Kodera isn’t the only recent departure, however, which makes the situation a little more bleak. Here’s a few more joining the exodus, per The Verge:

“It’s not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession — most recently Jason Gordon, the company’s vice president of global communications. Other fresh departures include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, director of digital marketing John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin.”

I knew that Lin had left: He moved recently to become a Product Marketing Manager for Skype after five years with HTC. The others are news to me, but in hindsight, perhaps not surprising given the company’s rough ride of late: delays for the HTC One flagship phone due to supply issues and the lack of buzz around the HTC First that highlights the Facebook experience.

With HTC’s fall from prominence in the U.S., it’s possible — likely even — that the Tawian-based company consolidates operations back to its home country. With Apple and Samsung dominating U.S. phone sales, it may make sense for HTC to concentrate more effort on the bigger opportunities in Asia. To do so really doesn’t require much of a U.S. presence, sadly.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate

You can see some of that future in Chromium for the Mac, which is getting the Chrome App launcher. Our extension of the week dovetails with Google’s new Play Music All Access subscription service. And while Kevin still loves the Chromebook Pixel, he pleads with Google to add one important function to Chromebooks: Support for Google Play movie and TV downloads.

Show notes

Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel

• So what was Google I/O like, what’s new for Chrome and what new services did Google add?
• More Intel-powered hardware builds are being tested
• Chromium for Mac getting the App launcher
• What’s Google’s vision for Chrome? To take over the world, of course!
• Extension of week: Better Music for Google Play Music
• When will Google add movie and TV downloads for Chromebooks?

Got questions, tips or tricks for an upcoming GigaOM Chrome Show? Find Kevin on Google+, Twitter (@kevinctofel) or via e-mail (kevin@gigaom.com)

(download this episode)

Subscribe to RSS

iTunes

Stitcher Radio

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”

Anyway, Truecaller now has 600 million partly crowdsourced names and phone numbers in its database, which is quite a lot, and it’s decided to open up this information to third parties that can make good use of it. “Great,” you might think, “what a boon to telemarketers.” But no, Truecaller is rather sensibly hand-picking those developers who get to tap into its newly-launched, 3scale-managed API, and telemarketers are not welcome at all.

As for potential uses for this reverse lookup service, that’s up to the developer’s imagination. Here’s what Truecaller CEO Alan Mamedi suggests:

“Among many other scenarios, the Truecaller API could be used to save time in call centres. Each call centre minute is connected to a cost. By using our API, both local and global, call centres can identify who is calling even before starting the call. Win-win.”

Truecaller’s database is populated by two main sources: traditional phone directory services and users who are willing to upload their address books. This latter source means it can contain numbers that are unlisted, including pay-as-you-go phone numbers. Numbers in the database come with two types of scores: a “spam score” to rate how likely it is that they are associated with telesales or robocalls, and a “true score” to denote importance.

Importantly, name search will not be a function associated with the API – it will only be available on the mobile app, meaning the API can only be used for reverse lookup purposes.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Hyperlocal: opportunities for publishers and developers

As part of reaching that objective, Cloudbase.io has launched a shared API to encourage data-sharing between apps. By way of example, someone coming up with a Foursquare-like idea could decide to use Cloudbase.io to build their application. Cloudbase.io would handle the backend for that app, and the developer could tell the BaaS provider to let other apps access their shared API, allowing those apps to draw on the app’s check-in data and creating opportunities for business deals down the line.

As Buliani told me:

“What I found everywhere [as I was promoting] Cloudbase.io was that everybody with a background as a backend developer instantly got it. Mobile developers were questioning the need for their application to be connected to the internet. Most mobile developers are only mobile developers; they’ve never done anything else before – never worked on websites, for example. They had this mentality of building the small game for mobile.

“The premise for the idea is that we want mobile applications to become platforms. We want them to be able to publish their own layer of APIs, even though it’s hosted on Cloudbase.io. Cloudbase.io becomes invisible in the background. We want to encourage them to be as ambitious as possible and think of themselves as a platform. It’s a chicken-and-egg game of course – what came first, the business or the API? – but we want them to be prepared for it.”

This perspective is unsurprising coming from Buliani, a developer (he was part of the early Covestor team) who became a management consultant in London’s financial heart before returning to tech. But then again, Cloudbase.io is not the only company trying to help smalltime developers think bigger.

So what about rivals such as Parse? According to Buliani, there’s a “philosophical difference” between the two outfits.

“The easiest example is, if you want to build an application on top of Parse you have to register the users of your application within that framework, so your application will have to have authentication. With Cloudbase.io you can have no authentication — it’s entirely up to you,” he said, adding that he was proud of the fact that all of Cloudbase.io’s libraries are open source and available on Github.

Of course, Cloudbase.io’s new service also crosses over somewhat with the territory of API management specialists such as Apigee and 3scale.

