Cellular
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Sprint plans to announce the details of its much-anticipated 4G network in a conference later today, and the company has been trialling various technologies including WiMAX, Qualcomm-backed technologies, and IP Wireless’ technology, among others.
Some are saying that Sprint has chosen WiMAX, partly to avoid the Qualcomm royalty ecosystem, where Qualcomm takes a percentage of every handset sold. We called Sprint and they wouldn’t comment on the technology choice, but we’ll bring you more details later in the day.
If it’s true, that’s another public strike against Qualcomm’s high fees, which seem to be riling carriers in developing markets. Though, Qualcomm also has a good business with Sprint for its CDMA network, and Sprint is even upgrading its high speed EVDO service earlier than expected by the end of this year. It’s not too big a suprise that Sprint would not want to keep shelling out money to the same company if there are other comparable technologies available.
If Sprint has chosen WiMAX it would be a major win for Intel and the like that have been trying to push the technology by massive investment. If a company like Nortel could manage to win the contract it would do wonders for its attempts at a turn around.
Sprint has been mulling over its technology choice for awhile. Last January Sprint’s COO Len Lauer made a speech at CTIA laying out Sprint’s plans for its 4G network, which will run over 2.5 GHz spectrum that the company owns. At that time Lauer said the company will use its partnership with cable for exclusive media content, and will transition its media and mobile TV services to the new network when the 3G network gets too crowded. He said the network could launch as soon as 2008 and the entertainment services might be sold for a monthly charge of between $20 and $40 a month.
In an interview later that day he told me the 4G network would likely cost upwards of $800 million to build — the fee that Qualcomm has said it is spending on its MediaFLO network in the U.S. With Sprint reporting pretty tepid earnings last week, does the company really need to be spending that much on an experimental technology that has yet to prove itself in the market?
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and WiMAX and Cellular and spectrum and EVDO.
Mobile people are all abuzz about Jaiku, that marries social networking with mobile presence. They call it rich presence.
Rich presence on Jaiku includes an IM-style away line, your phone profile (ring volume, vibrate), location (country, city/region, neigborhood), Bluetooth devices around, upcoming calendar events, and the duration how long your phone has been idle.
Though it works only on Series 60 phones (though not on S60 version 3) it has some serious potential of keeping track of your friends and family. Nice app to build a micro social network. You can put your presence button on your blog, MySpace page or whatever. I still think it is best suited for on the go presence. We will follow these guys closely. Meanwhile, try it out and let us know what you think. (via)
Written by Om Malik on August 6th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Start-Ups and Cellular.
GoogleFi, Google’s Mountain View network, may be good for data connections, but is it good enough for making voice calls? In order to find out answers, I headed down to Mountain View to conduct some first hand tests, and well, make some VoIP calls.
Voice over WiFi has the potential to be one of the most disruptive applications for city-wide WiFi networks, unlocking callers from expensive cellular networks. But MuniFi and even WiFi hotspots, many (including Om) argue is not yet reliable when it comes to making phone calls and the devices are still quite complex.
So during another hot daytrip to sunny Mountain View, we took our handhelds and laptops in tow, and spread out our gear under a tree in a city park. First we just tested basic Skype running over a Mac laptop.
The biggest issue is just sitting in a spot with a fast enough connection to the closest access point. After a few tries, we were able to connect and make a regular Skype call to another Skype user online, and managed to get pretty decent voice quality. It’s not as easy or clean as cellular, but it works well enough and it is free!
Test one out of the way, it was time to stress test the network using non-PC devices. We fired up the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet running the Gizmo Project application, which can connect VoIP calls to regular phone numbers. It costs a few cents to make outgoing calls, but we could call anyone over the public phone system and its still pretty cheap.
One problem we noticed with the service is there was a slight lag time between when I called and the listener got the signal. The lag time was large enough to be noticeable. Despite that the call quality was quite clear. Our Pocket PC phones did not play nice with the network, but that might be some configuration issues on our end.
So what is our conclusion? If your call is critical and you’re in a big hurry, and not willing to tinker with new technology, stick to your cellular handset.
Now, if you’re willing to give up the ease-of-use of your mobile handset, then, Google’s Mountain View network is not bad. If you find a spot where the signal is pretty strong, the calls can be as good as cellular calls. It might be just me, but the prospect of cheap or free phone calls over a free network, is something to get excited about.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and VoIP and Google and Gizmo Project and WiFi and Cellular.
There is a lot of debate over whether city-wide WiFi, or WiMAX, will replace or cannibalize high speed cellular networks. Telecoms and mobile handset makers talk about an era of seamless connectivity and painless switching between cellular and WiFi networks. Never mind the inherent conflicts with the harsh realities of their business. And while they talk, debate and pontificate, the real wireless-wireline convergence is happening inside the enterprise, thanks mostly to the slow spreading tentacles of IP telephony.
This is a trend which is quite likely to gain momentum. One of the start-ups betting on this trend is DiVitas, a Mountain View-based company that recently raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures. Previous investors like Clearstone Venture Partners also invested in this round. The company has raised a total of $23 million so far. DiVitas’ technology gives a business the ability to cut costs on wireless services, by switching company cell phones onto the corporate wireless network while inside the office, and to the cellular network when outside. That also includes access to all of the company’s business applications.
DiVitas CEO Vivek Khuller says the technology can be used over any carrier and any WLAN hardware. Cell phone manufacturers could be really interested in this technology as a way to directly reach business customers, though right now only eight handsets are compatible with the technology. The company is currently shipping its products to corporations for beta testing.
