Unwired
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Nokia says its buying the Seattle-based digital music company Loudeye for $60 million, which aggregates content and rights from music labels for distribution across mobile, Internet and other platforms. Nokia said it is paying $4.50 per share. Loudeye’s stock had sat under $1 for weeks, mostly because investors did not give the money losing music service any chance of making it to the black. It had lost $4.6 million for the first quarter of this year on sales of $8.7 million.
Loudeye previously sold its U.S. assets to Muze, which included the technology used by AT&T and O2 Germany. That was indication that there was a firesale in progress. Loudeye’s other technology, the “OD2 Platform” is used by many more companies in Europe and comes from a company co-founded by the pop singer Peter Gabriel and bought by Loudeye in 2004, says a Loudeye spokesperson.
Loudeye’s troubles are emblematic of the bigger issues around mobile music downloads, which have been slow to take off. (Update: Rafat leaves an insightful comment which explains Loudeye’s problems succinctly.) There is a school of thought that 3G would change that, as faster downloads could make it easier for consumers to buy music on their mobiles. Nokia’s new multimedia phones such as N91 are geared for those kind of services.
That’s what Nokia is buying and plans to launch a branded mobile music service , which could include devices, and the ability to purchase digital music, in 2007. The Post points out that Nokia sold more than 15 million music-enabled phones in April to June, roughly double the amount of Apple’s iPods and making it the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players. With the amount of iPhone rumors out there, Nokia is gearing up for a mobile music fight.
However, the service could put Nokia in direct conflict with the mobile music service plans of various service providers such as Vodafone.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and nokia.
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.
Qualcomm is not having a good time in India lately. First there was the whole furor over its talks with Indian CDMA mobile operator Reliance Communications breaking down as it refused to lower royalty charges. Then Reliance Communications, which operates India’s second-largest private mobile service, said it would focus on enhancing GSM services, which analysts see as a not so subtle threat to Qualcomm. Now, India’s tax department has sent the Indian unit of Qualcomm a notice seeking details on royalty collection in India, The Hindu Business Line newspaper reports.
The department has also approached Reliance and Tata Teleservices, both major clients of Qualcomm. According to local tax rules, if the patent holder has an office in India it must pay a certain percentage as service tax on royalties collected, the newspaper reports. If the patent holder is a foreign company with no office in India, the recipient Indian company, that is the user, has to pay service tax on royalty paid. “The financial statements of these companies have not shown any separate allocations for royalties paid to the US-based company,” a tax official told the newspaper.
If royalty is collected on the basis of Intellectual Property Rights, Qualcomm, which has offices in India, will have to pay 12.24 per cent on every invoice, a senior service tax consultant at Ernst and Young told the newspaper. “But if royalty is collected on the basis of a technical transfer agreement, the company will have to pay only about 5 per cent on every invoice,” the consultant said.
But a Qualcomm corporate communications official told the newspaper via email that only handset device makers, not operators, have to pay “associated royalty” to Qualcomm. “Average royalty paid on devices sold in India over the past 12 months is around 15 per cent lower than royalties that have been paid to Qualcomm in markets like Korea, Japan and the US,” the email said, adding that India accounts for only about 2.2 percent of our handset royalties.
Written by Shailaja Neelakantan on August 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and India Telecom and qualcomm.
The wireless spectrum auction is next Wednesday, and analysts from UBS have a taken a look at the data and given us some of their thoughts. A key point is that the analysts predict that the overall prices paid for spectrum are likely to be lower compared to prior auctions, given the large amount of spectrum for sale is bigger than the demand from wireless carriers.
“We estimate that Auction 66 will bring in net proceeds of $7 to $10 billion, which equates to roughly $0.25-$0.40 per MHz/per POP.” Other estimates had previously put the total government take away as high as $15 billion.
The report also says that T-Mobile could be an aggressive bidder, as it tries to reverse its position as the weakest spectrum holder among the national operators. And Wireless DBS (the consortium tied to Echostar and DirecTV among others) is also likely to be an aggressive bidder, says UBS.