As with Parse, it’s free to register with Cloudbase.io and get going. Once the app’s in an app store, users need to start paying – the most basic account costs $11.99 a month, which comes with a gigabyte of data exchange. Above that are professional ($47.99 for 8GB) and enterprise ($119.99 for 20GB) tiers, with the possibility of negotiated pricing for higher volumes.

Users should take note of how data exchange volume pricing works with the shared API. If the app accessing data from the original, Cloudbase.io-using app is also using the same BaaS platform, it’s that second app that gets charged. If the second app is off-platform, it will obviously be the original app’s developers who get charged (it might be smart to publish the shared API but keep it password protected).

Incidentally, for those developers who need as much help as possible, Cloudbase.io also partnered up last month with MoSync, a provider of open-source tools for building mobile applications. The idea there is for MoSync to allow the building and compiling of the apps, with Cloudbase.io adding in the connectivity, geo-location and social pieces.

(And on another note, cloud infrastructure and data-sharing will definitely be on the agenda for discussion at our Structure:Europe conference, which will run in London on September 18-19.)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media
• The Internet of Things: What It Is, Why It Matters
• Report: How Mobile Cloud Computing Will Change Tech

Mobile Wallet was developed by Wipit, a mobile payments provider for people without bank accounts and credit cards. Its platform therefore makes an ideal fit for many Boost customers who rely on cash to make pay for their wireless service. The approach seems to emulate the mobile payments revolution going on Africa and South Asia, where mobile operators are become bigger financial services providers than the traditional banks.

Mobile Wallet allows you to pay bills and send money to family or friends in 135 countries through Ria’s cash transfer network. Soon Boost will also offer a digital check cashing service, which lets you scan in a physical check and deposit the funds in your wallet account. You can also transfer money between different accounts, and top off your Boost Mobile plan within the app.

What you can’t do is use the Wallet App to make a payment at store. But Boost and WiPit have gotten around that problem by issuing a Visa prepaid card to any customer that signs up for a premium account. The card draws directly from the Wallet account and is accepted anywhere where Visa is. Google reportedly considered adopting the same approach for its digital wallet but dropped the idea.

Of course, all of these services come with fees, many of which are rather steep. Paying bills costs anywhere from $2 to $5 per transaction, while Ria money transfer fees vary depending on amount and destination. Even loading money into the account costs $3, though once the money is there, you can spend it freely using the Visa card. Until the check cashing service goes live, customers can only load money into the account at authorized Boost dealer locations.

The app is available to Boost’s Android customers and is downloadable in Google Play, but initially Boost is only enabling accounts for customers in Los Angles, San Diego and parts of New Jersey. The company is planning a nationwide rollout by the end of the year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile

That would mean that users could sign in with their Flickr and Vimeo accounts within the Settings app on their iOS device, just as they can now with Twitter and Facebook. Then when the user hits the share button in an app, the menu will include the services that they’ve registered.

iOS is expected to be detailed by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco in June. 9to5Mac noted that the decision to include two additional social services could be reversed before any announcement is made. But the report does make a lot of sense.

Such a move could be read as a bit more anti-Google maneuvering from Apple. After all, the company last year shed all iOS-Google tie-ins in iOS 6 with the exception of keeping Google search as the default option in mobile Safari. YouTube is available as a third-party app from the App Store, but it’s no longer the default video service in iOS. Apple could also take up the move to support Vimeo in response to Google allowing iOS developers to enable a setting in their own apps that automatically opens YouTube videos in the YouTube app, instead of mobile Safari.

But it’s also just as likely that Apple is simply increasing feature parity between iOS and Mac OS X. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has built-in Flickr and Vimeo integration, as well as Twitter and Facebook. Facebook integration also began on OS X and moved to iOS, so Yahoo’s photo service and Vimeo’s social video service could be following that same path.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media
• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace
• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide

We included Amprius, which was launched in 2008 as a spin out from Stanford University, on our list of 13 battery startups to watch in 2013. The startup has developed a battery based on research from Stanford’s Yi Cui, and its lithium ion batteries, announced Tuesday, use a nano-structured silicon material for the anode part of the battery.

A battery is made up of an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, with an electrolyte in between. Amprius’ nanostructured material allows the anode to be shrunk fourfold, delivering a fourfold increase in energy density.

Battery energy density is the amount of energy that can be stored in a battery per given volume. Amprius said its initial batteries can deliver 580 and 600 watt hours per liter, and its next-gen batteries can deliver 650 and 700 watt hours per liter. Traditional lithium ion batteries are operating at closer to 400 watt hours per liter.

