About Mobility

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Rudy de Waele at the m-trends blog:

Looking back at the many contributions done by so many mobilists till now, this is still what’s it’s all about! The Carnival stays probably the best online resource to read about different views and opinions by industry experts, pundits, marketers, and mobile (social) media watchers on the evolution of the mobile phone. And what an EVOLUTION we have seen the last couple of years…

…this week with contributions from Ajit Jaokar, Carl Martin, Carlo Longino, Dennis Bournique, C. Enrique Ortiz, James Coops, Jamie Wells, Judy Breck, Marek Pawloski, Mark K. Kramer, Phil Barrett, Ronan Mandel and Tomi T Ahonen.

So head on to m-trends.org and enjoy the Carnival of the Mobilists #180!

Thanks to Rudy for including my entry on this week’s Carnival…

ceo

Feature vs. the Smart-phone. There is no straight answer; the lines are blurring too fast. At the end, your definition will be different from mine. Nevertheless, this is how I’m defining it (to be included in an upcoming article):

Both Feature and Smart-phones support voice and data capabilities, including multimedia audio and video, camera, gaming, high-speed networks, GPS and advanced user interfaces. Both are programmable. And both are updatable while on the field. While the line that separates Feature vs. Smart phones is become thinner over time, Smart-phones are considered more advanced and are seen more like a portable Internet computer with voice capabilities, as opposed to the Feature phone which is seen as a programmable cell-phone device with data capabilities. Compared against Smart-phones, the Feature phone is typically Java or BREW-based, while the Smart-phone has a more advanced operating system and corresponding development environments.

I might rephrase the above some, but the described main idea should remain…

ceo

When browsing on your mobile, do you call it browsing “the Internet”, “the Web” or browsing “the Mobile Web”?

After an interesting discussion at ForumOxford on one vs. many webs, I’m curious (keeping in mind that the majority of the readers of this blog are mobile techies) on how folks see this.

Related to this see Barbara Ballard’s essay how many webs? (Little Springs Design).

ceo

P.S. It is the 1st time I use PollDaddy and I’m not sure how it will work, on the blog or feeds.

By now you probably have already seen the video on Layar augmented reality (AR) browser, embedded below:

Layar is a location-based, context-aware product by SPRXmobile, a group of very smart folks in Amsterdam that I have been following for a long time; because they get it. I got the pleasure to meet Raimo van der Klein, co-founder of SPRXmobile in the past, which I enjoyed very much. SPRXmobile gets what mobility is all about — about the intersection of mobility with the user context and with our surroundings. Which is why it is of no surprise to me that they came up with Layar.

And with Layar they also came up with an interesting business model. What about that! And it seems a sound one, meaning they will make money — what a concept! I’m not being sarcastic here; you see in mobile it is hard to make money, and those who make real money are either people who develop software for others (i.e. get paid as consultants) and the other group are the network operators. The others are left with models that are based on ads such as AdMob or Google, or must go straight after the businesses, which is what it seems Layar is doing. So it is pleasing to see a mobile application with a reasonable business model. And this business model is about “information sharing”, at this time, around advertising. But what it is interesting is the way information/ads are grouped into “buckets of related information” or Layers. So, perhaps you are trying to find ATMs, for this you will use the ATM layer. Or you can switch to other layers containing other information such as the banks layer. This concept of layers is very applicable to plain maps as well. This concept of layers is powerful.

Next, and to maximize such a great idea, the folks at SPRXmobile should also take advantage of the community, and allow for “social or user generated” layers, layers that people, anyone, can create, contribute to, and share. Is this Zcapes + Layars?

Layar is first targeted at Android handsets; no surprise there as Android is an open, feature-rich (video, accelerometer, GPS, compass, touch-screen, etc), easy to deploy environment. Because of its business models, it will be made available on a city by city basis; which is a reason they should just make it available anywhere and let community create layers. Next I am sure it will be made available on iPhone and other environments that provide the required elements of (video, accelerometer, GPS, compass, touch-screen, etc.)

ceo

VentureBeat is looking to recognize Mobile innovation at the second annual MobileBeat Top Startup Competition.