The lower prices are good news for the bidders, but not so great news for the government, which gets the proceeds. We’ll bring you more next week, before the big day.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on August 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and spectrum.
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 FCC just released a list of 168 qualified bidders for the AWS spectrum auction coming up on August 9th, and also announced that the process will not involve the controversial blind bidding. We’ve been following the companies interested in bidding pretty closely, and there were a few surprises in the FCC filings, including a group tied to Rupert Murdoch, DirecTV and Echostar, which put down almost a billion dollars that it can use to bid on spectrum.
Wireless DBS, the consortium tied to Echostar, DirecTV, News Corp, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Echostar’s Charles Ergen, qualified to bid and paid one of the largest upfront payments out of the list of interested bidders, of $972.55 million. The group’s auction plans might involve WiMAX, and prove to be crucial to these companies future as triple play becomes common place. (The upfront payment is refundable if the company doesn’t win the specturm it desires, but could be an indicator of how much the companies are willing to spend.)
The cable consortium SpectrumCo, tied to cable companies Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable and Comcast CEO and Chairman Brian Roberts, among others, qualified to bid and put down another large upfront payment of $637.71 million. Other cable groups like the Washington Post’s Cable One qualified and paid an upfront payment of $3.5 million. The Dolan Family, tied to Charles Dolan, Cablevision’s Chairman, qualified and paid an upfront fee of $149.98 million.
Most of the largest U.S. phone companies qualified. T-Mobile paid an upfront fee of $583.52 million, Cingular put down $500 million, and a company tied to Verizon paid an upfront fee of $383.34 million.
The company tied to Paul Allen, Bend Cable Communications, that we previously profiled, qualified to bid, and paid an upfront fee of $176,000. At least four companies backed by spectrum speculator “Super Mario” Gabelli qualified to bid, paid a total of $3 million in upfront payments. Controversial wireless bidder Allen Salmasi and Nextwave Telecom, qualified to bid through a company called AWS Wireless, and that group put down $142.83 million.
The group called POP Wireless, backed by BPL company Current Communications, which is funded by Google and Earthlink, that we profiled earlier, was listed as “not qualified to bid.” We’ll follow up with more on the upcoming auction before the big day.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 29th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Cablevision and Cable Cos and verizon and PhoneCo and spectrum and broadband over powerline.
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.
Qualcomm’s (QCOM) cell phone tax has been clashing with carriers in developing markets recently. The San Diego giant has a patent portfolio that lets it take a percentage of every CDMA handset sold, including patents for 3G.
Over the past few weeks, three carriers with large CDMA networks — China Unicom in China, Reliance in India, and Vivo in Brazil — have been reported to be investing in GSM networks in part to avoid the Qualcomm toll system.
While the carriers and cell phone makers will all upgrade to 3G eventually, delivering Qualcomm their payoffs soon enough, in the short term, possible losses on CDMA in developing markets could be a real concern to the San Diego giant–those carriers are estimated to make up as much as 5% of Qualcomm’s sales for 2006!
Qualcomm’s senior director of corporate communications Jeremy James had a pretty strong statement on the situtation. He said that the companies that are making the most money off of GSM, like Nokia (NOK), and Ericsson (ERICY) are creating “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” over a “false notion” of how Qualcomm’s royalties effect the availability of low-cost handsets.
He also said that GSM network companies like Ericsson are making CDMA carriers in developing markets “very attractive” offers to build and run GSM networks as “a last ditch effort” to try to maintain their traditional GSM shares as long as possible before the 3G future.
There might be some truth to Qualcomm’s complaint, but with a grain of salt. Analysts like Aman Kapoor from Packetology say that Reliance is probably building a GSM network just to better negotiate with Qualcomm over current royalties for CDMA when it expands that network. Since Qualcomm doesn’t disclose its fees beyond a range, it’s hard to tell exactly how much the royalty fee affects the total cost of the handset.