Another one of the challenges that Amprius said it has overcome when building this battery is that it has had to engineer the silicon to make it stable enough to be charged and discharged repeatedly over time. The more stable the silicon, the longer the life time of the battery. Amprius said the anode can be charged and discharged more than 500 times while retaining 80 percent of the original capacity (a requirement for original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs).

Amprius is supplying its batteries to unnamed smartphone and tablet OEMs and is also working with OEMs to design its batteries in custom ways to fit into new consumer electronics, it said. The next-gen batteries are supposed to go into pilot production later this year.

Amprius has raised at least $25 million from investors including the ones listed above as well as IPV Capital, and Trident Capital. The company has an R&D lab in Sunnyvale, Calif., and an R&D lab and pilot production line in Nanjing, China.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Opportunities for the future of batteries
• Why tomorrow’s iPad will need a battery breakthrough
• Cleantech venture capital heads east

(Update: Clearwire has rescheduled the meeting again, this time for Friday, May 31.)

Ever since Sprint made its $2.1 billion buyout offer in December, Clearwire shareholders have been expressing increasing dissatisfaction with the terms of the deal, especially after Dish Network swooped in with a counter offer. Sprint’s new bid is 19 percent higher than its old one and beats out Dish’s $3.30-a-share proposal.

Even if Clearwire shareholders accept Sprint’s new terms, Dish isn’t going away. The company is playing multiple hands, offering to buyout Sprint itself, despite the buyout deal it struck with Softbank. Sprint has kept Dish at arm’s length throughout the negotiations, but on Monday Softbank agreed to let Sprint start working directly with Dish, releasing internal documents necessary for any merger negotiation.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• A look back at mobile in the third quarter
• Mobile 2012 and beyond

According to the testing details, the device in question uses a 1280 x 800 display and is running Android 4.2.2. The processor can run between 800 MHz and 1.6 GHz clock cycles and uses a PowerVR 533 for graphics, which fits the bill as an Intel Atom chip, possibly the newest CloverTrail+ that Intel recently announced.

So does this particular device perform? Based on the benchmarks: Quite good. Here’s a comparison of the graphics performance of the tested Galaxy Tab 3 and last year’s Galaxy Tab 2 model, for example.

And SamMobile recently noted a different benchmark test of the Tab 3 using the Antutu test, finding that the device scored the highest ever for an Android tablet in terms of overall performance.

So why would Samsung, which makes it own chips for smartphones and tablets, consider an Intel inside its newest Galaxy Tab? Samsung could be keeping the Exynos for its own handsets, such as the new Galaxy S 4, because it sells more handsets than tablets. The company’s tablets wouldn’t like suffer any performance hit by using Intel’s silicon either; at least not if the early benchmarks are valid.

If Intel’s Atom does power the Galaxy Tab 3, it would be one of the biggest mobile design wins yet for Intel. The chipmaker does power a few smartphone products, but hasn’t yet cracked the U.S. market with a top-tier hardware partner such as Samsung.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• The big theme of MWC: How to live in a connected world

Nvidia is showing that even though it’s new to the radio silicon market, it’s keeping up with the technical prowess of the competition. The 150 Mbps benchmark is the most cutting edge LTE device currently available (in industry parlance it’s know as category 4 LTE), meaning the Tegra 4i can go head-to-head to with the superchips designed by Qualcomm, Broadcom and Altair Semiconductor.

Nvidia’s 150 Mbps demo at CTIA Wireless

But also like its competitors, Nvidia is been playing fast and loose with its marketing. It’s calling its modem “LTE-Advanced,” a benchmark no chipmaker in the industry is even close to matching. These chips are still 150 Mbps shy of meeting even the most minimal definition of LTE-Advanced. Nvidia and its peers are clearly abusing the term.

Nvidia has long made powerful applications and graphics processors for smartphones and tablets, but its momentum in the market has always been hampered by its lack of an integrated processor-modem. Integrated chips take up less space, draw less power and are generally cheaper, making it difficult for Nvidia to compete against mobile silicon giant Qualcomm in everything but the highest tier of the smartphone market.

Nvidia rectified the situation in 2011 by purchasing software defined wireless radio maker Icera. It gained an impressive modem to match its impressive multimedia processor, but it still needed to spend two years integrating the two into a single tight package. The Tegra 4i was the result.

When Nvidia first announced the chip back in February, however, it appeared that Nvidia was still having trouble keeping up with the competition. It’s processor was cutting edge, but the LTE modem was still an iteration behind – using category 3 LTE — making it a third slower than the other chips then hitting the market. Nvidia said it was able to rectify that quickly by utilizing Icera’s software defined radio architecture: it upgraded to category 4 with a simple firmware update.

