Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

Update: LinuxDevices lists most of the different variants of mobile Linux:
Linux phones too closed to appeal to Linux users?
The best solution would in my opinion be if Trolltech promoted one specific delivery of Linux.


If you thought Java ME was a fragmented mess, please read this. It seems to look even worse for Linux.

Trolltech two years ago: each of the FOUR different Linux cellphone initiatives, plus TWO more other companies who develop with Linux for their cellphone software, are completely incompatible

Today: at least SIX different implementations of Linux/Qt/other-API that are neither binary or source compatible with each other

Interestingly this is when you use Trolltech Qt. If you don't want to do that, and instead use e.g. GTK, for cost and/or lock-in reasons, the fragmentation gets even worse, and suddenly puts Java ME in a very good light.

If anything, an application platform for downloaded/dynamic applications needs to be compatible across devices so that investments in development can be compensated by volumes, and so that customers don't need to buy certain devices to run specific applications.

Hopefully the new Linux initiative will fix it to a certain degree, but the author was sceptical about that as well:
They only forgot to tell us that neither the PalmSource, Mizi Research, or OSDL initiatives are part of this "globally adopted platform".

Microsoft Windows is a good example of when it works out right. You might think what you like about Microsoft and Windows as such, but there's at least compatibility across PCs, as all PCs sold today run Windows XP. There's even backwards compatibility to a certain degree, so for that matter I'm happy Microsoft dominates, but maybe not for any other reason.

This makes me feel better about the Java ME situation. Actually I rather consider this a challenge and an opportunity for companies with the competence to overcome the hurdles. If there are no obstacles, how do you avoid commodity-style competition?

Editorial: The Chaos of Incompatibility in Mobile Linux - OSNews.com

J2ME Polish is a toolkit for enhancing the UI of Java ME applications through style sheets and form functionality that uses MIDP canvas, as well as for simplifying device porting through information about device-specific functionality and conditional compilation.

This sounds pretty good indeed, except that for applications (as opposed to games) it's getting more and more critical that Java ME applications look exactly like the embedded applications on any specific phone, rather than the same on all phones, to minimize the learning curve for users. Hence I'm personally for using the form functionality in MIDP rather than using J2ME Polish for that, despite the limitations in the former.

If I use J2ME Polish in a real-life project I might come back with more comments. The choice is as described above not a clear yes or no, so you need to make your own decision based on product requirements.

J2ME Polish

As the Yahoo! Go application only runs on Nokia Series 60 phones its scope is quite limited. I hope they will release a Java version soon. If they had made it in Java it would also run on Series 60 phones, but as the access to phone features is better in Series 60 (as of now) it's a sensible first choice.

Yahoo! Go - How It Works - Mobile

Here's an interesting take on the issues Opera faced when developing Opera Mini. The note was written by Opera for Sony Ericsson, so it's slightly biased. Especially the "Managing Java fragmentation" section should be interesting. As you might know, most of the processing is done on a transcoding server. Even so there were device issues.

In short, they have two basic versions for MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0 respectively, and most other tweaks are done run-time.

Quote: "Opera Software found that only way to solve the problem with Java fragmentation was to actually test the application on each and every device from many manufacturers."

This is a must-read for those that still believe multi-device porting is a non-issue.

Developer case study: Managing Java fragmentation, Opera Software's Java ME browser client

See also my previous entry about Java issues:
Abiro - Mobile News: Java ME, still not Write Once, Run Anywhere

The wallet, keys and ID/credit cards are some of the more important things we all bring along almost wherever we go, and Sweden's Smarttrust and a number of its bank customers have decided on a (local?) standard for how at least identification shall be handled via mobile phones.

The SIM card will store a certificate and when accessing a service needing authentication the user enters his/her phone number, a control code and a 6 digit PIN code that's tied to the SIM card. Sounds like a lot to enter, but it's at least only digits.

After this a signed certificate is sent to the service where it's verified.

I assume all transactions are encrypted as well, or else it's still not secure enough.

The actual transactions are then supposed to be done via a PC, but I would like it to be extended to also support mobile services, so that one could pay with the phone, fill up the account one's payment/credit card is tied to etc.

MOBILEN SKA BLI ID-KORT NÄSTA ÅR - Ny Teknik
The article is in Swedish.

I'm generally a fan of Sony Ericsson phones, as they are pretty solid on features and build, and the later years they've also improved significantly on the aesthetics.

One thing that's been around for a long time, and clearly shows age, is the auto keylock feature that I'm definitely not a fan of. I simply ask for an improvement.

I used K608i and W810i as test phones. They are both candybar style phones and their keylocks work exactly the same, hence no improvement even in the very latest models. Obviously a keylock is only relevant for a candybar phone. Don't confuse this with a SIM lock.