Nokia’s VP of external affairs, Bill Plummer, responded to Qualcomm’s statement by saying “that is certainly one way to look at the evolution of the wireless market. Another way would be to acknowledge that this is a highly competitive market where operators recognize the inherent benefits associated with open, non-proprietary, globally scalable networks like GSM.”
The real truth is that as all the carriers move to 3G, Qualcomm can quadruple its addressable market in the long term. As 3G handsets start to become more popular, Qualcomm is already growing sales and profits — last week the company reported $1.95 billion in revenues, with $643 million in net income for the third quarter, up 44% and 15% respetively.
But when it comes to its relationships with competitors and vendors the company seems to have few friends out there. Jupiter analyst Sharon Armbrust points out some of the data behind the complaints by the Nokia camp. But with complaints in various countries about its aggressive practices, the company can’t afford to alienate the world’s fastest growing markets India, China and Brazil.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and India Telecom and qualcomm and nokia.
The expectations for mobile WiMAX are growing, and so are the investments and trials. Mobile WiMAX chip maker Sequans said it received another round of $24 million led by Kennet Venture Partners, while Intel anounced new details of its mobile WiMAX chip, “Rosedale II,” and Motorola says it is testing a network in Toyko with partner Softbank.
That’s a lot of attention for one day. Intel said Alcatel will test Rosedale II in its mobile WiMAX networks, while 9 other WiMAX companies–including Aperto Networks, Airspan, Alvarion, Proxim Wireless, Navini Networks, among others–will include the chip in network solutions. A Navini spokesperson said the mobile WiMAX products with Rosedale II could offer wireless broadband access while moving at speeds up to 60 miles per hour (which seems to be a growing requirement for network access.)
Motorola’s Tokyo test network will use Motorola’s access points, access network and prototypes of handheld devices. The network could offer Softbank, which owns third-place Japanese operator Vodafone KK, a better way to compete in the tough wireless Japanese market.
Investment in WiMAX, both mobile and fixed, seems to be growing significantly. Sequans roughly tripled its total funding raised. Last month Navini received $17.5 million in part from investor Intel Capital. And Intel and Motorola dropped that huge investment into Clearwire earlier this month.
While mobile WiMAX products won’t likely be on the market until next year at the earliest, companies are looking to certify products as early as the end of this year. Mobile WiMAX, compared to its fixed WiMAX cousin, is being touted as a much bigger market. Hardware for both markets, fixed and mobile, is expected to generate $1.7 billion by 2009, according to Infonetics. Including services, Gartner puts that figure at $2.2 billion by 2008. Instat says in a research report today that the Asia Pacific region will grow from $106.4 million in 2006 to $4.3 billion by 2011.
If WiMAX, both mobile and fixed, doesn’t take off, it could very well end up being the biggest over-hyped wireless technology of recent years. Though, companies like Intel and global investors are spending massive sums to try to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and WiMAX.
Even though trains and planes have already become mobile hotspots, very little attention has been given to mobile access to say users in their cars. That might change soon, thanks to Broadband Antenna Tracking Solutions (BATS), a start-up founded by few professors from Purdue University.
The company is reportedly testing wireless antennas that can automatically track and link users. The idea behind these antennas is to basically connect boats and moving vehicles to wireless networks. In tests, the antenna system prototypes have been able to connect 12 miles over water and nearly 9 miles over land, reports say. The tests were conducted using the 900-MHz Motorola Canopy radios, over Lake Michigan.
Network World says the company launched in January with seed money from the university. The patent belongs to the university, but three Purdue professors own the global licensing rights. The company is supposedly looking for investors, so companies interested in wireless hardware–Motorola, Tropos, Earthlink?–or interested VCs, get your checkbooks out.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 24th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Start-Ups and Wireless Broadband.
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.
Earthlink and Tropos might be looking to make millions off of muni wireless, but members of the open source community are hard at work trying to make wireless networking free. And they just got some funds to help their cause. Sascha Meinrath, of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, CUWIN, just called me this morning to say his open source wireless mesh project received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Sascha says he plans to use the money to add staff, scour the globe for open source partners, and boost research and testing.