Networks that support category 4 speeds don’t yet exist, though we could start seeing in them appear in the next year or two. That timing, though, works out well since Nvidia and other silicon vendors won’t have their superchips ready for commercial devices until late 2013 or early 2014. In the meantime, Nvidia is demoing Tegra 4i’s 150 Mbps throughput at CTIA over a simulated network, not a real one.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• The mobile backhaul market, 2011-2012: more innovation, greater competition

Now MySiteApp, the Israeli company that previously put out the UppSite tool for converting websites into native apps, has brought out a new service called Brow.si for making mobile websites behave like apps. Brow.si is a multifunctional toolbar that can be easily inserted in a responsive website through the addition of some Javascript. It’s now in public beta, following a two-week closed beta period in which it was already used by a million people.

Pushing for the web

Much of this functionality is the sort of thing a publisher can put into a mobile website itself – content sharing through social networks, read-later options such as Pocket, font resizing and so on – but Brow.si aims to make its addition easier.

It also introduces something that’s previously only been available on apps: push notifications. Without the user having to install anything, they can subscribe to notifications from all the websites they visit that are using Brow.si, and consume that content through the platform’s own reader. Again, users don’t have to create an account for this – they just need to log into a social network (Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn) for sharing purposes, after which Brow.si will know which user is which.

What’s more, MySiteApp has become a WordPress VIP (see disclosure) feature partner, meaning sites using that publishing platform can easily install the Brow.si plugin. But again, that’s not all: as alluded to above, Brow.si is a platform in its own right, and it aims to help publishers monetize their content.

Cashing in

As MySiteApp CEO Gal Brill explained to me, publishers can add so-called “mini applications” that will only show up when the user activates the Brow.si toolbar. When the toolbar is swiped across the screen, it introduces new real estate below it, so the publisher could for example add a mini-app for the content recommendation engine Taboola, or they could even use this new space for traditional ads.

Mini-apps will be made available through Brow.si’s marketplace, and the company has an open API so third-party developers can help populate that marketplace with their own efforts.

It’s all very clever, and the simplicity of installation should give Brow.si a flying start. It remains to be seen, though, whether this sort of functionality will help publishers monetize their content on the mobile web. There are many variables at play here, from users’ desire for content-related push notifications (granularity seems to be lacking) to publishers’ desire for differentiated presentation.

That said, the addition of a new and relatively unobtrusive patch of mobile screen real estate for advertising purposes could turn out to be a welcome development.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, GigaOm. Om Malik, founder of GigaOm, is also a venture partner at True.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to deliver the next-generation web experience
• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

Between the two, they have more than 2,500 wireless charging installations at public locations such as airports, coffee shops, malls and arenas. PowerKiss recently added some charging mats at select McDonalds Europe locations. The idea behind these installs is to allow customers to place their mobile device on a wireless charging pad and add juice to the battery. Of course, the device has to natively support wireless charging, such as Nokia’s Lumia 920, or be compatible with an add-on product such as a wireless charging cover.

Overall, the ability to recharge a device by placing it on a special mat really hasn’t taken off with the mainstream public. Part of the reason is a battle over the technology standards: If you have a device that supports wireless charging but doesn’t work with a compatible charging mat, you’ll have to plug in your device, of course.

Powermat Technologies is part of the PMA, or Power Matters Alliance, which boasts that 80 percent of its partner members represent the entire wireless install base. That sounds good, so what’s the issue?

Well, there’s another body, the Wireless Power Consortium, that’s been at this longer than the PMA by about four years and uses the Qi-branded standard. Even worse: Some partners are members of both groups. So while the PMA gained a new member through marriage, there are still plenty of fish in the sea using a different wireless standard.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Wireless Power: Beyond Charging Mats and Solar Panels
• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

On Tuesday Truphone is unveiling its first shared plans for business. Companies can now buy big batches of minutes, texts and megabytes and pool them across not just multiple devices, but also multiple nations. For instance a $500 plan includes 5000 voice minutes, 5000 text messages and 1 GB of 3G data, all of which can be used anywhere in the U.S., U.K. Netherlands, Australia and Hong Kong. Germany, Poland and Spain will join that list later this year.

Those prices will definitely seem high to most of us since we’re accustomed paying only for the for the domestic-only voice and data buckets offered by our local carriers. But if you’re splitting your time between countries in the Truphone “Zone” those rates look like a bargain. Anyone who has ever opened their mobile browser overseas can attest to international data roaming rates being practically criminal — $20 a megabyte isn’t uncommon.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to manage the signaling storm in 2013
• New solutions for the evolving mobile network
• U.S. Wireless Data Market, Q1 2009

A splash page first spotted by TechCrunch on Square’s website shows a demo of the service, which for now is available only to invited users. The demo shows that a registered user only has to send an email to the payment recipient with the dollar amount of the transfer in the subject line and pay@square.com in the CC field to complete a transaction. According to the page, you can email money to any debit card. An accompanying FAQ reveals that all transactions will cost the sender 50 cents a pop, but the recipient pays nothing.

