Born to be Wireless

Android's version of Chrome is priority

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:08:00 +0000

Google co-founder Sergey Brin told CNET that he expects the company's new Chrome browser to end up on the Android platform in a later version of the yet-to-be-released mobile phone operating system. Brin said Android and Chrome were developed separately but that a "subsequent version of Android is going to pick up a lot of the Chrome stack."

Source: www.moconews.com

Samsung accepts selling its Symbian share to Nokia

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Nokia said today that Samsung Electronics has accepted Nokia's offer to buy out its stake in software firm Symbian, and Nokia now has acceptances from all Symbian shareholders to sell their shares.

"They (Samsung) have accepted it," Nokia spokesman said referring to the buyout offer.

Nokia said in June it would buy out other shareholders of UK-based smartphone software maker Symbian for $410 million and make its software royalty-free to other phone makers in response to new rivals such as Google Inc.

Nokia will contribute Symbian's assets to the not-for-profit organization, Symbian Foundation, in which it would unite with leading handset makers, network operators and communications chipmakers to create an open-source platform.

Source: Reuters

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:40:00 +0000

Google has launched its own application store or marketplace; see Android Market: a user-driven content distribution system (Android Developers Blog).

And with the Android Market solution, Google is addressing the problem of application discovery and download; and their approach is user-centric, similar to YouTube; exactly as how I would have approached it… YouApp!

Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube.

:

Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.

Very cool…

First Android phone approved by FCC

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:13:00 +0000

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US telecom government agency, has homologate HTC Dream, first Android mobile phone.
HTC Dream is probably going to be the first mobile using Google's Android. And according to The New York Times, it will be sold in the US by T-Mobile starting October.

Motorola & Android?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:24:00 +0000

It seems that Motorola is working on an Android phone... check this job post on LinkedIn

App Store success

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:33:00 +0000

According to Steve Jobs, App Store shoppers have downloaded 60+ million programs for the iPhone in the last month. While most were free, Apple has sold an average of $1 million a day in applications for a total of about $30 million in sales.

To put that into perspective, if Apple can sell apps at this pace, they stand to make at least $360 million a year. That's no small change...

But what does this mean for marketers? How can we tap into this desire to load our phones with gizmos and gadgets? It starts with utility...while I love my "light saber" application, its just for shits and giggles. The applications that really get me excited are the ones that add value to my day to day. They get me from point A to point B faster or find me a hotel in San Francisco the second I land or allow me to post to this blog with no effort at all. The point is, lets create apps that are useful and relevant...AND, entertaining. They shouldn't and don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Full Story: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121842341491928977.html

Yahoo call

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:03:00 +0000

I know this is not the focus of this blog, but since Yahoo is a great player in the mobile market and it has the single most-visited page on the Web (with 304 million unique visitors worldwide in May, according to comScore), it deserves a note:

Anyone who access www.yahoo.com will see a box on the right side of the side calling the stockholders to vote against Carl Icahn. When you click on the box, you'll be redirect to a page that attacks Icahn credibility as an investor. At the top of this page, you'll see the quote:

"It’s hard to understand these technology companies." – Carl Icah

my two cents: It feels like Yahoo is fighting the battle of its life and Jerry Yang is using all he can use in order to win the proxy battle on Aug 1st! And since I passionate about Yahoo for almost 10 years (the age of my Y!Mail account), I really wouldn't like to see it bought by Microsoft :-)

update: according to comScore monthly search report, Google lost 0.3% (total of 61.5%) market share on search, Y! gain 0.3% (total of 20.9%), Microsoft gain 0.7% (total of 9.2%), Ask lost 0.2% (total of 4.3%) and AOL lost 0.4% (total of 4.1%). This data is related to U.S. market

Sony Ericsson plans to cut 2k jobs in the next 12 months

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:41:00 +0000

In order to reduce 300 million euros in operational costs, Sony Ericsson will cut 2000 jobs all around the world within the next twelve months. This was a result of a drop of 97% in the earnings in the second quarter result.
It starting to look more and more like Motorola...

Full history here

iPhone costs

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:17:00 +0000

iSuppli’s Teardown Analysis Service on July 11 obtained an iPhone 3G and commenced a dissection in order to identify component suppliers, as well as to determine preliminary part and system costs.

Beyond the $174.33 BOM and manufacturing cost of the iPhone 3G, Apple is spending an estimated $50 on IP royalties per unit shipped. With the 8Gbyte version retail-priced at $199, and the estimated $300 subsidy paid by AT&T to Apple for each unit, Apple is selling the product at a price of $499, and spending $224.33 to produce each one. This gives Apple a BOM, manufacturing and royalty margin of 55 percent for each 8Gbyte iPhone 3G unit sold.

Source: cellular-news

BIC and Orange releases disposable mobile phone

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:27:00 +0000

The BIC® phone is ready to go! It comes with 60 free minutes, the battery charged, and the SIM card already in place.
With the BIC® phone, you pay as you go, with a prepaid “mobicarte” refill card.
The BIC® phone is easy to use since it focuses on cell phone basics: sending and receiving calls and SMS.
The BIC® phone pack will be easy to find. It will be sold over the counter, in major supermarkets and local convenience stores (tobacco shops, newsstands, train stations, airports…), and will be available on 7 August 2008, at a suggested retail price of €49 including tax. The BIC® phone will be sold in Metropolitan France only.

Press release here

Shazam for iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:27:00 +0000

Mobile music discovery specialist Shazam has released a native version of its mobile application for the iPhone. The application is available now on the Apple App Store. Shazam fully integrates with and complements the iPhone, allowing users to discover, buy and share tunes simply by holding their iPhone up to a music system for just a few seconds.