These are the main issues:

• Auto keylock works only on the idle screen. If you've navigated away from it, it simply won't activate. I often browse or look at messages, run Java applications etc, and I want to be able to leave the phone there when I move over to non-phone activities.


• While in e.g. the main menu, if you press down the joystick enough times you've actually sent an empty SMS to the first person in your address book. If the phone is in your pocket you might actually send a lot of empty messages to an increasingly dumbfounded recipient. I've done this a gazillion times, and now I have no friends left (actually I didn't have any before, but that's not the point...).


• Deactivation of the keylock is done by pressing "*" and the right softkey. That sounds simple enough right? The problem is that due to the above issues I often first press any other key to just get the backlight turned on, so I see where I'm at, and then the deactivation gets out of sync, which leads to an info dialog which makes it even more out of sync. Sounds trivial, but is actually quite annoying.

Note that if auto keylock is turned off (which it is by default) then issue 2 is likely to occur often.

Lately, Swedish operators have received complaints from customers about "ghost" SMSs, and haven't been able to find out why these are sent. The explanation might be above.

The solution for a Sony Ericsson loving consumer is to add an entry called e.g. "Aaaa" to the phone book with a false phone number (which will stop it from sending SMSs by mistake), or if you are in shopping mood get one of the clamshells. The solution for Sony Ericsson is to improve on the above, e.g. by adding a separate "hidden" slide button, like on the original Sony phones.

It should be noted that I've been in contact with Sony Ericsson via Developer Forum, but no one wants to touch this issue.

'nough said. Do you agree or disagree?

Interestingly this is not about designing for specifically WAP but for HTML and full XHTML, yet with advise for how to make content fit on small displays.

As noted here, browsers that just do narrow rendering (or small screen rendering) often show the horisontal and vertical menus first, and way down on the page is the actual content that you want to see. Some browsers, including Opera Mini, try to find the relevant text, but often fails as there is nothing in the content that says what is a menu etc and what is "real" content.

As I've pointed out earlier, it's best if mobile-adapted sites use the exact same URL as the normal web site, yet adapt dynamically to the phone's capabilities. That way users don't have to learn different URLs, and for some devices (like smartphones) the normal web site might actually work fine without adaptations. It's also crucial that URLs are kept as short as possible. Ideally all web sites should have a "send SMS with a link to this site" button, yet it could become costly for the service providers.

Wireless firms agree on rules for mobile Web sites - Yahoo! News

W3C: How to design for mobile devices | InfoWorld | News | 2006-06-27 | By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

W3C: Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

That simpler games are most successful on mobile phones is wellknown. That females clearly dominate mobile gaming is more surprising:
Sixty-five percent of mobile game revenue is driven by female wireless subscribers. They are the biggest driver of revenue for the Puzzle/Strategy category; comprising 72 percent of the total share of revenue
"The casual nature of mobile games provides tremendous appeal to women, who are not traditionally hardcore gamers by console or online gaming standards,"

Other news sources have indicated that game sales is stagnating. Not so, according to this: "Mobile game purchases continue to grow with more than 8.6 million games bought in April, increasing 60 percent since the beginning of the year," said Kanishka Agarwal, Vice President of New Products, Telephia.

Telephia Reports One-Third of Mobile Game Revenues Driven by Puzzle/Strategy Games, With Tetris, Tetris Deluxe and Bejeweled Leading the Pack: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

There's a stagnation in mobile game sales at the moment. There are many reasons stated for this, including the plethora of non-branded, boring and very similar games. Even so EA has had a lot of success with e.g. Tetris. Clearly simpler games rule in this market.

Juniper Research is though optimistic claiming sales will increase 6 times until 2011 and that APAC will dominate also in the future. I'm though not so convinced about the figures. I believe APAC will contribute by more than 38%, simply because that market is so much bigger 2011 than the much more topped USA and Europe markets.

Report: Mobile gaming revs to hit $17.6B by 2011 | Mobile content and mobile marketing news

I borrowed a W810i so I can as well write a short note about it.

It's got a standard candybar design, and as such is very much like previous models. As it's a Walkman-branded phone it has a special button for the media player and a sizeable amount of memory (shipped with 512 MB).

The camera is nice with a well-working and fast auto-focus.

Considering it's a media-optimised phone I was disappointed by the media player that wasn't intuitive. I would have liked to start with the list of media, not the player window.

The numeric keys are excellent. Some of the most tactile keys I've encountered in a long time. They are also all the same size. Far too many phones stray away from that "UI design 101" rule.

Where the good design ends is with the control buttons: Keys are combined and are a bit too close to each other, so I often pressed the Walkman button when I wanted soft key 1. By combining e.g. soft key 1 and back on a small key also means it's very hard to press. What I also didn't like was that it has a joystick that only acts vertically plus an arrow "ring", instead of the much preferred joystick with arrow function. I saw that some other new phone models have a real joystick, so I'm wondering why they switch back and forth this way.

