That new Android-based smartphone from the biggest phone manufacturer in the world with the big New York launch, the massive screen, and the 13-megapixel camera? Looks like it’s pre-selling like proverbial hotcakes.

Carphone Warehouse, a big UK mobile distributor, says the Samsung Galaxy S IV is pre-selling at more than four times the rate of its predecessor, the Galaxy S III. Which was already a best-ever launch for Carphone.

“The record breaking launch of the Galaxy SIII last year was always going to be a tough one to beat,” said Carphone Warehouse COO Graham Stapleton. “But Samsung have pulled out all the stops with a dazzling new device that’s sure to inspire many people to make the switch to Android from other operating systems.”

The phones aren’t scheduled to be available until April 26, and pricing hasn’t been announced yet. Even so, with pre-orders at 446 percent of S III levels, it looks like Samsung has impressed enough of the Android faithful to deliver another best-seller.

The SII sold 10 million units in its first two months and 30 million in five months, so beating those numbers won’t be easy. But Samsung did ship 57 million smartphones in Q3 last year as part of over 400 million phones shipped in all of 2012, so anything seems to be possible.

The question will be: Can Samsung top Apple’s iPhone 5, which was the top-selling phone in the last quarter of 2012?

Perhaps.

“We’re anticipating a massive amount of customer interest in this handset and are expecting our stores to be busier than at the height of the Christmas period,” Stapleton said. “We are planning to extend opening hours at our larger sites to cope with the increased demand.”

None of which changes my contention that the Samsung Galaxy S IV will mark the beginning of the end of Samsung’s smartphone dominance.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Targeting the universal smart device market, chip maker Marvell announced its most advanced single-chip quad-core processor for worldphones and tablets today.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s Marvell PXA1088 combines four processing cores with communications on a system-on-chip device for low-power, high-performance mobile computing. It supports all global broadband standards, which will allow you to roam the world without having to get a new SIM card or switch phones.

The company expects commercial production in the first half of this year. The device features 3G cellular modem support with High Speed Packet Access Plus (HSPA+), Time division High Speed Packet Access Plus (TD-HSPA+), and Enhanced Data for GSM Environment (EDGE).

“We’re very excited that global original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and original device manufacturer (ODM) partners have embraced and committed to this platform,” said Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell, in a statement. “I believe our industry-leading single-chip platform will drive mass market adoption of high-quality, high-performance, very affordable smartphone and tablet solutions worldwide to enrich people’s connected lifestyle.”

The chip has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 with Marvell’s own WCDMA and TD-SCDMA modems. The chip is targeted at low-cost 3G platforms for smartphones and tablets. It can handle multimedia, games, high-definition video, and standard phone capabilities such as Bluetooth 4.0, Avastar wide-area networking, and hybrid location processing.

The chip is compatible with the dual-core 3G chips, the PXA988 and the PXA986. The company will be showing off the chip at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona from Feb. 25 to Feb. 28.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

China has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest smartphone market, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry.
Based on data from its analytics service, which tracks 2.4 billion app sessions per day, China has just surpassed the U.S. as the No. 1 market for actively used smartphones and tablets.

“The U.S. is now No. 2 and will not recover,” said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry.

China has been the fastest-growing smart device market for more than a year. In January, China had 221 million active smart devices, while the U.S. had 222 million. Based on a projection for February, China will have 246 million devices by the end of this month, compared to 230 million for the U.S.

By tracking 275,000 apps, Flurry estimates it can measure activity across more than 90 percent of the world’s smart devices.

“We also conclude that the U.S. will not take back the lead from China, given the vast difference in population per country,” Farago said. “China has over 1.3 billion people while the U.S. has just over 310 million. Considering that the U.S. has the worlds’ third-largest population, the only other country that could feasibly overtake China sometime in the future is India, with a population of just over 1.2 billion.”

But India has only 19 million active smart devices. The U.S. and China each have more than five times the installed base of the United Kingdom, the world’s third-largest smartphone market. In the year ended January, 2013, the U.S. added 55 million new smart devices. But China added 150 million.

In terms of active smart devices, China grew 209 percent from 71 million a year ago. Countries that grew faster than China in the past year were Columbia, Vietnam, Turkey, Ukraine and Egypt.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

You can sum up Forrester’s prognostications on 2013 mobile trends in three little words: This changes everything.

Well, duh.

Mobile phones are already well on their way to replacing cameras, cash, maps, remote controls, handheld gaming systems, boarding passes, tickets, cash registers, calculators, notepads, and much more. And they’re becoming globally ubiquitous: 1.6 billion phones were shipped last year; and by the end of this year, 1.4 billion smartphones will be in use.

So the question is not so much what smartphones can do, it’s what can’t they do. And the strategic imperative for organizations is to understand how they are going to meet the challenge of that change.

A week after sharing its vision of the top 15 emerging technologies, Forrester shared its view of the near future of mobile in analyst Thomas Husson’s report, released today.