Key user features include the ability to tag (identify) music anywhere; to build your own soundtrack; go straight to iTunes to preview and buy tagged music; see related videos of the track on YouTube; personalise the tag by taking a photo and adding it to ‘My Tags’; and send track details to friends via email.

European SMS arbitrary roaming prices

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:54:00 +0000

It's really easy to travel between countries in Europe, and of course everybody uses their mobiles during the trips. For some time now, there have been complaining about the large coasts for roaming - voice, sms or data. Even European Commission has suggest to the carriers to cut their prices for roaming, something that, of course, didn't happen.
Now, the European Commission has released a plan to end "rip-offs for text messages abroad". Couple of days later, regulator agency in France has invited the carriers to cut SMS costs! I hope this reach Brazil as soon as possible ! :-)

PS: Nice site with SMS prices in Europe:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/index_en.htm

EA vs Gameloft

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:35:00 +0000

The presentation even goes beyond the EA Mobile games. It also shows that Gameloft copied concepts from Disney and Taito. Of course, we all knew this is happening, and fair enough, it happens all over the industry and for many years already.

Details are on Jan Rezab’s Mobile Enthousiast blog.

Apple offers 30 days MobileMe extension for users

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:57:00 +0000

For those who registered in Apple's MobileMe between July 9th and July 15th, Apple is offering a 30 days extension as an "i'm sorry" gift for all the problems that occur this last week.

Official note here

Twitter Buys Summize

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:04:00 +0000

From Twitter blog:

"We’re excited to announce that Twitter has acquired Summize—an extraordinary search tool and an amazing group of engineers. All five Summize engineers will move to San Francisco, CA and take jobs at Twitter, Inc. This is an important step forward in the evolution of Twitter as a service and as a company.
Summize is a popular service for searching Twitter and keeping up with emerging trends in real-time. Like Twitter, Summize offers an API so other products and services can filter the constant queue of updates in a variety of ways. The Summize service and API will be merged with our own and integrated under the Twitter brand."

Sony Ericsson: What's next ?

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:18:00 +0000

According to Reuters, Sony Ericsson is talking to India handset-make Spice Mobile about a possible merge. The value of India company would be something up to US$174 million.
"They want to acquire a majority stake, but it has not yet been finalised if it will be a 100 percent buyout," the Economic Times cited the source as saying.
It would be a nice step for SE if Spice could provide technology and the scalability for selling low-end devices, which has never been a priority for SE. The company, a joint venture between Japanese electronics maker Sony, and Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson has lost the fourth position in sales for LG and some analysts are calling it the next Motorola

1 million iPhones 3G sold

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Apple says it sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G handsets over the launch weekend. The 1 millionth handset was sold yesterday. iPhone 3G is available in 21 countries - Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US. The device goes on sale in France on Thursday.

Motorola: consumed by slow decay

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:58:00 +0000

According to Avian Securities, Motorola will end this second quarter with 8.5% share, a reduce from 9.3% on Q1. Same Avian Securities released on June that no motorola device is between the top best-selling handsets on the USA.
Same analysts are expecting Motorola to end up with 6% share by the end of the year... that's a shame for a company that once had 20% share

iPhone on China Mobile

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:05:00 +0000

Apple and China Mobile has returned conversations to lunch iPhone on China. The motivation was Apple giving up revenue share.
Maybe Steve Jobs realized that just iPhone's device profit over China Mobile's 400 million subscribers is a lot better deal than keep fighting :-)

Sony Ericsson App Store ?

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:35:00 +0000

Sony Ericsson and Handango join efforts to making available more content to the SE users: all SE phones with Symbian UIQ OS will have access to InHand, an application store.
Also, Handango will provide content to SE Mobile Web Store.
Released the same day of iPhone's App Store :-)

iPhone 2.0 unlocked

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:15:00 +0000

The new iPhone OS 2.0 software has been unlocked and jailbroken. It was released just hours ago
by the iPhone Dev Team. The first one took a couple of months, but this one was actually unlocked before Apple released it to the public.

google Mobile App for iPhone 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:42:00 +0000

Samsung Instinct: the new Razr

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Best Buy announced today that early sales results are showing the Samsung Instinct™, exclusively from Sprint, to be the retailer’s best selling handset in the past two years. According to MocoNews, a Best Buy spokesperson said the Instinct is selling comparably to the super hot Motorola Razr during the holiday period of 2006.

Nokia finishes NAVTEQ acquisition

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:52:00 +0000

Nokia announced today that it has completed its acquisition of NAVTEQ, a leading provider of comprehensive digital map information.

Full release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080710/ukth011.html?.v=18

Apple Allowing Free Ad-Supported Apps on App Store

noreply@blogger.com (Josemando Sobral) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:36:00 +0000

Medialets, a company that got off the ground June 1, is providing a mechanism for developers to include ads in their applications and make them free to iPhone users on the App Store. Revenues are split between Medialets and the developer—Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) gets none. Developers need to drop a code into their applications for the ads to show up correctly and allow for Medialets to offer metrics and tracking info on each ad campaign's performance.

It sounds like just the kind of thing Apple wouldn't tolerate: a company partnering with others to offer applications for free on its App Store and then monetizing their work through ads. But Medialets CEO Eric Litman says that's exactly the case and that none of the advertising revenue will go to Apple's coffers. "It's in Apple's best interest" to see developers prosper on the new distribution model, Litman said. Perhaps it doesn't hurt that the longtime online executive worked at NeXT Computer Inc., a company founded by Steve Jobs in 1985 after he left Apple Computer.

By the way, the release of the App Store is schedule for today! I'm waiting....

Source: http://www.moconews.net