Last year the awards went to firms such as AdMob and Loopt. This year the competition shifts to mobile applications and services, with 50 finalists to be determined and a final 14 to present live at MobileBeat on Thursday July 16th.

Top Startup Submission Rules:

• Startups must complete and submit a form by June 30, 2009 for consideration
• Fifty finalists will be announced on July 2nd on Venturebeat.com. Voting will then be open to the public to select the top seven companies per sector.
• Seven finalists from each category will present for five minutes each to the MobileBeat audience determined by judges as to avoid any vote manufacturing.
• Nominees must be younger than three years old. Special consideration will be given to companies that are launching for the first time.

Winners to be announced at the MobileBeat Conference July 16th, San Francisco CA San Francisco.

Directly following each two-minute presentation, a panel of judges will provide feedback in rapid fire. After final deliberation in the afternoon, winners will be announced.

Submitting a company for nomination is completely free. For more information visit the startup competition website.

MobileBeat 09 will take place on July 16, 2009 in the Parc 55 Hotel in downtown San Francisco. The theme of this year’s show is “It’s the application, stupid!”, focusing on mobile applications’ recent explosion in popularity.

See registration information.

Speakers at this year’s MobileBeat include: Dr. Tero Ojanperä (Nokia), Russ McGuire (Sprint Nextel), Matt Murphy (Kleiner Perkins iFund), Rick Segal (Blackberry Partners), Nagraj Kashyap (Qualcomm Ventures), Aditya Khurjekar(Verizon), and Michael Rayfield (Nvidia)

ceo

Below is a nice illustration on Radio Spectrum Allocations (Yankee Group):

…and those with the spectrum, the spectrum-rich players, are in the driver’s seat for Mobile Broadband economics.

Radio spectrum is a scarce resource that is critical for mobile communications. The expansion of mobile broadband services places tremendous pressure on available spectrum resources, and typically sees service providers with greater spectrum bandwidth having a distinct economic advantage as broadband services take hold. The most coveted spectrum bands are those that support mobile communications (generally less than 3 GHz operating frequency), have adequate bandwidth for economic service delivery and are aligned with a robust device and infrastructure ecosystem. These key resources include six distinct frequency bands that are illustrated above.

(Source: Yankee Group, June 2009)

Internal vs. external pressures impact the (potential for) success of your startup in different ways.

I’ll argue that internal pressures are the worst… how do I know? I’ve learned this the *hard way*. But remember that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; never forget that.

When building a startup, external forces are not the worst of your enemies. Competition? Who cares? Bring it on! The economy and funding? What about IT infrastructure? Nah, don’t worry — today is very cheap to build and run your venture. People/resources? Yes, that too is available and with reasonable/negotiable terms and expectations. Guy Kawasaki writes a good summary about this new economy on his Building 43 interview by Scoble The new economics of entrepreneurship.

And I’ll argue that external pressures such as competition or potential for competition are great incentives, for example, to go to market, fast.

But it is the internal forces, the struggles within — and especially the inter-personal forces, such as lack of balance, openness and trust… ah, those are the forces that might keep you from winning. Those are forces for you to watch out for… Those are your worst enemies, and believe or not, are all within, very close to you. Otherwise, the company will kill itself from the inside; which is the worst (and stupidest) way to die…

This is why the team composition, from management and down is so important on a startup. Keep the team small, to the minimal. Cut the excess; or better, avoid excess — if you need a specific resource but deep inside you know it is not a match for your startup, bring the person as a contractor. And be open and be fair and be balanced.

If I were to put a totally non-scientific chart on this, it would look as follows:

…which in summary translates to “internal forces increases the threat levels for your company”.

Related to this topic see a couple of great pieces by Paul Graham:

• Why Start a Company in a Bad Economy
• How Not to Die
• How To Do What You Love

ceo

P.S. This essay is part of what might become a series of related essays based on written notes on startups from previous life; notes that I thought I should share. I will be compiling these under the On Startups page on my weblog. And I’ve to admit that publishing these notes, which I recently re-discovered, is at times a bit “painful” in different ways; but hey, life goes on…

As some of you may already know, MIDP 3.0 is going public. While smartphones have taken their own route with respect to the runtime environment, I expect feature phones to adopt MIDP 3.0; to be seen is the adoption by device manufacturers. But that said, FYI, the list of new features is very good (and many of my wishes were satisfied); to mention a few:

• Backgrounds MIDlets (i.e. services) and auto-launched MIDlets
• Enhanced storage management w/ support for record tagging/labels and support for external, secure storage
• Access to unique device IDs such as UUIDs and IMEI (to better manage deployment instances)
• New UI functionality such as support for splash, idle screen and screenisavers, text input into Canvas elements, tables, tabbed panes, splash screen, scalable images and animated GIF, menus and form layouts, other
• Support for libraries — now you can decouple common infrastructure components from the app and into libraries that can be shared across apps
• MIDlet concurrency and inter-MIDlet communication
• Support for application and system eventing (from the system events such as low-battery, etc)
• HTTP support for PUT and DELETE in support for REST-like web services
• IPv6 URLs, file selectors, and other
• Migration path to CDC
• A number of clarifications that I hope helps reduce ambiguities that previously permitted inconsistent implementations
• …and other

Related to this see JSR 271: Mobile Information Device Profile 3 - Proposed Final Draft.

ceo

Disclaimer: I was a member of the expert group that defined MIDP 3.0, so I am obviously a bit biased to see this succeed and at the same time very pleased with the set of features that made it to the next generation of the Mobile Information Device Profile (Java ME).

It is good to see this. After a long time, hard work, lots of discussions, MIDP3 final draft has been submitted to the JCP…

MIDP3 includes a number of new APIs and functionality. And while the smartphones have gone their own way with their own platforms and environments, MIDP3 is relevant and will be a great environment for feature phones. For those asking what a feature-phone is, Phone Scoop as a good definition:

A Feature phone is any mobile phone that is not a smartphone or PDA phone. Feature phones have proprietary operating system (OS) firmware. If they support third-party software, it is only via a limited interface such as Java or BREW.

Compared to software for smartphones, Java or BREW software for feature phones is often less powerful, less integrated with other features of the phone, and less integrated into the main user interface of the phone.

This is changing, as newer versions of Java and BREW allow software to be more powerful and integrate with more features of the phone, although the difference is still present, especially on the interface side. While third-party smartphone software is a “first-class citizen” on the phone, third-party Java or BREW software is usually restricted to a special “applications” section of the interface.

The Proposed Final Draft Specification for JSR-000271 Mobile Information Device Profile 3 is now available at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=271.

“This JSR will specify the 3rd generation Mobile Information Device Profile, expanding upon the functionality in all areas as well as improving interoperability across devices.”

I hope to start seeing MIDP3 devices later this year…

CEO

Below are modified instructions for Android 1.5 update/install:

1. (Make sure the G1 is fully powered or connected to power)
2. For Android 1.5 Cupcake download the update from: http://android-dls.com/files/ota/signed-kila-ota-148830.de6a94ca.zip
3. Rename the downloaded file to “update.zip”
4. Connect your G1 to your PC; mount the device
5. Copy update.zip to your microSD card (the root directory)
6. Shutdown the G1
7. Start it again while holding down the Home key until you get a triangular caution icon next to a phone (this is after you see the normal G1 logo)
8. Press ALT-L; this will open a menu of options, one of which is install the contents of “update.zip”; press ALT-S to start the installation
9. Wait several minutes while the new firmware is installed; don’t touch / mess with the G1 — leave it alone!
10. You’ll eventually be asked to push the Home and Back keys again; Back is near Home — not the Delete key on the keyboard; this will restart your Android device
11. The firmware will be copied into ROM (this takes a couple of minutes or so)
12. Your G1 will reboot itself

Good luck!

Disclaimer: if your G1 explodes during the installation process, I’m not responsible!

ceo

P.S. Adapted from / via: MobileCrunch.

As I have written here before, a couple of texting “records” have happened in my family; at one point my oldest daughter had more than 3K text messages in one month, and more recently my youngest daughter had around 1,300.

This past weekend at soccer, I was talking to a good friend of mine about texting. My friend said…

“…so we had to talk to our daughter — last month her texting count was 19K text messages”

I, having previous experience with daughters and texting said:

“…nah, that’s nothing, my daughters had 1,300 and 3K”

he said:

“no, Enrique, you didn’t understand, I said 19 THOUSAND!!!”

