Category: Mobile

Has Nokia run out of names?

Nokia always named their mobile devices with numbers. Most of the times 4 numbers, sometimes 3. In the last few years they started also using letters such as N and E.

Many have tried to find some reasoning behind the numbers, but no real rule was ever found (at least that I know of). Anyway, it looks like Nokia might have run out of numbers. Today, while checking on Forum Nokia I noticed a device that was advertised as new, but did not sound so, to me. A little research on the Forum itself shows that the “new” device is the 3120 classic, but there’s also an older 3120! So why is the new one called “classic”? Shouldn’t it be called “new” or something?

Well, for all of us (OK, I’m the only one) trying to remember all model names, it’s going to be harder now.

PLUG: luckily you’ll find both in DeviceAtlas (Nokia 3120 classic and Nokia 3120).

barcodes on mobile devices

Barcode readers for mobile device displays are growing and is an interesting market, I think. In short, it’s hard to read from a tiny LCD screen, but the technology is catching up and a few solutions have appeared on the market.

Here is a video of an Italian company called Gear srl.

A similar technology is already deployed by Spanair on their spanair.mobi. The service is active only in limited number of airports, but gives an idea of how useful it can be. If successful it will be extended, of course.

New WURFL Java API will be GPL?

DISCLAIMER: I run DeviceAtlas for dotMobi.

A thread about making the next version of the Java API of WURFL more OO, something that Java developers are certainly fond of, has spun in a thread about licensing.
I think a few developers have been caught by surprise. In short Luca wants to make the new API GPL, instead of the current MPL. It is still not clear which version of GPL and I think it is not yet definitive.
The problem that was raised is, of course, that changing the licence to GPL will compel all developers selling their software based on the WURFL API to open-source it and use the same version of GPL. Luca mentioned how mysql does not have this problem and how big companies like Google can use open-source softwares, but not release back to the community. This is of course a different case from mysql, because the API would be tightly embedded in the software and the licensing issue would affect mostly consultants, not companies doing internal development (like Google, in Luca’s example). If you think that WALL might be licensed in the same way, it might be even worse as WALL will certainly be a core part of any mobile application.

There is a solution to this, of course, a dual-licence. Also, special discounts are announced for companies buying consultancy.

I am curious to see how this will end. I hope the community will be able to find a feasible solution that will keep everyone happy.

References:

Chat with John Puterbaugh of Nellymoser

Last week in Las Vegas Nellymoser announced a version 3.5 of their platform. Reading from the press release:

New Mobile Services Extended With Rich, Interactive Widgets And Microsites, Accessed Across Multiple Platforms And Supported By In-Application Advertising

Following the press release, Nellymoser got in touch with me to have a talk about their announcement. I thought they must have contacted the wrong person as I’m not a journalist, but they explained they wanted to talk to me specifically because this is a product for developers. I have to admit this made me curious.

So this Monday I had a chat over the phone with John Puterbaugh, Founder and Chief Strategist and Betsy Zikakis, VP of Marketing. We skipped all the marketing stuff that is not exactly my business and John went straight to the point of why this product is interesting for developers.
Nellymoser has a number of agreements with US operators, premium messaging companies and media companies. They already have their services provided via operator decks (portals). Why not open the platform to other companies that might have interesting services? Well this sounds like a great plan to me. Nellymoser now gives access to media provided by their big partners, a chance to be listed (via their software) on big operator portals and, if you want it, also manage payments via their gateways.

Nellymoser is specialized in media provision so all the device detection and media adaptation happens on their side. What developers should care about is create compelling services and mix the media Nellymoser provides with their own, if they want to.
The pricing also seems interesting as you will have a chance to either pay a fixed fee (if you know the size of your business) or pay per transaction. It is not exactly a revenue sharing, but rather a fee per active user. This made me think of i-mode, I have to say. We have not talked about the details of the pricing so I just do not know, yet.

