and nearby locations from one app. Loopt will show you on a map which of your friends are nearby, and lets you share plans and locations on the map. Today Loopt launched an upgraded version, mostly centered around the local discovery features. It now integrates content from recommendation service Pulse, updating options for Facebook and Twitter, locally sourced mobile coupons and reviews from Zagat, Citysearch and the Loopt community.

I love my food, so I’m particularly interested in the Zagat deal. Nina S. Zagat, Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Zagat Survey said “we are excited to offer the Loopt community access to Zagat’s top lists and information about special Zagat events in their area. It is our mission to provide consumers with Zagat content wherever they are and whenever they need it.”
 
Loopt is a Blackberry-only app, currently available for free on selected Curve, Bold and Tour smartphones.

iBasis

Here’s an interesting one. iBasis falls into the “silent giant” category of companies. It’s a massive international voice call provider, and has specialised in IP calls (or VoIP, if you like) since 1998. iBasis, for example, carries both IP and legacy voice calls for companies including Skype, Verizon, Vodafone, China Mobile, China Unicom and Telefonica. No lightweights, these guys.

Well, iBasis is getting into the storefront business with a new mobile application called Pingo EZ Dial. The application provides cheap international calls for users of most popular smartphones and operating systems - primarily iPhone, Blackberry, Android and S60 users.

The thing that I really like about this app is that once it’s installed, you don’t have to worry about it again. As soon as your phone detects you are making an international call, Pingo EZ Dial automatically routes it through the iBasis system and applies the cheap VoIP charges. You don’t have to load an app, or enter a code, or anything. You can buy Pingo credit on-line (or through your mobile browser), and it works on 3G as well as Wi-Fi.

Now, I use Skype to make my international calls because it is cheap as hell. I lost my bank card during the week and had to ring my bank in Ireland to cancel it. That 15 minute international call cost me a grand total of 22 cent. But it required making the call from my computer, which was something of a pain. If that same cost-saving could be applied to a completely painless mobile app… this could be a big one, I reckon.

Google buy Admob - another notch on the bedpost?

Google has a list of purchased conquests on its bedpost. The latest notch is called AdMob – the mobile advertising self-service platform actually making a little bit of money.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Google has bought AdMob. AdMob is the classic early adopter in the mobile space that managed to secure a lot of VC money and grow exponentially. It also doesn’t accept porn and so in Google’s eyes does no evil.

Or at least that is the PR scenario.

Without a doubt Google is the big fish in the ocean and quite frankly it is betraying its power with its multiple acquisitions. It hurts me to say that, as I do think AdMob is a good buy for Google. But that is because Google missed the boat on mobile and its services attempts at mobile advertising have been shit. I have said this since 2007.

But the fact of the matter is that Google is a cartel. Or at least it does need to be investigated. Doubleclick was one for online… AdMob for mobile – what about the rest of the competition?

Bing: Will it buy Decktrade? Or even Mobile Discovery to bolster is Microsoft Tag dream?

JumpTap: I thought JumpTap would have been purchased by Google so am a bit surprised as I thought the paid links would have been a match.

Yahoo: It’s the current mobile search and sponsored ad leader? Will it keep this title – I think it will be hard in the US but possible for it to remain the EU king.

Adfonic? If I was a start-up now I would think there is everything to play for. Carve your niche and the rest will follow so Adfonic must nail the UK and Ireland.

Webmoblink? Again this time a mobile and online player with a lot of potential in new markets such as South America and China.

What about the platform players?
Out There Media is the most aggressive player in the platform space at the moment with a Eastern European and Asian strategy. My money is on Out There Media for some kind of buy out in the next 24 months but this time I think it will be from a mobile operator.

Amobee: Amobee got funding from Telefonica and Vodafone but totally screwed it up, gave poor service and everyone hated them. Now with the CMO and every other C out apart from the founders …. can ex-Yahoo Michael Bayle turn it around?

Ad Aggregators:
Smaato: Smaato I think will also be sold to one of the publishing houses. Its brokering services will be vital for the publishing and digital market when the market is ready.

What AdMob did?
What AdMob has done right is grow with a mission. It had a simple strategy. To offer simple mobile advertising to users and nail brands with 100k deals. It had a pay back strategy offering incentives for signing up, cashing out, bonuses for just being there and all sorts.
This type of aggressive self-marketing strategy meant loyal regular users.

If you look at the last year, AdMob was quiet. In fact, bullish PR about the number of ads served ceased as the market got more aggressive. I think this is what made Google tick.