The organization had been applying to the NSF for 4 years now, and previously Sascha had been paying much of the research fees out of pocket–so the news is good for him on a lot of levels! A project like this could help make wireless broadband available for communities that can’t afford it and address the real digital divide. Not just recreate the economics of the traditional phone and cable operators with a slightly less monthly subscriber fee.
I thought maybe the NSF was starting to pay attention to an open source wireless project because of what wireless networking was shown to do in recovery efforts in Hurricane Katrina and the East Asian tsunami. Sascha said he wasn’t sure why the NSF approved them this time.
The open source code addresses the networking layer that improves the strength and reduces redundancies of the wireless signal. The code is in beta form and freely available on the organization’s web site. Making this technology freely available to anyone might make some companies with nice profits from wireless mesh, a tad unhappy. But the companies that are confident in their own technology probably won’t mind.
Sascha said he has also been talking to a few companies for partnerships. For example, he says possible partnerships could be wireless hand held device makers looking to test products over a test mesh network, that don’t want to pay a lot to use an already established network owned by a for-profit company.
Allan Leinwand, a partner at Panorama Capital, is an open source networking advocate and funded Vyatta the open source router company. He says a funding like this is really exciting for the open source network community, but that it’s also a big leap to turn a project into a widely used product.
The CUWIN project is really small, so whether the code will become popular is unclear. Sascha said his group started as “a bunch of geeks in my living room and grew to an international community.” Maybe these funds could help the technology follow suit.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wireless Broadband.
Murdoch is reportedly planning to jump into the world of WiMAX through its DirecTV broadcast company, and could either partner with Clearwire or go after its own spectrum. The Hollywood Reporter says the most likely story is a link with McCaw’s Clearwire, and quotes sources that say News Corp and DirectTV are in “advanced” talks with Clearwire.
Robert Young, the soothsayer who sees things before others had alluded to Murdoch’s broadband plans almost a year ago. You must go and read Murdoch, WiMax and The Two Way Web and get a sense of why it is the most important priority for News Corp.
Another option could be those spectrum auctions coming up in August that everyone from Gabelli, and Paul Allen to William Berkman are eying. FCC files say a group called Wireless DBS, which is backed by DirecTV, News Corp, Fox Entertainment, EchoStar, Rupert Murdoch, and EchoStar’s Charles Ergen, among others, are looking to bid. Though, the application is incomplete and today is the last day to update it. These applications could be a low-risk placeholder, but then again, it’s an indicator of company ambition.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and WiMAX and MySpace and Clearwire.
Today is the deadline for updating applications for the upcoming wireless spectrum auction, but we thought we’d dig through some more spectrum documents. One bidding team caught our eye. Telecom investor Willian Berkman couldn’t let Paul Allen get all the wireless action without a fight.
According to FCC filings a consortium backed by William Berkman, and the broadband over power lines company Current Communications Group that he co-founded and is Chairman, and including Current investors Goldman Sachs and TXU Utility Services, is looking to bid in the upcoming wireless spectrum in August. As you might remember, Current is also backed by companies interested in wireless–Google and Earthlink.
While Google’s and Earthlink’s individual investments are not disclosed Current has raised over a hundred million in capital to build its BPL network. There was a lot of speculation over Google joining the spectrum auction–this seems as close as the company was willing to get.
While Current refused our requests for the details on their wireless plans, wireless is already being used in conjunction with broadband over powerlines by companies like Motorola and Communication Technologies Inc (ComTek). BPL runs over electrical outlets and is touted for its ease-of-access, though has few deployments to date.
Wireless could help extend those deployments. ComTek’s VP for Broadband, Walt Adams, said in a few cases the company is already powering WiFi hotspots with BPL, and that the company is planning to grow its wireless offering later this year. So if Berkman and Current buy some wireless spectrum, the company’s slow-moving BPL plans could get a real boost.