We reached out to Square to get more details on the mysterious service, but the company isn’t revealing any more details for now. “We’re excited to share Square Cash with our friends,” a Square spokesperson said via email. “We’ll continue to invite others to try it out in the coming weeks.”

Of course, Square is a bit late to the party given that PayPal has dominated this space for a decade, while other companies like Braintree’s Venmo have been filling whatever gaps PayPal left in mobile peer-to-peer payments. The major banks all have their own email transfer services, and just last week at I/O, Google announced its intention to dive head first into the same market by adding Google Wallet support to Gmail. Square might just be another peer-to-peer payments setup, but it’s building up a consumer following thanks to Square Wallet (and Starbucks, which will help it distinguish its cash service form others.

Speaking of Google, the search giant revealed a sunset date of Nov. 20 for Google Checkout, a service it’s been promising to shut down for two years. Google has long intended to fold Checkout’s on-screen instant payment technology into Wallet. Google finally announced that transition at I/O last week.

In a blog post, Google said it would continue to support U.S. merchants that have their own payment processing technology with its new Wallet Instant Buy system. For customers who don’t have their own payment processing, Google is working with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks to get them up and running on new a new commerce platform.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities
• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals

Flickr is getting three big updates. All users will get 1 terabyte of photo storage for free. The site’s interface is also being redesigned to focus on full-resolution photos — both in photo browsing and in search — rather than words and links. Users will be able to share the full-resolution photos by email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. And, in addition to the iOS app Flickr launched last December, Yahoo is launching an Android app.

Flickr Pro, which had allowed users to pay for more storage space, is going away. “There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore,” Mayer said (though she acknowledged that there are “different skill levels”). There are still a couple of paid options: Users can pay $49.99 a year for an ad-free interface, and can add a second terabyte of data for $499.99 per year. It’s unclear what will happen with existing Flickr Pro memberships that users have already paid for.

On an investor call on Monday morning, Mayer had noted that there are “obvious synergies between Flickr and Tumblr,” but that it’s too early to say what those opportunities will be.

The choice of location for the press conference — a hotel in Times Square — became clear as Mayer announced that Yahoo has taken out a lease for office space at 229 West 43rd Street — the old New York Times building — and will be moving all 500 of its New York-based employees there. Tumblr’s employees, however, will stay downtown at their Union Square office.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage to say the move reflects “what a big player New York has become in the tech industry,” with Yahoo becoming “one of the largest tech presences in the city.” He noted that Tumblr is a “New York-grown company” and that NYC was the first city government to have its own Tumblr.

“Twenty years ago, if you looked out the window, there were plenty of yahoos in Times Square,” he said. “Now the Yahoos here will make an honest living … and help us grow and make our economy stronger.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• Report: Mobile Augmented Reality Today and Tomorrow
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

AT&T’s statement to the Verge on Monday notes that “by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from [Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry].” Besides FaceTime, Samsung and BlackBerry’s pre-installed video chat apps will also be included.

And more will be coming for all of its customers before the end of the year: “Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.”

When Apple updated its mobile video chat app to work over cellular last summer, AT&T came under fire when it announced subsequently that only customers who subscribed to one of its Mobile Share plans could use it. Several open internet groups threatened to file complaints with the FCC, calling the carrier’s policy a violation of net neutrality. Several months later, AT&T opened the service to anyone with an LTE device.

Based on broadness of the statement, it sounds like video chat apps like Google’s new Hangouts app, which is available over AT&T’s cellular network now for some iOS customers, will work over cellular for Android customers later on this year.

This post was updated on 5/21 to clarify that the iOS version of Google Hangouts is available for use over cellular networks now.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• 2012: the year of confusion for NFC payments
• NFC will be driven by marketing and loyalty, not payments

Hangouts has taken the place of Google Talk, which is what I use daily to make phone calls via Google Voice. Or at least I used to.

At the moment, users who upgrade to Hangouts on the web lose the ability to make voice calls through the old Google Talk. Incoming Google Voice calls can still be accepted through the new Hangouts, however. It turns out that Google Voice actually is a big part of Hangouts, it’s just not ready yet. Nikhyl Singhal, a product manager for all of Google’s real-time communications services said this on his Google+ page on Monday:

“Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.”

Singhal notes that from within Gmail, users can still place outbound Google Voice phone calls, so the functionality is still available; just not yet in the new Hangouts app or the Chrome extension for Hangouts.

On a related note, Hangouts still doesn’t use the open source WebRTC, or Web real-time communications, API that will allow for video, voice and file sharing without the need for plug-ins. Instead, the service is still built upon technology from Vidyo, which clarified the WebRTC situation in a blog post today. Google has confirmed the same to my colleague, Janko Roettgers.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Survey: the next wave of enterprise mobility
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust

Apple has started introducing trade-in offers that are particularly favorable to students. ZDNet reports:

Students who trade-in their old smartphones while upgrading to an iPhone will get 7,777 rupees (US$144). Non-students will be paid 7,000 rupees (US$130).