Here are the top 10 implications for mobile, according to Husson:

Mobile becomes a strategic priority

1. Marketers will realize that mobile requires a total shift in marketing approach.
   This is one of the reasons Google baked mobile into AdWords by default, one of the biggest changes in AdWords in five years.
2. Tablets will be the biggest short-term disruptors.
   Advertisers like marketing on iPhones and Android smartphones, but iPad ads command the biggest premium.
3. Mobile platforms will catalyze next-generation connected experiences.
   We’ll see more technologies like fitness trackers that know what you’re doing without you having to tell them, or a smartphone app that lets you control your home from Tokyo.
4. Smart apps powered by big data and sophisticated analytics will help us complete tasks.
   Think a Siri from Apple that is more than just a cute add-on and that actually becomes a valuable personal assistant.
5. Mobile will play a leading role in engaging consumers in emerging markets.
   75 percent of all new phones are being sold in Asia and Africa. That might change something …

Mobile investments must rise

1. Mobile will require more formal organization, processes, governance.
   BYOD rocks, but IT is getting fed up of supporting what it cannot manage.
2. Leading marketers will take back ownership of mobile from agencies and vendors.
   You can’t outsource core, and mobile is becoming core. So you’ve got to learn from the best and bring at least some expertise in-house.
3. The role of mobile marketing manager will emerge.
   If Google needs a mobile marketing manager, why don’t you?
4. Finding the right strategic mix of staff will rise in importance.
   Even more than in other areas, you need the right blend of business, marketing, design, and technology expertise to succeed in mobile.
5. Spending will increase to enable mobile services.
   Mobile marketing has been a bit of a bargain, but as it’s become core, that’s changing. Technology and staffing costs are going up.

Husson will be discussing these trends in a free webinar on February 18 at 2PM UK time, 9AM New York time, and 6AM (ugh) San Francisco time.

photo credit: Rev Dan Catt via photopin cc

App Annie released its January state-of-the-app-union report this morning, and the numbers show that Apple’s store is still the cream of the crop, earning 350 percent more revenue than Google Play, and growing more in absolute dollar figures than the upstart Android store.

But it’s growing much slower and seems sure to be surpassed in 2013 or early 2014.

“Clearly, the Google Play platform is working, and monetization is increasing,” App Annie’s VP of marketing, Ollie Lo, told me yesterday. “The growth is much more than organic … it’s really meteoric, especially in Japan and Korea.”

App Annie creates its app store index based on aggregate data from its app analytics offering. Eighty percent of the top iOS publishers by revenue use App Annie, Lo told me, with 180,000 apps in total having installed the solution. With that level of scale, the company has tracked more than 13 billion downloads and has, Lo says, all the data and scale to be able to build very accurate models of what exactly happens on apps stores.

Also see: Google Play and Apple app store sales increasingly dominated by Japan, Korea, and China

According to that data, Apple achieved record revenues in December, with a 33 percent month-over-month gain from November to December. But while Apple’s monthly revenues did not quite double from January to December, Google Play monthly revenues exploded almost 700 percent, January to December.

In terms of top publishers, Apple has — doubtless unwillingly — kept its friends close and its enemies closer. While Apple is the number one publisher by downloads on the iOS app store, Google is a close second, with 27 apps available for Apple’s mobile platform. Game publishers EA and Rovio, with Disney, round out the top five on iOS.

Source: App Annie

Top publishers by monthly downloads – December 2012

On Google Play, the top app publishers list looks almost completely different. While Facebook and Rovio are on both, most of the other top app publishers are not. Interestingly, major Google social media competitor Facebook is tops on the list, and Microsoft is a top-10 publisher on Google Play:

Source: App Annie

Top publishers by monthly downloads – December 2012

The Apple app store versus Google Play numbers are simply indicative of Android’s grasp on the global market.

With Samsung shipping almost 400 million phones last year, and Android winning 70 percent global market share in 2012, it seems inevitable that Google Play will become the most valuable app store in the world sooner rather than later.

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Global phone shipments hit 1.6 billion units in 2012, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics, with Samsung shipping a massive 396.5 million phones last year.

“Fuelled by robust demand for its popular Galaxy models, Samsung was the star performer, shipping a record 396.5 million mobile phones worldwide and capturing 25 percent market share to solidify its first-place lead,” Neil Shah, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.

While 1.6 billion units is a huge number, it’s only a modest two percent growth, as demand slowed in mature markets like Europe and North America, and mobile operators made it more difficult for consumers to upgrade.

Key Samsung competitor Apple shipped 135.8 million phones worldwide last year, which translates to 46 percent annual growth. That’s a record high number for Apple, and Samsung’s 396.5 million is a record for that company as well.

Meanwhile, Nokia retained a 21.3 percent global market share, proving that while it’s down, it’s not yet out. The Finnish company shipped 335.6 million phones in 2012, down from 417.1 million in 2011.

“Nokia’s dual-SIM feature phones, Asha touchphones, and Lumia handsets have been performing well, but this was not enough to offset a slump in demand for the company’s aging Symbian smartphone platform last year,” said Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics’ executive director.

The top four mobile phone vendors by market share are now:

1. Samsung: 396.5 million units
2. Nokia: 335.6 million units
3. Apple: 135.8 million units
4. ZTE: 71.7 million units

photo credit: juicyrai via photopin cc

But yesterday is less interesting to investors than tomorrow, which is why Apple’s stock price is down, and one of the analysts on the call asked the Apple chief exec about market share and cheaper iPhones. That’s been a big concern lately, as most of the growth in mobile phones is in markets like Asia and Africa, which are much more price-sensitive than the U.S. or Europe.

