July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

BARCELONA — 1.7 billion people got a new mobile phone handset last year. What happens to the old ones? Ten million of them have been reused and renewed by eRecyclingCorps. “If subsidies are the drugs of the mobile industry, then incentivized device recycling is the methadone,” says CEO Dave Edmondson from the Mobile World Congress. 

“Those 1.7 billion phones will retain one-third of their value 24 months into their future. That is 100 billion dollars worth of economic value that we are allowing customers to walk into the shop with, walk out with, and then put in a drawer.” Edmondson contends that only 1 percent of handsets worldwide and 1o percent in the U.S. are recycled or reused. 

ERecyclingCorps works with five out of the top seven U.S. mobile operators to offer consumers discounts on a new phone or payment plan when they trade in their old device. My slightly battered 2-year-old Samsung Galaxy SII, for example, is worth around $100. “Unincentivized recycling doesn’t work, ” says Edmondson. “Customers intuitively know that the device they just made a phone call on has some value, even if they don’t know how to monetize it.” The company’s oldest customer — Sprint =- has publicly stated that for every 10 new phones it sells, four are traded in. By 2017, Sprint’s CEO wants to increase that to nine out of 10.

When a customer walks into a shop using eRecycling’s system, they are asked a few simple question about their old phone: Does it power on? Does it have a good LCD? Is there anything broken? The answers are combined with the model type to calculate a trade-in price.

Old phones are shipped to a central facility where the data is erased and they are tested to see if they can be reused. If components are damaged, the device is given a new keyboard, screen, or camera. Finally an upgraded OS and operator-specific software is installed. Phones whose parts cannot be reused are broken down so the raw materials can be recycled. But the company estimates that 80 percent of incoming devices are reused as is or renewed.

There is no agreed definition for what constitutes a refurbished phone. ERecyclingCorps has teamed up with 20 other companies to define precise standards for what it calls a renewed phone. Every time the user moves the slider up and down on a sliding phone, for example, you get wear and tear on the ribbon cable. As long as it works, most refurbishers will not replace it but to qualify as a renewed phone the ribbon must be upgraded since it is a potential point of failure.

So where do the renewed phones end up? Surprisingly, 50 percent of them as resold within the U.S. as insurance replacements, for prepaid programs or used by operators to acquire new customers at a lower subsidy cost. Feature phones often go to sub-Saharan Africa while smartphones are more likely to end up in the hands of an Indian or Chinese urbanite who could never afford a new iPhone. 

Although eRecyclingCorps is a relatively new company (it was founded in 2009), its management team could not be more different from the typical starry-eyed young startup founder. It’s populated by battle-hardened mobile industry veterans, most of whom have held senior posts at mobile operators and device manufacturers, which is not to say that they are not idealists.

“The mobile industry has grown from nothing to a trillion dollar business in 30 years by focusing on the front, ” argues Edmondson.”What’s the next network upgrade? What’s the new application? Nobody looks at the backend, which is creating the largest environmental mess in the history of the world. How many companies at Mobile World Congress are talking about that?”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Yesterday was an interesting day for me at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As always the sheer size of this event is somewhat overwhelming, however there is no better place to see what the future of the mobile industry holds.

One thing that really stood out on day one is that Samsung, which has one of the largest stands here by far, has chosen not to launch its flagship product for the year, the Galaxy S4. Instead the company opted to use social media to announce that the S4 will be unveiled to the world at a special event in New York on March 14 (which will also be streamed online). This is one of the clearest indications yet that the center of the mobile industry has seen a shift from Europe to North America.

Traditionally MWC, and Europe in general, was the dominant market for mobile innovation. Major companies such as Nokia, Ericsson and Vodafone have long held the power and driven industry innovation.

Now the power has shifted to the U.S.. Apple and Google are the leading players in the mobile market with their superiority rooted in software for smartphones. For competitors to rival these big players, they need to be seen on the other side of the Atlantic in Apple and Google’s domestic market. This is without doubt part of Samsung’s rationale for launching the S4 in New York.