That’s in addition to an incentive for customers who use an American Express credit card to buy a new iPhone on a payment plan. Those customers will get 10 percent of their purchase back. Apple doesn’t have its own retail stores in India, but sells through a network of local, authorized retailers, many of whom only sell Apple products.

It’s a bit unusual for Apple to wheel and deal. But the iPhone maker has been tweaking its pricing strategy and incentive offerings in markets where smartphone ownership has only recently begun to take hold. Earlier this year, Apple introduced low and no-interest payment plans for iPhone buyers in India; similar to what it is offering in China. India is a country bearing huge potential — it is an example of what CEO Tim Cook means when he notes the potential of billions of people who have yet to own a smartphone. And as Om noted recently, there are 900 million mobile connections, and so far there are just 2.5 million iPhones in use.

As the iPhone matures especially in established markets, Apple is turning to fast-growing regions whose people are just now joining the smartphone revolution. It knows it can’t sell $600 smartphones to everyone. And so little by little we’re seeing Apple customize its approach to different markets, including selling older model iPhones through carriers, allowing brand-conscious young people to pay for the cachet of the iPhone brand in installments, or reaching customers through deals with local institutions.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”

Enthusiast site SamMobile got hold of the Galaxy S 3 software update and even has the file available for download if you have a Galaxy S 3 and you’re feeling particularly adventurous. The site suggests that Samsung is still working on the firmware and will likely include the Galaxy S 4 camera interface. That makes sense to me as Samsung representatives told me the company is trying to standardize the UI between its phones and cameras.

Don’t expect the Galaxy S 3 to see the touch-free gestures found on the Galaxy S 4 though: The latter device uses a special digitizer not found on the older phone. Here’s a partial list of the feature updates found by SamMobile, followed by a short video demonstration showing off the Galaxy S 4 bits running on a Galaxy S 3:

• Android 4.2.2 – Build ID: JDQ39
• New S4 Lockscreen: Multiple Widgets, two Unlock effects (Ripple and Light), improved ripple effect than Android 4.1.2, ability to change clock size and set a personal message
• New Screen modes (From S4): Adapt Display and Professional Photo
• Actionable notifications
• Completely revamped Settings UI (Tabbed interface – Exactly like the S4)
• Addition of Voice controls (Let’s you control various parts of the phone using voice commands – Galaxy S4 feature)
• New S-Voice (from S4)

The software update is expected next month, although that could change based on feature additions and testing by Samsung. What surprises me — in a good way — is that Samsung is doing this at all. Early on, the company wasn’t known for delivering Android updates too quickly. And instead of keeping the best features on the Galaxy S 4, possibly enticing some to upgrade early from a Galaxy S 3, the company is improving the experience on the older model.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• How to deliver the next-generation web experience

While Microsoft Windows 8 tablets have generally been sized at 10.1-inches or larger, the company is rumored to be working on a smaller Surface tablet. That would mean it relaxed the hardware requirements an allow for a device such as the W3, which will offer an optional keyboard to help with text input. Will the market support these smaller slates?

I’m not sold on the full Windows 8 Pro experience on such a small device. Yes, the formerly-known-as-Metro touch interface should be fine — quite good, in fact — on the Iconia W3; after all, the same design is great on smaller screens using Windows Phone 8. The bigger challenge is the Windows desktop and legacy app support, which is one of the three major points Acer calls attention to: “The Iconia W3 comes with Microsoft Office so you can edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs on the go,” for example.

With the 1280 x 768 resolution, running Office and other apps designed for Windows will present a challenge to most. The smaller screen and relatively lower resolution means smaller touch points, for starters. For maximum productivity in the desktop environment, a mouse will be the better option because the Windows 8 Desktop environment is similar to the Windows desktops of yesterday. Simply put, while Metro has evolved for touch and smaller screens, the Windows desktop hasn’t.

I could be wrong about this, but I do have a few years of experience that tells me it’s not likely. I used 7-inch touchscreen tablets running Windows XP and 7 on several UMPCs, often as a full-time computing device.

It took a ton of patience to make the systems work because apps weren’t designed to fit and run on them. These were the precursors to netbooks, and to a degree that’s what the Iconia W3 reminds me of: A cross between a modern UMPC and a netbook. Like those devices, Acer is using an Intel Atom to power the W3.

I’m sure to hear contrary opinions on this, but what would make the W3 more appealing would be for the tablet to run only the Metro interface and apps. (Ironically, none of the W3 product images even show the desktop, which I think is telling.) Of course, Microsoft doesn’t offer a Windows 8 license with just that part of the platform. I wish it did and did so at a reduced price since one would give up access to legacy Windows apps. In that case, and at the right price, I’d be far more interested in the W3.