“The most important thing for Apple is to make products that impact people’s lives,” Cook answered. “We don’t seek revenue for revenue’s sake.”

Those would not have been comforting words to investors who are looking for Apple to expand its market share by offering products that appear to a wider range of customers. But Cook did offer a ray of hope.

“We’ve had a great track record on iPod of offering different products at different price points,” Cook added.

That might be a hint that Apple will offer iPhones at differing price points, beyond the current strategy of offering old models at reduced rates. The iPod, of course, is available in the top-of-the-line iPod Touch, the still-existing Classic, and the cheap Nano and cheaper Shuffle.

But don’t hope for too much. Then Cook added, for emphasis:

“But our top priority is making a great product that enriches people’s lives.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apparently, information does want to be free. And phone calls, and text messages. At least, if you’re a subscriber to FreedomPop, “America’s free wireless Internet company.”

FreedomPop, which already offers free wireless Internet service, is announcing a partnership with TextPlus today that will enable it to also offer free voice calls and free texts.

“We’re allowing consumers to cut the carrier,” CEO Steve Stokols told me. “And basically screw AT&T and Verizon.”

Starting in the first quarter of this year, TextPlus’ free calls and texts will be integrated into FreedomPop’s services, so existing free wireless customers will have the ability to go 100 percent free, Stokols said.

Voice calls will run over data channels, Stokols said, using the FreedomPop app for Android and iOS, as will text messages. Users simply set up a new number — any number that is available in any area code — or port their existing number over. No new SIM card is needed.

And coverage?

“Today we’re in the top 80 markets,” Stokol said. “That’s 120 million people. By the third quarter, we’ll have coverage for 240 million people.”

FreedomPop makes money when users add premium services on top of its basic, free services. Currently 30 percent of its users purchase some form of upgrade. The company uses Clearwire’s WiMAX network to provide 4G service. And according to Stokol, it’s growing fast through viral marketing.

“We’re averaging about 10-11 invites per user,” Stokol told me today. “So some of the key metrics that were speculative at our launch are now proving themselves.”

Ten to 11 invites per user is pretty spectacular, and should result in a very sweet viral coefficient. In other words, watch your backs, AT&T and Verizon.

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While Samsung is still sitting pretty at the top of the U.S. smartphone market, Apple just climbed to the second-place spot for the first time, according to the latest data from the research company ComScore.

For the three-month period from August to October, Apple climbed 1.5 percentage points to reach 17.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, toppling LG to third-place.

Samsung still maintains a healthy lead with 26.3 percent of the market, after growing by .7 percentage points. But it’s clear that Apple is slowly, but surely, beginning to nip at Samsung’s heels.

All of the other top-five mobile vendors, including LG, Motorola, and HTC, fell in market share — which helped Apple reach that number-two spot. And of course, the release of the iPhone 5 in October likely helped Apple as well (though we’ll probably see bigger gains from that event in ComScore’s next report).

Overall, there are 121.3 million smartphone owners in the U.S., accounting for 51.9 percent of the mobile market. That’s 6 percent more smartphone owners than ComScore’s July numbers.

In terms of smartphone platforms, Android grew 1.4 points to 53.6 percent, while iOS grew .9 percent to 34.3 percent. RIM fell a whopping 1.7 points, and both Microsoft and Symbian fell slightly as well.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Telecommunications giant Ericson has released a massive report on the state of the mobile world. And clearly, unless you live in the almost-fully-penetrated European and North American markets, everything is up and to the right.

China, the rest of Asia, and Africa together accounted for 75 percent of new mobile subscriptions in the third quarter of 2012, with 38 million in China, 31 million in the rest of Asia, and 25 million in Africa. That contrasts rather sharply with only one million new subscriptions in western Europe and two million in North America.

With 6.4 billion global cellular subscriptions and a world population just shy of seven billion, it would seem that almost everyone has a mobile phone or other mobile device connected to the internet. However, Ericsson, says, those 6.4 billion subscriptions are spread over only 4.3 billion people, meaning that many people have more than one plan … for example, a phone and a tablet, both with a cellular connection.

Which leads to a penetration percentage of well over 100 percent in some areas:

Source: Ericsson

Mobile subscriptions penetration globally

40 percent of all phones sold in the third quarter, Ericsson says, were smartphones, but only 15 percent of the global installed base of phones is smartphones … so there is still a long runway for growth. In fact Ericsson is predicting smartphone subscriptions alone will reach 3.3 billion in 2018.

Source: Ericsson

Global total traffic in mobile networks. Yellow is voice; red is data

Global data traffic is skyrocketing as well — doubling between Q3 2011 and Q3 2012 — while voice traffic is only growing slowly. From perhaps 10 petabytes of monthly mobile data traffic in the first part of 2007, the world’s use of mobile data has exploded to about 900 petabytes, per month, today.

In the same period, voice traffic has only grown from perhaps 80 petabytes to about 190.

By 2018, Ericsson expects mobile traffic to grow 14 times to over 13,000 petabytes of global monthly data, as mobile PCs will gobble up over 10 GB each per month, and smartphones about 2 GB.

