Wednesday, December 27, 2006 

Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly

Bill Ray wrote a very interesting comment on apple mobile phone in his column on The Register. I am still reflecting on his words and do not know if i agree with him or not... so many apple fans (and many others that are not so fans) are waiting for this gadget... and probably will buy it, even if it had no subsidy. Or not? Let's wait and see.

Friday, December 22, 2006 

Gameloft confirms position 2 in the market

During this year, we witnessed a huge struggle between Gameloft and Glu for the second possition after a claim from M:Metrics that Glu was second. With Glu's IPO Sec-1 filing for Nasdaq, Gameloft contacted Mobile Games Blog to let them know they are happy to confirm they have twice the revenue and thus twice the revenue share of Glu. The Sec-1 filing was the Christmas present Gameloft could only wish for.

Source: http://mobilegames.blogs.com

Wednesday, December 20, 2006 

Glu opens the Book

A bit of surprising news coming by way of our friends over at Moconews: Glu Mobile has filed for an IPO on the NASDAQ, hoping to raise $92 million in common stock. Glu now becomes only the second mobile gaming pureplay IPO in North America after Jamdat Mobile (now part of EA Mobile).

Rafat has also dug into Glu’s SEC filing (which can be found here) and gathered some telling information about their financial state. Glu suffered a net loss of $17.9 million in 2005 and a net loss of $10.0 million in the first nine months of 2006. With major losses as well in 2003 and 2004, Glu had accrued a deficit of $43.7 million, as of September 30, 2006.

This news validates rumors that GLU had been strapped for cash and looking for a solution. Many thought that was going to come through a buyout by Time Warner, which had invested in Glu last year, but I guess they chose the public route.

Glu is one of the best mobile game publishers out there and we hope this sets them on the right track. More Glu info from their SEC filing is after the jump.

– Revenues derived from mobile games and other applications based on or incorporating brands or other intellectual property licensed from third parties accounted for 77.1% and 85.0% of our revenues in 2005 and the first nine months of 2006, respectively. During the first nine months of 2006, revenues derived from our four largest licensors, Atari, Celador, Fox and PopCap Games, together accounted for approximately 62.3% of our revenues.

– We intend to use approximately $12.1 million of the net proceeds of this offering to repay in full the principal and accrued interest on our outstanding loan from Pinnacle Ventures. We expect to use the remaining net proceeds of this offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital and potential capital expenditures and acquisitions.

– Licenses for intellectual property that terminate prior to 2008 and during 2008 represented 55.0% and 18.3%, respectively, of our revenues in the first nine months of 2006.

– A significant portion of our revenues is derived from a very limited number of carriers. For the first nine months of 2006, we derived approximately 20.9% of our revenues from subscribers of Verizon Wireless, 12.0% of our revenues from subscribers of Sprint Nextel, 11.4% of our revenues from subscribers of Cingular Wireless and 10.7% of our revenues from subscribers of Vodafone. In 2005 and the first nine months of 2006, subscribers from carriers representing the next ten largest sources of our revenues represented 25.6% and 26.4% of our revenues, respectively.

– In our industry, new games are frequently introduced, but a relatively small number of games account for a significant portion of industry sales. Similarly, a significant portion of our revenues comes from a limited number of mobile games, although the games in that group have shifted over time. For example, in 2005 and in the first nine months of 2006, we generated approximately 52.8% and 57.0% of our revenues, respectively, from our top ten games, but no individual game represented more than 10% of our revenues in either period.

– International sales represented approximately 41.8% and 44.6% of our revenues for 2005 and the first nine months of 2006, respectively.

– As of September 30, 2006, we had 226 employees, including 140 in research and product development. Of these employees, 123 were in the United States, 96 were in Europe and 7 were in Hong Kong.

source: quickly bored

Tuesday, December 19, 2006 

Using Orkut for Mobile Devices

Here in Brazil Orkut is a huge sucess. The number of Brazilian Orkut users is just under 60% of the total users. Due to the number of Brazilian users and communities in the Portuguese language, users from other parts of the world became upset with the service, when it established Portuguese as the first "alternate default language," (as English was the primary default language) prompting many community owners to enforce an English-only posting policy.

Recently I have seen lots of people talking about orkutting from mobile devices! While people from Google do not open Orkut API or launch a mobile service for it (at least here in Brazil) i will publish some hacking on that.