When will phones ship with an analogue joystick? That would make phone use more intuitive (press more to increase menu and web page scrolling speed etc). It would also be excellent for games.

A good solid phone no doubt, and with the black casing also good-looking, but as noted some issues in the UI department.

Overview - - Mobile phone - Sony Ericsson W810i�-�

This note argues that Softbank will somehow adapt web sites to better fit phone displays, but I'm sure it's about showing existing web sites the best way possible. That's what all operators now realize people need and expect, and it's an excellent way to generate data traffic revenue.

Obigo, Opera and Access have good such browsers for embedding in phones. Openwave less so. As you know, Opera also has Opera Mini that's written in Java ME.

As the author also argues, the .mobi domain is likely to become a failure. Rather I hope sites will use the exact same address for normal and mobile-adapted sites, so that we don't see separate addresses like www.somedomain.com and wap.somedomain.com. It requires a new way of thinking when designing the site, as all pages then needs to be fully scripted rather than static. It also requires an understanding of how to make good use of small display real estate which also differs between different phones.

Softbank inks deal with Yahoo! for mobile Web | Mobile content and mobile marketing news

If you’ve never developed Java applications for mobile phones, or you work in Sun’s marketing department, you might still believe this is true, but anyone having tried to launch a mobile Java application to a broader market knows it’s very far from.

Here are some of the reasons why this is so:

• Phones have very different levels of Java functionality, from the simplest MIDP 1.0 to MIDP 2.0 with different support for additional JSRs for Bluetooth, photography, video, audio, location etc. There are also operator-specific implementations like DOJA by DoCoMo.
• There are several providers of KVMs (Java ME JVMs) and many more different integrations of those into phones, meaning there are also different interpretations of the specifications from Sun, leading to different behavior and outright bugs. This even though there is fairly strict testing of KVMs.
• As the firmware is not upgraded in phones on the market except in very rare cases, possible bugs stay with the life-span of that phone model.
• To speed up deployment of new phone features some manufacturers add proprietary APIs for that functionality, which obviously makes it much harder to port applications between phones and especially brands of phones. This is more or less a thing of the past, but many such phones still exist.

It’s not all bad though (under-statement) for the would-be application developer:

• Even the lowest level of Java ME (CLDC 1.0 and MIDP 1.0) is OK for games and transaction-type applications, as it at least supports a bitmap canvas (yet limited) and HTTP communication.
• Java ME dominates the market for application platforms. You might think otherwise due to Microsoft’s marketing of Windows Mobile and Nokia’s promotion of Symbian OS / Series 60, but it’s a fact that Java ME completely dominates with close to 1B units. Also, Java ME is found in anything from simple featurephones and up. Windows Mobile and Symbian OS / Series 60 are still mainly found in more expensive featurephones or smartphones. Note also that Windows Mobile and Symbian phones typically also support Java ME.
• The industry is increasingly aware of the issues with portability and device differences, and has e.g. locked down base functionality in Java Technology for the Mobile Industry (JTWI) specification that all new phones support.
• Java, as opposed to C and C++, is a modern programming language designed from the ground-up with object-oriented programming in mind and common pitfalls like pointers and type inconsistency designed out. Hence, it’s typically much quicker to write an error-free application in Java than in e.g. C/C++.

To support future phone functionality Java ME of course needs to be enhanced, so application developers will never see one single incarnation of Java ME. There are also more major improvements being planned, so that phone applications get a similar environment to that of PCs. MIDP 3 is now being specified and there are also talks about implementing CDC (as opposed to CLDC, that is used today) in phones. There will also be support for advanced cameras etc.

There are now a lot of companies that can perform multi-phone testing for you, so that you don't have to get all possible phones yourself, which for smaller developers would be impossible.

It’s my clear conviction that Sun should be the only provider of Java ME implementations. That would have solved many of the compatibility issues. Manufacturers can of course still screw up the integrations in the phones, but it would mean less headache for the application developer, as Sun would then guarantee that at least the byte-code parsing and APIs would be 100% the same on all phones running the same version of Java ME.

For more information about Java ME, and ways to get started on developing applications, please visit my Java ME pages.

You may also find my previous postings on the topic of Java ME interesting. Here are a few:

• Advise for the would-be mobile application developer
• Motorola promotes a better mobile Java
• More about Java vs browser access to services
• The ongoing quest for finding out how many Java ME phones there are
• MobHappy on Java ME
• Java ME, the way to go for mobilizing services
• Qualcomm on BREW vs Java
• If you know Visual Basic or C# you can make Java ME applications
• The mobile client-server paradigm
• Eclipse improves on embedded software support
• Evolution of development tools for Mobile Java
• 2006, the year of broad J2ME adoption
• J2ME dominating in China
• NetBeans 5.0 now officially out

Note: Java ME means Java Platform, Micro Edition. You will also see it called J2ME at many places, but that’s the old term.