Speeds will increase to handle that influx of data traffic, rising to a current global median of 1.3 megabits/second as LTE networks continue to roll out. LTE can already offer download speeds in the 100 Mbps range, on supported devices, and an more-advanced version known as LTE-Advanced will offer peak

data speeds higher than 1 gigabit/second. Only about 100 LTE networks are currently in operation, covering 455 million people. By 2017, Ericsson expects LTE to be available to about half the world’s population.

Interestingly, Ericsson measured the network impact of free versus paid apps as part of the study. Free apps, which are generally, ad-supported, use much more data than premium apps — connecting with the network 30 times more frequently and use over 100 times more data … presumably for ad downloads.

Tethering is also a massive data consumer, especially iPhone and Android users who use data services on their smartphones to get network access on their laptops and tablets. Users who tether use 20 times as much data as non-tethering mobile subscribers.

The full report is available at Ericsson’s website.

Image credits: Ericsson

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If developers are the lifeblood of a platform, then RIM is about to be bled dry.

According to a survey by Baird Equity Research developers are defecting from RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry operating system months before it even reaches consumers’ hands.

On a ten-point scale, developer outlook for BlackBerry 10 fell from 4.6 to 3.8. Unsurprisingly, the BlackBerry 7 story is similarly dire: Outlook on that front dropped from 3.8 to 2.8, which is slightly higher than the reported interest in HP’s semi-dead webOS.

Arguably more troubling, for the second quarter in a row, over 30 percent of developers said they have shifted projects away from Blackberry 10 to another platform. And where did those projects go? 72 percent of developers said they went to Android.

To make matters worse, BlackBerry 10′s interest numbers are only marginally higher than those for Adobe’s Air and Flash platforms, the latter of which even Adobe is dropping support for. Clearly, not so many people are interested in developing for RIM’s mobile platform.

While little of this is surprising in light of RIM’s persistent struggles, it does serve as further evidence that RIM has no one in its corner: Consumers, investors, and now even developers are abandoning the RIM ship, and at this rate there won’t be anyone left to steer it.

But in the spirit of Friday, here’s some good news: Developer outlook for all variants of Windows 8 sits at 6.3, a slight drop from the previous quarter but still a respectably high number. We may finally have a third horse in the smartphone platform race.

As for Android and iOS — well, they’re doing alright for themselves: Developers rated their outlook for the Google OS at 8.7, leaving Apple with its predictable crown at 9.3.

Photo: Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Most people won’t care about Quantance‘s tiny qBoost power amplifiers. But these efficient little chips should capture your attention because they could speed up 4G data rates by 2 to 5 times.

Quantance is handing out samples of its finished third-generation chip, the Q845 ET power supply, it announced today. So far, major smartphone manufacturers in the LTE supply chain are testing the chip, which could wind up in smartphones in consumers’ hands in the first half of next year. Those devices will have faster data rates and better battery lives. And the phones won’t burn hot in your hands.

The new chip is more efficient and smaller than rival power supplies and can deliver power to the rest of a phone in the right amount and do so at a very high speed.

Older power supplies are slow and haven’t kept up with the rapidly evolving smartphone. Some can generate voltage efficiently, while others do it quickly. But Quantance designed its power supplies to deliver power quickly and efficiently at the same time, said Rob Rovetta, vice president of product at San Mateo, Calif.-based Quantance, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“This is giong to be the industry’s fastest-performing chip,” Rovetta said.

Most power supply companies simply ratchet up the power that they deliver to a smartphone application. That’s because the app will crash if it gets too little power. Designers have to design for overkill on power or risk having constant failures. The consequence is that the device, such as my own Verizon 4G LTE MyFi hot spot (which provides internet data connectivity anywhere it can get a cellular signal), will run out of power far too quickly.

The Q845 supports ET operation up to 20 megahertz LTE, providing the response time equivalent of a 400 megahertz switcher for ET systems. As a result, the Q845 is more than 100 times faster than any other mobile ET power supply solution available today.

Some 4G LTE companies evaluating the chip hope to get a finished product with it out this year. But Rovetta said most will likely take more time preparing brand new products around the technology. It could be used in 4G LTE smartphones, tablets, or MyFi devices.

These devices are currently frustratingly slow because the power-related constraints are stopping them from transferring data at the maximum theoretical rates. Device makers actually have to throttle their designs because of the power limits, Rovetta said.

“We are thrilled to be sampling our chip and are already deep in the process of integrating our qBoost-enabled products into baseband chipset platforms and high-speed mobile data devices,” said Vikas Vinayak, Quantance’s CEO and co-founder. “The industry-wide interest in our chip is a strong indicator that the 4G/LTE market will depend heavily on ET to achieve maximum speed, coverage, and battery life. And with our unique qBoost approach, we feel Quantance is well positioned to lead the ET market race.”

The Q845 uses a patented combination of switching and linear power supplies inside a single chip to efficiently deliver power. The design is so radically different that the company has had to work on the technology for six years. Its third version of the chip is the one that will likely be commercially successful, Rovetta said.