Sure, one could buy the device and simply ignore the desktop completely. But you’re paying for it in the product price, which includes the cost of a Windows 8 Pro license. If Microsoft wants to allow partners to make small tablets, a better strategy would be to go Metro only at a lower license cost and truly embrace the touchscreen tablet market.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A look back at mobile in the third quarter
• A near-term outlook for the mobile app marketplace
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

The Jolla hardware looks similar to that of Nokia’s Lumia, with a clean, button-less front face that houses the 4.5-inch touchcscreen. Jolla’s product page mentions “The Other Half”, which appears to be a removable back cover that comes in different colors, allowing for some device personalization. The phone will use a dual-core processor and support 4G LTE in some regions. Internal storage tops out at 16 GB, but can be expanded via microSD card. The phone also includes an 8 megapixel rear camera with auto focus.

Jolla is less about hardware, however. Jolla’s Sailfish software has roots in the old MeeGo platform that Nokia and Intel created with their Maemo and Moblin projects. The operating system offers a multitasking style interface and supports apps written with the Qt framework. But the phone is also “Android app compliant” which, in a move similar to that of BlackBerry, can help with available apps at launch.

While I like the idea of Jolla — a community-based open-source smartphone approach — I think it will be extremely difficult for Jolla to gain serious traction in the marketplace. Handset and component makers already have several platforms to work with and the potential payback to invest efforts in Jolla is relatively small.

Credit to the Jolla folks though: Even as Android and iOS rule the smartphone markets, the little Davids are still willing to take on the Goliaths.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”

The payments startup is now chummy with the top two POS terminal and software makers used by U.S. restaurants (the other is Micros), and has deals will several smaller suppliers. The startup still has a long way to go before all of the burger joints and bistros that use those systems adopt its payments solution, but it’s comfortable in the knowledge that half the restaurants in the country could easily adopt that solution.

LevelUp offers both its own mobile payments app and white label technology that retailers can integrate into their own apps. In both cases, the implementation is pretty simple: they generate QR codes linked to a customer’s credit card information, which they can then scan into a terminal at the restaurant to make a mobile payment.

That terminal could be as basic as the proprietor’s smartphone (several previously cash-only merchants have used LevelUp to start accepting credit card payments), requiring no additional hardware, or it could take the form of a dedicated terminal. LevelUp takes 2 percent off the top of any transaction, but it also uses its platform to track customer data for rewards and promotions, bridging the gap between a loyalty program and a payment processing service.

At the end of 2012, LevelUp’s apps had about 500,000 users and it was handling about $5 million in transactions each month. Even in the nascent mobile payments market that makes it relatively small, however – in 2012, Square’s annual processing rate was $10 billion. But LevelUp believes it can become the Android to the Square’s iOS by working with other players like NCR in transaction value chain.

That’s one of the main reasons is focusing on independent restaurants, LevelUp said. Most restaurants already have a fully functioning (and often expensive) POS system in place. Instead of requiring a business to implement a new system for mobile payments, LevelUp merely acts as an appendage to their existing ones.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE

On the GigaOM Chrome Show, Chris Albrecht and I chatted with special guest, Joe Marini. As a Google Developer Advocate, Joe is an expert on the Chrome app experience along with the technology behind it such as Packaged Apps and Native Client apps.

Stacey Higginbotham also had a special guest interview this week on the Internet of Things podcast. Adam Dunkels explains how his early IoT coding efforts helped form the basis for LEGO Mindstorms robots and gave him the knowledge to start his latest company, Thingsquare.

Lastly, on the GigaOM Weekly Wrapup show, Tom Krazit, Eliza Kern, Janko Roettgers and I team up to dissect all of the developments at this year’s Google I/O event, ranging from new APIs for Chrome and Android to the new Google Play Music All Access subscription service.

(Download the GigaOM Chrome Show)

(Download the GigaOM Internet of Things podcast)

(Download the GigaOM Weekly Wrapup podcast)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• A near-term outlook for big data

Marketing becomes new revenue arm

Traditionally, CMOs have dealt with the “soft skills” of marketing. They headed up cost centers filled with branding, advertising and campaigns that were expensive endeavors, producing benefits that were often difficult to measure. In this current shift, CMOs might not bring CIOs to their knees, but if corporate budgets could talk they would certainly favor the CMO. To wit: Gartner predicts that by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. Why? Mobile, big data and real-time analytics are transforming the modern CMO’s organization from a cost center to a critical revenue-driving arm to reach and engage the customer base.