It waited for the economy to be weak. It waited for the downturn and it pounced just as AdMob couldn’t be as bullish as it would have liked to be. I mean 750 million is a steal if you look what prices have been flying around for online social networks. AdMob has clients. Its average high end deal is 100K and its CPC is as high as 0.22 in the UK.

Anyway, back to the point. One thing you can expect from Google buying AdMob is better mobile advertising from Google.

Augmented reality is basically combining meatspace with cyberspace, flesh with flash and skin with SIM.   By combining the technology in your phone with the connectivity of your network, augmented reality takes real life and imposes data over the top.  You never need to be disappointed with real life ever again.   This post over on Mashable has got some pretty interesting pics of the new Wikitude iPhone app, which pulls down geotagged data from Wikipedia and lets you interact with it using your camera, compass and GPS.  Another step towards Johnny Mnemonic then.

The Progress Apama BEP platform will form a crucial part of match2blue’s back-end infrastructure, providing the performance and scalability it needs, as well as enabling its business partners, who will be operating the location-based services to control and monitor their
operations through dashboards.

One example of an application is match2blues’s enterprise grade social solution that mobilises members of frequent flyer programmes globally. Members will be able to connect, exchange ideas, share taxis and engage in real time via a new mobile application.

In another example New York clubbers can use match2blue’s Webster Hall application for finding and meeting like-minded people. Clubs and communities can also push information on scale to the New York party scene via the iPhone application to ensure that new venues or
events are filled to capacity.

Stephanie Renda, Managing Director at match2blue explained, “Real-time information is the lifeblood of the community and opens up a number of lucrative opportunities for our brands and
multi-national clients. Our distinctive technology is based on a matching engine, which can identify offers, information and interests to communities. Now we have added scale to real-time exchange. This means that our reach has increased and we can target the masses with our instant profiling and people matcher technology. Event based real-time messaging will change the way in which we digest information and create a healthy new environment for brands to connect and engage with clients and consumers”.

Kenny Schachter at Webster Hall added, “match2blue allows us to offer something really unique for our customers. Our new iPhone application instantly notifies club goers when someone with similar interests is in close proximity and will reinvent their nightlife experiences by allowing them to take their socialising inside the walls of Webster Hall. Users can connect with like-minded people, and even invite them for a drink.”

Dr. Giles Nelson, Senior Director of Strategy at Progress Software, commented, “The use of
Apama Complex Event Processing to provide real-time information to social networking communities, wherever they may be, is another innovative and exciting use of our technology. This really is taking social networking to the next level and the Apama product offers the scale and performance for match2blue to react to millions of subscribers’ movements in real-time, so transforming their customer offering.”
The Apama platform is used by companies like 3 Italia (the Italian 3G service provider) for realtime visibility into service and billing processes, Royal Dirkzwager (a Dutch Maritime Information
and Service provider), for monitoring and analysis of real-time shipping information, and Boekhandels Groep Nederland – BGN – who introduced the world’s first item-level RFID
implementation).
ENDS

November 2009
Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:

*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.

*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.

You can read more about this deal at www.admob.com/google .

Omar

What we think?
Will Google also acquire AdWhirl - I wonder what happened to that deal. But congratulations Omar and Russell - its a great price and the company really has had a rollercoaster.

Mobile advertising agency,  We love Mobile,  is claiming to be “using rich mobile codes … the first of their kind to be used outside Japan” for a campaign its masterminded for Colombia Records and the band, Passion Pit. Couldn’t see anything particular rich about the ‘Mobile QR’ codes, though.

The code takes you straight to the Passion Pit’s home page and although it has a .mobi URL, the site wasn’t particularly mobile friendly either.

The good news is that the codes will be readable via a whole host of existing mobile handsets. GoMo News tried it with the standard code reader built into a Nokia E66 and had no trouble obtaining the URL buried in the code.

Those that need help with code readers can go here. If you can’t be bothered with QR code readers, you can still text ‘Manners’ to 88600.

The site offers visitors a number of discounts and money-off vouchers. Participants don’t have to download the music online, however. They can be used to buy CDs in independent record stores.

The clever part, however, will be that We Love Mobile will be posting up new codes over the coming weeks - each one revealing a new free track or video.

The most unusual thing about this whole promotion, however, seems to be that the QR code actually forms part of the band’s album artwork. The album is called Manners.

Did you know that Manners is actually the family name of the Marques of Granby? That should be useful in a pub quiz.