Quantance has 25 employees and has raised $30 million from investors, including TD Fund, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners, and DoCoMo Capital. Rivals include Texas Instruments, Fairchild, and Maxim. Smaller rivals include R2 and Nujira. Quantance founders include Vanayak and Serge Drogi, chief technology officer.

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

We’ve finally reached the point where half of U.S. mobile consumers own smartphones — a significant moment that proves the smartphone revolution is more than just hype.

As of February, 49.7 percent of U.S. mobile owners have smartphones, according to the latest figures from Nielsen. Additionally, the research group found that more than two-thirds of new phone buyers in the last three months opted for smartphones over feature phones.

The big takeaway: The strong rise of smartphones will continue, and feature phones are on their way to becoming extinct (see graph below).

Nielsen notes that smartphone penetration has jumped significantly since February of last year, when it was only 36 percent. If growth continues at this rate, smartphones could account for 70 percent of all U.S. mobile devices by next year.

48 percent of smartphone owners have an Android handset, 32 percent have an iPhone, and 12 percent have a BlackBerry, according to Nielsen. Among new buyers the figures look similar, with 48 percent going for Android, 43 percent for the iPhone, and a misguided 5 percent going for BlackBerry.

Come next year, I suspect we’ll see Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform breaking out of the Nielsen “Other” category and gaining significant market share. RIM is on the decline, and the upcoming $100 Nokia Lumia 900 will likely pull some consumers away from cheap Android phones.

Smartphone picture via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Marvell is showing off a bunch of new chips for smartphones, smart TVs, networking, and other gear at the Mobile World Congress event this week. Among the new products is the world’s first TD-HSPA+ modem chip for smartphones used in emerging countries such as China.

Mobile chip makers are dueling to get their chips designed into the latest smartphones and tablets at this week’s event, which is being covered live by VentureBeat’s Devindar Hardawar. Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel have all announced big customer wins already at the show.

The new modem chip, the Marvell PXA1202, can triple the data rate for phones connected to TD-SCDMA networks. Phones using the so-called 3.5G technology can download data at rates of 8.4 megabits per second, compared with 2.8 megabits per second for current phones.

Marvell is also launching its LTE multimode modem chip set for phones that can transfer a lot of data at a low cost. The new PXA1802 chip will help address geographic fragmentation problems that have slowed adoption of certain mobile standards. The chip targets China’s TD-SCDMA network technology for mobile phones.

Marvell said it will have a number of new handset design wins for its TD-SCDMA chips for emerging markets such as China. Those designs use a user interface from Marvell dubbed Kinoma.

Kinoma Play is a user interface for smartphones, tablet computers, and other mobile devices. It can be built into a single application or become the user’s main interface for operating the multimedia apps on a phone. Kinoma Play is functional, fluid and fast interface. It works great with a touchscreen, letting you do tasks more easily, such as flipping through your music collection or zooming in on a face in a picture. Marvell acquired the small software company Kinoma last year.

Among Kinoma’s new features: the ability to manage your home appliances and lighting from afar. It makes sense for a chip maker to do this because it isn’t all about the hardware. Great smartphone software can show off the power of a chip through applications such as photo browsing. Intel has learned that too and is designing entire phones for its first smartphone customers.

“I am very proud that we are a strong driving force behind the evolution of the smart devices people around the world use every day in the home and at work, from mobile smartphones and smart TVs, such as Google TV, to smart appliances, energy-efficient lighting and mobile printing,” said Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell.

Marvell’s new WiFi platform, Avastar, will be upgraded to handle 802.11ac, which promises much faster wireless networking in the not so distant future, as well as near-field communications (NFC) for more ubiquitous phone-based payment platforms.

Marvell said it is also launching technology to support easier mobile printing via WiFi networks.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Forget your girlfriend, your mobile phone is fast becoming a better companion in times of crisis — you know, when you need to score the best deal on that sexy gadget or you’ve left your wallet in the car.

New data from Nielsen shows that nearly one-third of U.S. smartphone owners (29 percent) now turn to their devices for shopping dos and don’ts. And our new-found love affair with our phones is so promising, most of us are ready to close the deal — 71 percent of app downloaders said they’d like to use their phone to pay at the register.

Mobile shoppers, according to Nielsen’s U.S. Digital Consumer Report, are most keen on comparison shopping while in stores and browsing products on their devices. During the third quarter of 2011, 38 percent of smartphone owners turned to their cell phone for both activities. Thirty-two percent used their device to read up on product reviews, 24 percent searched for coupons, and 22 percent actually purchased a product from their mobile pal.

While just 9 percent of mobile shoppers indicated that they used their phone to pay at the register (we’d hazard a guess that a majority are Starbucks customers), 71 percent of app downloaders said they were interested in using their smartphone as a credit card. And iPhone owners showed even more interest; 75 percent expressed interest in paying by iPhone, and 39 percent said they would be extremely or very interested in using an app for that purpose.

These high percentages point to a mobile wallet future we’ve all seen coming and suggests that early entrants like Google and PayPal have large opportunities to capitalize on consumers’ mobile payment desires.

Nielsen’s findings also fall in line with other recent studies, including one from Pew Research Center that found 52 percent of adult cell phone owners used their phone for shopping-related activities over the holidays.

The data serves as further evidence that brick-and-mortar shoppers and mobile shoppers are no longer two disparate entities.