However this transfer in epicenter does not mean that the European mobile market has died. In fact, the shift has given rise to a new, thriving market for app development. In the UK in particular the market for mobile app developers, building new products for smartphones, is producing some genuinely brilliant businesses, which are catching the eyes of investors. A great example of this is SwiftKey, which topped the Google Play paid app charts for more days than any other app in 2012.

An example of how the app market has developed in the UK is the Smart UK Project, a competition run by the UK Trade & Investment, which held the final of its contest today here at MWC.

Beginning with 70 UK based mobile companies, a shortlist of 20 was selected and this was then reduced again to five, who had the privilege of presenting to a panel of six judges at the show, of which I was one.

This year’s winner, OpenSignal, is a brilliantly innovative app that can help users to understand the quality of the network coverage they have in any given region. Despite fierce competition, OpenSignal has really wowed the judges with its innovation and practical application. Knowing which mobile network operator best covers where you live is an attractive proposition for consumers and will certainly increase competition among operators.

There has been a clear shift in where the mobile industry considers its main market to be, representing a change in business strategies for handset manufacturers and telcos. This has given rise to new business and investment opportunities, especially in the burgeoning app market. As always, the UK finds itself a hotbed of innovation and creativity and with competitions such as the Smart UK Project, investors don’t have to look far to find their next opportunity.

Frederic Lardieg is a principal at Octopus Ventures. You can follow him on Twitter at @FredLardieg.

Photo: MozillaEU/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Mary-Ann Parlato is Global Insight Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech

With some 70,000 visitors in Barcelona this week for the Mobile World Congress, the tone is being set for the next phase of the dynamic mobile telecommunications industry.

This is coming at a particularly pivotal time in its history as mobile technologies dominate digital communications worldwide and platforms, and operating systems are locked in ever intensifying competition.

Against this backdrop, some important trends are emerging.

Connecting with the next billion consumers

With smartphone usage globally growing exponentially, manufacturers are focusing on expansion to the next generation of consumers. The tagline “connecting the next billion consumers,” is almost an official theme for the gathering. Key brands driving this trend this year are Huawei, Nokia, ZTE, and Firefox.

The Huawei and ZTE brands are showcasing a multitude of products across the entire spectrum of low to high end. One new entrant in particular is generating intense interest: ZTE Open with Firefox.

Firefox OS offers a user friendly interface that provides a few unique functionalities, such as the ability to create your own apps from online searches. These devices will be extremely useful for low end consumers in developing markets.

Smartphone penetration is currently low in these markets due to the expense of current smartphone products and tariffs. Yet many in the market have proved a desire to use an OS as ownership of “smartphone lookalikes” has increased over time. These devices have the benefit of looking like a smartphone, yet only include a few advanced features such as messaging, without any OS. These handsets and plans are generally lower in price and thus more affordable for the low end consumer in these markets.

The availability of more OS brands and devices will lead to fierce competition and ultimately provide consumers in these markets with affordable smartphone options for the very first time.

It’s not the OS, it’s the form factor that matters

In many booths, companies’ product showcasing and pitching seemed to stop at the point of physical inspection. This is thanks to the expansion and perceived equivalence of key operating systems dominating most of the new devices at MWC.

Now, differentiation surrounds the physical product — the materials, the size, the look and in particular, the feel. In other words, like the pre-smartphone era, the manufacturer brand’s physical product is of key focus moving forward.

For a consumer deciding to purchase, a physical trial of the product is important. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech latest US data shows that 24 percent of consumers that considered the purchase of a smartphone in December 2012 wanted to test the phone themselves. This is in fact the most influential source in considering a new smartphone, followed by a promotional offer at 15 percent, and the in-store display at 14 percent.

Fablets, the physically larger flagship devices, were an interesting range of products at the show. Smartphones with a 5″ or larger screen were prominent across the show, from Huawei’s Ascend Mate to ZTE’s GRAND Memo. Five inch screen flagships are almost becoming the norm from what one can see at MWC.

Category 4 connectivity & BYOD

“Ultrafast” connectivity was the tagline at Huawei’s stand.

New devices’ — think Ascend P2 and P1 — major selling point was the LTE category 4 connectivity which delivers up to 150 Mbps download speeds. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data showcases that connectivity is important to consumers, ranking in the top five reasons why consumers are either satisfied or dissatisfied with their current phone.

While consumers are satisfied with current functionalities such as the camera and internet browsing, only 26 percent of current smartphone owners say they are satisfied with their connectivity.

Another particular roll out to notice was Samsung’s new KNOX system. This BYOD system from Samsung will be aimed at the enterprise market, providing consumers with the ability to have their personal and business phone all in one and will be available on key Galaxy devices later this year in the UK. Kantar Worldpanel ComTech US data shows that of those who bought a smartphone for themselves in January, eight percent have their company paying for their calls.

This shows that BYOD approaches are currently being utilized across businesses and are likely to continue.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech USA maintains the largest continuous consumer research mobile phone panel of its kind in the world, conducting more than 240,000 interviews per year in the U.S. alone. ComTech tracks mobile phone behavior and the customer journey, including purchasing of phones, mobile phone bills/airtime, and source of purchase and phone usage. 

photo credit: LGEPR via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

I always get asked, “What was the big theme at MWC this year?”

It’s a hard question to answer, since there is so much going on. But there is one way to gauge it, by looking at who is exhibiting, how big the space is that they rented, and where the are booths in relation to each other.

This is not a perfect analysis, because some companies choose not to attend (Apple being the prime example). But there is a message even in absence. Two years ago, Nokia decided not to have a booth, but Samsung took its spot and then a year later overtook its market share.

At this point, you probably know more about the specific news coming out of Barcelona than I do. From the ground, there’s no way to keep track of all the press releases and keynotes. Every once and while someone mentions some tidbit. And I start every meeting by asking each company what they are announcing at the show. But that’s just a small sliver of the data flow.

Its hard to keep up because this show is crowded. Its a giant space, but at times the walkways are complete gridlock. First conclusion: This is a healthy industry.

The big handset vendor booths are crowded. Samsung’s sprawling expense feels like a high end department store, there’s so much on offer. Huawei, LG, Sony and ZTE all have some nice phones on display, and their smaller ‘booths’ are buzzing. The HTC booth features gymnasts, and what is often mentioned as the best phone introduced at the show. The Nokia booth features a massive conga line every hour. They have some phones too. The only exception to the merriment is the Motorola booth. For some reason they decided to decorate their showspace with high walls and climbing vines, so it’s hard not to think of Ancient Roman ruins. They have two models on display, the Droid RAZR HD and RAZRi, both of which are at six months old at least. And neither was running the latest version of Android, even though Motorola is now part of Google’s corporate family. The assumption is that Motorola is saving its best for Google I/O in May, which is odd because carriers buy phones in bulk at MWC, not at I/O.

Different halls focus on different types of companies. This year Hall 3 seems to have the largest booths. Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, and Alcatel all seem to have a half acre apiece there. The smaller networking and backhaul equipment vendors congregate in Hall 7. Hall 8 is where you find the app and monetization companies. This is not a perfect system, but it helps to keep track of what’s what.

It is hard to do a precise analysis because this venue is bigger than that of past shows, but you could probably learn something meaningful by comparing the amount of floor space reserved for each kind of company.

For instance, “App Planet” used to be lots of small stands from dozens of app and game vendors. Now it is home to large exhibitions from ad networks, analytics companies, and gaming studios like Gree.

Big telco vendors like Alcatel, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia Siemens all have huge spaces, but the antenna, base station component, power system and cabling companies now consume far less square footage than in the past.

One thing that has not changed is that the biggest exhibitors, notably Ericsson, still maintain gigantic facilities set apart from the main building. These companies sell to carriers and need a lot of space to host big operator entourages, display big pieces of hardware, and sign big deals. I heard one guesstimate that Ericsson spent $15 million on the exhibition this year, but signed $5 billion in contracts at the show. Seems like a good investment. In fact, Ericsson’s ‘booth’ really seems to be a village, or a show in its own right, complete with its own entertainment, restaurant-scale catering, and numerous sub-sections.

Looked at in this light, one of the more notable themes this year is the growing importance of the enterprise in mobile. Typically MWC does not attract a lot of non-carrier corporate buyers.

But that does not seem to have stopped Airwatch. This provider of Mobile Device Management (MDM) and enterprise mobility software had a space in Hall 3 that appears to be larger than even that of its neighbors, Qualcomm and Intel.

Set aside the fact that Airwatch could probably hold all of its employees in a quarter of that space, its presence is a pretty clear sign that software is now a major force at MWC.

Photo credit: VentureBeat/Jonathan Goldberg

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

[This is the latest installment of Jonathan Goldberg's MWC 2013 travelogue. We're hoping he won't be too exhausted to file another news-filled post tomorrow. --Ed.]

Tonight is the Night of Parties. Twitter, Nokia, Ericsson, Andreessen Horowitz, and a few others hosted after-hours events today. Last year, Google won the best event title by general acclaim. This year they did another great event, but word on the street is that Air Watch had the real blow-out. The array of choices is overwhelming.

All this makes for some late nights.

The show officially closes at 7 p.m. But many companies host cocktails starting at 5 or 6. Getting out of the Fira conference center can take an hour.

Then, people in Barcelona eat dinner late. Exceptions are made for all these strange foreigners, but most of the year if you go into a restaurant at 8 p.m. you’ll qualify for the Early Bird discount — and that’s if the restaurant is even open yet.

See where this is going?

8 p.m. is too early for dinner. So a lot of times people hold a business meeting over drinks. Then a business dinner at 10. Swing by the “Bubble over Barcelona” party after that. The first live music act at the Google party goes on at 10:30. And the club is open until 2:30.

At this point, you have to be careful. If you still have any charge left in your phone, you may get a text from a friend. And if they’re Nokia employees they probably have a table at a nice lounge with a cold bottle of vodka and good champagne.

By this point transit is hard to come by.

And it is probably around this time you remind yourself that next year you really, really should not schedule any 8 a.m. breakfast meetings.

Buenas Noches, Barcelona.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Photo credit: VentureBeat/Jonathan Goldberg

Exent is launching its GameTanium mobile-gaming subscription service for the television.

The company is adapting its GameTanium Mobile service to smart TVs, enabling Android-based smartphone games to be displayed on a TV while the mobile device serves as a game controller. Exent made the announcement of the services, which will be commercially available later this year, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, it announced that Deutsche Telekom will debut GameTanium in Poland.

Players will still be able to use smartphone controls — like touch, tap, drag, and motion-sensing — to control a game on the TV. They can start a game on a phone and continue to play it on the TV when they are home. Then they can resume playing on the phone after that.

Israel-based Exent was founded in 1992 and went through several gyrations to find a market for its digital distribution technology. Now the company is focused on enabling “anytime, anywhere” games. Users who subscribe to GameTanium on Android will have access to new games each week. The service will help small developers get their games discovered since it has featured content, recommendations, ratings, and a big collection of video trailers.

Last year, Exent launched its tablet-based version of GameTanium at Mobile World Congress. That service is being demonstrated at the show again this year.

The company said GameTanium is a way for mobile operators and device makers to engage customers on smartphones, tablets, and TVs. It offers a turnkey service that can help those companies increase their average revenue per user and strengthen brand loyalty. The operators and device makers can put their own brand names on the GameTanium service. Titles include hits like Fruit Ninja, Collapse!, and Plants vs. Zombies.

“We remain focused on delivering a revolutionary, all-you-can-play subscription games service that supports anytime, anywhere gameplay,” says Zvi Levgoren, the chief executive at Exent. “Our GameTanium for TV service represents the next evolution of that vision and a tremendous opportunity for mobile operators as it enables them to keeps their customers actively engaged whether they are on the go or relaxing on the couch at home.”

Customers using Exent’s service include Verizon, AIS, Telmex, CenturyLink, Lenovo, and Asus. Deutsche Telekom will offer GameTanium in Poland with more than 150 games from top publishers and developers.

“We’re pleased to partner with Exent and be the first operator in Europe to offer such a mobile-games subscription service to our Android users.” said Heikki Makijarvi, the senior vice president at Deutsche Telekom. “Subscription is the preferred consumption model for entertainment services, and we are working diligently to partner with leading players to bring the best of these types of offerings to our customers. Following successful partnerships in the subscription music space, for example with Spotify, this addition of the GameTanium service is a natural progression as games are routinely a top content request of our customers, and Exent is the perfect candidate to provide such services.”

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Last week we suggested a few things to keep an eye out for at Mobile World Congress, and last night we had our first sighting.

Mozilla announced a greatly expanded line-up for its Firefox OS. Firefox OS, or FOS, is interesting because it is entirely ‘web-based,’ meaning the average HTML-literate web developer can write an app for the system. Many developers (and carriers) see this as somewhat of a holy grail, the ultimate end game of all the mobile operating system platform wars.

Creating great mobile experiences in a world of OS fragmentation is one of the major themes of VentureBeat’s invitation-only Mobile Summit, which is only six weeks away (April 1-2 in Sausalito, Calif.). Read more about the Mobile Summit themes.

Firefox will not bring an end to the platform wars, but it is a step in that direction. In our post last week, we told you to keep an eye out for new hardware partners and new carriers. And at its press event yesterday, Mozilla delivered both. They now have three hardware partners including TCL (aka Alcatel), LG Electronics, and ZTE. That’s a good start, with devices shipping ‘this summer.’

Mozilla also announced 17 carrier partners, and this is probably far more important. Telefonica was already on board, having been the first to announce Firefox OS support last year. Added to this were America Movil, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Smart, SIngTel, Sprint, Vimplecom, and a few more.

You may not recognize some of the names on this list, and that’s because Firefox OS is targeting carriers in emerging markets. But Mozilla ha now lined up something like 17 of the top 30 carriers globally. This is a pretty serious list.

So far so good. There is still a lot we don’t know about Firefox OS, and it is still largely untested in the marketplace. But last night annoucement shows the company has made considerable progress.

Nokia launched four new phones today at Mobile World Congress, among them the Nokia Lumia 520. The 520 features a rounded back to fit in the palm, a 4-inch supersensitive screen, 8GB of storage, and a 5 megapixel camera.  The device will cost a mere 139 EUR ($184) without a contract.

At the slightly higher price point of 249 EUR ($331), the Nokia Lumia 720 delivers a HD-quality 6.7 megapixel camera with a flash designed to take clear pictures in low lighting conditions on your nights out. The 4.3-inch LCD display comes with a filter to reduce glare during outdoor use.

At the other end of the scale, Nokia also announced its cheapest device ever aimed at emerging markets. The bare bones Nokia 105 will cost a mere 15 EUR, has no camera, and sports a tiny 1.5-inch screen, but the upside of the pared-down feature set is that can run without a charge for up to 35 days (12.5 hours talk time). For the millions people who have no access to grid power, charging is a major consideration. It also sports its own flashlight and FM radio, essential tools in places like sub-Saharan Africa.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Intel has made just a little progress in getting into mobile devices. But it is determined to make the strategic jump from PC chips to mobile processors. Today, the world’s biggest chip maker is launching a fast dual-core Atom mobile processor for mainstream smartphones and Android tablets.

The move shows that Intel still wants to break into mobile devices despite the advantages of ARM (and licensees such as Qualcomm) and its low-power technology that suits devices that require long battery lives and stellar performance. Smartphones are a strategic market since they are expected to ship 500 million units a year by 2015.

Intel said the new chips will enable a new generation of faster and power-efficient smartphones and tablets. That means the devices will give consumers smooth web browsing, glitch-free high-definition movies, and a zippy Android app experience.

The new Intel Atom Processor-based Z25xx platform (formerly code-named Clover Trail +) has double the computing power of last year’s model and three times the graphics capabilities. It enables devices — smartphones or Android tablets — with competitive battery lives. Intel made the announcement at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain.

The chip has one of the smallest and lowest-power multimode-multiband LTE wireless solutions, Intel said. It is shipping single-mode LTE now and multimode devices will ship later in the first half of the year.

Previously announced customers for the Intel Atom Z2420 processor include Acer, Lave, and Safaricom.  New smartphone customer Etisalat in Egypt is adopting the chip, and so is Asus, which is expected to use the new Atom chip in a 7-inch phone-like Android tablet, dubbed a “phablet.”

Intel said more original device manufacturers will adopt the company’s next-generation Atom chip, code-named Bay Trail, for launch during the holidays of 2013. Those ODMs include Compal, ECS, Pegatron, Quanta and Wistron.

“Today’s announcements build on Intel’s growing device portfolio across a range of mobile market segments,” said Hermann Eul, Intel vice president and co-general manager of Intel’s mobile and communications group. “In less than a year’s time we have worked closely with customers to bring 10 Intel-based smartphones to market in more than 20 countries, and have also delivered an industry-leading low-power Atom SoC tablet solution running Windows 8, and shipping with more than 10 customers today.

He added, “Looking forward, we will build upon this foundation and work closely with our ecosystem partners, across operating systems, to deliver the best mobile products and experiences for consumers with Intel Inside.”

The new Atom processors are built with Intel’s 32-nanometer manufacturing process and are available in speeds of 2.0 gigahertz (Z2580), 1.6 gigahertz (Z2560), and 1.2 gigahertz (Z2520). The graphics technology built into the device should enable fast-action 3D games running at 30 frames per second, Intel said.

The Intel chips will square off against rival technology from Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung, Marvell and a bunch of other chip makers.

Later this year, Intel will move to 22-nanometer manufacturing, which yields chips that are faster, cheaper, and more power efficient than 32-nanometer manufacturing can. The new Atom chip using 22-nanometer manufacturing is code-named Merrifield, and it will have a brand new microarchitecture as well.

Intel said that the new Atom has support for two cameras, with the main camera sensor able to capture 16-megapixel images. It can also do panorama captures at 15 frames per second for 8-megapixel photos.

Intel is working with partners to build identity protection into the chip. Its partners include including Feitian, Garanti Bank, MasterCard, McAfee, SecureKey Technologies, Symantec, Vasco Data Security International, Visa.

Intel’s latest LTE solution is the Intel XMM 7160.

“ With Intel shipping the XMM 7160 LTE solutions to customers now, this gives them a real shot at picking at Qualcomm’s discrete LTE franchise, particularly with Apple,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. “Intel’s current Medfield-based Atom processors are shipping in 10 phones that are selling in 20 countries.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

It’s been a long day of traveling, but a sunny day in Barcelona can lift a lot of spirits.

I’m heading to Mobile World Congress. This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. MWC is still an important conference (I’m thinking of you CES), and Barcelona is a great city.

I’ll be posting on industry events during the coming week, but I also hope to capture a little bit of the experience beyond the press releases, demos and meetings. Think of this as a guide for planning your trip next year.

The first thing to know about MWC is that the show is big. Something like 70,000 people attended last year, and it creates a sense that foreigners are overrunning the city. That started at the airport when I was departing the U.S. When they called boarding for “Executive Platinum” cardholders, 100 people rushed the podium. The hard-core road warriors were migrating.

This year MWC is at a new venue. Barcelona has great mass transit. But on Sunday the metro was empty except for the line heading out to the Fira, the conference venue. That platform was crowded with people who exuded “telecom.” And I saw two friends in line.

Moving the show to the new venue has caused all kinds of consternation among long-time attedess. Everyone remembers last year’s transit strike, and the Fira Europa is in a remote location. The old venue was in the middle of town, and very compact. No meeting was more than a 5 minute walk from the next meeting. The new site is much bigger, which is why they moved it. Still, any gathering of attendees (for instance in the waiting lounge of the airport for a five-hour delayed flight) will eventually have someone fretting about the new locale. A good cure for this is to say, “I remember when the show was in Cannes 10 years ago. They never had enough hotel rooms, and we had to rent a car and drive an hour each way.”

Personally, I think all this anxiety about the new venue stems from something deeper. Five years ago, this was a telecom conference. The big exhibitors made switches, antennas, signalling sytems, testing boxes, subscriber databases, and microwave radios.

Today, half the show is apps, mobile software, and tools for making apps and mobile software. This conference literally used to be filled with men with grey beards. The grey beards are now in a shrinking minority, and no one is quite sure what that means. It’s a new industry.

Regardless, registration is now much easier. Its a sunny day in Barcelona. And now it’s time for sangria and paella.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Photo credit: VentureBeat/Jonathan Goldberg

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

1) The Mobile Experience

In this theme, we’re looking at the intersection of design and technology. Smartphone hardware is starting to all look alike. So increasingly the only way to stand out is through building a better user experience. The platform wars are now a race to find new ways to people to interact with their devices. Look for advances in voice control, gesture recognition, contextual awareness and smart design.

Look for news from some of the smaller players. In particular, we are watching to see if Firefox Mobile gets traction at other carriers and handset makers. Same goes for Microsoft. Bonus points if you can spot any Apple employees walking the show floor.

This is not a big show for ad network news, but we will be looking for movement from the carriers. Who is partnering with whom? And which carriers are going to try and go it alone?

We anticipate a lot of new mobile payment schemes. Some more workable than others. We would also watch for new ways to use NFC chips in phones. Many think that we need to have these in devices for mobile payments to take off, but we will probably see NFC chips used for things other than payments first.

Expect all the big equipment vendors to showcase their small cell solutions. Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, and ZTE will probably all have something to say. But also keep an eye out for smaller companies like Accedian and Spider Cloud who are driving much of the innovation in the space.

We expect all the chip companies will announce something about LTE product launches (some have already done so). But watch the details. When will these chips actually ship as opposed to ‘sample’?

MWC tends to be a carrier-heavy show, and we expect to see digital living rooms built around carrier plans. More interesting may be other sensor networks and “M2M” (machine to machine) systems.

With software companies taking a growing share of the show’s square footage, you should look to startups like Apperian, AirWatch, and Enterproid as well as stalwarts like Good Technology and Mobile Iron for interesting news here.

Photo via Christine und Hagen Graf/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Touch feedback makes a user interface better by providing confirmation, enabling a sense of realism, and creating richer communication.

That’s the view of Immersion, the maker of haptics, or electronics that deliver touch feedback — such as a vibration or the sense of a button being pushed — through touchscreens and other devices. Today, it is launching a way to get more touch-feedback technology into more devices, mainly by designing user interface experiences that device makers can easily adopt.

The company has shipped more than 550 million TouchSense products.

Founded in 1993, Immersion always has a tough sell because its touch technology adds cost to a system, and you can’t always describe why it makes the experience of using a device better.

But the San Jose, Calif.-based company argues that mobile communications devices can feel lifeless, isolated, and detached if they don’t offer feedback to the user.

“Everyone is familiar with the idea of telepresence, the notion that while we’re talking on a phone, we create a shared audio space with others. With Tactile Presence, we have extended the idea of a shared space to include the sense of touch,” said Immersion’s Chris Ullrich, vice president of user experience. “The sense of touch is fundamental, emotive, and creates a strong sense of connection. With Tactile Presence, OEMs [original equipment manufacturers, or gadget makers] can harness this powerful sense to create more satisfying mobile telepresence experiences.”

The company will be demonstrating its new Tactile Presence and Integrated Themes solutions at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain, next week.

Immersion still hasn’t sold Apple on the idea, but the Android operating system from Google has supported haptics since the 2.1 version of the software.

A wide range of devices use them. The Samsung Galaxy S III, the Samsung Note 2, and the Samsung Note 10.1 use haptics. So does the LG Optimus 4. NEC, Fujitsu, and Panasonic have also adopted haptics.

Game makers such as Rockstar Games, Sega, Gamevil, and Handy Games have tapped touch feedback. Several car makers have used haptics in instrument controls. And game peripheral makers such as Razer have also adopted Immersion’s technology.

When it comes to confirmation, Immersion says getting feedback in your finger improves your confidence that you have performed an action such as pushed a button. It also improves accuracy, usability, and intuitive interaction.

Realism is another important result of haptics. A button feels like a button when you push it. It creates the illusion of physical reality in a device that is trying to deliver an illusion to you for the sake of entertainment. And once you interact with haptics, you can recall the effects from the memory of the touch feedback alone, Immersion argues.

Immersion believes that brand messages can be delivered through touch. Intel’s famous computer sounds became familiar to people from its commercials. But the same kind of brand recognition could be delivered through the unique feel of an object as well. Brand makers will be able to tap this technology starting in the second quarter, Immersion said.