•More than 1 million iPhone users on Orange UK by the end of 2010
•Increase ARPU of more than £10 per user per month compared to typical Orange contract customers

9th November 2009

Orange is set to make £795,065,695.77 in revenues from iPhone customers in the UK, according to a Mediacells forecast from its 2010 Yearbook, available November 21.

The huge revenue figure does not take into consideration the carefully guarded cost of purchasing iPhones from Apple, but even if at £250 per unit, this still generates more than £500,000,000 of revenue for Orange from selling the iPhone on its network in the UK.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) for an iPhone customer on Orange will be £58.11, per month, an incredible 29% higher than Orange’s reported average contract ARPU.

Brad Rees, CEO of Mediacells, said: “Selling the iPhone remains the best way for operators to get customers to part with more cash, even in a recession.”

“The fact that Orange has not undercut O2’s tariffs with their own iPhone offering just goes to demonstrate Orange’s confidence that they can generate new customers and reduce churn through selling the iPhone.”

The Mediacells forecasts are based on its accurate, fact-based, Tariff Tracker insights, which take the key performance indicators from officially announced O2 KPIs over the last 24 months and apply these to Orange’s tariff offers.

Orange announced 250,000 pre-subscriptions for the Orange iPhone range, which is set to launch in the UK tomorrow (November 10th). If Orange converts these into sales in the first 48 hours of availability, this will make the launch second only to the original, globally hyped launch, in June 2007, when 270,000 iPhones were sold within the first 48 hours.

It says something about a user interface when you’re forced to trawl Google to look for the handset’s manual. Sadly, that’s what has happened with the Vodafone 360 H1. GoMo News has the correct URL is anyone’s interested here http://tinyurl.com/y9omelp.

You’ll need that URL because there’s currently a bugette on the Vodafone 360 web site where the URL points to a non-existent point on the  Samsung download centre. The 360 support crew kindly supplied me with the correct URL (above) and are working to fix the problem.

Personally, I’m building up consumer resist to finger-based touchscreens and am trying to establish why this is. Perhaps it’s because adult male fingers are too big for the typical finger-based model like the Samsung H1?

The research doesn’t bear this out, however. Canalys recently released a report that found that I may be in the minority being male but not a minority of over 45s.

The report says,  “Interest in finger-centric touchscreens varied little across demographic groups, tariff types and countries, reinforcing the view that they have mass-market appeal.

Men showed a slightly higher preference than women – 40 per cent versus 35 per cent. Those aged between 22 and 45 were more positive.”

The most controversial finding was this … “Of those for whom this [touch] was already their primary method of interacting with the phone, only 47 per cent said they would choose the same type of UI on their next model.”

What this suggests to me is that males are aspiring to be seen with the very latest gismos and that includes Touchscreen handsets but over half haven’t enjoyed the experience.

Significantly, the report suggests that HTC and Apple are the most liked touchscreen UIs but there’s another clue in the report. Those who were most hostile to finger-centric UIs were those who had opted for a stylus based touch UI.

Aha. Perhaps this is the Ghost of the palm Pilot – which I loved – coming back to haunt me. That was a stylus and handwriting recognition device which I took the time to master.

Maybe I need to investigate stylus based handsets more closely? Meanwhile I’ve dug out my stylus to see if that might help with input.

*Sorry. Stylus won’t work at all.*

Tony is based in Surrey and is a veteran journalist he writes on the UK market…. contact him here mailto:tony@mobileinsight.co.uk

Columbia Records and We Love Mobile are using Mobile QR (Quick Response) Codes in order to support sales of Manners the debut album by Passion Pit. The band signed to Columbia Records following 2008’s Chunk of Change EP and a huge online buzz. Their debut album followed in May 2009 to critical acclaim and packed summer of festivals and touring.

The rich mobile codes are the first of their kind to be used outside Japan, and feature artwork from the album. They will be available via posters, flyers and print marketing as well as from the web, including the Passion Pit Myspace and Facebook pages. New codes will be posted up over the coming weeks, each one revealing a new free track or video.

The campaign is partnered by 7Digital and independent record stores throughout the UK, delivering online and offline discounts for Manners as further reward for interaction with the campaign

Users will be encouraged to interact with the codes to download the exclusive content directly to their phones. They will also be pushed links and money off vouchers to paid-for downloads via partners, including a reduced-price full album. All mobile interactions and downloads are trackable and Sony Music and We Love Mobile will be closely monitoring and assessing response rates and ROI across the campaign.