Photo credit: Roger’s Wife/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Young or old, if you’re loaded, you’re far more likely to own a smartphone.

The finding comes from analytics firm Nielsen. The company surveyed more than 20,000 mobile consumers in the U.S. and found a strong correlation between age, income, and smartphone ownership.

Adults aged 24 to 34 showed the highest proportion of smartphone ownership: 66 percent indicated they owned a smartphone. Overall smartphone penetration in the U.S., according to Nielsen, was at 48 percent in January.

Nielsen also found that, in general, for all age groups, the more money people make, the more likely they are to own a smartphone. Youngsters 18 to 24, however, skew higher for smartphone ownership even at lower salaries.

“Older subscribers with higher incomes are more likely to have a smartphone,” Nielsen said in a blog post on the survey. “For example, those 55-64 making over 100K a year are almost as likely to have a smartphone as those in the 35-44 age bracket making 35-75K per year.”

Clearly, parents and grandparents with extra cash on hand are happy to get hip with the smartphone-toting times. After all, it’s what the kids are doing.

On the whole, consumers are opting to upgrade to smartphones over feature phones. In the past three months, more than 50 percent of people in search of a new device, under the age of 65, chose to purchase a smartphone. And if you look at the 25 to 34 age group specifically, the percentage of smartphone choosers is a whopping 80 percent.

Photo credit: Ed Yourdon, Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Are you addicted to your phone? Fearful of losing your cell signal or having your battery die? You may suffer from nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone. A new study revealed that 66 percent of people in the United Kingom suffer from nomophobia.

Discovered in 2008, nomophobia is defined as the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. When first studied, the phenomenon afflicted 53 percent of respondents. Now, that number has grown to 66 percent, according to a survey conducted by SecurEnvoy, a mobile security service.

Between the genders, women suffer more; 71 percent compared to 61 percent of men. But, men are much more likely to have two phones — compensating for their phobia by having a backup phone. Younger populations are more susceptible too; 77% of 18 to 24 year olds survey takers related to nomophobia.

You have to take these findings with a grain of salt, especially since they come from a mobile security company. But this type of behavior is becoming common. Most of us know at least one person who constantly has their phone by their side. MTV’s real-life documentary series “True Life” even ran an episode about people addicted to text messaging.

Other technology phobias exist too. You can be technophobic (fearful of all advanced technology), ipovlopsychophobic (fear of having your picture taken), or suffer from logizomechanophobia (the fear of computers). There is an opposite of nomophobia too, its called telephonophobia and if you suffer, you are terrified of talking on the phone.

Part of me wants to say that I’ll believe nomophobia exists when I see it in the DSM V, but part of me understands that people suffer from this daily. Excuse me while I go obsessively check my phone to make sure I haven’t lost my signal and my battery is still strong.

Women with phone addiction image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Answer an email from your employer after your work day is over and you’re eligible for overtime pay — but only if you’re a Brazilian citizen, that is.

The worker-friendly amendment was added to the country’s labor code and approved by Brazil President Dilma Rousseff in December.

“[The legislation] says that company emails to workers are equivalent to orders given directly to the employee,” the Associated Press reported. “Labor attorneys told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper this makes it possible for workers answering emails after hours to ask for overtime pay.”

The law is the latest measure designed to address the serious implications of an increasingly 24/7 mobile workforce — it’s also bound to make workers the world round more than a little covetous of their Brazilian peers.

German carmaker Volkswagon recently made headlines for its decision to shut off email to some employees 30 minutes after their shifts end.

[Image via Ian Lamont]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google’s Android operating system is kicking ass and taking names in the mobile software market, and Apple’s iPhone is on the rise in the hardware category, according to newly released data from comScore.

One in ten mobile subscribers are iPhone owners (10.8 percent), according to comScore which surveyed 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers. The iPhone nabbed more than a percent share of the phone manufacturers market form July to October, but still trails Samsung (25.5 percent), LG (20.6 percent) and Motorola (23.6 percent) when it comes to mobile handsets.

Google has no skin in the hardware game, but no matter. Android once again ranked number one in the smartphone platform market share category, and now commands almost half — 46.3 percent to be exact — of the entire market. Apple’s iOS is a distant second with 28.1 percent share, up 1 percent from July. RIM, meanwhile, continues to slide backward; it dropped from 21.7 to 17.2 percent share between July and October. And Windows Phone, which fell from 5.7 to 5.4 percent of the OS market, is not exactly a hit just yet.

Also, according to comScore, a larger percentage of mobile subscribers are texting (71.8 percent), using the browser (44 percent), downloading apps (43.6 percent) and accessing social networking sites (32.3 percent) on their devices.

[Image via svet/Flickr]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Samsung‘s new mobile device lineup will feature flexible screens starting in 2012, the company announced today.

In its quarterly earnings call, Samsung’s vice president of investor relations, Robert Yi, told investors, analysts and press, “The flexible display we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part. The application probably will start from the handset side.”

After flexible-screen mobile phones roll out, the company plans to introduce the same technology for tablets and other devices.

In January 2011, Samsung purchased Liquivista, a strategic acquisition that will allow it to produce the kinds of displays that were announced today. Liquivista made electrowetting display technology, which is used to create mobile and other consumer electronic displays that are bright, low-power, flexible and transparent.