To what I responded…

“what the hell, no way! that’s crazy!”

Wow, 19 thousand messages — that is an average of ~633 (sent and received) messages a day…

That reminds me, have you ever seen my essay Texting and The Evolution of the Thumb?

ceo

Via @hametner, a couple of handset and Mobile Network Operators (MNO) metrics of interest (USA).

Top 5 U.S. smartphones sold in Q1 2009

1. BlackBerry Curve
2. Apple iPhone 3G
3. BlackBerry Storm
4. BlackBerry Pearl
5. T-Mobile G1

Note that 3 out of 5 are BlackBerry handsets, and that 4 out of 5 are Java handsets! RIM seems to own over 50% of the *consumer* space in the US; i.e these numbers do not include enterprise sales. As @hametner ponders, “does this mean that Apple needs to expand beyond exclusivity to have a broader cross carrier offering?”… Yes,interesting…

Top 5 US MNOs by number of subscribers at the end of Q1 2009

1. Verizon — 86.7M subs
2. AT&T — 78.2M subs
3. Sprint — 48.1M subs
4. T-Mobile — 33.2M subs
5. US Cellular — 6.2M

Verizon continues to be ahead, and with Verizon committing to LTE that means a very large LTE deployment supposedly starting in 2009, and with rumors that Apple and Verizon have been talking that would be a great opportunity for Apple and its “Pinky and the Brain” world dominance expansion plans for the iPhone!

Other MNOs, at&t and T-Mobile are all either committed or still evaluating LTE with eyes towards 2011, with Sprint pretty much committed to WiMAX (at this point).

Sources:

• NPD Group
• FierceWireless

Disclaimer: I’m a Pinky and the Brain fan!

Android Widgets, which will be made available with the release of Android 1.5 (Cupcake) is a great addition to the platform; I’ve been waiting for such widget API for a while now.

Android Widgets is an example of Local widgets (as opposed to Web-based widgets). And because they are Local, you get the benefit of the (Android) platform to its fullest.

Android define their widgets or AppWidgets as miniature application views that can be embedded in other applications (e.g., the Home). These views are called "widgets" and you can publish one with an "AppWidget provider." An application component that is able to hold other widgets is called an "AppWidget host."

Below is a glimpse at Android Widgets (thanks to PhoneDog):

When Android widgets are used with the AppWidget framework, see Introducing home screen widgets and the AppWidget framework, developers can write “widgets” that can be dropped onto the home screen. (And with “home widgets” we are getting closer to something that I wrote some time ago - see the bit old but still very relevant piece titled The Next Battlefront for Mobile Applications.)

For those interested in developing widgets for Android, there are a couple of good developer guides available at developer.android.com:

• Widget Design Guidelines
• AppWidgets

Plus see my Mobile Widgets Page which provides some background, definition, examples and related information about mobile widgets.

ceo

It is said that dogs are man’s best friend…

And after 15 years, I’ve lost mine…

Bubbles was his name.

Always happy, always on-guard, obedient, playful and friendly, always waiting and wanting to be with one.

Today we’ve lost him, and will miss him very much.

ceo

A very nice slide-deck by Rudy de Waele (@mtrends) — love it.

I totally agree with this vision, which is one that has great potential, and is one that I’ve been passionately promoting for some time now:

“The mobile handset is, by its own nature, a social artifact; an object made and used by people to connect with people. This is the reason why the next big development in mobility and related services involves social software in some form or fashion, to enable better ways to find, communicate and share with friends and family, to learn about our surroundings, and to consume information. And the mobile handset is at the center of this.” I call this People-centric mobile computing.

We have many names for this, but four main concepts are at the center of this:

• People-centric Computing (PDF)
• Physical Interactions
• The Internet of Things (“Internetting everything around us”)
• The Mobile User eXperience

…and while all the necessary parts to make this happen are here today in some form or fashion, this vision is one that will take some time to fulfill and monetize, mainly due to slow go-to-market/deployment (state of the industry) and thus adoption.

See Rudy’s slide-deck Mobile Social Contextual Applications & Services:



Mobile Social Contextual Applications & Services
View more presentations from rudydw.

ceo