DiVitas might be a young gun slinger in the space, but it will also have to watch out for Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion, more known for its Blackberry devices. The company has been making quiet moves, including its acquisition of Ascendant Systems, that allows it to become a big player in the enterprise convergence market.
While we are not dismissive of the telco convergence the current state IP Multimedia Systems doesn’t really instill confidence in the market just as yet. Some startups, such as BridgePort Networks have done a good job of lining up the corners of this extremely complicated jigsaw puzzle, but it will be a while before we all see the upside of their work.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 2nd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Start-Ups and WiFi and Cellular.
The New York Times takes a look at the emerging trend of mobile phones with built in Wi-Fi connectivity and concludes that the barbarians are at the gates. Their conclusion is that WiFi could pose challenges to the traditional cell phone carriers. Maybe, maybe not!
Instead of relying on standard cellphone networks, the phones will make use of the anarchic global patchwork of so-called Wi-Fi hotspots. Other models will be able to switch easily between the two modes.
A lot of my good pals are pretty excited about this article, perhaps too excited. The story, looks at the positive side of the trend, but skips over the challenges of today’s Wi-Fi networks and consumer ability to use them as conduits for voice. These challenges, are likely to be around for sometime, despite what the folks from T-Mobile might have to say.
Later this year, T-Mobile plans to test a service that will allow its subscribers to switch seamlessly between connections to cellular towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, including those in homes and the more than 7,000 it controls in Starbucks outlets, airports and other locations, according to analysts with knowledge of the plans
Except, if you try to log on to the T-Mobile network, you have to jump through the hoops on a web page, which is temperamental at very best. Unless you have two of the T-Mobile’s Windows Mobile handsets - MDA and SDA - you cannot easily log on the the T-Mobile network.
I have tried it with Nokia N93, Nokia E61 and Nokia 9300i. It is a problem that occurs on other non-PC devices as well. Good luck entering your username and password information on a mobile phone browser. And even if you do, something strange will always happen making you repeat the process. And when you somehow overcome these problems, then try making a VoIP phone call. It would be a good way to convince your mother that you are an astronaut.
One of the reasons I ended up buying an E61 was because it boasted WiFi and VoIP in one device. WiFi is nifty when surfing the web or checking email, but VoIP hasn’t worked… period. You need special clients from Avaya or Cisco and your company needs to be using their IP-PBX systems. A simple Asterisk system, the kind I am using doesn’t work.
Even the WiFi VoIP only handsets, if you try using them outside the closed WiFi network (inside your home or office) are not that easy to use. Let me be even more blunt: WiFi/VoIP combo today is where the MP3 players were before iPod came along. So unless something as gigantic as “iPod” happens, this is just another complex technology for consumers (not the early adopters) to decipher.
The bottom line is that before WiFi-on-the-mobile becomes a legitimate way of making phone calls, you would find speedier versions of 3G - EVDO Rev A and HSDPA would come to market. The carriers will use the increased capacities to offer some sort of VoIP plans. What happens then?
That should be a topic for another Times story!
Written by Om Malik on July 29th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and VoIP and WiFi and Cellular.
Indians listening to FM radio on their mobile phones can now watch visuals while listening to their favorite Bollywood songs, as Nokia, Hewlett Packard, local station Radio Mirchi and mobile operator Hutch have launched a new service called ‘Visual Radio.’
The service, which will initially launch in Delhi, will let users buy concert tickets, video clips, games and ring tones. It will also allow users participate in quizzes and audience polls. The application will be available on 10 Nokia handsets including the Nokia Nseries phones. Mobile operator Airtel will also soon provide the service.
“This is a classic case of convergence of telecom, radio and music. The key here would be to provide our listeners with quality content,” said Pankaj Mathur, country manager, HP India Sales.
Nokia initially developed the technology for integration into mobile phones carrying FM radios. HP came on board to market, sell, distribute and implement the Visual Radio solution with operators and radio stations globally.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on July 27th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Cellular and nokia.
MTC Group, the Middle Eastern telecom company, is an interesting operator to watch — the company recently launched several SMS-donation campaigns for the people of Lebanon. The PR strategy/philanthropy is a typical move of CEO Saad Al-Barrak, a passionate telecom wild-catter running networks in the Middle East, and Africa, and even Iraq. A few months ago I got a chance to talk to Dr. Al-Barrak on the phone about his plan to be the biggest operator in the Middle East and beyond. At the time he was getting ready for a trip to Chicago to meet with infrastructure partner Motorola.
The company took a big risk on building an Iraq network and spent $430 million on the effort, including $20 million alone on security. Those funds are to help combat things like daily bombings, kidnappings and the horrors of running telecom services in warzones. In Iraq, Motorola’s contract with MTC is estimated to be worth $170 million, and MTC is already seeing suprisingly high growth and earnings from Iraq. For the first half of 2006 the company reported it already has 2.09 million subscribers in Iraq, up 263% from the year before.
Given U.S. bombs wiped out much of Iraq’s landline infrastructure, cell phones are the best means of communications. There’s been a lot of problems with transparency and telecom contracts in the country, and there’ll be even more problems as the country tries to issue new cellular licenses. But companies like MTC, that already have a toe-hold in, could make even more money if/when the country stabilizes.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Cellular.
For someone who doesn’t drive, I am not the one who should be talking about live traffic information on the mobiles. But still, given the time I am riding shotgun giving directions, live traffic data makes perfect sense for mobile phones. In recent past I have used Google Maps to find my way - first on a Blackberry and more recently on a Nokia E61.