Before going ahead here is an excerpt from Orkut Help page!

Why can't I access orkut from my mobile device?

We’re sorry to hear about any difficulty you’ve experienced accessing orkut.com. Currently, orkut.com isn’t compatible with mobile devices. To access your orkut profile, please try logging in using your computer’s web browser.

So today I'm posting about how to use orkut from mobile devices! Before going ahead lemme tel u few things about my environment! I have Nokia N93 with opera 8.62 installed!
U may use opera mini or any version of opera which support javascript!
With these assumptions lets start the ride!

Login issues!
First at all, if u try to open orkut.com and get a page loaded with missing login box i.e. no place to enter login information then go to this address! It will directly open login frame where u can enter ur Login ID & password! This frames address is long one so better bookmark it on ur mobile device!


(click on box to select all the text inside box)
or u can use this tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/sd36m , which wil redirect u to above link!

The above address can also be used from ur PC to fast login on orkut!

Clicking on button does not work!
As of now u log into orkut but experiencing problem while clicking on buttons! The most common problem I have seen button like submit, delete, yes, no, accept, reject does not work!

There are two solution.... First is for opera mobile user and second lies in JavaScript!


Opera solution...

This great solution is found by Rahul Talele (Shame on us enggs.)
Best thing about this it works for all buttons without any coding effort!!!(Really great na)!!!

Now after logging into orkut using opera,
Go to Options >> Navigation >> Find in page
Put caption of button means 'submit' , 'delete', 'yes', 'no', etc... in text to be found.
The moment text on button starts highlighting exit from Find wizard pressing roght-selection key (which have Stop option).
Now clicking on that button works!

Extra tip: Assign a shortcut key to "Find in Page" option by going to "Option >> Settings"

Javascript solutions (for others)

Submitting Scrap!
First thing If u want to scrap someone u hv to go into his/her scrapbook! (The code following are not for orkut's new reply feature!)
After opening intended scrapbook, write scrap with optional formatting the way u usually write!
In next step, without leaving that page(or tab if u r using opera with tab browsing) go to this address:


(click on box to select all the text inside box)

Similarly....

Delete Scrap:
This will delete first scrap from ur scrapbook. For 2nd scrap replace 'b6' by 'b9' , for 3rd scrap replace 'b6' by 'b12' ans so on...
Same code can be used to delete scraps from others scrapbook (of course scraps dent by you).
In this case replace 'b6' by 'b3' (for 1st delete button), 'b4' (for 2nd)... and so on




New Friend: Accept
To accept new friend request which is shown on ur orkut home page! Note, this will work for first request if u have too many! u can increment 'b0' by 2 for next request and so on if u hv multiple requests and directly want to accept other than first request!
e.g. 'b2' for 2nd, 'b4' for 3rd....


New Friend: Decline
Works in the opposite way of new friend accept... Executing this wil decline first request..
increment 'b1' in the script by 2 for 2nd request and so on...
e,g, 'b3' for 2nd, 'b5' for 3rd....


Friend: Confirm "yes"
You will need to confirm whenever you are accepting a new friend request or sending a new friend request to someone...


Community: New Topic
While on a community, execute this to start a new topic...


Community: Reply to Topic
While reading a topic on a community, execute this to reply to that topic...


Community: Submit Post
After writing ur new post or reply, execute this to submit it...


Community: Confirm "Join"


Actually this is not a web address but javascript which will "execute" submit button!
Again bookmark this address by naming Submit Scrap or something! The advantage of bookmarking is that u can directly open the bookmark after writing scrap!

Steps for bookmarking above codes into ur mobile browser:
  1. Copy content in text-box to say notepad and send that file to ur mobile.
  2. Open that file in any editor in mobile!
  3. Copy the script on clipboard! (using edit key in Nokia).
  4. Open ur browser and go to Add Bookmarks Option!
  5. Chose a name u like and paste the script in address field! OR U can manually create the bookmark by entering the script instead of copy-paste n sending a file to mobile!
Now once u have created these bookmarks, u can log into orkut fast as well as scrap someone!

Monday, December 18, 2006 

Microsoft and Java ME

Windows Live Search for Mobile is a connected application available for Java ME and Windows Mobile phones that allows the user to search content into Live Maps service . You can find addresses, traffic information, business, restaurants, hotels, etc. in US and inside a map you can pan, zoom in and zoom out. When you are typing your search, it has a very useful autocomplete feature.

After opening the application you'll see a full-canvas design with many Windows Mobile Smartphone UI components and features, like:

  • Full width list items with horizontal scrolling labels when they are focused

  • A textbox that works a bit different as Nokia's one. You should start typing wherever the focus are, and you don't have an “editing” or “non editing” status inside the textbox.

  • The Command area for softkeys is a bit diferent than Java's one. They are two commands rendered like visual buttons, with their labels centered (not aligned to the edges).

  • The “Options” or “More Options” command is called “Menu” and opens a mini-submenu in a pop-up style where you can browse with up-down or use [1] to [9] keys to select the option (similar to Opera Mini too)

  • The “Ok” or “Select” Command is called “Go”.

  • There is a “Home” command to go the the Main Menu and you have an “Exit” application command in every screen. Sometimes there isn't a back command, so you should use “Home” instead (a bit confusing).

  • The alert messages are similar to Windows Mobile.

  • When you are typing in the search box, the autocomplete feature replaces the Home menu options with new ones. But you must clear characters with the left arrow (I've to try many keys to detect that). Right key acts as "Select". If you keep pressed a key, it doesn't appear the number corresponding to that key, you should cycle between letters and numbers, for example "abc2ABC".

Windows Mobile or Java ME application?

I think if you are a Java ME phone user, like a Nokia's one, you can feel yourself lost inside this application for a while. The usability guidelines aren't the same between Windows Mobile and Nokia/Symbian/other vendor OS.

I like the visual design and some of the “original” UI behaviour like the dynamic options based on the user partial input (similar to an autocomplete), but I'm not sure if it's a good idea for the usability to have a totally different UI compared to the device's where the application is running and different from other applications installed.

Download the application free from http://wls.live.com and tell me what do you think.



source: Forum Nokia Champion Blog (
Maximiliano R. Firtman)

Friday, December 15, 2006 

2007 Predictions

"In 2007 I predict even more hype to be focused around music, video and TV. Music will continue to be a great success, but I think the jury is still out on Mobile TV. Games developers and publishers will have to deal with even more fragmentation, but despite this will continue to produce some great products. Oh, and please Apple open up the iTunes Games platform to the mobile development community, this has to be the way forward for D2C content."
Brian Rodway - MD at Affinity Studios

"In 2007, Bazix is to release MSXPLAYer-GS60, which makes it possible to play thousands of classic retro games - originally released on the multi-million selling MSX computer system - on the Symbian Series 60 (v2 and upwards) mobile phones. With this, we will bring a large variety of addictive, small (mostly only a few kilobytes) and high quality games to the Series 60 platform. This service responds to the demand for better, easy to distribute and commercially proven game concepts."
Sander Zuidema - MD at Bazix

"2007 will be the year when native gaming content really takes off. Number of smartphone models increasing dramatically so everyone can find a suitable design, available with contracts or on handset renewal at an indecent low price, installed base representing an important part of the global mobile market, rumours of very big names in the video game market working on it, users realizing what native gaming really offers... And no, native gaming doesn't mean 3D! It means a lot more than that."
Michael EL BAKI - CEO at BitRabbit

"During 2007, BGIn will start-off with a specific mobile dept to help leveraging the Benelux mobile game community. This on various domains like business support, educational input, standardisation, European representation to name but a few."
Tommy Goffin - CEO at BGIn

"2007 is going to be a breakthrough year for mobile 3D gaming. Another few trends to watch here are multiplayer games, as they become more and more popular, and, on the other hand, increased number of casual mobile titles. Still, the market is growing and 2007 is going to be a significant year for both mobile gamers and developers."
Dmitry Avdeev - Business Development Manager at Boolat Mobile

"2007 will definitely see better and more convenient games for customers. Because of in-game advertising and growing off-deck channels, games will be available at lower prices and to more customers. Breakpoint is boldly progressing in this direction, featuring strong in-house development and attractive publishing channels. The recent deal with Tribune and AcrNum shows Breakpoint’s commitment to forge global, independent and user-friendly channels for distribution of quality content."
Ludwik Zoltowski - Sales and Business Development Director at Breakpoint