So what’s in for me? Why should it be interesting for me (I live in Italy, just FYI)?
Well the plan is to extend the platform over the summer and not only to let developers build sites for operator decks, but also for the open internet. They call them microsite, a name that I do not like very much, these will build the web of tomorrow! Still it’s good they are looking out of the window and I’m sure they are already seeing the potential.

After about 30 minutes of talk including some business and technical perspectives, I think this is a very good initiative and I look forward to see how it works and what are the tools available. I should be getting access to it in a few weeks. I’ll post more once I get that (and maybe after a few hundred dollars sold over the US operators. 😉 )

See a flash demo called VIP Access of sites will look like.

I also reviewed a similar service in the past, called Mobispirit, but I think Nellymoser is a step further.

Nokia N-Gage?

In the last few days the N-Gage has come back into the news.

Surely the N-Gage is an interesting platform, if only because it allows for multiplayer gaming while on the move. What better transport if not GSM and UMTS? PSP and the DS are no where near that, so Nokia should be ahead of the competition, unfortunately the platform is not as good and the games are lacking. Not a small problem if Nokia wants the N-Gage to be successful.

According to M:Metrics, in February:
+ 48.4 million people played a mobile game
+ 20.2 million played a game they previously downloaded
+ 7.6 million downloaded a new game

These numbers are all up from the same period last year (February 2007), when:
+ 45.2 million played a mobile game
+ 18.5 million played a game they had previously downloaded
+ 6.8 million downloaded a new game.

Among Nokia owners, in February, 20.1 percent (5.9 million people) played a mobile game, against a market average of 21.4 percent. Other Nokia stats:

+6.2 percent of Nokia owners played a game they had previously downloaded (versus 8.9 percent market average)
+2.7 percent downloaded a new game (versus 3.4 percent market average)

“Nokia is currently underperforming in the games market today primarily due to the fact that the US market is flooded with low-end, free Nokia phones that came with carrier contracts,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics. “Today, N-Series devices are still quite expensive and are not widely distributed in carrier channels, resulting in low market adoption. However, among those toting high-end Nokia devices on the Symbian operating system, 30.8 percent played a mobile game, indicating that mobile gaming is a popular activity on these phones.”

Over The Air event report

Last Friday I was in London to speak about DeviceAtlas. My speech was actually called “DeviceAtlas Masterclass”, but I did not know exactly what to expect, of course I knew the participants would be developers interested in mobile, but what exactly were they looking for? 1 hour was the scheduled time, I prepared a speech that would take about 40 minutes so that I would leave 20 minutes for discussion. The speech was really an introduction explaining how DeviceAtlas works and why dotMobi decided to create it.

There were about 30 people in the class. Most of them already knew DeviceAtlas and already had their own ideas of what they needed. While the presentation was only an introduction, the outcome was very positive, in fact there has been a lot of interaction, questions and discussion. I think this really turned a speech into a masterclass.

The only real issue during the class is that it was interrupted by a Fire Alarm started. We all walked out and stood in the grass for a few minutes. Then back into the class-rooms and got an extra 15-20 minutes. Luckily the weather was very nice and chatting on the grass has been a pleasant interruption.

Argogroup data is now part of DeviceAtlas

We announced DeviceAtlas back in February and promised that Argogroup data would have been included to our repository.

Well that day has arrived, Argogroup brings so many years of experience that I can hardly think of a company in the mobile space that was around when they started. We have already loaded information for almost 800 devices (adding information to existing ones or creating new devices) and we have a few more updates in the pipe.

This addition brings a lot of value to DeviceAtlas as Argogroup has built a huge reputation on their testing platform (Device Master) which makes it a perfect match for DeviceAtlas and dotMobi.

Visit the official DeviceAtlas site now to get the fresh downloads and if you are not a user yet, I think it’s a good time to get your developer licence for free. Do not forget you need an account (also free) on dev.mobi, first.