Now Google has launched a new service that allows you to get traffic information in more than 30 major metropolitan areas including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
The app works on a handful of phones. Nextel users are out of luck and so are those of you using Palm and Brew-based phones. Okay this is what I don’t understand: why not Treo. Have they not noticed that Treo is the favorite device of most sales people, especially on the road. Insurance agents and other reps like Treo as well. Anyway GMM is not the only option for traffic data. My dear friend Gary Price has this awesome post where he has put together a full list of services that offer traffic data over mobiles.
Written by Om Malik on July 25th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Google and Cellular.
A report from the market research company, Strategy Analytics, shows that an on-demand mobile TV service, offered by the Rok Group, came second in a UK user trial behind Vodafone Vodalive offering. But that’s ahead of Orange and (Hutchison) 3’s offerings.
Rok TV has just gone live in the US, and the company is quite likely to make an impact in one of the biggest markets for mobile and television. Rok has been doing particularly well with those mobile network operators who haven’t sunk billions into 3G technology and just want to offer their subscribers access to mobile TV.
The crucial point is that Rok’s service runs over 2.5G whereas all the other are 3G services. This means, the company will compete with MobiTV, one of the companies that has helped prove that there is demand for television-on-mobiles. Only this month the VC firm Oak Investment Partners led a $70 million investment into MobiTV, which says it has struck deals with numerous mobile network operators globally as well as supplying AT&T’s Wi-Fi network.
Elsewhere, while its rivals struggle to make video work over 3G links–and 3.5G connections using say HSDPA — Rok’s compression techniques are good enough to stream a TV channel to an existing handset using 2.5G/GPRS as the carrier. The company has filed some 34 separate claims as part of its overall patent application. ROK already has the patent in the UK (GB 2410817) and has applied for similar patents on a global basis.
Rok is expanding into all the obvious markets. It has signed a deal with Shanghai Dragon Mobile Information Ltd, an approved content supplier for the world’s largest mobile network operator - China Mobile. It has struck similar deals in Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.
Written by Tony Dennis on July 24th, 2006 with no comments.
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Things are getting a bit dicey in the MVNO Land. Helio is costing Earthlink some profits. Amp’d is d’amp’d. And now reports are trickling in about Mobile ESPN having some difficulties in that attracting sports fans to their service. Walt Disney & Company owned service will have 30,000 users by end of 2006, lagging the 240,000-user target for the current year, a report from Merrill Lynch says.
Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen says it will cost the company as much as $135 million, and they should shut it down. (I wonder if she has taken into account the airtime being devoted to the service on ESPN, instead of taking paid ads. )
Rafat thinks they should tweak the model, but not shut it down this early in the game. I think getting cooler phones should be a start. I had stopped by at Best Buy to check out the service, but there was not a single handset that would make me sign up for the service.
Written by Om Malik on July 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Earthlink and Cellular and MVNO and Helio.
It’s no secret that Earthlink’s spending loads in an attempt to push new services like muni WiFi, VoIP, web 2.0 services, and an MVNO.
The company released earnings for its second quarter and reported a net income of $16.6 million, down from $43.8 million from the year before. Revenues for the quarter came in at $323.10 million, pretty flat from the previous year’s quarter. The company’s net income drop is not an insignificant loss due to the company’s eager spending spree.
Earthlink’s MVNO Helio cost the company about $13.3 million in lost net income. For the third quarter, Earthlink predicted it will come between roughly break even or losing $10 million in net income, with losses of $20 million to $25 million from Helio. For the full year the company predicted between breaking-even and earning $20 million, with Helio losses of $75 million to $85 million. Earthlink is spending liberally on Helio, but if it doesn’t start bringing in customers soon, things could get very ugly. Of course take into account the cost of those Muni Fi buildouts, you get the drift.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 22nd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Earthlink and Cellular and MVNO.
The TV show American Idol is the example often used when showing the potential popularity of how text messaging can be used with television shows–mobile and interactive TV company Telescope Inc. says it managed 580 million combined phone and cell phone votes for American Idol’s last season!
American Idol has proved that Americans love text-to-vote - though making money off that has been a bit of a thumb-cramper for companies managing the process. The carrier walked away with the bulk of the 10-cent text fee, the Show got the viewers, but those doing the heavy lifting got bupkiss. Or at least not as much as they would want.
So what do these start-ups do - push a new concept in SMS voting called, Premium SMS — a text message that costs more to send but that the viewer gets something (or the illusion of something) in return.
Edward Boddington, CEO Telescope Inc., says “premium SMS is the future of ‘participation TV.’ His company, owned partly by Bertelsmann and Harvest Media Group, is managing SMS voting for shows like American Inventor (Bullet Ball!), Hell’s Kitchen, Rockstar, and American Idol. (He’s the one in the picture shaking hands with the American Idol announcer.)
Premium SMS can cost the viewer between 50 cents to 99 cents and the consumer gets either a bit of digital content in exchange or, say, gets a chance to be entered in a sweepstake. That business looks a lot more attractive to a company like Telescope than a regular low cost text-to-vote campaign for a carrier. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has a bit about this growing market in today’s paper.
The major problem with this move is that with a higher fee for texting, inevitably some users will balk at the high cost. I definitely wouldn’t pay a buck to vote on Hell’s Kitchen in exchange for a sweepstake. But then again, I’m not the lottery ticket kind–a lot of people are. Of course there is that nagging little bit - people’s tastes change and this whole reality TV thing might be over. What happens to companies like Telescope then? They also manage mobile marketing and other mobile content, so they’d probably survive.
The WSJ seems to be pretty bullish on the popularity of premium SMS for interactive TV. Naturally so is Telescope. Edward says “if it’s packaged in the right way, consumers will definitely pay that much,” he says.–What do you think? Would you be willing to pay a dollar to text TV?
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 20th, 2006 with no comments.
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Verizon Wireless’ EVDO has won itself many fans, and those fans will have a lot to cheer about later this summer or early fall, when the company rolls out an upgrade to its wireless data network.
Verizon’s key supplier Nortel Networks today announced that it will be supplying gear to Verizon and has finished trials successfully. In comparison to today’s EVDO technology, the Rev A technology is able provide peak data rates of up to 3.1 Mbps on the forward link (information flowing from the cellular base station to the subscriber) and up to 1.8 Mbps on the reverse link (information flowing from the subscriber back to the cellular base station).
Though it is highly unlikely that we will all see those speeds, but they will be substantially higher than what we get today - 200 kbps in good areas of coverage. In this week’s podsession, Niall and I discuss the the impact of 3G, and other wireless access technologies. (You can download it here.)
Written by Om Malik on July 20th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Cellular and verizon and EVDO.
Telecom companies - actually wireless companies - are spending billions of dollars in their bid to attract new customers (or even switchers) according to data collected by TNS Media Intelligence for Advertising Age. )
Collectively, Verizon ($1.72 billion), Cingular ($1.31 billion) and Sprint ($995 million) spent a whopping $4 billion on advertising. In fact their spending was up a whopping 15.9%. Vonage was the 26th largest spender in 2005, doling out $413.5 million, up 552.6% from 2004 when the company spent mere $63.4 million. Well, now that the IPO is done, we should expect some decline in that drunken spending! (Of course there is a cheaper, easier way of attracting customers - Spyware.)
Who do you think will be the big spender from telecoms next year? My guess is AT&T, and all those MVNOs who will blow throw megamillions of investors money. And then they say times are tough on Madison Avenue 
Written by Om Malik on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and Cellular.
It’s no secret crazed eBay bidders generate a lot of sales in the last few minutes of an auction–maybe other Internet sites can add that same money-generating frenzy.
The mobile commerce startup behind eBay’s last-minute cell phone bidding system, UnWired Buyer says it has received a second round of funding for $6.1 million that will expand its current offer with eBay and could eventually help add more Internet commerce partners.
UnWired Buyer’s President and CTO Eric Smith says that the company’s auction service is already being used by “tens of thousands” of bidders through eBay, and that the company is looking to add more partners in the future. While Eric didn’t confirm any deals, he mentioned Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and even business-to-business sites, as possible targets for partnership.
Expanding beyond eBay might not be too hard. The service is flexible and easy to use for a lot of applications, given the company uses basic phone calls, out-bound-only calls, and VoIP for part of the back-end infrastructure to keep costs down. For any application that requires time sensitivity and inventory scarcity the service could add that last minute bidding craze over mobile.
For eBay, Smith says UnWired’s data shows that the service adds 17% to the value of the auction in the last 3 minutes–in addition he says when an UnWired bidder enters the bid, 26% of the time that auction had no bidders before it.
On those figures alone, Smith says the service helps Internet commerce sites by bringing in more sales. But eBay also takes a fixed fee every time an actionable auction happens. And the ebay users that are turning to UnWired are the hard-core users that buy on average 14 to 36 items per year, the company says. That gives Internet commerce companies a high incentive to keep those customers happy.
The company, which was formerly called gNumber, has now raised a total of $7.5 million to date, from Texas-based firms, Accent Texas Fund I, Aegis Texas Venture Fund, and DFJ Mercury among others. Not all the money being thrown around comes from the Valley, the Long Star state has been heating up too!
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 17th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and Google and yahoo and Start-Ups and Cellular and ebay.
First they used to be inspired by Apple and iPod. Now they are taking a cue from Apple’s retailing strategy.
Cell phone makers are getting hungry for real estate these days. Motorola launched its first store in Shanghai a few days ago, with plans to open several more in China. Nokia opened its first U.S. store last month, Samsung has its New York showcase, and Earthlink is touting Helio phones in downtown San Francisco.
It looks like a growing trend for mobile manufacturers–traditionally the brand behind the well-branded carriers–to open outlets to market new designs and give tutorials on increasingly complex phones.
It worked for Apple. Build a hip store, add tech-savvy sales people, and stuff a room full of add-ons that customers might buy up while waiting in line. Apple brought in $636 million in net sales for its retail divisions in the most recent quarter, with $29 million in operating income. But the global cell phone companies are a far cry from design-conscious Apple, which may or may not add phones to its line-up one day.
Motorola might have hit it big with the design and branding of the Razr, which sold more than 23 million by the end of last year, but Nokia and Samsung have never been big design leaders. It’s hard to imagine Nokia’s Chicago store getting the attention paid by rabid Mac and iPod fans at Apple’s digs. If Motorola’s Shanghai launch is any indicator–phone tattoos?–we’re not so sure of the prospects.
The trend is also as much a signal of the difficulties of the phone market as anything else. The increase in the world’s phone sales is coming from growing markets with low-margin mobiles, while the markets with significant phone penetration are seeing manufacturers try to push high-end designs to plea for replacements. The stores are a way to tout the most sophisticated and stylish. and that’s likely another reason why phone makers need outlets–the devices are getting so complicated, a lot of customers need basic lessons to start!
One possible upshot of the store trend is that if Nokia can develop a design-driven following, a powerful brand could help the company if it ever decides to go head to head with the carriers. A WiFi phone that looks like the Razr could convince consumers to buy. Our advice to a Nokia is to keep creating those partnerships with Google and maybe the duo can deliver the design power, a compelling store, and an industry-wide shift in who controls the ecosystem.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 17th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Apple and WiFi and Cellular and motorola and nokia.
Dodgeball is so New York! In Silicon Valley, its all Twttr!
Twttr is a new mobile social networking application written by Noah Glass (and team), an Odeo-guy, a long time compadre of Blogger founder Ev Williams. (Twttr is a side project.) It is not a very complicated application - and which is what makes it so addictive and at the same time annoying.
Twttr has married Short Code Messaging, SMS with a way to create social groups. By sending a text message to a short code (for TWTTR) you can send your location information, your mood information or whatever and share it with people who are on your social-mob! Best part - no installation necessary!
Jason Goldman, Blogger product manager calls is presence tense blogging. (Pyra, the company behind Blogger that Ev started did not start doing blogging software. A mutation of Odeo in the near future?) Glass, says that it started off as a conversation between him and Jack Dorsey, “in a car parked on Valencia and 14 in san francisco” after a night of Vodka drinking!
While I was smoking/talking outside the Zoomr/Valleyschwag party last night, I was introduced to Glass by Nitin Borwankar, a good pal of mine. “It’s presence+real world status over text messaging,” he said. Glass added me to his group, and now my damn Nokia E61 is twttring all the time. Ross Mayfield invited me to his group, and we are off to the races. Who else is on this .. not saying. It is spreading like a virus, and it is very viral.
The annoying SMS messages from nocturnal friends is not the only thing which bothers me about this service, but also the fact, that the texting a message(reply) to twttr ends up on their website. Best thing is to allow users to create micro groups, and give users the options of picking topics and setting rules to maintain privacy and control over the service. If Glass can do that, well, it be pretty awesome.
“Then it can also be adapted for keeping distributed teams in sync,” says Nitin, who is one sharp cookie., “Unlike, IM, text is lightweight, ubiquitous and viral.” Also, no smart phones required! (PS: You can put it on your Live Journal, MySpace page and blog as well!)
Written by Om Malik on July 15th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Start-Ups and Cellular and Social Networks.
Phillip Alvelda, MobiTV’s CEO, is having a great day, and you could hear it in his voice. His mobile TV company just received a $70 million fund to grow the company.
Phillip discussed a few interesting moves with me, including a plan to push the company’s service on PC’s (it’s already available over WiFi), which will be announced in August. That service could possibly challenge place-shifting in the wireless domain. And with all those content deals, well maybe Qualcomm can step-up and buy them for some premium dollars!
Q. We heard a bit about the company’s plans to work on PCs, is part of the fund going toward this?
A. The WiFi deal with AT&T is commercial today, at the company’s some 20,000 hotspots. A bigger deal will be announced in August with PC products, but we’re not giving details on that right now. Our goal is not just to work over cell phones. The real issue is that there has been overwhelming demand for our product. When we look out, we see a huge greenfield.
Q. What are your mobile broadcast plans. You’re already testing DVB-H. What about MediaFLO and WiMAX? What else?
A. Our mantra from the early days is to be network technology agnostic. We have trials in the U.S., U.K., Europe with various technologies. WiMAX is really taking off. We are also guided by our partners and what they think will show a strong demand.
Q. What is your relationship with Qualcomm?
A. With Qualcomm we’ve been working on BREW for a long time. We’re like a gold or platinum BREW developer. We’ve had a great relationship on that front. MediaFLO is a different beast–they are taking a go-it-alone approach for that.
Q. A Qualcomm acquisition might make a nice exit and partnership for you guys?
A. Agreed, everyone would all love something like that. Though, this is obviously just speculation.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 12th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on WiFi and Cellular and qualcomm and Place Shifting.
MobiTV, one of the first startups that started running mobile video services in the U.S. in 2003, has raised another $70 million, led by Oak Investment Partners. That’s the company’s third round of funding, to bring the company’s total to $85 million, making it one of the more well-funded startups in the wireless industry.
The company says it already has 1 million subscribers and plans to use the funds for “rapid expansion” in international markets. The company has been adding international partners beyond its U.S. base, including the U.K., Canada, Peru, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic.
But in addition to growth, this year MobiTV is looking to add broadcast-style capabilties with a variety of mobile TV standards, like DVB-H, Qualcomm’s MediaFlo and DMB. At CTIA this year the company was testing its service over DVB-H and at that time told me they plan to add DVB-H compatibility in the coming months. After DVB-H the plan is to add compatibility with most of the other standards. The company has even worked with IP Wireless technology.
Only a few months ago I recently realized how big MobiTV has been getting, with its over 150 employees, when I first noticed their red-n-green logo shining off of the 580 in Emeryville. With this funding, they’ll shortly get considerably bigger.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 12th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and Cellular.
Sulake, the Finnish company behind the popular online virtual world Habbo Hotel, said it will take €6 million euros ($7.7 million) from Japanese Movida Group to both set up a Japanese operation and to push its content onto cell phones.
Movida Group is a joint venture between Softbank BB and Asian Groove, an interactive entertainment company, and Sulake is backed by investors like Benchmark Capital, 3i, and Elisa Group. The investment is a step in the company’s plans to replicate the wild success of its online site, which has brought in an astounding 53 million registered users worldwide, to the mobile world.
Wireless domination might not be too hard, given the company already sells Habbo-themed mobile content like wallpaper, ringtones, and games. Sulake did a survey of its Habbo users and the company says 85% of respondents were interested in buying Habbo mobile content–mobile games are by far the most popular.
We have also learnt that the company is working on a mobile Internet site called “Pocket Habbo” that will launch later this summer, which will give cell phone users access to aspects of the Habbo community, including messaging, blogging, and buying and selling Habbo currency. Then in the first quarter of next year the company plans to release a mobile client that will more fully recreate the Habbo web-based experience.
Sulake can stand to make significant money off porting Habbo to cell phones. The company plans to work with handset manufacturers, to preinstall the mobile community, carriers, to boost mobile portal traffic, and other entertainment brands to distribute content wirelessly. A Habbo-themed handset could even be in order–Habbo MVNO? It’s such a good idea that combined with the success of the Internet site, a company exec said Sulake is planning an IPO at the end of next year.
One reason Habbo Hotel will likely be so successful on the mobile, is because its virtual-only animations and avatars, exclude some of the real-world problems associated with a MySpace-style social network. It’s the same thing with Cyworld, Korea’s mostly virtual world, which has also been successful on mobile.
On the other hand Verizon was rumored to have bypassed on the original MySpace mobile deal, because of privacy concerns. Conservative carriers don’t welcome a lot of those hassles, and while MySpace will likely land on the traditional carriers next year, after its exclusive contract with Helio, mobile Habbo will likely already be there.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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Mobile commerce might be getting a lot of attention today, but the reality is that mobile commerce in the U.S. gets very little foot traffic, and might not gain ground for years to come. That leaves some room for a startup like Frucall that offers cell phone users a way to compare the price of goods through just a basic low-tech phone call. It’s not mobile payments yet, but its a step toward easier shopping via wireless.
The way it works is that a Frucall user calls the 1-800 number, types in the barcode of the product, and listens to a list of price quotes from Amazon, Yahoo Shopping and, just added today, Streetprices.com. The service might not convince the early adopter types, given mobile data users could easily get sick of listening to automated voice messages. I know I do.
But CTO Nasser Manesh says the service is targeted at the mainstream cell phone user that favors “good-old voice interface,” as he puts it. It could become popular with thrifty U.S. shoppers because its simple to use and of course it is free. That’s the niche the company wants to fill, given comparison-shopping on the web could be pretty easy to port to a web-based mobile phone. Nasser says the service, which is still in beta, has 700 registered users, given word of mouth.
Frucall also uses SMS to help users create a social network around shopping. Next week the company is turning a group-based voice messaging system on, that records voice messages and saves them for your Frucall peers. I’m not sure how the social-networking function will do, given a lot of social networks are based on the allure of checking out visual profiles. A mobile social network that doesn’t emphasize images, and is based on voice and SMS messaging, might not keep its users happy. But Frucall also has more tech-savvy mobile commerce plans in the pipeline, including a WAP site.
Update: Mobile commerce in the U.S. is getting hot enough to deliver $10 million more to mobile coupon startup Cellfire. Menlo Ventures led the deal, which will help the company market its cell phone coupon service to more users. (Cellfire is a GigaOm advertiser)
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 10th, 2006 with no comments.
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The Nokia N93 looks like a wee TV, but don’t be fooled. This video phone has Carl Zeiss optics and takes DVD-quality video and 3.2-megapixel stills. But where’s the digital TV? Streaming video? Subsidized coolness?
Priced at about $600, this is definitely not a mass market phone. The N93 should have a digital television tuner (DVB-H), but that standard is not sufficiently supported on our shores and means that the U.S. continues to lag in the high quality digital-video-over-cellular front, much to my personal dismay. As a result, Nokia has been forced to aim this at folks who want to take home movies with their phones rather the folks who might want to watch the big game on their small screen.
Written by John Biggs on July 10th, 2006 with no comments.
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With every teenager sporting a cell phone these days, the college dorm phone is quickly being relegated to the closet. Rave Wireless, a New York city-based startup that makes mobile software, saw this coming, and has started creating applications for cell phones that could help college kids wirelessly manage their social and academic lives.
Rave co-founder and CEO Rodger Desai says the company will launch with 15 universities for the Fall school year and another 20 or so in the months after that. The company already runs its service at Montclair State University in New Jersey, which the AP talks about a bit in an article this weekend. With the way things are moving along, he says the company will be profitable by the end of next year. The company uploaded a promo video on Google video this morning.
To meet that time frame, Rodger’s been busy signing up universities like Georgetown, doing deals with all the carriers, and even has the ear of Microsoft, who wants to get its software on college kid’s phones. That’s because the company has a savvy business model–position itself between these three deep-pocketed giants, and get parents of the college kids to cover the cell phone bill. Now that’s smart. The company does a deal with a carrier, which can build out the cellular network around the school, ensuring students can get phone coverage. Microsoft, the universities and the carriers are desperate for ways to reach these young mobile subscribers. Parents just want to be able to reach their kids.
The company’s service creates mobile channels that can be used by the university to send messages and updates to students. Students can use the service to socialize with each other. One of the more interesting applications the company has developed is a mood-based presence function. A student can set messages such as “I’m bored,” or “I’m hungry,” and these messages can be combined with GPS-based location services that help you find close-by friends that feel the same way. Another application somewhere down the road could sync with connected laundry machines that alert the students to open washers and dryers, or when your laundry load is done. A few months ago I talked with a student who was writing a mobile blog he called “Bored in the Dorms.”
Out of the 15 universities that will launch in the Fall, 6 of them require students to purchase a Rave-managed cell phone. When colleges mandate that students buy cell phones with the Rave service, the company gets a deal that can be worth around $2 million. That’s a nice deal, but the downside is that Rave has to open a store on campus to manage the handsets, which can cost significant capital.
When the college doesn’t mandate a phone, but decides it wants the service as a mobile option for students, the deal is more like $500,000. With that option the university and students still have access to all the mobile campus channels, just over student’s personal phones. To do all this, Rave has already raised $17 million from venture firms like Bain Capital Ventures, Sigma Ventures, and RRE Ventures.
The biggest hurdle to Rave’s service could be the students themselves. Mandatory phones, and universities sending you messages, doesn’t always equal cool-factor. College-backed digital music services haven’t gained popularity when there’s hipper alternatives nearby. While Rave and the VCs invested want the service to be as popular as Facebook is for colleges, a top-down approach might not be the most direct way to gain student’s favor. There’s also a lot of competition for the screen on student’s cell phones, and wireless social applications like Facebook’s mobile plans, or Intercasting’s Rabble service, could contend with Rave for most-favored status.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 10th, 2006 with no comments.
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WiFi phones are essentially changing the home-phone landscape, bringing cellular portability and cool into a realm that was once owned by the Bells and later folks like Con-Air and Coby (see: $9.99 special phones at your local drug store). Even though seem to be running a little bit behind schedule put forward by telephone industry leaders.
Not surprisingly, WiFi phones like D-Link’s latest, the $249 DPH-540, are essentially home phones with SIP connectivity to most major VOIP carriers (which means you’ll probably be able to use this thing with Vonage or your Cable company’s VOIP system). Surprisingly, this phone looks like a low-end, clamshell cellphone, which means the size and shape of these things will soon rival even the slimmest Motorola.
Best of all, this phone is compatible with PsipTN, which is a public VOIP telephone system that just may take the big boys down a peg or two. Expect firmware upgrades from D-Link in the next year.
Earthlink has plans to offer WiFi phones. Municipalities are also getting into the act, although only Taipei has created a faux-public network call “Taipei Easy Call” to unwire their offices and schools while making - or not making - a buck selling service to private consumers
Mobile carriers should worry about the trend because, if not today, or tomorrow, eventually the alternative s will get enough traction. If they follow the same design-and-feature curve as the cellphone, it won’t be too difficult to imagine a future where these WiFi things had better end up lying side-by-side with the latest CDMA or GSM phones.
D-Link DPH-540 WiFi Phone
Written by John Biggs on July 10th, 2006 with no comments.
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Chalk another on the board for the MVNO fallout. EasyMobile, the mobile service created by the crew behind Europe’s bright-orange “Easy” brand–EasyJet, EasyPizza, EasyMoney– is closing its service in the Netherlands after just 9 months. Well, as they say–easy come, easy go. Or as Om says, “Not-So-Easy Mobile.”
It’s an indictator of how crowded the MVNO market in certain markets has become, and could be a warning sign for the U.S., with its current MVNO gold rush mentality. Last year Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the easy brand founder, was the poster child of Europe’s MVNO wave, speaking at big wireless industry conferences. Though, he didn’t own or run much of the mobile move, it sounded like a good idea at the time. Take a well known brand that is known for cheap and “easy” and sell wireless service to consumers that want no-frills calls.
But even then, the Netherlands market, one of the birthplaces of the MVNO model, was getting increasingly full. By some estimates the market has over 30 MVNOs already, and basic low-cost services like Simyo are the standard. Across Europe the MVNO count is likely higher than 100. That includes the more niche services that have cropped up like Call-4-Care, a do-gooder branded MVNO that gives part of its proceeds to non-profits, Denmark-based Gaymobile, PePtalk, for Dutch pot smokers, and Al Yildiz for Turkish subscribers in Germany. This site has a growing list of current, shut down and speculated MVNO’s. All in all the global MVNO market is touted at close to $11 billion by analysts.
In the U.S., the MVNOs are going after media-content and 3G data services. That means more of an invesment and higher fees for subscribers, and Amp’d, Helio, and ESPN Mobile, are all looking to sell mobile data to bring in a higher average revenue per user. Amp’d is one of the most well-funded wireless companies in recent years, with $260 million from investors like MTV, Qualcomm, Intel Capital, Highland Capital Partners and Redpoint Ventures. You might recognize Amp’d’s founder, Peter Adderton–he founded Nextel’s Boost and is trying to do it again with Amp’d.
The U.S. services haven’t fared half as well as all the hype. ESPN dropped its prices recently, and its move to sell its mobile service on its TV channel looked like desperation. Amp’d is rumored to have started to change its strategy significantly after bringing in only several thousand subscribers. Then there was that “Helio has only 100 subscribers” rumor, but the companies publicly denied it.
Actually with that last rumor in mind, it has become a bit in-fashion to diss MVNO plays. Though, if the U.S. MVNOs are getting more subscribers then they are letting on, you’d think they would be the first ones to shout it out. At the same time the MVNOs could very well become the disruptive mobile networks that Amp’d’s Adderton likes to claim, stealing market share from the carriers–he likes to position Amp’d as the MTV of the mobile generation. But the services will take a good long while to bring in loyal paying subscribers, and that means not a lot of money will flow from the investment any time soon. And we all know how VCs hate to wait!
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 7th, 2006 with no comments.
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Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sherpalo Ventures (a venture vehicle of Google-backer, Ram Shriram) have decided that India is the next big market for mobile commerce–using the cellphone as a connected wallet to buy and sell stuff.
With over 100 million Indian wireless subscribers—-more than double the number of the land phones in the country–they could be right. The two firms are investing over $5 million in Paymate, a mobile commerce company, a start-up backed by Coruscant Tec, a Mumbai-based company that powers mobile content, commerce and other data applications that land on Indian phones.
Paymate might not have launched an application yet, but its site says the company is looking at “tele-merchant services”, “mobile wallet” and “person to person” payments services. Mobile commerce has been a distant dream for wireless carriers in the U.S., but in both advanced wireless markets like Japan, and fast-growing SMS-heavy markets like India, “m-commerce” is a real phenomenon. A recent report from eMarketer says that 43% of Japanese Internet users already use some form of mobile payment.
In India mobile infrastructure is starting to offer a cheaper, easier way to manage funds, especially in areas with limited banking systems. One likely mobile commerce strategy would be to marry m-commerce with SMS, since Indian mobile market is dominated by SMS and voice services. SMS-focused startup Air2Web’s has a growing business in India and the company says big Indian banks send out around 2,000 SMS messages to important clients per day for account managment. Coruscant Tec currently is trying to jump start demand for data services in the country, offering content apps like MTV’s Loveline for cell phones, a social dating service, as well as video, ringtones, and games and works with carriers like Airtel.
While wireless data is something new to the Indian market, wireless startups pushing mobile data are starting to hit it big in India. Canadian mobile chat company AirG works with Coruscant for its mobile chat application in India. Mobile marketing Enpocket recently launched a mobile advertising campaign with Airtel, and mobile games are going gangbusters in India, an example is Electronic Art’s partnership with India Games.
Mobile commerce will likely boom in India long before the U.S. despite recent attempts–Paypal Mobile launched this year, and startups like Obopay are pushing peer to peer payments. KCPB and Sherpalo are betting it does. The first apps will likely be peer to peer and direct buying and selling over a wireless broadband network. Maybe next will come swiping a mobile at the gates of a cricket stadium. Now that would be a big hit!
Photo via Flickr by Pidge
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 7th, 2006 with no comments.
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Earthlink’s first muni WiFi network made news when it was launched in Anaheim, California, last week, but Earthlink’s VoIP VP Steve Howe, revealed some interesting news to me in a conversation this week. He says Earthlink plans to start selling WiFi-only phones starting in the fourth quarter of this year. The phones will work over Earthlink’s WiFi networks, and will have a voice plan somewhere between $10 to $25. Users have to pay extra for a data plan. That’s in contrast to the dual cellular-WiFi phones that the company plans to sell with its MVNO Helio, estimated to launch in the beginning of 2007.
Steve says Earthlink has narrowed down the WiFi phone search to two manufacturers, though declined to name which ones. (If you know which ones, or feel like speculating, add your comments.) He says over the past few days the company has been testing Earthlink’s WiFi phones over the company’s Anaheim network and that they’re working well up to 40 miles per hour.
Other companies have been offering WiFi-only phones for some time. Skype and Netgear have a WiFi phone, as does Vonage with UTStarcom. But Earthlink’s voice over WiFi could give a significant boost to these services going mainstream. The service could also boost the demand for Earthlink’s WiFi services, primarily because of the voice-data bundle. Earthlink will have to keep the prices low enough to attract mainstream users. High prices of cellular data services have been the main hindrance to mainstream adoption of such services thus far.
Still, there remain significant hurdles to Earthlink’s WiFi phone plan. Right now the phones are expensive. Steve says Earthlink will have to subsidize the phones for a good while, to push the industry standard below its current hundreds of dollars range. But “this business will get really interesting when the phones get down to the $40 range,” he says. Will this become another drain on Earthlink’s cash reserves? The company is spending like crazy on its municipal wireless projects.
Then there’s the basic risk of the citywide wireless deployments, and the big question: Will networks be able to attract enough subscribers to make enough money! There’s been fair enough discussion over that in recent days, and I wrote about this with an interview with Gary Betty earlier this year. It could happen, but given that the networks are so new, it’s entirely unproven.
Earthlink is also assuming that the price of WiFi phones will come down significantly, which will only happen if they become popular enough to support an economy of scale and a resulting price drop. That’s a more risky proposition and some speculate that WiFi-only phones are only transitional devices on the way to dual-cellular phones. With the Helio dual mode plan, the company can hedge its bet somewhat on the WiFi vs cellular debate.
When I asked him if the company had come into any major fights with cellular providers over the upcoming WiFi phones and cheap voice over WiFi offering planned, he says, “They probably don’t stay awake at night over Earthlink. But maybe they should.†It’s a savvy PR move to act as the savior for disgruntled phone company defectors. The company opened an Earthlink store in Seattle last week, and is planning to open another store in downtown San Francisco at 1 Front Street next week to convince more pissed Bell customers to join them.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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It’s no secret that Qualcomm is the wireless company everyone loves to hate. For the mobile world, its the Microsoft of the industry, angering competitors in many markets it dominates through its aggressive–or many would say monopolistic–business practices. So it wasn’t so suprising that Texas Instruments and Broadcom joined the ranks of the anti-Qualcomm league, accusing the company of abusing its stranglehold on the South Korean wireless market. TI and Broadcom were two of the six companies that filed similar complaints against Qualcomm in Europe as well.
It is important to note, that the San Diego giant has a patent portfolio which is pretty far reaching and protects the chip maker from its rivals. Still, the company’s stock has taken a turn for the worse, because of all the negative news.
And that wasn’t the first time Qualcomm has angered competitors in Korea. At the CTIA show in Las Vegas this April, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs spoke to a room of reporters on its great relationships with local parters in international markets, while his PR team left a stack of papers at the door trying to explain why that week Qualcomm’s South Korean offices had been raided by the Korean Fair Trade Commission.
With royalty rates like 5.25% on local Korean CDMA handsets and 5.75% on exports by South Korean manufacturers, according to the AFP article, its not hard to see why companies are disgruntled. [Qualcomm doesn’t reveal its exact royalty rates.] Others are concerned that Qualcomm will try to assert those high royalty rates through other wireless technologies beyond CDMA i