"I think 2007 may finally offer a first glimpse of the real potential of connected gaming on mobile. As 3G networks deployment has been completed on most major Carriers, billing plans are becoming more conducive to larger data consumption, and advanced multimedia handsets continue to proliferate, it seems as if all the key ingredients are in place for the advent of connected gaming. I think simple connected games that cast the widest net at the potential demographic have the highest probability of becoming financially successful. Furthermore, albeit not yet in 2007, LBS will allow mobile games to leverage the type of gaming experience that can not be duplicated on any other gaming medium. This is what I personally look forward to the most.
I also expect 3D mobile games to continue their strong performance in 2007, as they have been validated by the market in 2006. The popularity of 3D games will continue to grow, as the handsets with embedded GPUs are introduced to the market, and the current leading edge devices assume the mass market norm."
Tom Frencel - MD at Capybara Games

"2007 will see an explosion in availability of ad-sponsored content for phones, with ad networks, Google, Yahoo and specialized search firms entering the mobile ad market in force and providing a solid revenue baseline for publishers and portals. In-game advertising will continue to make inroads, but will evolve away from "sponsored by" and towards measurable product placement as time progresses."
Arthur Goikhman - CEO at Cellufun.com

"2007 will be the year that will see 3D games on mobile and Connected gaming break through to the mobile mass market. I can see another round of industry consolidation and key partnerships as publishers realise that there are only a handful of really good development studios out there. I predict 2 major mobile publisher acquisitions by the major traditional console players with no real presence in this market. 3 UK's lowering of it's walled garden internet will see a golden market opportunity for mobile content portals offering current and yet to be exploited always-on mobile services. Ultimately, 2007 will be the year of less is more in mobile. There will be less volume (and sales) of poor games on decks and portals and more focus on quality made-for-mobile games where the sales volumes are going to be."
Mark Ettle - MD at Cobra Mobile

"2007 will be the year in which it will be more tempting for consumers to download games to their mobile phones. Consumers will be able to try mobile games before they buy them and the consumer can get ad subsidized games for free. Further we will see more flat rate data plans with operators which will make a global launch of mobile multiplayer games more realistic."
Peter de Jong - CEO at Codeglue

"2007 will be the year VC's start to find out if their investments have been worthwhile as several pure-play publishers perform their exit strategy. We'll also see the demise of some development studios as publishers focus on fewer, higher quality titles. One thing is for certain - we'll be seeing many more devices with new features that will continue to push development costs ever higher."
Nigel Little - MD at Distinctive Developments

"2007 will be THE year so far for mobile gaming. With handset fragmentation slowly but surely being reduced and the increasing number of high-spec gaming handsets on the market, more larger and complex game ideas will be given the chance to truly flourish on the platform."
Brian McNicoll - MD at Dynamo Games

"I will be 47.
Elite will be 24.
Al-Qaida will attack the mobile internet, and chaos will ensue. If you type "Paperboy" into Google -- misspelling the name of the popular 80s arcade game -- the search engine will respond, "Did you mean: Al Jazeera?"
You’re kids will ask: if you can tune a piano why can’t you tuna-fish?
Our new mobile game “Atlantis Quest” will prove to be “… a cure for addiction to Bejewelled 2”.
Mobile Entertainment magazine will publish this list."
Steve Wilcox - Managing Director at Elite

"2007 will be the year where smartphones go mainstream. One of the big drivers for the success of smartphones will be the availability of useful content. Content for Smartphone’s running on Symbian, Windows, Palm, Blackberry, Brew and soon Linux offer better value and better user experience to end-users then they are used to with Java phones. This being said, it will take all parties within the Ecosystem, including MNO, handset manufacturers and CPs, to join forces and really deliver the promise."
Edwin Oosterkamp - International Business Development Manager at Filao Mobile

"Downloads will keep on growing as the handset penetration and customer awareness grows. During 07 we will se a few more mergers and new emerging players joining the mobile games industry. Brands will keep on playing an important role, but casual games and women playing mobile games will be a big part of all the downloads. As for the way games are sold, I see more demos being given out, more operators opening new ways of charging their customers (rent, pay per-play and subscription) Within the operators I see a couple of the big players outsourcing their games platform to third parties."
Borja Aragon - Managing Director at Gaapco Ltd.