For now how the consortium plans to use any wireless spectrum in tandem with their BPL plans remains unclear. The application is officially incomplete but the company has until 6PM today to update the filing.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wired and Google and Earthlink and Wireless Broadband and spectrum and broadband over powerline.
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.
Earthlink’s foray into RSS/Social Bookmarking is hot news of the day, but Atlanta-based company is not done with what is turning out to be a total Web 2.0 makeover. Earthlink’s plans to offer more web-based services.
Craig Forman, President of Earthlink’s Value-Added Services, who was formerly in charge of News and Info at Yahoo, told us that Earthlink has been working on new applications. Earthlink subscribers will soon get a chance to try out another new web based service, Earthlink WebLife, a new photo and media sharing service. The service will come with one GB of storage for its users.
All of the web-based plans are part of Earthlink’s broader scheme to convert from a former dial-up company to a broadband services firm that not only sells broadband, but all broadband applications. Muni WiFi and VoIP are two areas where the company has focused so far, but now it is trying to introduce other applications. Earthlink user base is much more mainstream and as a result, the company is trying to use “web 2.0″ technologies to create simply, yet rich user experiences.
All this development is not cheap. Forman says Earthlink’s investment in value-added services for the web is going to have a material impact on its top line. Muni WiFi might be the biggest investment of the year. But there’s no question that the company has to adapt. It’s the same problem AOL has. They both just hope that spending money, will eventually lead to making it.
Update: Earthlink emailed us to say that the company soft-launched the photo sharing product a few weeks ago. They did mention that in our earlier conversation.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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FCC’s spectrum auction process is far from perfect. Mario Gabelli, a pundit turned spectrum speculator is a perfect example of someone with deep pockets can rig the game in their favor.
The FCC’s system of auctioning off the country’s spectrum is far from perfect. Yesterday a U.S. district court approved a settlement that said New York money manager Mario “Super Mario” Gabelli and his army of affiliate companies have to pay $130 million for gaming the auction system several years back.
According to the New York Times, the lawsuit was filed against the Wall Street investor by “whistle-blower, Russell Taylor III, a lawyer who was involved in the wireless spectrum auction,” five years ago under the False claims Act.
Gabelli, seemingly gamed the system by setting up small companies, whose sole purpose was to grab spectrum, possibly to resell that at higher prices. By claiming “designated entity” status a company can buy spectrum at a lower cost and then later resell it for a massive profit.
(We have put together a list of his new bets, and you can read them after the fold.)
While the FCC has changed some of these rules, we’ll soon see how effective the new plans are. That’s because Gabelli and his crew have once again filed to bid on spectrum for the Advanced Wireless Spectrum auction, which will take place in August.
Shouldn’t there be rules that should prevent anyone who has been fined for abusing the system for trying again.
We checked the records, and found a whopping 12 companies backed by Gabelli. (See the list of companies backed by Gabelli gang after the fold.)
If any of these companies win big in the upcoming election, we can probably assume that the spectrum will get flipped shortly after. None of Gabelli’s applications were accepted yet and were all labelled “incomplete,” but the company can resubmit over the coming days. This time around Gabelli isn’t pleading the “DE” status as a leg-up, but will likely have some other money-making scheme to generate cash.
The list of names includes:
- Cal-Ore Telephone Company
- Central Utah Telephone Company
- Upper Peninsula Telephone Company
- CS Technologies
- Cuba City Telephone Exchange Company
- Dunkirk & Fredonia Telephone Company
- Lynch AWS Corporation
- Western New Mexico Telephone Company
- Haviland Telephone Company
- Inter-Community Telephone Company
- Bretton Woods Telephone Company
- JBN Telephone Company.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 14th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Wireless Broadband and spectrum.
Live from Mountain View–A few months ago a Google exec told me a story about a city resident who took a swing at him after a public hearing on Google’s WiFi plans. Naturally, when I heard about a public WiFi training session for Mountain View residents at the Googleplex last night, I had to stop by. Well, no fisticuffs, but a few interesting tidbits.