Flexible screen technology was also a focus of Samsung’s in March, when Yongsuk Choi, director of Samsung Mobile Display, gave an overview of the company’s future mobile device plans. At that time, Choi said most of the flexible-display technology Samsung was working on was still in very early stages.

Flexible displays have been on the fringes of up-and-coming mobile technologies for some time. For example, we saw a bendable e-reader from Plastic Logic back in 2008.

More recently, Sony, in particular, has shown some interesting work in the field, demonstrating its first flexible display at CES in early 2009 and showing off advanced, thinner, more flexible displays just last year.

Still, flexible screens aren’t something we’re seeing on the mass market yet; we wonder if consumers will warm to the idea when Samsung takes the wraps off these new devices.

Samsung recently surpassed Apple as the top smartphone manufacturer, shipping 27.8 million smartphones last quarter. Altogether, Samsung’s current share of the smartphone market is 23.8 percent.

Image via DVICE.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

You’re as likely to get cancer from using your cell phone as from drinking coffee. Say what? That’s right, cell phone radiation is not dangerous.

The results of a an 18-year study by researchers in Denmark, tracked the incidence of certain cancers among cell phone users, and found that cell phone owners, and those who did not own cell phones were equally likely to get cancer.

The study, which was led by the Danish Center for Cancer and Epidemiology, had the following conclusions:

Of the 358,403 mobile phone owners looked at, 356 gliomas (a type of brain cancer) and 846 cancers of the central nervous system were seen – both in line with incidence rates among those who did not own a mobile.

Even among those who had had mobiles the longest – 13 years or more – the risk was no higher, the researchers concluded.

The World Health Organization put cell phone usage in the same category as coffee, which cannot be positively linked to incidence of cancer, but cannot be disproven either.

In the U.S., cell phone radiation is measured in the Specific Absorption Ration, or SAR, which tracks the amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the body when using the handset. CNET recently published a list of the 20 best and worst phones available in the U.S. for their radiation output, with the Motorola Bravo as the worst offender, and the Samsung Blue Earth emitting the least radiation.

That doesn’t mean that cell phones can’t be deadly. While the link between cell phone usage and cancer looks increasingly unlikely, a study about cell phone usage and deaths behind the wheel would likely have a very grim conclusion.

H/T: BBC

[Image: Minerva Studio/ Shutterstock]

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday, Meeker returned to talk about internet trends at a pace that was faster than I could type. So I recorded her talk on video (see below).

Her first two trend ideas — globality and mobility — were pretty much the same as last year. We’ve got a big global tech business with lots of mobile growth, and Meeker believes the mobile revolution is just in its infancy. These are themes we’re getting used to hearing from pundits of all sorts, so it’s not surprising Meeker is hitting this topic again.

The growth of the internet and mobile computing are two major trends in technology that have happened faster than the adoption of radio and television. While there are 835 million smartphone users now, the potential for growth is huge, since there are 5.6 billion mobile phone users.

Meeker said that iPods, iPads, and iPhones are selling at tremendous rates, but Android phone sales have grown even faster than those for the iPhone. Consequently, mobile search, mobile ads, mobile commerce, mobile apps and mobile usage are all skyrocketing.

Meeker believes that touchscreens have arrived and user interfaces will move to sound (with Apple’s Siri) and motion-sensing as well (with Microsoft’s Kinect). She believes that internet commerce has become so fast, easy, fun and efficient that it will become more important than ever. She notes that digital commerce is only about 8 percent of the commerce market so far.

Just a few years ago, the U.S. looked weak in mobile technology, she said, but now it is the undisputed leader thanks to the rise of Apple and Google and the decline of Nokia. U.S.-made operating systems now command 64 percent of the smartphone market, compaed to 5 percent just five years ago. Facebook, Amazon and eBay are among 14 major companies from the U.S. that are in the ranks of the top 25 “mega-leaders.” It’s worth noting that 81 percent of the users of the top internet properties are outside the U.S.

China is seeing tremendous growth in mobile users, hitting 459 mobile internet users in 2010, compared to 244 million in the U.S. A total of 11 other countries have users who spend more average hours on social networks than users in the U.S.

Meeker believes that events like the Arab Spring signal the empowerment of people via connected mobile devices. The weak economy presents considerable uncertainty. Consumer confidence is weaker than usual, the stock market is more volatile, and gross domestic product forecasts are all being revised downward for 2011 and 2012.

Here are Meeker’s slides and the full presentation and Q&A in three videos.

KPCB Internet Trends (2011)http://www.scribd.com/embeds/69309864/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Scott Croyle only just took over as the new design head at mobile device company HTC, but the former vice president of design already has big plans.

In the near future, the smartphone and tablet maker will “concentrate on delivering more content and services into our products, focusing on the user experience,” Croyle said in an interview with VentureBeat. “For example, larger screens for streaming video and enhancing the entertainment experience, and front and rear cameras to take advantage of real-time face chatting with friends and family.”

When HTC chief innovation officer Horace Luke left the company for personal reasons last month, the company’s vice president of design, Croyle, took over Luke’s duties. We asked a Croyle a few pointed questions about whether and how HTC’s remarkable and distinctive mobile products might change.