Trading in old gadgets that are not even phones sounds like a desperate move to get new subscribers, especially since the offer is for existing subscribers. I guess this will also sway potential subscribers, but it still sounds a bit too desperate to me.

I tried to trade-in my digital camera. It said it didn't have any trade value. I should have guessed.

In terms of audio players you can only trade in those from Apple.

It would be interesting to know what happens with all this junk afterwards. I'm just guessing, but to make this pay off I believe Helio has outsourced the handling to tradeups.com that will resell this stuff through auction services, and they will split revenue somehow. I'm quite certain Helio doesn't touch any of this.

Helio TradeUps

This new service enables you to sell and manage eBay auctions via your mobile phone.

You can for instance take snapshots of the items you want to sell and upload to eBay. You can also speak the description of the item that the service will then convert into text. The conversion to text is done centrally.

The phone needs to support Java ME and both voice recording and snapshots are done via the Java ME application.

Kurtis Meloche at Atseta informed me that some of the phones supported now are Nokia 6682, Motorola Razr and the Sony Ericsson W series, but they will release support for more phones shortly, and they are also developing a BREW version. He also mentioned that Atseta recommends a 1.0+ Mpixel camera (yet a camera is not a requirement) and a display resolution of at least 176*220 (which most newer phones meet or exceed).

Sell it Mobile - eBay edition, the easiest way to sell online using your mobile phone.

iMind4U is a Series 60 application that turns camphones into surveillance devices, primarily for home use. This is an enhanced version of iCamCU that adds motion detection. The price is the same as before (you decide if it's a good price).

You need two phones (and SIMs if you use GSM) and the sending phone needs to have a camera (obviously). The other phone needs though only support SMS and MMS, so it could be almost any phone.

That only Series 60 phones are supported is in my opinion a considerable limitation. Hopefully there are plans also for a Java version.

iMind4U

Nokia has a dedicated device with similar functionality called Nokia Remote Camera PT-6.

Ikivo is a pioneer in providing Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) for mobile phones, and they are supporting the standardisation within OMA. SVG 1.2, that Animator is designed for, supports vector graphics, text, audio and video.

OMA promotes SVG, but the media industry and also some operators prefer Flash, as that's what's being used on web sites, and that's also what advertisement designers know. Maybe Ikivo Animator can lower the threshold to also use SVG.

SVG will have mainly two uses (in my opinion):
1. As a way to present vivid/animated advertisements on phones. Like it or not, it's coming.
2. Provide more advanced vector graphics to downloaded applications (via JSR 226).
From a bottom-line point of view item 1 is the most important, but as mentioned also Flash (read: Adobe/Macromedia) wants to get a slice of that cake.

As Adobe now owns Macromedia, and Adobe earlier preferred SVG, the pressure on using Flash instead of SVG is probably increasing.

Worth noting is that the mobile version of Flash (Flash Lite) is a subset of "real" Flash, so if a phone supports Flash Lite doesn't mean it can render the Flash content found on normal web sites. Possibly it can do a best effort, but supposedly not even that. Hence, as the market wants phones to provide better support for browsing existing web sites I believe the pressure to support full Flash, rather than Flash Lite or SVG, will increase substantially.

webitpr - online press release distribution and monitoring

Update: Financial news argue that Ericsson will gain from this short term (and maybe also long term), as Nokia and Siemens, as well as Alcatel and Nortel will be very busy merging. Also, even with the merger Ericsson is still the largest equipment provider.


This is seen as a way to better compete with Asian providers (Huawei not the least), but this will also affect Ericsson. According to the note Nokia+Siemens will be almost equal in size to Ericsson's division.

Nokia, Siemens in $31 billion phone equipment deal - MarketWatch

This time up at MobHappy. More contributions than ever.

Carnival of the Mobilists 32 at MobHappy

It will soon be up here as well: Carnival of the Mobilists

Abiro will host CotM August 11.

I'm considering changing the base font of the site, so we've made a test page with different fonts for a specific news entry (as example text).

Let us know which one you find most easy to read and/or looks best. Indicate also if you want larger or smaller font sizes. You can use the comment field.

Thanks in advance.

Abiro - Font Test

IDC expects sales to reach $1B in 2010. I'm wondering why such predictions are always so far ahead. Because the shorter term is too uncertain, or that people will have forgotten the predictions by then (if/when they are concluded to be wrong)?

Quote: IDC believes over-the-air music tracks at $2 each would emerge as a sustainable price point
That's too high in my opinion even if there's no traffic fee, and would for a complete album be similar to a CD in price, even though there's a much lower logistical cost. I doubt though that many will buy complete CDs this way. Rather they will buy "singles" of primarily the latest pop tunes. Adults are likely to stay with music services on PCs (where UI and access is much better), unless in markets where simply home PCs don't exist in abundance (like in China and Japan).

Quote: the phones would have to deliver sound quality comparable to portable music players
True, but there's no cost nor complexity in achieving that, so it's just a matter of doing it.

Mobile Phone Music Services Expected To Top $1 Billion - Yahoo! News

Update 060616: This new info indicates the effort is set up as a defensive maneuver against Microsoft. I hope that's not the reason, as there's enough to do to standardize on a single application environment, and Microsoft is still focusing on smartphones, which is a small part of the market. Microsoft's efforts in the mobile phone market is like a steamroller that's headed in one specific (and IMHO wrong) direction decided years ago of people that know PCs but not the mobile phone market, and rolling along at a very slow pace, still scaring the bystanders in the process, thinking that maybe Microsoft is right after all. The mobile strategy of Microsoft can be expressed like so:
* Emulate MS Windows in mobile phones
* Focus on information workers
* Hardware will develop to accomodate our bloatware
That's the wrong strategy to win the market, so is Microsoft a real threat?
Mobile Linux Group Seen As Possible Defensive Move - Yahoo! News


Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone are collaborating for this new platform, which at least means there's decision power behind the effort.

Several manufacturers are already using Linux in phones (yet still mainly in higher cost smartphones) including Motorola and Samsung. Montavista Linux and Trolltech Qt/Embedded and Qtopia has so far been the preferred combination solution.

What concerned me while reading the info was that the issue is not Linux itself but the application environment and the UI. That's where there's most differentiation between solutions and what also causes the most application porting issues. Hence, that needs to be part of this effort too. Linux doesn't contain any phone specific functionality at all. Trolltech's Qtopia adds basic such functionality. Note that e.g. Series 60 and Windows Mobile are complete phone-adapted application environments in comparison.

There's in any case nothing stopping Linux from being used in phones, but a firming up of the functionality is good for both manufacturers and application developers, and for general cutting down of costs and development time.

I have a few free Linux logos if you want to make people believe your phone already has Linux inside.

Another Linux Mobile Knitting Circle - Yahoo! News

Carriers and manufacturers form pact to push mobile Linux - Engadget Mobile

Linux Coming to Your Mobile Phone - Yahoo! News

Mobile players form Linux platform pact - Yahoo! News

Motorola, Samsung, and others form Mobile Linux Platform Group (MobileBurn)

Operators, Vendors Line Up Behind Mobile Linux at MobHappy

As mentioned elsewhere, everyone these days wants to profit from ringtones that only teens can hear.

What about completely silent ringtones, that no one can hear (not even dogs and crickets)? The next craze?

Just kidding (I think) ...

webitpr - online press release distribution and monitoring

This is a sign the industry starts to realize and endorse the commercial impact of ringtones. To get an award requires sales of 500K (platinum) and 1M (gold) ringtones respectively. The award is appropriately in the shape of a mobile phone.

Ringtones applicable should be directly derived from the original music (typically in the AMR or MP3 formats), hence not "made-for-ringtone" covers or polyphonic or monophonic ringtones.

FOXNews.com - RIAA Certifies Ringtones as Gold, Platinum - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment

Ringtones Go for the Gold - Jun 14, 2006 - E! Online News

Monstermob, one of the biggest mobile content providers, has been forced to sack its CEO Martin Higginson so that the company can focus on the Asian market instead of the origin market UK that's increasingly stagnant.

Interestingly Jamba/Jamster is though still focusing on Europe and US. I doubt for long.

Independent Online Edition > Business News

This piece is about social networking via IT in general, but it's sure to also cross over to mobile, which is very much already happening.

webitpr - online press release distribution and monitoring

Quote: "The firm found that the British are more inclined to use social networking applications than are American or German mobile phone users, with 10.1 percent of Britons, 7.2 percent of Germans, 6.5 percent of French and 6.7 percent of Americans reporting they uploaded photos or videos to the Web, used chat or used dating applications in the month of April."

Instead favoring IM, SMS and e.g. MySpace (in Sweden we have a very popular similar service called Lunarstorm). I read elsewhere that in Korea e-mail seems almost extinct among teens. Services like MySpace are even taking away users from IM, which means that mobile access to such services will become very important.

It's also indicated how this might affect future corporate IT systems, as a MySpace-like paradigm might be expected.

I honestly prefer the more slow-paced e-mail paradigm, giving me more time to think through what I want to present, and not having to rely on people being around when I send the message. When doing business it's very often you are in different time zones or the other party is simply away, so asynchnonous messaging can't go away altogether. I expect though that e-mail and IM will merge. E.g. Skype chat stores messages until the other person is available, emulating e-mail. MS Outlook with fully integrated IM (from the same UI, using the same folders, with generic presence status (with possible auto-respond), sharing of contacts etc) would be really nice. I also expect VoIP to be integrated in similar ways.

Maybe I'm a bit weird, but I also don't want other people to know when I read a message vs responds to it. Responding to a message might require research and asking around, so the only information I want to present is the actual message. What I do meanwhile is completely my own business.

I though increasingly use IM (and VoIP) to quickly settle things. I obviously haven't used MySpace, but it's imperative for people involved in IT systems development to follow the trends in this area.

There have been postings about how teens get stressed out and can't sleep etc because they feel they always need to respond to incoming SMS and IM. In a workplace this could also increase stress and lower effectivity: If you sit in a meeting you should focus on the meeting (why else have a meeting) and leave to an auto-responder to just tell the "world" you'll be around later.

A not so good trend is that I sense the amount of non-interoprable systems are increasing. E-mail has the benefit that you can always send information to anyone else that also has e-mail (whatever the service). With IM and MySpace that's not the case. As younger people communicate in a more spontaneous way that's probably not an obstacle, but to professionals this is a real issue.

MercuryNews.com | 06/13/2006 | Teens turn away from e-mail

Quote: Ah. No wonder adults like Cindy Nelson of Palo Alto are frustrated. Nelson organizes a high school dance team, whose members all have e-mail. But ``it really doesn't work for communicating with the kids,'' she said.
So we need e-mail to IM gateways and aggregating e-mail/IM clients then. New market opportunity.

Here's some general common sense advise for use of ringtones. It's focused on adults, as I'm in that demographic group. Feel free to add your own advise.

Select a unique ringtone

Don't use the default ringtone of the phone, as 99% of people with the same brand or model will use that ringtone. Select another one from the stock ringtones, buy or borrow your own (Abiro Mobile Fun has a nice selection), or even create your own. The last choice is sure to make you unique and get interesting questions from the accidental audience.

Still, be a bit careful with the selection. Don't choose Pantera or Killswitch Engage unless you "have" to. Again, a mellow evergreen is better.

If you want to create your own it's now easier then ever, as all new phones support at least AMR, and most also MP3 or similar. Hence you can cut out a short phrase from a song or record your own synthesiser or guitar riff. Here's an example of a guitar riff I recorded yesterday. As I played it myself I'm pretty sure no one else in the world has the same ringtone (unless you use it; be my guest though).

Another factor here is that people appreciate uniqueness. I've often received comments on my ringtone choices. Especially when they are of the more bizarre kind, like my own riffs, heavy metal solos, "nature" sounds etc. If at a boring party or similar a unique ringtone can make a difference for your social life (in either direction).

Use Increased Ring

This is a good way to limit the intrusion on others "ear space". Also, if you are in a business meeting and forget to turn on silent mode this is still less annoying than a full blast of ugly ringtone. If you are away from the phone (not likely nowadays) you will eventually hear it, unless the caller tires.

Turn off ringing on meetings

Sometimes the best ringtone is a completely silent one.

All phones support meeting or silent mode, and most phones switch to vibration if the ringing volume is set to 0.

If possible and not already done, create a shortcut for meeting/silent mode so you can quickly make the switch before and after the meeting.

Use good judgment when selecting ringback tone

If your operator supports it and this is your business phone, select a mellow, professional sounding ringback tone, e.g. a classical tune or at least a mellow song. Considering people might wait for you for a while, and it could be a customer, your boss, loved one or anyone else affecting your bottom line and/or social status, you don't want to scare them away, but rather give a glimpse of how nice and approachable you are as a person. Seriously.

Also, you are not likely to change this often, so don't select the latest pop tune, as it will grow stale pretty quick.

Advise to manufacturers

Even vibration can be a bit annoying at times, so I would propose that all phones supported light flashing as an option as well, for both ringing and other notifications, like messages, calendar events etc. Ringing could flash differently than messages etc.

I also hope that manufacturers add text-to-speech as a complement to other notifications, as a way to autonomously get messages, events, directions etc presented while you are driving, on the bus, while watching TV or whatever. It could even be used to speak the name or number of the one calling, so you know if you want to answer if you are busy with something else.

Update: The "inventor" of this ringtone is using it against teens via his Mosquito product. Interesting that the exact same tone can be used both ways. If it fights off young people from shops etc, what about dogs then?
Inventor hopes to hit big time with silent ringtone - Britain - Times Online


Ringtones that only younger people can hear seems to be the current craze. Understandably, if you can hear message notifications without your teachers or parents hearing them, you can stay up-to-date in the class room or at the dinner table without getting caught, and you can feel a bit rebellious at the same time.