Google’s Mountain View WiFi network is ready to go, though not open to the public, but about 100 people are already starting to receive invitations to test the service.
The invitations give directions on how to discover the SSID number of the network, which is the number that distinguishes one wireless network from another. (Anyone want to send one along to us?) Right now the SSID number is “cloaked”, so Mountain View residents can’t access it. A few of the residents were saying that they could already see the SSID number when their computer searches for a WiFi signal. That made a Google spokesperson look a bit nervous.
There were probably more than a hundred residents at the training session, and most were worried about not being able to get coverage. For a few areas of Mountain View the company could not secure space on light poles, so Google is asking residents if they wouldn’t mind putting an access point on their chimneys. They even thought about flyer-ing those areas, but said they didn’t want to be too aggressive. Google also said that “it is unlikely that a WiFi-enabled laptop or computer with a conventional WiFi card will work indoors at most locations. If you want to use the system indoors we suggest getting an extended-range WiFi modem.” So that’s another extra cost if the resident wants to rely on the network as a DSL or cable replacement.
After the 100 testers give the network a rigorous review, more trusted-testers will be invited to check it out. Google is calling it a “rolling launch.” They want to make sure that there’s as few glitches as possible for the official launch day, which they’ve only set at the “summer of 2006.” Hopefully we’ll get a chance to give it a spin pretty soon.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 13th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and Google and WiFi.
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.
With Clearwire and the launch of WiBro, WiMAX and its mobile derivatives have been in the news a lot lately. The latest is Paris-based Sequans, a fabless semiconductor company, which says it has started shipping its mobile WiMAX station chips to test with its customers, for use in mobile devices like cell phones, PC cards, and USB dongles, as well as fixed devices.
The company is part of a gaggle of start-ups that are pushing mobile WiMAX silicon, and now that Korea’s WiBro network is officially up and running there’s actual customers. Sales of WiMAX equipment is estimated to top $3 billion by 2010 says research firm Instat. Fujitsu, Runcom, TeleCIS, Wavesat, and Samsung are all competing for business, and Korea’s WiBro network will be a really interesting test case to see which WiMAX chip companies find favor with phone makers and operators.
A few months ago Sequans managed to score a major partnership with LG to supply WiMAX chips to LG’s consumer electronics. The deal could be seen as way for LG to team up with a savvy startup, to compete against WiBro king and archrival Samsung. The Samsung/LG rivalry is intense, and will just get more so over WiMAX. (Though Samsung seems to be solidly winning for now.)
How intense is the rivalry? How about LG PR people making me take off the CTIA badge for an interview, because the event was sponsored by Samsung!
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Unwired and WiMAX and Wireless Broadband and WiBro.
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.
Read more articles on Unwired and MySpace and Cellular and Social Networks and virtual worlds.
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.
Read more articles on Unwired and Start-Ups and Cellular and Social Networks.
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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I got a chance to check out Metalink’s wireless chip technology a few months ago, as the company played a crystal-clear high definition movie and ran it over three blazing-fast wirelessly-connected TV’s. If the demo was the norm, it was as easy and fast as wireless networking should be. Today Chinese consumer electronics-maker Haier said it tested its high-def TV’s that are using Metalink’s new WiFi chip set–N-compliant standard–for wireless networking.
But the technology won’t likely land in your living room for a good long while, if it makes it that far. Metalink is an Israeli fabless chip company, that has plans to work with other consumer electronics makers to embedded really fast WiFi in products like set-top boxes, DVRs and residential gateways. While the technology is the latest wireless breakthrough for the digital home, the company isn’t making any money off its innovation just yet. The company lost $4.1 million in the first quarter of this year, and competitors like Airgo, and Broadcom could very well have the upper hand.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 10th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Connected Home and Unwired and Broadband Life and WiFi.
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.
Read more articles on Unwired and Start-Ups and Cellular and MVNO.
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, al