Realizing that CIOs and CMOs probably hate stories of a battle raging between them, there is actually a peaceful, and logical, middle ground in which the two work together to harness the vastness of big data to create real-time – and importantly, actionable – analytics. While the CMO brings the marketing skills to the table, the CIO has the technical chops to deal with capturing, processing and integrating data to make it useful.

Mobile transition requires new tools

The CMO is in a particularly prime position in the increasingly important mobile channel, as the feedback loop is uniquely personal and immediate. The ability to measure, predict and act upon an end-user action has never been more precise.

However, mobile is a different beast and legacy systems designed for the web rely on cookies to track user interaction. As we go more mobile, we enter a world devoid of cookies. New tools are required to match mobile users to their actions across multiple channels. Along with new tools, there needs to be a new partnership – the CMO and CIO united as a Dynamic Duo – working diligently together to deliver the cloud-based and back-office infrastructure required to pull actionable information from big data across all channels: bricks and mortar, web and mobile.

New focus on data-driven outreach

To get a view into what makes the CMO so potentially powerful, let’s turn to another battle, the one that happens on a quarterly basis across corporate America and beyond: The fight to make the quarterly earnings number. Typically, a CEO faced with a sales or earnings shortfall will turn to the CFO and the head of sales and say: “What can you do?”

The honest answer is: short term, not much. They can jam the channel, which will make the next quarter’s number even harder to achieve. Or shovel product out the door at prices that wouldn’t otherwise make sense. But by the time the word gets to the field and actions kick into gear, there can be quite a lag in results. And, again, these results may have value only for the short-term.

In the very near future – one that has already arrived for some organizations – the CEO turns to the CMO, who looks up from his or her laptop and says: “No problem. We should make that number by noon.”

The CFO and head of sales turn and say in unison: “How?”

“While you were talking I found an overstock of our Zing42 and sent an offer to 234,000 customers who have purchased this in the past, and statistically are ready to buy again, and to another 341,000 customers who haven’t purchased this yet, but show a high probability of doing so at the price point we are offering.”

No hurried sales calls to the field asking them to stuff the channel. No broadcasting of sales and discounts that can tarnish an image or weaken a brand. But rather, an analytically-driven offer to a curated digital audience delivered via a simple mobile notification, or in-application offer, to thousands of people who are analyzed and selected to be eager buyers.

This is the look of the CMO ascending: Powered by a cloud of mobile, big data and real-time analytics.

Rob Lilleness is the CEO of Medio, a Seattle-based provider of analytics solutions for mobile computing. Follow him on Twitter @Robmedio.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The importance of putting the U and I in visualization
• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media
• The Internet of Things: What It Is, Why It Matters

Google announced that in June, customers can order the handset through the Google Play store. Instead of the phone running Samsung’s customized TouchWiz software, it will instead run on pure Android, just like the Nexus 4. That means it will get future software updates directly through Google and not Samsung or a network provider.

Of course, some of the newest Samsung features won’t be present on the phone: I wouldn’t expect Samsung’s new camera modes to be there, nor would I expect gestures to work for hands-free scrolling or swiping. Still, in light of no new Nexus hardware, the unlocked handset could appeal to hardcore Android enthusiasts.

So without the release of Android 4.3 at Google I/O, does that mean Android hasn’t improved? Not at all; in fact, Google essentially boosted Android’s software without needing to wait for carriers and handset makers to upgrade the software. How did this happen? A large part of the 3.5 hour Google I/O keynote was dedicated to new Android services and APIs, plus a new application called Hangouts.

The new Hangouts app replaces Google Talk and is Google’s effort to unify its messaging platform. The app supports video calls with up to 10 participants, SMS notifications of incoming chat requests when offline, text chat and works across platforms: You can communication with other users on the web or on iOS devices. Hangouts also highlights a great new feature in Android: Support for synchronized notifications. If you get a notification on one device and take action, the notification won’t appear on other devices or in the Chrome browser.

Google also introduced its music subscription and discovery service called Google Play Music All Access. For a $9.99 monthly fee — $7.99 if you start a 30-day trial by June 30 — you get unlimited access to stream tracks thought the Play Music app and on the web. Human curators surface top songs and albums while music recommendations come from Google’s Knowledge Graph and your Google+ circles.

Gaming got a supercharge in Android as well. Developers can use the new Google Play Games services that allow cross-platform gaming complete with achievements and leaderboards. Game progress can also be saved to the cloud, allowing gamers to pick up where the left off, even from another device.

Android also saw one other big announcement this week, but it didn’t happen at Google I/O. The Bluetooth SIG announced that Android will gain support for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices in the coming months. That’s likely to be included in an actual Android release as some developers told me that Google will be completely changing the Bluetooth software stack in Android. Regardless, this means widespread support for Bluetooth 4.0 Smart and Smart Ready accessories such as watches, heart rate monitors and other low-powered companion devices.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter