Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

As always you can interpret statistics any way you like, which the author to 'Nearly half consider mobile GPS a privacy threat' has done in the title.

More interesting from an adoption point-of-view is that as many as 30% of the asked DoCoMo subscribers had actually used GPS, and 34% want to.

Also very interesting is the fact that all new phones in Japan need to support GPS from April 2007 (which should be tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken).

Based on this information (assuming it's correct) it means Japan is way ahead of USA. Sometimes laws can start a revolution, as mobile service providers will of course love this.

There are certainly concerns about privacy, and they should be taken seriously. I'm not sure I would want anyone I hadn't opted in (or been forced to in the case of emergency services) to at all have access to my position info.

The users involved in the survey volunteered, and hence might not be representative for DoCoMo's customer base as a whole.

The title 'EU report: More mobile phones than citizens' is actually wrong, as I'm sure there are considerably more phones (used or not) than live subscriptions. As we are talking the latter it's more impressive, and in Luxemburg it's supposedly even 171% relative to the population.

Consider that also people that for obvious reasons don't have a mobile (either very young or very old) are included, so why do so many have more than one subscription? In transition between different operators? Because of separate private and work SIMs? I doubt that. The note doesn't provide the answer.

Sure, I have 5 phones and two SIMs, but I'm a geek.

Opera Previews New Web, Mobile Browsers mentions two enhancements to Opera Mobile (not to confuse with Opera Mini):

• Visual Bookmarks for quick navigation to the most used sites
• More PC-like features in the Windows Mobile version, including address bar searching, copy/paste etc

These improvements won't affect the sites in any way. Rather they make browsing simpler on existing sites.

Not so with ZenZui by Microsoft, that requires special design of the sites to make use of the active tile concept, yet provides a seemingly good user experience:
Microsoft's ZenZui zooms in on mobile
Microsoft: ZenZui Aims to Change the Way People Use Mobile Devices
Microsoft ZenZui - new web navigation interface for phones (with video)
Each tile is live (via Javascript and SVG) even in zoomed out state.

Microsoft releases "Deepfish" browser for Windows Mobile tells about a new feature in Microsoft's browser, but that's already supported by Nokia, Obigo etc: Being able to see the whole web page scaled down and then select what part you want to zoom in on.

My completely selfish interest in this phone is the GPS and navigation support, and most others also seem to focus on that in reviews, as that's what's completely new. The camera is also impressive, but supposedly very slow.

The Smartphones Show has a video episode about the N95. The beginning is hilarious, but it gets more serious after that. See also the list of other episodes covering other phones.

'Nokia N95 - part 1, The Navigator (Smart2go)' goes through the navigation software bundled with the N95. Verdict: The software is not en par with dedicated navigators.

Of course, if you are dissatisfied with the included software you will be able to replace it, but don't expect such software to come free. There will be (and already is) a lot of software for making use of GPS for other purposes like geotagging, geocaching, fleet management etc, either developed for Symbian or Java. For both application platforms there's access to a Location API, making it easy for developers to location-enable applications. See Forum Nokia for more information.

'Future of the Industry' lists 5 predictions where I found 'J2ME will grow slowly but Flash Lite will become very popular' to be the most thought-provoking.

Java ME already dominates, so deployments can't grow much faster than the production and sales of new phones, while Flash Lite is starting from a lower level, but that of course doesn't say anything about the usage volume and increase of those platforms. Java ME also dominates in the amount of games/applications and the overall usage.

The thought that operators might broadly endorse Flash Lite is an interesting one, and slightly controversial, as Flash Lite is so tightly controlled by Adobe. The benefit of the tight control is on the other hand cross-phone compatibility.

A great blog overall, with good coverage of CeBit.

Update: As Barbara Ballard pointed out in the comments, mobile access to Mapquest has been around since 1999. It's the Send to Cell feature that's new, which eases the hazzle of mapping out directions before a trip. The browser access is now free too.


Mapquest now offers improved mobile access to its map service.

The new features are:

• free access to Mapquest via the phone's browser (is that really new?)
• maps and directions can be set up on a PC and sent to the phone

Quote: 'Mapping, navigation, and location based-services (with or without GPS) are one of the hottest trends in the cell phone business.'

Mapquest Mobile

The title 'The Mobile Phone Industry Must Die. DIE!' is clear enough, which made me think why I consider mobile phones so good (not saying they are all good), focusing on everyday 'normal' use, rather than my role as mobile application developer:

A mobile phone enables me to have one single access number for voice calls and short messages. This is actually better than with e-mail, as I need to juggle three accounts on a daily basis. The reason it works to have only one single phone number is that it's more or less identity-less: If someone calls me to talk about Abiro it's not visible that I also represent Mobile Labs, my private persona and other roles I might have. An e-mail address is though either not anynomous, or so anonymous that people don't trust it for business inquiries (e.g. ...hotmail.com, ...yahoo.com etc).

A mobile phone is also individual, so there's no risk for improductive and meaningless 'I want to talk to ...' calls. Sure, you might at times (and based on calling person) not want people to reach you, so a 'human filter' might come in handy, but then that person could still reach you if you have a mobile phone. If you don't want to get reached at all, then you are probably not doing your job, or you are pushing up daisies.

I always bring the mobile phone, so there's no need for fixed phones, cordless phones, portable VoIP phones, telephone booths or whatever. Sure there's a cost penalty, but it's more costly to not be reachable, and when I'm indoors I use Skype a lot to cut the cost of calling/chatting.

All my contacts are synced from my PC. The phone book stores also e-mail and web addresses, so I can reach people other ways than by calling/SMSing. I would have liked it to integrate also MSN etc chat addresses, and that it had shown presence status. I of course also sync the calendar and tasks.

The same phone also handles e-mails well, including those with (M)HTML, so I can always be updated on e-mail, provided I want to.

I use it for browsing too, but I'm the first to say that the experience is far from satisfactory, even at a relatively high display resolution. Opera Mini actually provides a way better experience (performance, layout, data cost etc) than the integrated 'full' web browser.

Another important feature is that it's got an alphanumeric keypad and PIM applications. I especially take notes with the phone, as reminders.

Having a mobile phone with me always is also a security feature. If my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, then I can always reach someone. With GPS I can then also locate myself. For location (in general; my car hasn't broken down yet) I mainly use MGMaps.

I don't mention my mobile phone number at the site, which might be a bit peculiar, but there are two major reasons for not to: I want to qualify those contacting me before they are allowed to call me, and I don't want to be called at night.

To completely avoid mobile phones is an interesting notion, but only that. It doesn't make much practical sense.

The title hints at the tough time the industry has to define what a smartphone is. I've already given up on that, as there's a huge gray area of phones that have so called Open OS's yet are still not mechanically designed for messaging and information management, and vice versa, and then there are Nokia's 'multimedia computers' etc etc.

Therefor I like the design of the Helio Ocean, as it kind of says 'screw terminology, let's make something useful'.

Little Springs Design has two recent articles about this, but I can't safely say they make the picture any clearer.

segmenting handheld devices

The Carry Principle revisited

And here's a contribution from MEX, muddling the concept even further:

Serving the data creators

Phrases like 'smartphones' and 'featurephones' are just ways to make something undescribable pseudo-describable/understandable and easy to refer to. Compare with:

• MP3 Players that also support AAC, FLAC etc, somehow they are still MP3 Players, why?
• DVD Players that also support DivX, XviD, VCD, CD, MP3 etc, -"-

The problem with mobile phones is that 'smartphones' and 'featurephones' don't describe any tangibly different use cases anymore. A DVD Player is still mainly used for playing DVDs, so that phrase is still fairly accurate. A mobile phone is mainly used for making voice calls and sending SMSs, whatever it's called, yet sports tons of other features. The most appropriate term is probably 'mobile everything'. Oh whatever...

Sorry for the Radiohead reference. I meant faster and better, according to Exclusive - Symbian OS v9.5: More Than A Free Mobile Performance Lunch. 9.5 seems like a major step forward, despite the .x version upgrade.

As opposed to a certain other company that also provides an OS and application environment for mobile phones, Symbian has taken action to lower memory and performance needs, which is a good thing, as that makes Symbian OS useful in more phones than today, and I'm sure that's Symbian's goal, competing with proprietary system solutions.

Other interesting improvements are on demand paging, file system caching, an SQL database (complementing the existing DBMS), IP packet priority etc. Features PC OSs have had for years, but that haven't made much sense for mobile phones until now.

A note about availability: 'We expect to see the first phones based on Symbian OS v9.5 to start shipping sometime in 2008. However, it's entirely possible that some v9.5 features will be delivered into v9.3 or v9.4. It's not been uncommon for us to release features in earlier versions once they've been verified in their target release.'
Before 9.5 will be in phones Nokia and UIQ must adapt their UI/application environments to the new version.

This should be interesting to Symbian developers: 'it retains full backward binary compatibility for public APIs with earlier v9 releases'

Yesterday NetBeans was awarded at the Jolt Awards: NetBeans 5.5 IDE for best IDE, and Mobility Pack 5.5 and Visual Web Pack got community awards.

For a summary see NetBeans Wins Jolt Awards.

'Phones ads may adjust to weather' describes a new service from Weather Channel Interactive that shows weather-related ads depending on where you are.

Note though that you have to manually select where you are to get your local weather, and by doing so you get ads based on that weather (hot dogs when it's cold, ice cream when it's warm, etc). The concept therefor doesn't require anything special in the phone. This is technically similar to selecting a specific sport on a sports site and then get ads relating to that sport, e.g. events. Using weather as ad selection criteria doesn't add much complexity, as WCI already has that information based on the selected location.

Being a perpetual cynic I noted that WCI mentions Coca Cola as a possible advertizer. They obviously know that Coca Cola, whose popularity mainly relies on in-the-face marketing, might provide WCI lots of dough.

Quote: 'About 22 percent of people who Web-surf on phones and other mobile gadgets visit the Weather Channel, making it the No. 2 online destination after Yahoo Mail'
And there's the incentive for Coca Cola to accept WCI's offer.

Update 3 20070329: MobileBurn has tested it, and really liked its capabilities: 'Overall, the Helio Ocean just appears to be a fantastic device and is easily the highlight of this year's CTIA show for me.'
Update 2 20070327: Engadget has seen the Ocean and liked it (except possibly the size of it).
Update 1 20070327: Helio Seeks Perfection with Its New Dual-Slider Phone, Ocean says it is actually GPS-enabled. My mistake. This makes it an even more compelling phone.


The title hints that this is not your everyday featurephone, and Helio Ocean continues the tradition of blurring the distinction between feature- and smartphones even further.

'Engadget - Helio Ocean' goes through the main features of the phone/device/gadget, and I list those that are interesting from a future outlook perspective:

• dual-slide design with QWERTY in one direction and numeric in the other
• list with integrated "presence detection" showing contacts' statuses on a variety of instant messaging services
• Exchange Server integration (!) for the suits out there
• a click-free web search mechanism (search by typing on the main screen)

All good things, and indicating a well-thought out top-down design if it also follows through on ease-of-use. I can safely say I'd want this device, if it only had GPS as well. Of course we don't have the Helio service over here, but the mentioned features are generally useful.

Helio - Helio Ocean product info

Mobiledia - Helio Ocean QWERTY Slider Unveiled

In Do we really have a mobile development platform? Ivan Kuznetsov ponders on whether there's a viable mobile application platform today, mainly comparing Symbian OS and Java ME. As Ivan is clearly leaning towards Symbian OS as the best/only (?) application platform, I'll make a stand for Java ME.

"But is there a real mobile development platform for independent developers?"
In my opionion, yes: Java ME / CLDC / MIDP. It's in pretty much all new phones, development tools are free, performance is not an issue anymore, and applications can be sold independent of operator approvals or certifications and other formalities. There are several independent e-commerce sites that can sell your MIDlets. There are certainly issues with the misdirected security scheme of MIDP, that I've commented on before, but for the basic functionality that's less of an issue. For stand-alone games and most utilities it's not an issue at all. Getting a commercial success is something else, and don't assume that you'll get rich just by releasing any odd application. I know that by experience. Testing on and adapting to many phones (which is required) is also a major pain, but less so if you rely on basic (read: old and tried) functionality.

I won't deny that a Symbian OS application can access much more of a phone's functionality, and also the latest functionality. Even when overcoming the MIDP-stipulated security warnings issued for many of the feaure accesses there are several features of phones that you can't access from a MIDlet at all. This is true for e.g. the SMS Inbox of the phone, something many want to access for good or bad reasons. In newer phones you can access the phone's file system and PIM database, but not in a user-friendly way, as per below:

"For example, to access file system of the mobile phone from Java, you need to use APIs defined in JSR 75..."
I agree the security scheme of MIDP and JSR incompatibilites are real issues, but most applications don't need to access the file system via JSR 75 anyway:

• Read-only files (images, audio etc) are bundled with the application as resource files, that are very easy to access from the MIDlet
• Smaller amounts of persistent data (like configuration options etc) is easily stored using RMS

If the solution is complex, and especially if it's a community solution, the main "intelligence" is probably on a server anyway, so there are a lot of applications that don't need local read/write file access.

Steve Jobs has an an interesting view on Java:
"Java’s not worth building in [to the phone]. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain."
Almost all phones released today have at least Java ME / MIDP, and the MIDlet development community and sales are thriving, so Steve is of course clearly and completely wrong.

Again, there are a lot of issues with developing MIDlets, but it's too easy to say it's all bad, when it's only partly so. Also, being available in so many phones means developing a MIDlet is given for services that need good user and phone interaction, something Google and Yahoo! have endorsed fully. Even for corporate applications/services MIDlets might be the best choice, as most users will have phones with only Java, and not Symbian OS. Even BlackBerries run standard MIDlets. Even so, try to stay away from later JSRs in general.

Seven Companies That Aren't Rumored to be Buying Palm, But Really Should Be is actually a rant on who probably shouldn't acquire Palm. The question is for what company it would make sense though.

There's been talks about Nokia acquiring Palm. The only reason I can see is to get hold of user-friendly applications (and ditto design). Palm doesn't own its OS and Nokia is focused on Symbian anyway. All in all, that acquisition wouldn't make sense, as application design can be copied.

Geocachers use GPS units to find hidden treasure describes how geocaching (hiding stuff and then mentioning its coordinates to others so they can retrieve it) has been done so far.

It's a no-brainer that there will pop up lots of such services that will rely on phones with GPS in the future. Those services could support blogging, chat, photo sharing etc so you could tell others when you've found a new treasure, and also team up with others for a quicker find. You could even invert it: Show a photo of a place and let others report its coordinates.

Geocaching contests (find the most treasure in the shortest amount of time) seem pretty likely too.

By nature geocaching is somewhat local, so many geocaching services could co-exist. Then there's the question of bottom line, and as with many Web 2.0 services this is arguable, unless combined with advertizing and other (commercial) offerings.

'location-based services in the US' lists some of the interesting services that are possible if mobile phones have location support (in the phone itself or via the network). Some could be implemented also with "lesser" network-based technologies, at least in rural areas and so that standard phones could be used (e.g. for local search and local weather), but most require the precision of GPS. The services listed could as well be deployed in other parts of the world.

Mentioned:

• maps, directions
• traffic monitoring & dynamic re-routing
• very local weather
• “fencing” (providing an area outside of which the tracked phone should not venture)
• tracking (useful for many businesses)
• friend finding
• local search

I'm surprised that operators haven't taken the opportunity to provide at least good network-based location using triangulation and other precision-increasing methods. It's as if the operators got jaded after all the hype about LBSs around 2000 (that in my opinion stood for Lots of Bull Shit at the time), and somehow never came back. Now the field is open for GPS, that operators have no control over, unless we talk A-GPS.

slashdot reviews Pro Java ME MMAPI and concludes it's good. Very good actually.

Update 20070327: Ivan Kuznetsov has written a good piece on his impressions of the N95: N95 - it's what computers have become.


Nokia N95 is the first phone from Nokia with integrated GPS, and that supports the Location APIs available in Symbian OS and Java ME, making it a snap to develop location-aware client applications and services. Navigation software is included.

It also has other features of note, including a 5 megapixel camera, and likely good support for recording and viewing videos. It also has HSDPA for snappy downloads. The only thing lacking is an alphanumeric keypad, but if you need that you can get the E90 instead, and some more money.

The N95 is not for everyone with its slightly high price tag, but soon the 6110 will be out, also with integrated GPS, but with slightly weaker multimedia features, and for roughly 200 Euro less. I have a feeling the 6110 could become very popular among users that need basic navigation, and that want to geotag everything in sight.

Nokia launches N95 multimedia computer

Nokia N95 begins shipping

Nokia's N95 now shipping... everywhere but here
As in, not in USA.

Nokia's N95 unboxed

Nokia N95 multimedia computer starts shipping

Nokia N95 Starts Shipping

Update: Nokia ships N95 phone with GPS

At least for now, according to Google Hangs Up on Mobile Phone Idea. Google representatives deny there are any such plans.

I won't write more about a possible Google phone until I can verify it's more than a pipe dream.

11 Little Things proposes how mobile phones could be improved for a better gaming experience.

Still, phones are more designed for looks and for entering phone numbers than anything else. Even so called music phones are not very music adapted at all. See e.g. Sony Ericsson's new W880.

The picture of a gamepad connected to a mobile phone is not that far-fecthed though. As phones move to USB, a small gamepad could be attached to the data port (inexpensive) or communicate via Bluetooth (more expensive).

Belgium eyes world first with text message payments describes a new mobile payment service that uses simple SMS for confirming the order and the payment. The only security measure mentioned is a secret code entered in the SMS, yet it seems that's considered safe enough. I wonder how and why.

This week Golden Swamp (what does that mean?) hosts Carnival of the Mobilists. Judy Breck there is now one of the admins for CotM.

Over time I see a general increase in notes about services (especially of the social network kind) and less about individual phones and network technologies, which indicates a maturing market where focus shifts to what the technology should be used for. Again, it's interesting to see that India, China etc are seemingly way better at being creative about data/information services than the more developed markets.

Actually one of the more interesting notes I found wasn't in the CotM, rather it was a note about Mobile Learning in the side-bar. It says mobile phones (despite their small real estate etc) are personal and hence better suited as learning tools than PCs at schools. Interesting point, yet to be verified. At least pupils are way easier to reach via their mobiles than via any other means, except possibly "over-the-air" shouting.

I apologize for being slow with posting blog entries lately. Part of the reason is that I've been working on Converter Pro. It's a nifty little MIDlet that can convert a lot of different things into a lot of other different things.

If anyone wants to write about the application I can provide a free copy. Otherwise it can be purchased at ClickApps. It should run on any contemporary mobile phone with Java, as it uses only CLDC 1.0 and MIDP 1.0 features.

The version released tomorrow will also support digital data sizes and more time conversions.

Mobile 2.0 IS NOT Web 2.0 is an interesting article that reverbates my own thoughts on the matter. It's more about how the available technology is used than the technology itself. See e.g. the following:

Mobile 2.0 explained

Commentary on the Mobile 2.0 conference in San Francisco

The perfect mobile service

Web 2.0 not for phones?

A comment on Mobile 2.0

Geocaching is about treasure-hunting via global positioning: You hide something, describe where it is, and let others search for it. It's that simple.

In the case of Drop Spots there's no GPS or other location method involved. You just describe where the loot was hidden via Drop Spots' site. You can't even do that via a mobile phone, so technically speaking this is a "Google Maps 101" service that probably took just a few days to develop when talking the service backend. Even so, it's a nice combinatoric solution using Google Maps in an interesting new way, and that doesn't require any new technology on the user's part. Adding mobile access shouldn't be that hard.

The site doesn't have a page rank despite being launched in 2006. That's a bit weird.

The PDA API is used for accessing PIM data as well as the file system from MIDlets. I believe all phones released this and last year has it, if they at all support MIDlets. See the J2ME Polish' API/JSR directory for all phones supporting it.

Enrique Ortiz has recently published informative and hands-on articles on the PIM API subset. There will be six such articles in total. I will add them as they are published here.

• Part 1 - Managing Personal Information
• Part 2 - Portability Considerations
• Part 3 - Security Considerations
• Part 4 - Design Considerations
• Part 5 - Data Management
• Part 6 - TBA

An issue seldomly mentioned about the PDA API, which is covered in part 3, is that in uncertified applications you can typically not shut off the security reminders you get for each and every access to the API. That can completely kill the user experience. On a farly new phone like the Sony Ericsson M600i I can only select 'Always Ask' or 'Don't Allow', and according to the MIDP 2.0 specification, that's maximum what you are supposed to get. I have argued before that asking all these questions doesn't really make the solution more secure, it only pisses the user off.

'Nokia sees replacement sales role up in 2007' gives some pointers from a Nokia perspective:

Will be in demand:

• Color screens
• Cameras
• Music players
• 3G

Will likely not be in much demand this year, yet later:

• Push e-mail
• Mobile TV
• Navigation

That the replacement market is so healthy worldwide (including in emerging markets) indicates phone manufacturers continuously need to add more and more features whether they are used or not, and whether they are functional or aesthetical. Otherwise users can as well stay with the phones they already have, and manufacturers wouldn't want that. Not even operators want that, as then it would be extremely hard to sell "phone / long term agreement" bundles as a way to sway over and lock in users from other operators.

India is the quickest developing mobile market, and will become second in the world, so here's some current stats and info:

Nokia sees India as 2nd biggest market by 2010
That doesn't necessarily mean in terms of profits. Especially for the phone manufacturers there's need for much more cost-effective technologies, but phones are already surprisingly cheap to produce, as indicated in Cheap phones to get cheaper

Mobile communication is revolutionizing economic and social development in rural India
Showing how multi-faceted mobile phone/service use is, as few have PCs.

Google exec confirms phone in the labs shuts down the rumor mill quicker than I had expected.

Quote: 'Google's mobile skunkworks were designed to make their way into developing countries'
That actually sounds smart. As I mentioned in the previous note, information access is more heralded in Asia than in Europe and USA, and the sheer volume of potential users is also much greater there.

It doesn't say whether this phone (or phones) will be fully optimized for Google's services, but what else could it be? I don't think Google would just release a "me too" phone. Rather I expect something like the Helio concept (phone with strong information services bundle) yet with an alphanumeric keypad of some sort.

The Wireless Carrier as the Gatekeepers of the Internet tells a slightly scary story about operators increasing the power towards the users and the service providers, as more and more of the Internet access is done on the move.

I only hope there will be alternatives to traditional telecom operators popping up. I don't think current broadband providers will stay out of wireless for very long, and telecom operators, and the very concept of walled gardens etc, seriously need competition. Users want direct access to the Internet, something broadband providers already satisfy.

My impression of the emerging Asian markets is that operators there are much more aware that data/information is a normal form of mobile phone use, while operators in Europe and USA still are voice/SMS focused. That mindset needs to move over here.

Check out Seven mobile user experience downloads for information about mobile trends and guidelines for mobile services etc. The reports are quite lengthy.

I didn't get time to read through Jeff Axup's thesis (400+ pages), but it's clearly solid work, and written with also the user's perspective.

Don't be scared off by the 130+ slides in Brian Fling's presentation. That includes all part slides, so maybe it's "just" 70 slides all in all. I had expected more about the alternatives to using the phone's browser for service access, like Java ME and Flash, at least for showing that using the browser is best (if it now is). These platforms are becoming very strong for service frontends, providing much better responsiveness for the end-user. The only way a browser-based service can be as responsive is by deploying Java/ECMA-script on the mobile side, and there's very little about that in the presentation.

It links to a summary by Unstrung of the Top 10 Emerging Mobile Markets where China and India clearly stand out. Other information has confirmed that China and India will be the major markets also over time, but the presented list of countries indicates there's a substantial amount of mobile market still to evolve, but of course it's not endless.

This is according to 'Bluetooth 2.1 Offers Touch Based Pairing, Reduced Power Consumption' done by using NFC technology so that it's enough to hold the devices close together to get a pairing, and in cases even without a PIN code. The NFC functionality adds some cost though.

M-Trends has published this week's Carnival of the Mobilists. I forgot to submit any entry, so the quality level is extra high this time, but also due to great work by Rudy de Waele.

Or at least the LBS market. GPS is the only technology with enough precision and with total operator independence, to save the (so far) stuttering independent LBS efforts. A-GPS adds the reaction speed normal GPS lacks, but then we are back to operator dependence.

The key issue now is that there are too few phones with integrated GPS, and even though GPS modules have decreased substantially in price, are still not on the top 10 list of "must-buys" of the average consumer.

Tom mentions power consumption as an issue, but many uses of GPS are not continuous, e.g. geotagging for photo sharing/blogging, so the increased power consumption can in many cases be unnoticeable.

Enquirer: GPS is the future for mobile phones

Tom Hume: LBS and GPS: I was wrong, wrong, wrong
I concur.

Ten commandments of cell phone etiquette is a funny/serious take on what to think about as a mobile phone user. The commandments are quite traditional though: There's nothing about what to think about while chatting, blogging, surfing, digging, geotagging etc. Maybe in the next version. Please check out the site for an elaboration and some funny pictures.

• Thou shalt not dial while driving
• Thou shalt not wear thy earpiece when thou art not on thy phone
• Thou shalt not speak louder on thy cell phone than thou would on any other phone
• Thou shalt not grow too attached to thy cell phone
• Thou shalt not slam thy cell phone down on a restaurant table just in case it rings
• Thou shalt not make the cell phone more important than the company thou art keeping
• Thou shalt not leave the cell phone ringing just to show off the "cool" ringtones or refrain from answering for that same reason
• Thou shalt turn off thy cell phone at funerals, weddings, yoga class, and anywhere it would be unacceptable to bring a screaming child
• Thou shalt not have a message intro lasting more than 15 seconds
• Thou shalt never answer your phone while you're in the bathroom.

(via Textually)

It's not a proven fact yet, but as with the iPhone, everyone has an opinion. Both notes below are based on the same survey supposedly coming from Google.

Flatrate data and 3-month trial sounds nice if true.

Based on the pictures, this seems to be a phone more optimized for alphanumeric input than the iPhone, which would be in line with Google's services.

This could be all fake though.

New pictures of the Google Phone

Survey gives more Google phone clues?

Update 2007-03-17: MEX has elaborated on the Canalys report in Growth in open OS will shift zones of influence. In my opinion the industry over-exaggerates the proliferation and current user benefits of phones with Open OSes, as most such phones are still mainly used for voice and text messaging. The trend towards using Open OSes more is clear though, but the costs are also clear, and both Symbian OS and Windows Mobile are considered expensive. Symbian and Microsoft need to change their pricing policy as we overall move to more inexpensive and mainstream smartphones.

Mobile carriers sick of so many operating systems talks about Symbian OS and Windows Mobile being the dominant OSes on smartphones, implying that very soon most phones will run any of these OSes, while the fact of the matter is that the transition will take several years, as the cost of using smartphone OSes are considerably higher than for the dominant solution based on a lightweight OS kernel with often a manufacturer-developed application platform and in-sourced applications, as well as Java ME or BREW. Clearly the shift is going on, but the note indicates it's going fast, which it's not, as the market for low- to mid-range phones is still booming in emerging markets. Also most phones sold in the developed markets are based on this architecture. Sales of Symbian OS based phones are increasing fast, but from a low level.

More relevant would be to talk application platforms, as that's what developers of applications need to face. There Java ME is still completely dominating. As I've mentioned before, official figures from Sun and Nokia indicate there are 1.5B phones with Java ME (the CLDC/MIDP variant mostly) and 100M with Symbian OS (mainly Nokia's Series 60). In that sense even Flash Lite is more dominating than Symbian OS as an application platform, as Adobe claims 200M phones run it (on top of the actual OS). Also, almost all smartphones also run Java ME.

Quote: 'But smart phones, high-end devices that have access to the Internet and send e-mail,'
Even the simplest phones have Internet access and e-mail today.

Smartphones sold last year (according to Canalys):

• Symbian OS (Series 60 or UIQ): 66% ("2/3")
• Microsoft (Windows Mobile etc): 14%
• RIM: 7%
• Linux: 6%

Note that BlackBerrys can also run standard MIDlets. Note also that Linux phones can make use a number of different UIs, so it's not possible to talk about one consistent Linux-based mobile application platform (hence all the industry efforts to try to standardize Mobile Linux). Of course neither can be said about Java ME to be honest, but volume-wise the difference is staggering. Some Linux phones are also closed from an application developer's point-of-view, which of course makes matters worse.

It should be noted that I have one big concern about Java ME CLDC/MIDP, and that is that the UI is so terrible. Most developers still use only Canvas UI, as using the highlevel UI is too limiting and simply not viable for games. Even developers of more serious applications often stay away from the high-level UI. This will increasingly be a drawback for MIDlet development, when moving outside games, and even there. Don't expect Java ME CDC to take over though. MIDP 3.0 has considerable UI improvements (including full customization), but will it be enough to retain the current dominance of CLDC/MIDP? There are also concerns about incompatibilities between phones and limited access to newer phone functionality (due to slow standardization), so the Java ME "model" is certainly not bullet-proof in any way, looking at the longer term, but it will still dominate for years to come.

I found another note on the convergence topic: Platform proliferation limiting mobile content?

It's no doubt that from a developer's point-of-view Flash Lite has a lot going for it when it comes to graphics/ media-intensive applications, and with the later additions of Internet communication etc it's an option also for service frontends. Java ME / MIDP is though still a much more generic and widespread solution, so don't unlearn Java ME just yet.

Hence 'Watch Out Java, Here Comes Flash Lite' is right in that Flash Lite is getting more competitive and a viable alternative, but it definitely can't replace Java ME as the main after-market application platform any time soon.

'Flash Lite has also needed to encourage more development on the GSM phone standard'
What's needed in GSM to support Flash Lite? It's apparent from the following text that this is a misunderstanding.

'[Adobe] has not gotten as much play on GSM handsets as it does with ones embedded with BREW technologies'
Of course not. BREW is like Java ME a platform for after-market applications. Hence adding Flash Lite to a BREW phone is about downloading and installing a new application, not involving the phone manufacturer at all. To add Flash Lite to non-BREW phones means either embedding it (which is very tough to convince a manufacturer to do) or make it into a Java ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Palm application, depending on targeted phones. I doubt that Adobe would ever make a Flash Lite MIDlet for competitive and technical reasons. That's like Microsoft making a Java version of Office.

Here are two ways Apple has affected the market with the iPhone, even before it exists, and even before anyone has concluded the first incarnation of the iPhone is worth buying.

Gizmodo: iPhone Generated $400 million in Free Publicity
Deserved or not: 'No other company has ever received that kind of attention for a product launch...It's unprecedented'

Mobility Weblog: The future of handset design: from hardware to software
My comment: By using this form of UI paradigm, the software will determine more of a mobile phone's functionality (at least the kind that doesn't require special hardware) and more or less all of the UI. Application developers definitely like this ... if they had a possibility to add any software to the iPhone that is. Phones with this form factor will often be used in landscape format for browsing, viewing videos and TV etc.

A bit sad for those that already have iPhone-like phones is that due to the power of Apple's marketing consumers get the impression they clone the iPhone, which they obviously don't. The same with the iPod: Many seem to think Apple invented the MP3 Player, while rather such devices existed well before the iPod, yet not as easy to use, and probably not as well integrated with a media download service, even though Sony tried. Apple was more pragmatic though: By adding support for the favorite 'music pirate' format MP3 instead of holding on to a proprietary format (in Sony's case ATRAC), even non-iTunes users liked the iPod.

What I think and hope Apple has done better with the iPhone than competitors have, is to more consistently make use of the 'clean slate' UI to provide overall better functionality and ease-of-use. I hope they haven't forgotten the 'if you press the phone to your ear, you don't want to accidentally hang up the call' and 'if you have the phone in your pocket you don't want to call or message the whole world in the process' issues. There's also the issue of tactile feedback when pressing 'keys'.

What we're learning from Web apps, part two: Community = shared obsession goes through reasons why Internet-based communities are popular, but I don't fully agree with the conclusions/hypotheses regarding mobile communities, that I think are overly pessimistic, so here's my take on mobile communities, only partly based on verifiable facts.

Mobile communities is probably the most popular mobile service category around, if counting also chat, media sharing etc in this category. There are lots of communities that are only accessed via phones (and from media/analyst point-of-view might be virtually invisible), and there are of course also originally PC-optimized communities that are now accessible from mobile phones (e.g. MySpace, Flickr).

