Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

This phone is interesting for a number of reasons, including that it's very small and has suppoprt for popular IM services (please add that to all phones!). The camera is though nothing to write home about: 640*480.

What caught my eye was that 3 Java games are included with the phone. As developers know Java better than any other mobile application platform, and of course there are tons of Java games available, it makes sense to use that even when the games are pre-installed rather than developing for the native phone system. Applications in obfuscated Java bytecode are typically also smaller than ditto in ARM machine code, potentially saving on memory.

Samsung SGH-T509 printer friendly version - Cell Phones - CNET Reviews: "J2ME"

Natural language input is not ideal for phones, unless it's combined with voice input (and that's still a rare thing).

Supposedly this is aimed for information retrieval, but I would prefer to enter the shortest possible distinct text, like "movie fun dick jane" instead of "Can you please provide information about the movie Fun with Dick and Jane?" (slightly over-exaggerated).

Natural language input has been tried many times before (the phenomenon as such is at least 20 years old), but it never caught on. It hasn't even caught on when the user has a terminal with full alpha-numeric keyboard and a high-resolution display. Rather GUIs replaced the need for natural language input on PCs.

What would be more useful:
* Local or central memory of entered keywords (you likely search for the same keywords again).
* Better predictive text dictionaries that can be upgraded via the network with e.g. professional terminology etc.
* Predictive input that understood what's a verb, noun etc to make a better prediction. This includes words that you add yourself.
* Auto-completion of predicted words. Already supported by some phones, but not all.
* Touch screens on featurephones as well, for quick navigation using your fingers or a stylus.
* Idle screen combined with application menu, so that messaging etc is literally one key away.

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

Hinted by:
textually.org: Nokia Phones Go to Natural Language Class

Two news stories about acquisitions of companies with mobile application and mobile service development competence, not the least in Java ME and located in India.

As many (most?) future consumer services will rely on client/server setups, with an application (Java ME, and to a lesser degree Symbian OS, Windows Mobile or Linux, yet also Ajax and Flash) in the phone, and the development companies tend to be small, with little stock value compared to the buyers, and often without its own products (often consulting/oursourcing type of companies), it makes sense to buy the best competence that's out there now, and merge with a more market-driven organisation to secure that competitive services can be launched quickly.

CIOL : Mergers and acquisition : CSS acquires e-Brahma Technologies

The Hindu Business Line : Induslogic plans two acquisitions during this year

I can now show smilies/emoticons in blog entries. Inserting them into posts is a matter of adding img tags to smilies I have uploaded to the site, which should work with most blogs.

I can for instance insert things like and .

Not the most important thing, but it's a bit nicer-looking than ":)" etc.

I'm also frustrated by device differences, making Java ME development hard as you need to circumvent for a lot of device-specific oddities. And to even know what those oddities are you simply need to test the application on a whole slew of phones, and in cases you have to work around real bugs that will never be fixed in the phone model in question (maybe at the manufacturer, but the majority of users will not upgrade the phone system software).

Still, I'm a strong promoter of Java ME, as it's simply the most used mobile application platform, and it's actually quite developer-friendly with very good development tools and easy to use class libraries. Read more about my thoughts on the Java ME pages.

I include my complete comment to Russell's entry below, if it happens to get erased or something. You never know. I was quite opinionated ;).

The Frustrations of Java at MobHappy

My response:

I believe I'm throwing a bit of gasoline on the fire here, but that's what comments are for. I'm as frustrated by the device differences as anybody else, but there are shades in hell too. All personal opinions of course.

I think we should be careful not falling into the "If it's not perfect it's useless" trap. All seasoned Java ME developers know it's not WORA, so let's get on with it. "Adopt, Adapt and Improve", as John Cleese once said.

The KVM provider and phone brand specific differences between phones and hence the need for testing on "all" (at least very many) phones, is the biggest issue with Java ME in my opinion (more so than the overall feature differentiation/evolution specified by Sun which is a necessity; everything evolves), but it's not a show-stopper. There are companies that specialize in such testing, by simply having most commercial handsets in their labs. In many cases such testing, especially on simple corporate client/server applications, can easily cost more than the implementation, or at least take the most time. Solutions like J2ME Polish and similar can help, provided they are used from day one.

Java ME and WAP (or HTML) are often not alternatives, as WAP has no access to local phone functionality. There's a lot of services you can't do without that. Maybe Flirtomatic doesn't need it, as I guess personal photos could be sent in via MMS equally well, etc.

Especially when we start talking games (2D, isometric or whatever) it becomes apparent WAP doesn't even come close to the interaction and functionality that's possible via Java. I could even say WAP won't cut it at all.

Let's take a more pro example: You want to show a stock chart that you can scroll and scale without latency. Is WAP or even HTML suited for that? No. Is Java ME suited for that? Yes indeed, and you don't even need any newer phone for it to work. Already MIDP 1.0 supports simple but useful vector graphics. Flash could do this, but it doesn't exist in enough phones.

I would argue that Java ME is actually good for RAD, with a big but: Writing a client/server form-type Java ME application is incredibly easy and quick, as long as you only test it on one specific phone model initially (e.g. my Mobile Blogger only took 8 hours from waking up in the morning with the idea and to publish the first version on GetJar; it certainly doesn't support all phones, but that wasn't the intention as it's free). That's RAD to me! If we talk public "for everyone to use" services the phone differences need to be understood and handled before the service is launched. I believe many still make that mistake (I did it with another (and commercial) application that I won't mention).

"The network is the computer" is very much about downloaded local applications (where Java was supposed to be used), so Java ME fits that description well in theory, provided it had been the same Java base implementation on all terminal devices.

The fragmentation _IS_ actually to a large extent Sun's fault, as Sun handed out the rights to others to make KVMs and base class libraries, which resulted in a plethora of differently behaving (and also in cases quite buggy) and differently featured implementations, instead of one "if it's a bug it's a documented feature" single reference and implementation at the same time. They didn't make that mistake with J2SE and J2EE, so why with Java ME?

Another drawback with Java ME, as opposed to J2SE and J2EE is that upgrading the KVM and class libraries can't easily be done on featurephones (which is what the majoity of people use). Typically you need to upgrade the complete phone software, which pretty much nobody does. That means from a developer point-of-view that possible bugs and other oddities stay the life-time of the specific phone model. If the phone runs BREW you can in cases easily upgrade the KVM (the KVM runs on top of BREW), but BREW is much less used in phones than Java ME, so the issue is still there.

I guess I'm getting into "Messerschmitt" mode now, but J2ME is the abbreviation of "Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition", which is even longer. I think "Java ME" as new abbreviation (no more "2") is better from a branding perspective.

I think this is a good indicator: mobispine is currently the most popular download at GetJar (even more popular than Opera mini), with close to 30k downloads per week. This despite mobispine being completely proprietary and (in operator speak) a walled garden.

It's completely free and without ads, so I haven't been able to figure out the business model, yet if it reaches critical mass they could add opt-in services, and they would be a very likely acquisition candidate.

Free Java, Symbian, Palm and Pocket PC Software

As the names suggest, these are evolutions of previous N-series phones.

They are all very capable phones, but there's still a differentiation:
N72: music/multimedia focus, 2 Mp camera, EDGE
N73: camera focus, 3.2 Mp camera, Carl Zeiss optics, 3G
N93: video focus, same camera features as N73, 3G

Press Release: Meet the Nokia N72: the Multimedia Computer that Looks as Good as It Performs (MobileBurn)

Press Release: Digitally Divine Nokia N73 - the Ultimate Challenge to the Digital Camera (MobileBurn)

Press Release: Nokia Introduces the Next Story in Video with the Nokia N93 (MobileBurn)

I'm not much for those long term estimates, as they always miss the mark completely, but this at least shows operators haven't given up on 3G.

It seems operators expect HSDPA to be the Holy Grail in terms of generating the bulk of the data revenues in the future. I hope they are right, as the current use of 3G of course doesn't even come close to compensating for the investments.

This is to me an infrastructure provider driven business. What I mean with that is that Ericsson and others have seemingly easy to convince operators that "if you just add this too, revenues will start coming in". This despite the fact that operators haven't fully exploited e.g. instant messaging yet. That in itself could be a major revenue generator and requires no new infrastructure.

Mentioned in other notes, I sense there's a big possibility for specialized MVNOs to exploit those opportunities that fall off the wagon as the major operators chase hectically for the rainbow of possible future revenue generators. (how's that for colorful description :)? )

Current MVNOs seem to focus on "more of the same, but cheaper", and there are way too many of those around.

Digital Media Europe: News - Worldwide 3G subscriber base to reach 540m in 2010 – report

If you all remember, in the old days when people used to fax: In its very inception, if you bought a fax machine you had no one to fax to, so it took quite some time before investing in a fax machine made sense. The growth curve for that must have been exponential after that, as when your business contacts (most likely at companies larger than your own) all had fax machines, you simply had to buy one yourself.

Hotxt is in a similar situation: To use Hotxt for the low rate of £1 a week both you and your SMS pals need to be signed up to Hotxt and run the Hotxt Java application. Hotxt supports an Out function to interface with normal SMS, but then the rate is 7.5p, which is way too high in my opinion.

It's both a logistical (convince all your friends and contacts to sign up to Hotxt) and pedagogical (you as a user must figure out that the application is needed on both sides; something that beta testers of my Jiminy! SMS application had trouble with) issue.

My spin on how Hotxt could solve this is that all SMSs sent to non-Hotxt users would automatically go through Hotxt Out with a considerably better rate than other operators (because you can view Hotxt as an SMS MVNO). That would serve as initial incentive for users to sign up. Later on the much better rate to existing Hotxt users would speed up the transition.

Is Hotxt Hot? at MobHappy

SoonR and Avvenu offer solutions enabling you to access documents you have on your PC at home or at work from mobile phones. SoonR takes this to the most extreme by just requiring a WAP Browser in the phone. That of course means document legibility can't be that very good, but that hasn't stopped users from signing up to the service in droves, despite the usual question mark regarding how secure this is. After all, you might be accessing contracts etc this way.

Phone Home - Yahoo! News

SoonR - In Touch Now

Avvenu - Access Files and Share Photos from Anywhere

Some interesting diagrams showing that Japan is way ahead of other countries in terms of using mobile phones for Internet access, and that the growth has been remarkably high in the Americas and Europe (literally doubling) between 2004 and 2005, yet is supposedly flattening.

eMarketer.com - Will the Mobile Phone Become the Dominant Internet Platform?

Commentary from Russell Beattie:
RussellBeattie.com - Juggernaut

Quote: the massive growth of the mobile market as a whole is going to push the mobile internet users beyond the PC users within the next year or so

And a sad note that he'll stop posting to his blog (for good?):
RussellBeattie.com - The Last Page

iCamCU is for Nokia Series 60 phones and allows you to take a picture by sending a camera phone running the iCamCU application a text message (SMS and/or MMS?). The picture will be sent back via an MMS.

Neat, but the price is pretty high: £39.48 = $70.3 !!!
They don't have any evaluation version of the software, meaning you can't try before you buy.

iCamCU

That's simply amazing numbers. Just shipping that many phones to consumers seems mind-boggling. As many of those phones are shipped to price-pressured markets, it's likely revenues will drop relative to the volume.

The top providers are as usual Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG (in that order), and nothing indicates this will change in the short term.

Coming Later In 2006: One Billion Mobile Phone Handsets - Yahoo! News

Russell at MobHappy has a piece on AdMob, one of the advertising brokers for mobile phones. A mentioned benefit with AdMob is that you can pinpoint specific phone models etc so that advertising gets more targetted and hence you spend less money on visitors that might not have use for your offering. Whether this is unique I haven't been able to verify.

I'm actually using AdMob at wap.abiro.com both ways:
* advertising for other mobile sites at wap.abiro.com
* advertising for wap.abiro.com at other mobile sites
I can't say the results have been awe-striking so far, but as the ads are quite subtle (you don't get a full-page blinking color image with audio, just one line of linked text) I'll continue to use it and see what kind of result I can get.

Declaration of Interest at MobHappy

Very good results from Nokia, in large part due to strong sales development in Asia, but also due to an increased average price per phone.

Nokia beats forecasts in strong first quarter - Yahoo! News

This sounds strange to a European and possibly also an American, but as Asia is where the growth is, and a lot less have PCs than mobile phones in e.g. China, this means the amount of users with possibility to access the Internet via phones increases quickly.

This is very interesting and important for service providers that currently only allow access from PCs and haven't adapted content to phone needs yet. It's time guys!

Mobile Browsing Seen Changing Face Of The Web - Yahoo! News

Mobile Distillery promises to simplify the effort of adapting Java applications to multiple phones with its Celsius product, in effect cutting time-to-market.

It sounds a bit similar to J2ME Polish (that is free).

According to information on the site Celsius is optimised for games, and it's focused on UI aspects of Java applications rather than communication.

MOBILE DISTILLERY

Process-one provides a heavy-duty server solution for Jabber-based IM. SHAPE Services provides mobile client applications as well as an IM gateway (including for Jabber). Together they seem to achieve a very strong offering, likely without major changes to their product portfolio.

Personal IM is not mentioned, which seems to be on all operator's minds right now. Considering the note talks about Mobile Enterprise, possibly they are not after the operator market.

Process-one Launches Mobile Enterprise Instant Messaging Platform and Partners with SHAPE Services

We are not talking big changes in profit from last year, but I guess status quo is not what is expected from a player in this market. Sales increased by 20% since last year, together indicating prices are dropping.

When following the mobile phone manufacturers over time it's interesting to see how strong Nokia and Motorola still are. Samsung and LG don't seem to be able to knock even Motorola out from its second position. Also, domestic manufacturers in e.g. China have not been able to affect any of the top players noticeably. Sony Ericsson is maybe the manufacturer that is hanging the most loose, even though they've had good success with the Walkman phones. Without them the situation would probably be worse.

Motorola net dips even as sales surge 23 per cent in first quarter - Yahoo! News

Using the phone as a replacement for exchanging written notes in the class room is a nice one. It's even less easy to spot, and it also works between class rooms etc.

Actually I designed Jiminy! SMS for this very application, but a Bluetooth chat application would also be interesting as it doesn't cost anything to communicate.

Tele2/Comviq now charges 0 (in whatever currency) for SMSs sent within its network. That means SMS is a better choice than Bluetooth provided both sides of the SMS "link" has Tele2/Comviq.

textually.org: Generation text

I haven't used a wristwatch for many years, but it seems this is an overall trend as phones and media players take over as status and clock devices.

textually.org: Wristwatches Get the Back of the Hand

Apparently its commonplace in the US to have real flatrate data plans, while in Europe we still typically have capped and pay-as-you-go plans, except for some specific operator-controlled services like in cases music downloads etc. That means Orb's concept of streaming information from your own PC to your phone works much better in the US. Mentioned here is that you could have your favorite channel running on your PC (provided you have a TV card) and stream that to your phone. The cost would be huge with the type of plan most Europeans have.

Orb - Stream Your Computer to Your Mobile at MobHappy

Geoff Goodfellow, inventor of wireless email, was hired by NTP as a consultant, but in actuality the setup made Geoff invisible to the legal process, so his prior art didn't show in the hearings. That's how it goes when a company like NTP consists of mainly lawyers, that of course know that prior art would invalidate NTP's claims.

Geoff Goodfellow, early inventor of wireless email, profiled - Engadget Mobile

Nokia has for a long time designed keypads more for looks (if even that) than usability, the 3650 probably being the scariest example, but it seems Nokia finally has realized something must be done. Russell Beattie shows some good examples of not so good Nokia phone keypads. I don't think Motorola is much better though, with its "wavy" lines.

As said earlier, usability aspects must get a higher priority, both in what operators specify and require, and in what manufacturers actually do. If not even the simplest things like telephony and SMS are easy to use, how can the industry expect users to deploy the more advanced features?

Russell Beattie Notebook - Buttons for Humans

There's obviously no law saying that the music industry should be exempt from revenue pressure. Both executives and artists are paid way more than they should anyway, but if status quo is what people want, then ringtones is a good cure for the loss in CD sales.

We all know that physical delivery of music and other multimedia will go away in the longer term. Digital distribution is simply much more cost efficient (we are talking magnitudes more efficient, not "percentages", even when the music is of CD quality), which hopefully also will show in the consumer price.

What's ironical is that even though digital distribution is so incredibly cheap, the audio quality is so crappy. Hence, by paying almost the same for an album online you provide much more margin to the music company for lower-grade goods. Anyone understands the logic in that? The cost for making the album is of course the same, so at least online stores should give knowledgeable customers the possibility to download music in CD or DVD quality. I'm sure music representatives complain that the delivery infrastructure is expensive etc etc, but it's simply not. Consider that digital distribution just requires setting up a bunch of hefty servers and compare that with delivering physical media across the world to thousands of shops...

Ringtones are big business for the music industry - Apr. 12, 2006

It sounds a bit incredible, but instead of using high-power and extremely heat-intensive lamps and a igh resolution LCD screen this solution uses a laser and a single (pixel?) LCD panel.

Already there are projectors for presentations and home cinemas that are pretty small, but if giving comparable amount of luminance the laser technology could easily knock out the lamp/high-res LCD technology, simply because it's cheaper, smaller, less power-consuming and noise-less.

It's interesting that this is tried first in phones, when it would also make sense to integrate in notebooks.

The Korea Times : Phone to Carry Video Projector

It seems the Walkman brand can still generate money, or maybe it's because of the feature sets of the phones. My impression is that the Walkman phones are not just a PR stunt, but that they actually deliver what consumers want.

Quotes:
the number of handsets shipped rose 41 percent to 13.3 million in the first quarter, compared with 9.4 million in the same period last year.
"However, Sony Ericsson may have lost market share compared to the fourth quarter as the overall market was very strong in the first quarter,"

Sony Ericsson Net Profit More Than Triples - Yahoo! News

This sounds similar to the controversy about Jamster/Jamba posting reminder messages via mBlox that actually the consumer had to pay for. I haven't read anything about what actually happened to either mBlox or Jamster, but in that case clearly Jamster was at fault, as they ordered this to happen.

In the current case mTouche has provided its customer database (yikes!!!) to MyGLobalFun that then spammed the consumers with messages they had to pay for. I think this is simply outrageous, and there's clearly need for a discouraging example for other companies to learn from (so they apply humane business ethics). In this case clearly both companies are at fault.

Content Provider Fined for Sending Spam SMS Messages (MobileBurn)

The term J2ME is no more, so I guess I have to start using the proper term Java ME.

If it hasn't been clear enough before, using Java ME to extend online services to mobile phones is the way to go. Hands down. To make all those projects possible, there's need for good tools, which is what this survey is about. Developers don't seem to be very happy with current testing and debugging tools.

The major problem I see is that you currently have to verify your application on all phones that you claim to support. This is plain silly and simply has to go away for this to be feasible in the long term. A major reason why this is so now is that there's no single source of Java ME implementations (which is bad), but also that Java ME is so quickly enhanced with new features (which is good, provided it's backwards compatible and can be sensed run-time, which is the case). Sun opted for third party to make Java ME KVMs and class libraries, which is a big blunder. Also, notably MIDP 1.0 lacked in important functionality, so manufacturers added their own. Nokia UI is a good example, which was needed at the time, but that I hope no one is using anymore.

Quote: 87% of respondents have made the move to extend mission-critical applications to mobile devices (up sharply from 75% only six months ago).

Quote: Approximately 52% of respondents are currently working with Java ME ... compared to 46% six months ago

Wireless Developers Dish out Poor Grades on Quality of Development Tools in Latest Evans Data Study

On a less serious note: If you want to know why there has been less postings lately, this is the reason:
Abiro - The Lab - Computer Games - Oblivion

It's already (and understandably) a big commercial hit, so Bethesda will get the invested money back, with a hockey stick.

To give it a mobile phone spin: There's also a mobile version of Oblivion. I can't fathom how it can in any way be comparable to the PC/Xbox version, but would be interesting to try out.

Quote: Subscribers wishing to use the faster service need a new handset or computer data card.
The majority of subscribers in Europe still have GPRS phones, and most don't even use that functionality. HSDPA could be the ice breaker for data services, but then fees need to be sensible. E.g. downloading a song should not cost anything on top of the price of the individual song or the subscription.

HSDPA could actually rival WLAN-based hot spots, unless WiMAX comes a-knocking.

CORRECTED-Operators move swiftly to speed 3G networks - Yahoo! News

Quote: Industry experts say low tariffs have spurred the rapid growth of phone services in India, where the average wage is 1.60 dollars a day.
Not much market for ringtones then I guess, unless phones are considered a status symbol and identity enhancer, and hence cause for extra investments.

India phone subscribers surge by 41 million in 2005-06 - Yahoo! News

Eclipse is a popular open-source tool for software development, and is also popular among mobile application developers writing J2ME applications.

Regarding J2ME development: A new Mobile Tools for the Java Platform Project will provide frameworks for runtime management of devices and emulators, build management and deployment of J2ME applications, mobile device debugging, application creation wizards, UI design tools, localization and mobile security extensions
Sounds like they've looked at NetBeans Mobility Pack. I only use NetBeans at the moment.

EETimes.com - Eclipse extending into embedded, device software

CellBackup now covers BREW, Java and Windows Mobile phones.

Lumitrend claims to support backup of all content on the phone. Knowing that you can't reach all the phone's data from Java and most phones don't even have access to the file system and PIM data, this can't be true, but if you have a more modern phone you will be able to backup at least most of the data. In terms of BREW and Windows Mobile this is less of a problem, as both have more full access to the phone's files etc.

The Windows Mobile version will be $10 one-time fee, which sounds like a good deal. I wonder though: Would you really backup all your music etc via the mobile network? It sounds pretty expensive and slow to do so.

Lumitrend Extends Global Reach by Offering the Online Backup Solution for Windows Mobile Compatible Cell Phones

You can read the note for yourself, but here are a few thoughts from me:

BREW is today limited to CDMA networks, yet the technology as such is not. Java on the other hand is used independent of network. There are also other issues with BREW: You can't offer BREW applications without having them approved by Qualcomm/NSTL and offered via an operator. Java applications can be offered by anyone via any means. That of course then means all independent content providers focus on Java, while some US operators focus on BREW. Yet not all: Sprint prefers Java.

One thing that BREW does much more right than Java is the way it's a complete solution with DRM, billing, virus avoidance (through certification) etc. Therefor Qualcomm also markets BREW as a way to sell Java applications, as BREW can run Java KVMs and the billing etc of the BREW Distribution System can then also be used for Java applications. That of course requires that phones have BREW in the first place, and most phones don't. At the same time I expect that in a year's time all phones sold will support Java.

It should be noted that there's a clear technical benefit with BREW: Applications run as machine code on the phone, which means faster applications and access to more system functionality. A drawback is though that by doing so a BREW application can easily crash the whole phone (and you don't want that to happen; hence the strict certification procedure).

The market doesn't care which technology is the technically-speaking best solution. It's all about dominating on developer endorsement, product availability, sales channels, convenience etc. In that sense Java has already won.

Qualcomm beckons developers with BREW | The Register

They even call it Push-to-Xperience.

Push-to-talk is the key functionality advertised, but it also offers push-to-video and push-to-e-mail (isn't the latter just attaching a file to an e-mail?).

It's IMS/SIP based, so it has to be compared with other companies' IMS offerings. A diagram at MT's site shows use of GPRS. I definitely wouldn't do video over GPRS. Audio might work though, but not very well. 3G is advised in GSM countries. cdma2000 1X should be enough though in CDMA countries.

Mobile Tornado Whips Up A Storm In Push-To-Talk Communications - Yahoo! News

Welcome to Mobile Tornado

Mobile advertizing seems to be the most spoken of topic this year.

Quote: It’s pretty clear to me though that the US is about to go into overdrive and whizz past Europe on the mobile marketing front.
That's not necessarily bad for Europe. Depends on who you ask.

Day 1 @ CTIA at MobHappy

I can imagine RIM people having discussed lite this (not in any way saying they did, just maybe...): "We are sitting on a gold mine here, as the awareness of mobile corporate email is stronger than ever, and our competition wants to take over, so let's get this stupid law suit out of the way so we can expand our business."

It wasn't just a matter of economics, but also possible long term destruction of a respected brand, yet I'm still wondering why they had to pay that much.

5 million subscribers is of course not much when comparing with the total mobile phone market, so I would advise RIM to expand its offering to all Java phones. Considering the Blackberry is Java-based anyway (with a dialect of J2ME/MIDP) it can't be that complex for RIM's developers to make a generic solution.

BlackBerry Tops 5 Mln Subscribers - Mobile News - Designtechnica

I'd say competition any day (and a thought that if what is supported today doesn't generate more money to operators, then a slew of more features will; re-iterated every year). Adding software like PDA functionality doesn't cost much, but adding hardware, like a camera, a high resolution display, GPS and lots of memory for music etc does, and most consumers don't use these features. This goes for cameras too, even though analysts and manufacturers make you believe everyone is snapping pictures on a daily basis with their phones.

The author discusses that the drawback with adding a lot of software features (despite being almost free from the consumer's point of view) is that the phone gets harder to use. Sure, a lot of that can be hidden away, but if those features are there at all, obviously they have to be accessible somehow, leading to cluttered menus etc.

The feature frenzy will not stop of course, but I hope to see two things:
* More differentiation in models, and even honesty from manufacturers calling simpler phones for standard or basic phones rather than entry level phones, but I don't think it will ever happen.
* More focus on usability aspects when designing the products. This simply has to happen!

Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak - Ease of use lost in a sea of features - Yahoo! News

This is a sign that it's going well for Trolltech, being the preferred choice for Linux-based GUI on mobile devices.

Oddly, many talk about Linux's main benefit being that it's free, but obviously Qt/Embedded, Qtopia and other mobile applications aren't, so the cost might not be that different from other solutions after all. What's a big difference between Linux and proprietary or licensed systems though is that there's so much that can be re-used, yet the manufacturers can also add its own functionality to the system. Something that Japanese Access has taken to heart.

Digital Media Europe: News - Trolltech to expand into Germany

I guess Apple's Fairplay is the most used method counting individual service providers, but on the other hand WMDRM is used by supposedly 100 service providers, and many audio/video players support it as well, so viewing the content is in no way limited to the PC.

In recent news stories it's been shown that consumers don't have that much faith in the Microsoft brand, but it's clear the industry does, considering it's their IPR that WMDRM is protecting. It can also be that there's no viable alternative.

Digital Media Europe: News - Microsoft to increase investments in DRM

More evidence that looks are more important than features, at least in USA.

Miro Kazakoff at Compete:
Sales figures tell a sad story for fans of high-tech phones in the United States: Beyond the RAZR, U.S. consumers are walking away with inexpensive, midrange clamshells, Telephia's Baumatay says.
For all the hype, consumers keep coming back to basic clamshell phones

It's a RAZR World - Yahoo! News

Bitstream has previously provided ThnderHawk as a browser for Windows CE that relies on a service that converts and compresses the data. Now Bitstream introduces its own Java-based browser which competes head to head with Opera Mini.

Quote: ThunderHawk Java/J2ME Edition displays full HTML Web pages just as they would appear on the desktop for a superior user experience.
This is different from Opera Mini that shows all content as one vertical banner.

Quote: If a browser reformats, repurposes or in some cases, even removes content ... subscribers will spend less time browsing
This sounds like a direct argument against Opera Mini (no names mentioned of course).

Bitstream Previews ThunderHawk(TM) Java/J2ME Mobile Browser at CTIA Wireless 2006

Recent press releases about Eclipse and NetBeans showing evolution of features for mobile Java development. Of course these tools can be used for much more than that.

Eclipse:
Mobile Tools for the Java Platform (MTJ) Project - This new DSDP project will provide frameworks for runtime management of devices and emulators, build management and deployment of J2ME applications, mobile device debugging, application creation wizards, UI design tools, localization, and mobile security extensions. The initial release is scheduled for June and will focus on runtime management, build and deployment of J2ME applications.

NetBeans:
Currently, while NetBeans has scripting support it is all within the Java realm. We are now extending that scripting support outside Java to C and C++. One of the reasons is that NetBeans has a strong following in mobile dev space, and that is still a fragmented sector. Devs are not just writing Java for mobile devices but are working with other languages, such as C and C++ to support devices and even carrier partners.
This is the first time we’ve supported J2ME, J2EE, J2SE and SOA on Mac.

Eclipse Continues Momentum in Device and Embedded Software Development with New Open Source Project Initiatives

Integration Developers News

Quote: The feature pack has built-in middleware components that provide networking technology, codecs, and customizable user interfaces ... With the feature pack, "there is no need for them [developers] to do any integration anymore,"

That sounds a bit optimistic, as the manufcaturer still needs to integrate Windows CE with the display, keypad, network stack etc.

Microsoft Upgrades Windows CE 5.0 - Yahoo! News: "The feature pack has built-in middleware components that provide networking technology, codecs, and customizable user interfaces"

We are not quite there yet though. Consider for instance that J2SE embedded supposedly takes 25 MB when most UI parts are taken out. What if e.g. Swing was in place, plus an advanced OS and embedded applications on top of that?

Sun hasn't been as committed to J2ME as it has to J2SE and J2EE, not the least evidenced by the fact that Sun delivers its own ready-to-run J2SE and J2EE solutions, but not so with J2ME (where third-party like Aplix, Esmertec and others provide that).

Existing phones are using J2ME/MIDP, so that's the market to go after for mobile applications when talking 2006 and probably also 2007, whatever Sun and others might think about lack of functionality, plethora of dialects and the like. Actually this can be a competitive advantage for those that actually know how to navigate past those issues.

Sun aims "standard" Java at embedded apps

N91, N71, N80, E60, E61, and E71 are delayed.

Quote: they'll be shipping the N91 -- which was slated for a holiday release last year -- this week

Quote: the E61 will get priority for release
I consider this the most interesting of the upcoming phones.

Software bugs at fault for delays of Nokia's N91, E61 and four others - Engadget Mobile

AOL and others teamed up on this survey.

This is the first time I see mobile mapping mentioned as a key feature. Maybe because it's now available and working. This was actually the most sought after feature of all, even over SMS.

Also interesting is that many want to go all mobile, dropping their landline subscription. Mobile + VoIP sounds like a good solution to cut costs.

Survey Fingers 'Must-Have' Mobile Services - Mobile News - Designtechnica

Poll: Youth Find Many Uses for Cell Phones - Yahoo! News

Some time ago there were discussions about whether Google had the right to remove ads etc when converting web pages for small phone displays, but also AOL has taken that route by chopping off all "unneeded" information before generating WAP/WML from the HTML, shrinks the images and handles simple Javascript menus on the server side. Taken together this should mean you can use your existing phone for browsing any (or most any) web site.

Quote: AOL's servers detect the size and color depth of individual phones' screens and alter images to fit. And while the system will try to automatically reformat many pages, the most popular Web sites will get hand-tagged by human AOL editors, he said.
The last point doesn't seem very realistic as the most popular web sites are also the most updated (on a second-by-second basis).

Quote: But Opera Mini is a Java application you must download to your phone, where AOL's service works through the phone's existing WAP browser.
The question is if it's a but or an advantage. E.g. I haven't seen WAP browsers that can show such small text as Opera Mini.

AOL Shrinks Web for Cell Phones - Yahoo! News

I'm no expert in what constitutes kosher, but apparently it means voice only and filtering of inappropriate voice services when it comes to phones. Not even SMS is supported.

textually.org: 'Kosher' Phone to be sold outside of Israel

Low-cost in this case doesn't mean low on features. At least not for everyday use.

They are clearly differentiated:
2610: business user
2310: consumer
1112: simplicity

What struck me as the most interesting, considering they are said to be intended for emerging markets, is the extensive language support, and especially Asia and South America. In terms of India, menus etc can be shown in several languages, yet T9 only works for Hindi. Of course they support Chinese as well. Note that they won't support all the same languages in the same phone model. I guess for cost reasons, as e.g. Chinese fonts take a lot of memory.

Nokia - Performance, quality and ease of use - the hallmarks of Nokia's newest range of iconic affordable phones - Press Releases - Press - About Nokia

If you are into photoblogging from phones, there are a number of tools for making that easier from Series 60 phones.

anti-mega: Flickr off

I didn't find any J2ME applications för Flickr at GetJar, but here's a Fl