In a departure from previous Mobile QR code campaigns, We Love Mobile has ensured that reach is maximised by allowing fans to also use a standard short-code, or URL, to access the same content.
Editors notes/using the codes

Readers are built into many phones, and are available to download for free. Alternatively, you can put the address passionpit.mobi straight into your phone browser. People in the UK can also use a short-code to access the free tracks, by texting Manners to 88600.

The lead developer for Stuck4Words (see our story here), Steven Dow, described his experience of trying to upload software to the Apple App Store as “like having a television not working and the way to fix it is to change a fuse in your toaster.” Perhaps things aren’t so simple as Apple would have us believe, after all?

But then look at the statistics. The App Store launched on July 10th 2008 with some 800 apps available for download. Just three days later (July 14th), over 10 million apps had been downloaded.

In less than a year (April 23rd 2009), the numbers had increased to 35,000 apps available and an impressive one billion downloads. The latest figures (from October 27th 2009) are 100,000 apps and over 2 billion downloads.

So, obviously, enough developers are prepared to put up with the idiosyncrasies of Apple’s system to make it worthwhile creating and uploading iPhone apps.

In Steven Dow’s blog he says he searched the relevant Apple documentation and found the relevant certificates which overcame the “Not signed or certificated” error message.

The system then accepted the app but for three days the software wouldn’t work. “It stayed like this (showing me a message which was obviously not correct) for three bl**dy days as I tried everything,” Dow said.

Eventually, after trawling through Google for information about the error message he was receiving, he found the toaster fix which seemed highly unlikely but actually did work. So the moral for iPhone app developers is persistence pays off.

One final set of stats. A recent survey by AdMob of 1,000 mobile phone users found that the average iPhone users downloads ten apps per month. But iTouch users are even hungrier for apps – downloading nearly twice as many - 18 apps per month.

During a routine quality control process, Nokia identified a potential product quality issue with certain chargers manufactured by one of its third-party suppliers. The plastic covers of the affected chargers could come loose and separate, exposing the charger’s internal components and potentially posing an electrical shock hazard if certain internal components are touched while the charger is plugged into a live socket. Nokia is not aware of any incidents or injuries related to these chargers.

Only a limited number of chargers of certain model types manufactured by a single third-party supplier during a specific time period are within the scope of the exchange program. They are the AC-3E and AC-3U models, manufactured between June 15, 2009 and August 9, 2009; and the AC-4U model, manufactured between April 13, 2009 and October 25, 2009.

For more information, including how consumers can check to see if their chargers are part of this exchange program, Nokia has established a website. Consumers are asked to visit http://chargerexchange.nokia.com or their local Nokia website.

Nokia recommends consumers with chargers within the scope of this exchange program to stop using the charger and exchange it for a free replacement.

The Mobile Premier Awards 2010 will include the following awards:

* MPA in Innovation - The best grassroots startup innovation chosen by their peers in partnership with MobileMonday

The MobileMonday chapters will vote for their local most innovative startup. An international jury of the most recognized mobile industry experts will select the 20 finalists from all the local chapter nominees to pitch at the event in Barcelona in front of investors, operators, media companies, peer entrepreneurs, and press and influential bloggers.

* MPA in Marketing - The best startup in Mobile Marketing

* MPA in Entertainment - The best startup in Mobile Entertainment
in partnership with the Mobile Entertainment Forum

* MPA in User Experience - The best startup in Mobile User Experience
in partnership with MEX.

* MPA in Social Change - The best startup using mobile for social change in partnership with MobileActive.org

* MPA in Female Entrepreneurship - The best woman-lead mobile startup in partnership with Women2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association

Participation to these awards is free and open to any startup with a mobile angle.

Go to www.mobilepremierawards.com and take your chance to the red carpet in Barcelona!

———————–

FEATURED LINKS:
Mobile Premier Awards - http://www.mobilepremierawards.com/

MobileMonday - http://www.mobilemondaybarcelona.com
Mobile Entertainment Forum - http://www.m-e-f.org/
MEX - http://www.pmn.co.uk/mex/
MobileActive.org - http://mobileactive.org
Women 2.0 - http://www.women2.org
Women in Mobile Data Association - http://www.womeninmobiledata.com/

Fact:
As well, marketers have begun to take seriously the promotional benefit of social media, as Forrester reported in its study “Social Media Playtime is Over,” indicating that 53% of marketers plan to increase social media spending. Businesses are now turning to focus on the question of how to capitalize on the rapidly expanding mobile social networking audience.