I'm clearly not in the demographic anymore but I could hear this ringtone loud and clear at a reasonably high volume.

Adults fight back with Barry Manilow ringtones...

ringtonia.com: A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears

Update 060613: After 2 full weeks there's still a huge amount of downloads (> 25k a week), but very few simultaneous users. I counted around 50 active users in all rooms, and the "English" room contained only Russian discussions. Strange.


Considering the immense downloading since last week I had expected more to be active users of the application, but I rather noticed a constant entering and leaving the chat rooms (that were few), and only a few people were involved, asking questions like "anyone here?", "what's up?" etc clearly trying things out. I guess it should be expected this early on.

Some pros and cons noted:

Pros:
* The chat log is updated autonomously without any need to refresh, and it's very fast. The fastest I've seen on a phone.
* Photos can be sent to peers.
* It's possible to set up a profile with pictures for others to watch.
* Simple to log in, as the previously entered info is remembered.
* Smilies and special symbols are easily inserted, and are shown graphically in the log.

Cons:
* As indicated earlier this is a proprietary solution, so there's no gateway to MSN, Yahoo! etc. That might be the plan later though.
* The font looks pretty ugly: fixed pitch and only capitals means it's hard to read. Using the phone's own fonts (and at configurable sizes) would have given a better result, but maybe there would be problems with combining text and smilies then (not that I understand why).
* It's not possible to pause the updating of the history while logged in, meaning the data cost could become pretty steep over time if you forget to log off. It should be noted though that the data sent per request and response is very compact (I monitored the traffic).
* There's no way to store predefined text, which would have sped up chatting.
* Smilies are shown as ":)" etc (and not as icons) while editing.

Noted:
* To achieve an inline text input field on all phones the application uses its own implementation. My phone would otherwise have opened a full-display field for that, which would have obstructed the chat history. Doing so isn't a complete success though, as the symbols are not at the exact same places I'm used to from other applications. Also this field doesn't support predictive. There's a "T9" soft button, but that opens the phone's own (full display) text input, where obviously T9 or eZiText works.

The question is if a "walled garden" chat approach is interesting enough in the long term. It's a matter of critical mass. If too many similar applications are released there won't be enough people using each application to create and sustain a large community, so it will be interesting to see which one survives.

Here's a comparison of the most popular similar applications:
* AirWayChat, 25102 downloads last week
* mobispine, 12828 downloads last week

A general comment is that many seem to download free applications on pure chance, but only a very small percentage seems to then use them after initial brief trial.

AirWayChat is yet another free IM client (and service) that people download like crazy. Similar to mobispine it's not compatible with existing IM services, but that doesn't seem to bother the users. I'll be back with a test report shortly.

I've said it many times that people want IM, but will operators ever get it? I've also said that operators should serve as bit pipes. Frankly they do, by walk-over, so the opportunity is there for anyone else to exploit.

AirWayChat / free download

As people in the business knows, setting up Premium SMS and similar agreements with individual operators simply doesn't work due to the amount of operators and the need for more advanced services than most operators offer (not saying that operators couldn't have offered better services).

As this is big business right now, aggregating the billing for all the content providers, this article argues that there will be more acquisitions of such companies, typically where a large customer in need for in-house billing services buy a smaller mobile transaction company.

Mentioned as potential acquisition targets are mBlox that Jamba uses (yet Jamba decided to acquire m-Qube instead) and Motricity.

Racing to the middle

I'm on Sweden Rock Festival June 8 to 10, so it will be silent on the reporting side those days.

Porcupine Tree was on stage today. Simply brilliant!


Sweden Rock Festival

This rather lengthy article mentions arguments for and against diving into the game development market. It has a US focus, and the situation in US is a bit different than in the rest of the world. E.g. the operator lock-in is much less of a problem in Europe. In Europe games are sold by independent providers via any operator's network, which is a much better approach for the game provider. Also, in Europe Java completely dominates, so there's only Java you need to care about here.

There are many issues with this market, e.g. phone funtionality fragmentation and a still dormant awareness among consumers.

The opportunity is still great though, especially for simpler games, so here is some advise:
* Forget about advanced 3D games and similar, instead focus on addictive, fast-paced, quickly understood and played, simple games. Tetris is a very good example of such a game, supposedly EA's most popular mobile game.
* Outsource multi-device testing. There are companies in Russia and India that will do this for a very low fee.
* Possibly outsource the complete development of the games, yet keep the control over design and quality assurance.

IGN: Pros and Cons of Mobile Game Development

Giving the game away for free is one good method, but as users treat such games as test-and-dump, that's a shortsighted solution. Another is to provide an online high score, which in this case has made this game become the most downloaded application/game all categories at GetJar as of today. It will not last long, but it's still an impressive feat.