"Our recent acquisition of Daydream Mobile has greatly increased our customer base and strengthened our business relationships with mobile operators, publishers, and mobile phone manufacturers. Going into the new year, we are now in a position to offer our customers a complete toolset to create, implement and distribute mobile applications. Gamefederation is stronger than ever. In 2007 we look forward to further expansions of our products and services, through organic growth and acquisitions."
Thomas Lindgren - CEO at Gamefederation

“In 2007 mobile content creators will have the ability to leverage a closed loop in the mobile advertising-distribution-monetization cycle. For the first time they will be able to:
1) Reach the mobile consumer through mobile advertising
2) Directly fulfil through alternate distribution channels like GameJump.com
3) Generate immediate revenue from ads delivered through their content (WAP, in-application, etc.)
4) Go to step (1), and repeat as desired.
The mobile industry has long been envious of this value chain that supports the majority of the online web. 2007 is the year this model will explode in the mobile world.”
Michael Chang - Founder and CEO at Greystripe

"For the year 2007 the management of HandyGames™ forecasts a hard fight for market shares on the European mobile games market. Germany’s largest independent mobile games publisher will enhance its European position with a strong portfolio consisting of own IPs, licenses and publishing titles and by exploring new business models like advert-gaming. With the help of struggling mid-size competitors the strategy for the upcoming year is clear: Full steam ahead and overtake them!"
Christopher Kassulke - CEO at HandyGames

"We see the stars coming into alignment in 07 for high performance native gaming in Europe, which will rapidly catch up with similar developments in the US and Japan. The proliferation of native OS's such as Symbian and Windows Mobile, and of flat-rate mobile data subscriptions, are great news for driving uptake of higher quality and potentially connected games. It will be especially interesting to see how Linux breaks through as a native platform, coupled with the inevitable spread of BREW gaming in Europe, now that QUALCOMM have established their beachhead with TIM in Italy."
Tim Closs - CTO at Ideaworks3D

"I'd love to be able to predict that multi-player gaming will leap forward within Europe in 07, but while 3 and T-Mobile have started to take steps in the right direction with flat-rate data plans, we re still some way off. Instead I think ad-funded mobile games will be the big talking point within the trade, and it will be interesting to see to what degree consumers buy into this concept in '07."
John Chasey - VP Mobile Games at Infospace

"In 2007 we still see casual games as to lead the mobile games market but the consumer experience needs to be improved with more quality gameplay and original titles. Console games publisher and independent developers will be leading the evolution towards quality. JavArt is already working in this direction, concentrating on quality and original IPs. We look forward to cooperate with top console publishers to make top games and in case explore the opportunity to porting our games across platforms"
Alfio Lo Castro - CEO at JavArt

"In 2007 we will see further consolidation, be it by M&A, downsizing or players exiting the market altogether. After a period of strong growth the pace has slowed down a little and the next 1-2 years will see a reorganisation of the industry as a whole. For us this has had surprisingly good effects as our sales continue to grow. We are looking to further strengthen our position as a strong European mobile publisher and distributor. 2007 is the most important year our industry has faced so far."
Michael Kaartinen - General Manager at Kaasa solution

"Consumers are getting smarter. Why buy a ringtone if you can record in from a MP3 on your computer? Why buy wallpapers if the super mega pixel camera allows you to take a great picture for free? For games it’s more difficult, but smart consumers will find their ways into ad funded game portals. Sure there are consumers that hate the adverts, but most will regard it as a perfect alternative for saving £3.00. This will drive down the revenue developers get per download, but skyrocket the download volumes. As far as timelines for this big shift in ad-subsidised content goes, this will take less than a year in my opinion, considering that two our of three of the main content groups, namely ringtones and wallpapers have already gone down the nearly free route. With games it’ll require only a few consumer brands to step into an ad-funded model and that will be the start of the big shift."
Karl Woods - EVP, Sales & Marketing at Kiloo

"2007 will be a difficult year for many small to medium mobile content developers but interesting regards ad-wrapped content that will make further waves in the industry, releasing some strangleholds over path to market for many developers. We will see more consolidations amongst the big players whilst some of the smaller ones will perhaps disappear altogether! Further developments with Flash Lite may arise as it matures into something worth actually producing content for."
Adrian Cummings - CEO at Mobile Amusements

"2007 will probably show the difference between the big companies with bundles of cash to spread around, and the smaller developers jumping into adver-gaming and taking the most out of a growing mobile-game awareness on portals and websites. This could very well mean problems for those in between who want to be big and bad, but have no funding to back it up. Sadly the branded games will still try to mimick their console counterparts, and fail terribly. And I still predict 2007=google+advergaming"
Pascal Bestebroer - CEO at OrangePixel

"2007 will be the year in which mobile gaming communities will pick up with the rise of the mobile gaming trend of increasing favouritism for multiplayer games. Through incentives, interaction and gift redemption systems, the number of gamers participating in mobile communities will continue to grow, directly increasing the ARPU of mobile operators involved. In 2007, Ozura Mobile will continue our contribution to mobile entertainment industry through our community platform services."
H.E Mah - VP of Marketing at Ozura Mobile

"The year 2007 will bring further consolidation in the industry which will consequently force smaller independent developers to find the niche they could cater. Casual games including well known titles from the PC industry will remain the key driving force and the main element to capture new potential customers. On the other hand, especially on national scale there will be stronger emphasis on advertgames which independent games developers may find interesting to specialise in. "
Mateusz Zagorski - Content Manager at QubicGames

2007 is the year when finally web-to-mobile sales start to pick up for games. The current user behaviour of searching and reading about mobile games online but rarely purchasing will slowly but surely change. This will be good news for big online entertainment portals like Yahoo Games, AOL games and of course RealArcade."
Gunnar Larsen - Head Of Games, Europe at Real Networks

"For the mobile game industry and for our company in 2007; The mobile game industry in general will grow. Not with current markets, but with markets, that weren't able to rise (Slovakia, Poland, ...), and are still doing low shares. Aggregators and platforms will slowly be consolidating, which will generally help mobile game coverage and sales. In addition, mobile game advertising and mobile application ads will grow very massively to a new business, like ad games, ad supported games, etc. "
Jan Rezab - CEO at Redboss

"The mobile gaming revolution will begin in 2007! A sustained onslaught of fresh, innovative and original mobile games will bring the old guard of poor licensed titles and cheap console ports to their knees. This year many publishers will come under increasing pressure to achieve profitability at which point the profit margins of successful own IP titles will start to look very attractive indeed. Proven 'hit maker' studios such as Tag Games will be much in demand and I'll win the lottery!"
Paul Farley - Managing Director at Tag Games

"Partnerships between mobile agencies and developers will grow stronger. This is because, the bottom of the mobile gaming market will be driven by marketing activities of national and global brands. Successful suppliers will be those partnerships that combine media and technological skills to provide exiting brand exposure at equally exiting prices."
Jesper Lindholt - CEO at Touchlink Mobile

"In 2007 we will see the mobile game market mature. We will see new start ups targeting more focus niche demographics. Such as Pocket Elevator focusing on the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender market with games and content. 2007 will also see mobile advertising take off. Then on the hardware front there's Apple Computer. We will see more consolidation in the market place. 2007 will also bring the raise of the mobile communities. All in all a exciting year."
Randy Shepherd - MD at Werd Interactive

Thursday, December 14, 2006 

Soon, in a store near you, more computational power and comunication than we had in Brazil in sixties... one of the latest mobiles phones from Motorola [raz v3xx] have video GoForce from Nvidea, what gives 256k colors in display, besides HDSPA [3.6mbits/s], mpeg4, mp3, 1.3 megapixel digital camera [still far away from my N93 3.2 megapixel], microSD memory card and so on.

The price, without operator subsidy, in US will be between 500 and 600 dolares. Here in Brazil, we still have to wait to see the price, i hope it would be affordable. Because mobile fone robery here in Brazil happens in every corner. The question is: if the bandwith is so wide [more than 3mbps and growing] wouldn't be better to have all those funcionalities and features in operator side or independent servers?

In this case the mobile phone would be used just like a browser to access the services availiable in the network. The cost of development of the phone would fall a lot and the price to the end user too.... by the way, if it could be very cheap, it would never be stolen... sweet!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 

SBGames 2006

Last month, took place here in Recife-Brazil the V Brazilian Symposium on Computer Games and Digital Entertainment. Great talks and lots of good panels. Good to see the brazilian market shaking on game development and moving toward all dificulties that we have in a country in development. Still very dificult to us to compete in a global scale. Apart of that, excelent brains, low development costs, top notch universities and all-year-sun are our strenghts.

Check the procedings here.