Solution?
PhindMe Mobile has introduced a solution for businesses to create their own mobile social hub. Available through the PhindMe Mobile product Everywhereigo, the solution combines social media (like Flickr pictures, YouTube videos and Twitter posts), and the business’ branded content into a customized mobile application. The application is in turn made available on the web in multiple versions to accommodate consumers on all types of mobile phones, and in a downloadable application for the iPhone and Google Android-powered phones. The company states that, by delivering product and service promotions in a mobile experience within the context of community-based social media, businesses develop stronger bonds with their core customers, in turn shortening the buying cycle with new customers.

What we think?
I like it. This is a one stop shop for instant social media exposure for any small company. This will also grow mobile use and hopefully the mobile web too.

Greystripe, who have had more partners than Katy Price to be fair, are touting this as a far more open and honest relationship when held up against the recent Admob/AdWhirl deal as it provides access to a variety of networks. One thing is for sure, this Ruckus has played nicely into the hands of Tapjoy, who were last spotted driving a gleaming  ferarri stuffed with girls in bikinis to Vegas.  See what happens when everyone plays nice?

139.com, China Mobile’s mobile social networking offering is conscripting users at a frightening rate, promising to push 100m users in 2010.  That’s nearly as many people as live in Mexico.  And thanks to this deal with MInfo you can now advertise to each and every one of them.  It’s got to be worth it, on a numbers basis alone you could probably drive enough traffic to put a mid-tier UK website to shame just on accidental clicks.  The deal, which also sees the company providing search as well as ads, will see MInfo providing services for both the portal and mobile app.

Good news is that:

Super reporter Cian O’ Sullivan will run the show from the USA.

Tony Dennis will continue to track down and investigate the UK market (tony@mobileinsight.co.uk)

Andrew McMob- our new writer will cover me on search, barcodes etc. WELCOME Andrew!  andrewmcmob@yahoo.co.uk

Please send all emails to Cian@gomonews.net  or if you are not sure our business development guru Niamh Owens will help you out: nowens@wit.ie

What’s the story?

When EBay bought Skype in 2005, it had some vague plans to use it for allowing buyers and sellers to talk to one another for cheap on-line. But EBay users tend to prefer keeping things anonymous, and it found it had a service that it couldn’t make money from. EBay itself lamented the “limited synergies” that existed between the two companies.

Fast forward 4 years, and GoMo News reported at the start of September how a group of private investors were pooling their resources to take Skype off EBay’s hands. Their asking price was $2 billion, putting EBay at a distinct loss. But the complete failure of EBay to monetise Skype meant that it was more than happy to recoup at least some of its losses.

But there was a big problem.

Skype doesn’t own the technology it runs on. A company called Joltid created the peer-to-peer technology that Skype uses. Skype just licenses it. The issue is that when EBay bought Skype, it didn’t pay Joltid a single cent. EBay never acquired the license that was essential for Skype to keep running! Legal issues arose from the patents and licensing issues, and Skype and Joltid ended up in court with Jolid trying to pull the license. Through legal wrangling, Skype managed to get the decisions put off until June 2010 - which still meant that Skype might suddenly find itself without an engine next year.

What was the solution?

It boils down to these basics:
- Skype gains ownership of the Joltid technology, so it’s safe from sudden collapse next year.
- the Skype founders get to join the consortium of private investors who are buying it, thereby gaining back a 14% share in the company they sold off 5 years ago.
- EBay gets to regain a little money, and never do anything like this again.

What we think?

“But wait?” you might say “what do the guys from Joltid get?” And that’s the really great part about this entire story. You see, the founders of Joltid, , Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are also the founders of Skype. That’s right: when EBay “bought out” Skype for three billion dollars, they allowed its owners to keep ownership of Joltid and therefore the license for Skypes’ underlying technology. And Zennstrom and Friis have used that as leverage to pull in a vast amount of extra money from what should have been a straightforward deal between EBay and the consortium. Well done, you clever bastards! It’s the heist of the century!

The device:

Seemingly spotted first over on Chinese mobile wholesaler m8cool, the Michael Jackson phone is about as tasteful as you would imagine a non-sanctioned device to be - and bears a striking similarity to the Signature line from Vertu:

m8cool does retail an awful lot of Vertu phones, so it’s quite possible that it had a few thousand lying around spare and decided to do something with them.

So let’s say you really did want one of these… things. What could you expect from the device? Well, assuming that the insides haven’t been gutted and replaced, you’re getting a Signature device from Vertu (which, incidentally, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia). The Signature is a decent enough phone, but very basic. It has all the voice, SMS and bluetooth capabilities you’d expect. It even has a web browser… but it’s a basic wee device that is for people who value form over function.

What we think?

Personally I think this is a nasty, tacky attempt to make a few bucks from a dead performer with whatever they had lying around in boxes out the back. There’s no word on how much they’ll be charging for these phones yet, but it won’t be cheap. The phones they’re based on were meant to be “luxury” devices after all, and wherever you see that word you can expect a significant price hike.

Who is Bright AI?

Bright AI is functionally an advertising and marketing company. It tailor-makes mobile applications and mobile games for brands that want to get on the mobile channel. It also provides a channel for selling mobile content, with its Boximo platform. It has been involved in football for a while now, creating various football themed mobile games and other content for 20 or so clubs. This deal brings the number of clubs it works with to 100.

What’s the footie deal?

The Football League is the oldest league competition in world football - it’s been around since the late 18th century, and was only surpassed when the Premier League formed in the 1990s. It’s still a big deal. The league features over 70 teams from England and Wales. Well, part of the Football League governing body is called Football League International (FLI) which manages, amongst other things, it’s website and other digital assets.

The FLI has announced that Bright AI will be developing mobile content and applications for eighty clubs associated with the Football Leage (including some not currently playing in the league). It will be creating football themed games, content and applications for clubs including the Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers. While Bright AI is platform-neutral, it is getting the iPhone app out first. So iPhone owners can expect to see their teams apps pretty sharpish. Mobile browser versions, as well as Android and Blackberry apps, will be coming out in the next few months.

Bright AIs MD, David Lane said “football fans love to demonstrate their club allegiances and branded mobile content provides a great way for supporters to personalise their phones and show their support. The deal with FLi clearly demonstrates the appetite for branded mobile content and by using the Boximo platform, clubs of any size can easily sell content direct to fans from their existing websites.”

What we think?

I can’t help but think that a big part of the reason Bright AI was chosen for this deal was because it has a content sales channel all ready to go. Mobile content can be a big seller when it comes to hardcore sports fans. Video clips of matches, or even an entire match, can be sold. Due to the nature of league play, there are constant content updates required for a football club - and mobile is simply the best way to get them out to the fans.

Who is Centennial?

Centennial is a cell phone operator that began in New Jersey in 1988. It has done very well for itself since then. It now provides wireless and broadband services to almost 900,000 subscribers in the American Midwest, Southeast and in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

What’s the deal?

AT&T is buying the entire company out, at a rate of roughly $3,000 dollars per acquired customer. Given that there will be pretty much no infrastructure or upgrade expenditures (for basic services), that’s a pretty good deal. The majority of the work to be done by AT&T is rebranding - it has a lot signage to replace in a lot of Centennial retail stores. But this work is going to be spread out over the next years. Not only that, but Centennial subscribers will have the option to stick with their current Centennial price plans for the time being - or choose to straight switch over to an AT&T plan at no further expense.

Probably the biggest expense incurred by AT&T will be in expanding its 3G network. There are plans to deploy 3G at over 200 sites in the Centennial network, before the network asks customers to transition over to AT&T.

Then, of course, there’s the LTE deployment to take care of…

What’s this business with the FCC?

Centennial is the 9th largest operator in the United States. With an acquisition of this size, the FCC always has to consider whether it could damage competitiveness. In order to keep things on an even keel, the FCC required AT&T to “divest” eight different service areas - five of which ended up being acquired by Verizon Wireless.

A further demand was made by the FCC for mobile roaming. AT&T will have to the roaming agreements that Centennial made with other carriers for the entire life of the contract - or for up to four years if it’s with a smaller operator.

What we think?

The easiest subscriber to acquire is the one that doesn’t have an existing contract. Once a consumer is signed up with someone, it takes a lot to get them to jump ship. And you’d have to look a long way to find someone in the US who doesn’t have a contract already.

So it makes sense for AT&T to simply buy those customers. Centennials debts included, the purchase has set them back $3 billion - but how long will it take them to make that back? Especially once they can start offering juicy 3G (and 4G pretty soon) services to subscribers.

Journalist are habitually accused of over-hyping the iPhone,  so legendary electronics hack,  David Manners, has decided to go that one step further. He’s created his own iPhone app (with a couple of mates) entitled Stuck4Words.

Actually, David has managed to combine a whole host of skills – journalism, social engineering, marketing and IT savvy – into one product. Basically Stuck4words gets the socially inept out of sticky situations when they haven’t a clue what to say.

So Mr Manners’s gang has probably succeeded in creating a whole new class of mbile application. It’s probably going to be labelled social skills enhancement. Or Apps-4-Geeks.

With Stuck4words, the clever journalism bit comes with the fact that Manners hopes to pull what us Oldies would describe as the Chuck Berry ploy. That’s when Berry had a smash hit by virtue of his record being banned by the BBC.

In David Manners’ case, in his blog (here) he’s rather hoping that the Chinese will ban the app or that Greenpeace will demonstrate against it. Perhaps he can get Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to slate it?

In terms of marketing, besides from picking the iPhone as the initial launch platform, the Manners crew have decided to price Stuck4words competitively. A mere 59 pence in the UK and a mere 99 cents in the US of A.

Significantly this app does require its purchasers to be running the very latest version 3.1.2 which Manners assures GoMo News only came out a month or so ago.

The other two members of the Stuck4Words posse – Steven Dow and Stephen Jones - have vowed to spill the beans on just how difficult it is to create an iPhone app when software development really isn’t your primary skill set. Uploading the app to Apple’s App Store caused headaches, for example.

Those who might be tempted to splash the cash should search for ‘S4W” on the App Store. Plus there’s a web site dedicated to the product here.

Find a way to test this app should prove very challenging, of course.

Fiserv and Family Credit Union:

Fiserv is an enabler when it comes to mobile banking. We’ve had numerous stories about smaller American financial institutions that it has set up mobile operations for. The nost recent is The Family Credit Union, based out of Iowa and Illinois. The FCU solution allows members to check balances (the single most requested function by customers when it comes to mobile banking) transfer money, pay bills and set up SMS alerts. The service itself is available via SMS or mobile browser - but a downloadable application is on the books.

Indian Corporation Bank:

The most recent Indian bank to realise the potential market in the “unbanked” sector is Indian Corporation Bank. When we say “unbanked” we mean those who have little or no access to normal bank services. Corporation Bank has teamed with mobile operator Tata Indicom and payment provider PayMate to create the service, called Green Money Transfer. It’s a simple service that allows users to send money to one another through their mobile phones. As with many services of this type, money can be loaded into the service through a merchant, so banks aren’t necessary. CorpBank will have 1,000 “Green” vendors in rural areas by the end of 2009, with the intention to have 2,000 by late 2010.

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_indicom-ties-with-corpbank-paymate-for-mobile-money-transfer_1307655

Xcellink:

Xcellink is a payment company… but it didn’t start as a mobile company. It has spent ten years developing secure methods to transfer financial data between customers and merchants through various channels. Now it is transferring those patents and licenses into the mobile arena. The company has now announced that it has secured a big one in China - the patent for an ‘Automated Electronic Funds Transfer System and Method’. Basically this covers automatic transactions between customers and merchants, either wirelessly or wired.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0555106.htm

NFC in the USA:

GoMo News has encountered Inside Contactless before - it’s a company dedicated to turning everything into a mobile payment device using little stickers with NFC chips on them. Twinlinx adds and interesting proposition - it is a mobile-centric company that also creates stickers. However, it’s stickers are geared towards being a middle man between bluetooth and NFC. Essentially, the sticker contains multiple contactless chips which interact with your devices bluetooth and allow it to communicate with many different kinds of NFC.

The two companies have announced they are bringing their partnership to North America, where they are looking to gain support from major bank card brands.

The following is in German but an interview and update coming shortly.

Tarik Tokic sagt: „Mit barcoo und woabi hat checkitmobile eine der größten und am schnellsten wachsenden mobilen Nutzergemeinden in Deutschland. Allein im Oktober 2009 haben über 50.000 Leute eine der beiden Anwendungen heruntergeladen. Das ist insbesondere für die Anbieter von Produktdaten, Kooperationspartner und Werbetreibende von großer Bedeutung, die bisher wegen mangelnder Reichweite noch zögerlich im mobilen Internet unterwegs waren.“ Die gemeinsamen Ressourcen wollen barcoo und woabi unter anderem nutzen, um die lokalen Dienste weiter auszubauen und zum Beispiel mehr Geschäfte im Umkreis anzuzeigen.

Weitere Informationen unter www.checkitmobile.com  und www.barcoo.de .

The Curve series:

The Curve series of devices has been around since 8300 came out in 2007, and as you can see from the image below, RIM has really stuck to the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” method of phone design:

The form factor is pretty much identical, so you might wonder what is actually new in the 8530. It has only been a few months since the 8520 was released, so I went and had a look at the specs and compiled what has actually been upgraded in the newest Curve 8500-series phone.

And, in fairly typical RIM fashion, the company itself is completely up front about these differences on the website itself:

Sprint and Verizon:

Both Sprint and Verizon have announced they will be carrying the new device. Verizon will be selling it from the 20th of this month, for $199.99 (you can get a $100 rebate with that), and Sprint has announced neither date nor price yet.

What we think?

Hey, if you’re a Blackberry fan with an older model Curve then this is perfect. It’s got everything you’re already used to, just updated a bit and with much better mobile data capabilities. Although it doesn’t seem to come with new Blackberry OS 5.0, so your mobile browsing experience will probably be a bit clunky.

The Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) has announced the launch of what it claims is the world’s first ‘open-access’ IMS network. The network exploits Ireland’s plentiful open spectrum.

Kevin Kennedy,  spectrum development manager for ComReg – the Irish telecoms regulator – argued that multiple factors contribute to the availability of spectrum suitable for next generation mobile networks in Ireland.

These include a modest population; only a single border with another European country that can create network interference; and, perhaps most significantly,  no spectrum allocated to military services.

The UK,  for example,  recently announced that it was borrowing spectrum from its own military to provide sufficient coverage  for the forthcoming London Olympic Games 2012. (See GoMo News passim).

Projects like TSSG’s open access IMS network are among the first fruits of Enterprise Ireland’s goal to generate a culture of technological innovation in the country. The TSSG is an Irish research and development centre focused on next-generation networks.

EI is an Irish government organisation aimed at fostering growth in all segments of industry. The body believes that the country is ideally suited to help wireless companies from around the world test their products in an environment that is relatively free from outside interference

The TSSG’s test IMS network is based on Ericsson equipment and has the same capabilities as those used by large carriers. It enables any global technology provider to run tests,  plus test and validate IMS compliant products and functionality.

Gearoid Mooney, who is ICT commercialisation director for EI,  explained that his organisation is content with being an incubator for innovation and exporting the resultant IP to other countries.

“Sure, we’d love to have our own Irish Nokia, but the company has to make the business decision that’s right for it. Many times that means moving to another country,” Mooney commented.

Still, GoMo News anticipates there will be plenty of demand for TSSG’s test IMS network.

What’s the deal?

Best Buy Mobile is a subsidiary of Best Buy that only runs mobile retail stores, much like Carphone Warehouse across the water (with which Best Buy Mobile has a standing deal). The ideology of Best Buy Mobile is best summed up by the “Walk Out Working” programme - the idea that a consumer should be able to walk into a store, and walk out soon after with a completely operational phone including installed applications and other mobile services.

Now Best Buy Mobile has announced that through the Walk Out Working service, it will be installing the Google Mobile App on every device it stocks that can support it. The app in question is a “hands free” application from Google that allows you to run searches on Google by speaking the search terms into your device - and the results also have location integrated (for nearby shops/restaurants/etc.)

So if you buy a phone in Best Buy Mobile, and it is capable of running Google Mobile App, you now have it automatically - this means iPhone, Blackberries and WinMo and S60 devices.

From the release:

Marc Vanlerberghe, Director of Marketing at Google: “We are excited to offer users a new and more personalized way of getting Google on their smartphones. While Google Mobile App is available as a free download from m.google.com, often times users run into problems because they don’t have the right handset or data plan. Through this agreement, experts at Best Buy Mobile will be available to help users install Google Mobile App on their existing or new smartphone so that they can Walk Out Working.”

Scott Moore, VP of Marketing for Best Buy Mobile: “We know that consumers want smartphones and, increasingly, they want to use applications. The challenge is that people still need help understanding what is available to them and how they can bring it to life on their device. This partnership between Best Buy and Google serves that role and will go a long way in bringing applications to more consumers regardless of what device, carrier or platform they use.”

What we think?

It’s an interesting facet of human behaviour - the easier things get, the easier we expect them to be. Quite often, asking a smartphone owner to download something to their phone is asking one thing too many. They just want it to work. That’s the genius of the Walk Out Working programme. There is a large percentage of smartphone owners who will happily spend hours downloading and trying out new apps and services, but there’s an equally large percentage who couldn’t be bothered. This service is aimed at them. “You want to know how to do search on your mobile?” asks the helpful Best Buy Mobile employee “Sure, let me install Google Mobile App for you”. For the right customer, that’s a powerful sales channel.