The note says a community like dogster can't be converted to the mobile form factor. As a comparison: PC-optimized news sites often show tons of information on one page, in several columns and with pictures all over the place etc etc. Still, reading feeds of the same news works excellently from a mobile phone. Stripping down a service to the core functionality reveals that funtionality like chatting, user profiles, blogs, feeds, media sharing etc can be ported to a mobile format (not necessarily easily or cost/performance-efficiently, but all the same). Also, it's not necessary to make all service functionality accessible via mobiles, and there are also things you can achieve much simpler via a mobile phone, like photo and video blogging/sharing, adding value to the service.

I extracted some interesting official stats from the AdMob Daily Inventory page. The first figure indicates ad click proportion for that service category, and the second figure provides daily average ad clicks for one service in that category:

• Communities: 55.0%, 38065
• Contextual search: 0.0%, 1031
• Downloads: 26.4%, 19191
• Entertainment: 1.4%, 1102
• News and information: 0.0%, 701
• Portals: 16%, 19778

Provided that service providers have chosen the right category for their services, it's pretty obvious what type stands out. When it comes to the Downloads category I guess GetJar stands for a lot (and maybe the majority) of the clicks. I don't know of any other download site with mobile access that has the same popularity.

This is clearly not a scientific analysis, and doesn't really counter Michael's conclusions per se, but indicates there's clearly life in mobile communities, and for some reason users of mobile communities are eager (relatively speaking) to click on ads. It would be interesting with a comment from AdMob for why this is so. The reason might be obvious.

Seemingly you shouldn't go for pure entertainment (whatever that means), news and search sites if you want to get mobile ad click revenue. That would completely contradict the ongoing hype around mobile search, so what's wrong in the logic? There's only one search service listed on the stats page, so the margin of error is huge in this case, but still, why only one? Because other search services handle their own advertizing? Possibly. Google and other heavy-weights obviously do, or intend to.

Bluetooth Digital Photo Frame by Parrot describes an electronic photo frame that you can beam photos to, previously taken with the phone's camera.

I find it interesting not so much for the practicality of it (which could be argued), but that it shows a use of Bluetooth that I don't think the Bluetooth SIG thought up in the early days of hype.

What I would like to see, in the same vein, is a similar beaming of photos to a PC that wouldn't require any user intervention. What if beamed photos would immediately show up in Picasa and even be directly posted to Flickr via the PC, without touching the PC? That would be neat, as it would cost less than sending the photos (or videos) via the mobile network.

Parrot PHOTO VIEWER 3.5"
Parrot PHOTO VIEWER 7"

(via Textually etc etc)

HighContrast has posted several entries with speculations about the possible Google phone. I'll update when I've read through the pieces.

The Real Google Phone

More Light on The Google Phone Mystery

Google/Skia Update

Top 3 Questions About The Google Phone

With a new set of developer tools AMD/ATI now hopes that the development community will start churning out more games that make use of ATI's 3D chips, and secondarily also push more phone manufacturers to integrate mobile-optimized 3D acceleration hardware, so that 3D games and applications will run faster and with a higher rendering quality. ATI has had such chips for a couple of years.

Based on the specs the performance of these mobile 3D chips are similar to a few years old budget 3D chips for PCs, and considering the display resolution is lower than on a PC, the user experience could be really good.

AMD launches new tools for mobile development

ATI - Handheld Products

ATI - Mobile Phones with ATI 3D chips
More than I had expected, but note the lack of phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

(via QuicklyBored)

Now it's time for Google to be the focal point for private-branded mobile phone rumors. A lot of guesswork right now though.

Quote: 'We are building a small team of top-notch Logic Designers and Analog Designers aimed at nothing less than making the entire world's information accessible from anywhere for free.'
Why not outsource the phone development instead? Most phone manufacturers already do that.

Quote: 'And like Apple, Google would focus on designing the product and work with a contract manufacturer to produce it.'
There you go.

Quote: 'But for Google to make a splash in the crowded mobile phone market, the company would need to design a product that sticks out among the rest'
Seamless support for Google's own services is an obvious differentiator. Of course not just via a web browser but truly integrated in the phone, like "one-click" photo/video-blogging, spoken news feeds and alerts etc. I don't think iPhone has that. Another differentiator would be to have broad support for downloaded applications and content, so that Google can start selling mobile content as well.

Google May Be Working on Mobile Phone

Google mobile phone in the works?

The industry is still struggling to define Mobile 2.0, but the most simple explanation is that it's more about creating content than creating sites. In my mind it's based on two core things:

• Web 2.0 and the focus on user-generated content, which is due to the fact that tools have evolved that handle the nitty-gritties of creating sites, and that anyone can use
• Making use of the capabilities of mobile phones: push messaging, photography, video and audio recording, always-on, always-with-you etc