“Horace led HTC through a transition, creating a culture that puts a major emphasis design,” Croyle told VentureBeat of his predecessor. “That culture continues to thrive today… [HTC CEO] Peter Chou’s attention to detail forces us to keep designing products that give people the opportunity to create their own memorable experiences.

“In this sense, my day-to-day won’t change, given that our ‘consumer first’ focus is core to our DNA.”

Luke was a strong guiding force within the HTC after he joined the company in 2006. During his time there, HTC transitioned from an obscure Asian contract manufacturer to a smartphone brand known for its glossy, elegantly designed handsets. To help meet the company’s burgeoning industrial design needs, HTC acquired One & Co. in 2008. The then ten-year-old San Francisco design firm was owned and operated by Croyle, who worked closely with Luke on some of HTC’s most innovative design work.

In hearing from Croyle, it’s clear that HTC’s design team places a huge emphasis on meeting the needs and desires of consumers. In fact, creating customizable, relevant user experiences for every kind of smartphone user is a key piece of Croyle’s philosophy — and something he thinks other manufacturers and handset designers get wrong.

“We focus on the experiences people have while using our products rather than focusing solely on the technology behind it,” he said. “We observe people in their daily lives to have a pulse on what they expect from their mobile devices, which allows us to design a product that is more personalized and can be tailored to a person’s expectations.

“For example, if someone uses their phone to send email and relies on just two or three applications, their experience with their phone is largely different than a person who uses their phone in more complex ways. We give them features to support that. This consumer-centric approach to design stems from the idea that it should be easy for consumers to get the experience that they want from their devices versus assuming everyone will use a device in the same way.”

In addition to zeroing in on how consumers interact with the software, Croyle is also continuing what he called Luke’s palpable passion for continuity in design — design that permeated every aspect of a product launch. “We both believed that a carefully designed product could come from any place, and we believed deeply in a holistic design approach. For example, the HTC Diamond was the first project where HTC made a foray with this approach [in] packaging, marketing and sales. It was not just hardware- or software-focused.”

Although Croyle stated that design is and will always be a focus at HTC, he also said, “We’re always questioning how we approach design, even if we’re not necessarily making a radical change.” In other words, especially since Luke and Croyle have similar philosophies and inspirations, we can expect incremental shifts in how HTC handsets look and feel; but don’t hold your breath for any seismic activity.

“Inspiration can come from anyone, anywhere,” said Croyle. “Inspiration may come from one of our carrier partners or a designer or from observing consumer behavior with a device. It can also come from the design of everyday goods (Shoes! Chairs!) which is why the collaboration with the One & Co. team has always been so effective for HTC.”

Croyle ended the interview by saying that he and his team are “constantly looking for new sources of inspiration, which is why we encourage designers to identify how consumers are using their phones. The focus on user experience aligns with our idea that one size does not fit all, and people should have choices.”

He gave the recently launched HTC Flyer as an example. The tablet-cum-stylus combo was first sketched out at the company’s Taiwan headquarters. After executives hammered out a product-specific design language, the Flyer project was shipped off to the company’s Seattle-based user experience team. The Seatte team’s goal was to make user experience suggestions based on how consumers interacted with HTC product. “Our goal is twofold,” Croyle concluded, “to provide a product that is deeply and holistically driven by design, and to create an unforgettable user experience.”

Mobile malware was up 46 percent in 2010 to 967 threats, compared to 704 in 2009, according to the McAfee Threats Report for the fourth quarter.

That’s small compared to PC threats, but the trend is clear. The renewed interest in attacking mobile platforms comes as smartphones and tablets become a primary computing tool for millions of users. If this trend continues, mobile security may begin to consume as much resources as PC security, which accounts for billions of dollars in investment.

Altogether McAfee said there were 20 million new pieces of malware in 2010, equating to nearly 55,000 new malware threats each day. That’s because cyber criminals are able to automate the creation of new variants of malware. To date, McAfee has identified 55 million pieces of malware, and 360 percent of those were created in 2010.

Spam saw a surprising decline recently. Spam accounted for 80 percent of total email traffic in the fourth quarter. That was the lowest level since the first quarter of 2009. But McAfee said the decline is only because several large spam botnets (or herds of compromised computers that are controlled by cybercriminals) were taken down and spammers are moving to new botnets.

Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, said there is a direct correlation between the popularity of a device and attacks against the device. One of the most high-profile threats was SymbOS/Zitmo.A, which attacked phones with the Symbian operating system, which is still the most popular mobile platform despite Nokia’s significant loss of market share. Another prominent threat was Android/Geinimi, which hid a Trojan in legitimate Android mobile apps.

McAfee said that attacks against mobile platforms were also successful because so many mobile users aren’t aware of mobile security threats. People who believe in putting antivirus software on a PC don’t think about doing that for mobile phones.

Overall, malware keeps spreading. McAfee found that, within the top 100 results of the top daily search terms, 51 percent of the results led to malicious sites. McAfee said that Adobe product vulnerabilities have turned software such as Adobe’s PDFs into prime carriers of malware. McAfee said that trend would continue, as mobile devices support various Adobe technologies.

[image credit: ShaswatPatel]