People seem to crave for fame, which a high score list is all about, even when it doesn't involve any cash money prizes.

There's no direct revenue from the game, but the author provides a donation link. Considering the amount of users, this might still provide a sizeable revenue. At least enough to motivate further game development.

A parable to this is a WAP-based game that was introduced in Finland in the days when WAP was a new phenomenon, that was about catching the largest fish. The weight of the fish was selected totally by random and was then listed on an online high score list, of course together with your name/alias. This extremely simple service (that was free) became the specific operator's most successful service in terms of data airtime revenue.

GetJar - Mobile Fighter

This time guessing that Apple will cooperate with RIM. I don't see that as a good fit considering RIM is focused on corporate users, while Apple needs to reach the broad market to survive. After all, Nokia and others are already planning to take over the DAP market with better media support in mobile phones.

Here Come the AppleBerry Rumors - Yahoo! News

Honda has spent 20 years developing a robot that can walk, and even run. Looking at the history of this effort, and the fact that the later models are getting smaller and smaller, it's clear they are in the technology optimisation phase now, at least regarding the movement.

The latest model is called ASIMO (sounds like Asimov, which is appropriate as Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of sci-fi stories about robots).

Of course just walking/running isn't what human beings are about, and at a recent demonstration it was clear that ASIMO was remotely controlled, but they are also working on face recognition etc, so I guess we are all soon superfluous, not.

Considering e.g. telemarketers (that nobody wants to be, and everybody hates) haven't yet been replaced by robots, even though we are "just" talking talking (no pun intended), hearing and some more or less hardwired IQ in between, we are still a long way from creating a really human-like robot.

Honda Worldwide | ASIMO

Carlo at MobHappy elaborates on ways to get out of the stale mate position the industry is in: What operators offers in terms of data and content services doesn't appeal to consumers, and there's a general question whether consumers really care about much more than voice and text messaging.

I agree with most things mentioned. My short version: Operators should focus on providing bit pipes and billing to third party service providers. They should give them a good business proposition where third party gets most of the revenue from the transactions. Except for that operators should stay out of the way.

It should be noted though that at least in Europe service providers don't care much about individual operators, as there are so many. Therefor companies like mBlox and similar are important to serve as brokers for Premium SMS etc so that service providers don't have to set up agreements with each and every operator. In the other direction operators can't set up an agreement with each and every big or small service or content provider.

I've been shouting out about providing instant messaging for a long time, and that's clearly something consumers want, but operators don't want to offer. Someday operators simply have to realize they are not in control of consumer needs.

Should We Just Give Up On Mobile Data and Content? at MobHappy

Clamshells have grown in popularity considerably and pushed out candy-bar style phones. Also it seems price and design are much more important criteria than technical features. As most people are looking for a phone to talk through, I guess that makes sense.

US consumers: "Give us cheap flips" - Engadget Mobile

Fancy Features Don't Sell Cell Phones - Yahoo! News

High-End Features Don't Sell Cell Phones - Mobile News - Digital Trends

Sorry for fanning out into completely out-of-topic fields, but as I happened to study up on tardigrades and at the same time came upon the Ugobe Pleo I started to connect some dots.

What can these things possibly have in common? A lot actually, as robotic pets like the Pleo and tardigrades have similar features: light sensing but not sight, touch sensors, simple locomotion, some form of brain for learning and coordination, etc. Of course there are things the Pleo clearly can't do, like being frozen down to close to 0 degrees Kelvin and survive to tell the story. This was why tardigrades caught my attention in the first place. Also, tardigrades are very small: They eat by puncturing and sucking out individual plant cells. That's tiny!

When talking robots many think man-like robots, which are insanely complex to make even though many try, missing out on the fact that most animals are very primitive yet extremely successful and dynamic. Hence, there's a lot to learn from simpler life forms when making useful self-learning robots.

Most robots today are not self-learning at all. Even if they can adapt to what is being sensed they rather rely on a fixed script with a fixed set of conditions for performing their "behavior". The future is in self-learning and self-adaptation, as it will simply be too complex to tell a robot all possible conditions it can run into and all possible reactions to them. Especially when robots get e.g. real sight and hearing.

Tardigrades (Tardigrada): images, video clips, text and monthly magazine.

Ugobe

Note the date: January 2006. Much has happened since then, and India should have passed Japan by now (and soon Russia as well?), and China should also have pulled away even more. European countries and USA are of course quite saturated markets compared to China and India.

ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog - Top 15 Countries in Mobile, January 2006

Javaground promises to make porting of Java ME applications to BREW possible. It's not an easy feat, as BREW applications are written in C or C++ and the APIs are completely different.

BREW 2006: Javaground Creates New Development Tool - Modojo: Handheld and Wireless Reviews, Previews, Cheats, News, Games, and More

JavaGround - J2ME Development and Porting Tools