Monday, December 11, 2006 

Mobile 2.0

Great read from Rudy (m-trends.org) about Mobile 2.0. Lots of discussion about this topic. Here in Brazil, besides the huge number of people using mobile phones (nearly 100 milion), we are still in Mobile 0.5 age... lack of VC investment in mobile start-ups [lack of services], lots lots lots of tax, beaurocracy and carriers dictatorship contributes to this reality.

Despite all this barriers, we still have people investing and fighting to grow up the mobile market here

Thursday, December 07, 2006 

Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon


One of the world's largest computer and consumer electronics manufacturers will ship a completely open, Linux-based, GPS-equipped, quad-band GSM/GPRS phone direct, worldwide, for $350 or less, in Q1, 2007. First International Computing's (FIC's) "Neo1973" or FIC-GTA001, is the first phone based on the open-source "OpenMoKo" platform.

Sean Moss-Pultz, an FIC product development manager, introduced the Neo1973 -- and OpenMoKo -- as the "Mystery Guest" at the inaugural "Open Source in Mobile" conference today in Amsterdam.


FIC Neo1973 (FIC-GTA001)

Moss-Pultz worked for FIC in Taiwan for two years, before founding the Neo1973 project in January. He said. "I was able to convince FIC that having an open phone makes financial sense for us. Some big company's got to stick their neck out there and say we believe in this, and we're going to do it."

Consistent with FIC's dual-OS support policy on computing products, the Neo1973 can also run Windows Mobile. In fact, the phone was co-designed by the Chinese government, for a high-volume Windows-based PHS ("Personal Handy Phone") product. FIC has the capacity to ship 100,000 of the phones per month, Moss-Pultz said, explaining its low cost. [Read full article]
This looks to be the hackers delight in phone, Pure GSM/GPRS, no mention of CDMA support and no mention of WiFi that I saw anywhere. Given that the Chinese government collaboarted in development, I'd expect this handheld will see wide deployment in China, a huge market as it grows. FIC does plan on distributing it worldwide. Looks like the intent is to distribute unbranded and let users add the carrier SIM of choice.

640X480 touch screen, and 2.8" looks to have stunning resolution. They say this is the first model in what will be a family of Linux phones. WiFi and Bluetooth are planned for future releases.

One key aspect that's getting a fair amount of talk is GSM multiplexing in this release/ Multiplexing can allow applications to simultaneously access call features. That means being able to take/make a call while browsing the web. A nice addition, but I believe the EVDO Rev A architecture that's just starting to roll out provides this capability. The problem with EVDO Rev A today is lack of handset support.

Availability
The first "pilot run" of 500 Neo1973s (FIC-GTA001s) will arrive in mid-December. The device will reach general availability in January, and sell direct from FIC for $350.

source: Realtime Unified Connections

Monday, December 04, 2006 

There are plenty of areas in mobility yet to be developed to its fullest potential. Below is a list of some of the "hot areas in mobility" to follow, or even better, to be part of and make a difference - there is plenty to innovate still:

  1. Mobile advertising (web-based, local/native-based)
  2. Mobile payments (ordering, payments, coupons, SMS-based, contactless, ...)
  3. Mobile directories and 411 (local information, merchants, ...)
  4. Mobile search (quick access to relevant data, traditional and new ways)
  5. Mobile gaming
  6. Mobile messaging (from IM to email, from text to video)
  7. Mobile-and-Multimedia in general
  8. Location-based Services
  9. Advanced User Interfaces (including voice integration, navigation, and Widgets...)
  10. Content sharing (photos, events, ...)
  11. Mobile Social Software (from sharing, to messaging, to virtual communities)
  12. Power! (better sources for power)
  13. Content adaptation (better ways to manage/target/adapt Web content for mobile handsets)
  14. Common/single sign-on (common identification, authentication, authorization across the mobile Internet/Web; see Identity and Mobile)

Other:

  1. Smart notifications and reminders (based on user's mobile context)
  2. Backups (keep data safe, off the handset)
  3. Device management (this is key for enterprise adoption: application, access control, licensing management, etc)
  4. Education, translations, tourist-related information, while on the go
  5. Mobile banking
  6. Mobile polls and surveys

Join the bandwagon... Have other hot areas? Leave a comment!

source: Mobility Weblog - CEO

Pedro "K2" Macêdo

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