In a design style dubbed skeuomorphic, Immersion says that product designers at Samsung created a water-like effect using sounds of droplets and visuals of those droplets hitting the water. You can enhance that feeling by adding a sense of touch to the feel of the drops as they splash in the water. Customers who tested the effect said they could “feel the water” even though they weren’t touching real water.

And when it comes to rich communications — like communicating one lover’s touch to another through a phone — haptics can work wonders. You could, for instance, create an app where you can tap on the phone and the person on the other side of the phone call could feel the vibrations on the phone. Immersion calls these effects “touch trails.” This kind of “tactile presence” technology will be available to gadget makers in the second half of 2013.

To make it easier for developers, Immersion provides an applications programming interface (API) to implement the effects in smartphones or tablets.

Over time, Immersion’s technology has gotten less expensive. And the company says that haptics effects consume only about 2 percent of a smartphone’s processing power, as long as the device uses Immersion’s TouchSense embedded software. Without that software, the haptics use about 7 percent of the processing power.

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Mounting its biggest challenge to market leader Qualcomm, Nvidia is introducing its first mobile processor with integrated wireless data technology. The company says the result will be smartphones with killer processing power and 3D graphics.

The new Tegra 4i has the highest performance of any single-chip smartphone processor, according to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia. The chip represents the maker’s big chance to grab market share in smartphones as it shifts from its mainstay business of developing graphics chips for personal computers to creating chips for mobile devices.

Nvidia is announcing the chip ahead of the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, where the Tegra 4i will be on display. It will also have sample smartphone designs to make it easier for customers to adopt it. As you can see from the above picture, the Tegra 4i is smaller than the Tegra 4 chip for tablets and superphones.

But the competition is tough. Qualcomm is introducing its 600 and 800 series Snapdragon processors in the coming months, and it has lots of design wins. Those processors have high-end 3D graphics and high-speed LTE data networking that can deliver 150-megabits-a-second data access (once such networks emerge).

Still, Nvidia says its chip is half the size of its competitor’s, which means it will likely be cheaper and consume less power, resulting in longer battery life. Nvidia claims that the Tegra 4i can generate performance per square millimeter that is 2.5 times better than the Snapdragon 800 series chip. The 4i’s raw performance is also faster, and it delivers blazing fast Web browsing, Nvidia said.

Nvidia’s chip is sampling now, and a few phones could feature it later this year. But more smartphones with the chip should debut in the spring of 2014. Qualcomm, by contrast, said devices with its 800 series chip could appear mid-year.

“The Nvidia Tegra 4i looks competitive on a performance-per-mm2 basis, but until we see third-party tests between Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and Nvidia’s Tegra 4i, no one knows for certain,” said Patrick Moorhead, president of analyst firm Moor Insights & Strategy. “Qualcomm did provide enough performance details at CES where one could derive a reasonable competitive estimate. If the Tegra 4i performance estimates do stand, then Nvidia could be very competitive, particularly in China and southeast Asia, where performance at a cost level means a lot.”

Moorhead added, “Nvidia’s biggest differentiator with the 4i is its integrated and software-upgradable LTE modem combined with its graphics brand.  This could be the first significant threat to Qualcomm in that it’s the first time a high performance system-on-a-chip with integrated LTE is available from someone other than Qualcomm.”

The Tegra 4i, previously code-named Project Grey, has 60 custom graphics cores for 3D graphics and four heavy-duty microprocessor cores to handle computing tasks. It also has a version of Nvidia’s i500 LTE modem, optimized for integration with the processor. The modem can deliver up to 150 megabits per second LTE data service.

The processor uses ARM’s newest and most power-efficient core, the 2.3-gigahertz R4 Cortex-A9 central processing unit. Nvidia also added a fifth lightweight core to handle small tasks while saving on battery life.

Nvidia says the design enables an “extremely power-efficient, compact, high-performance mobile processor that enables smartphone performance and capability previously available only in expensive superphones.”

Phil Carmack, senior vice president of the mobile business at Nvidia, said, “Nvidia is delivering for the first time a single, integrated processor that powers all the major functions of a smartphone. Tegra 4i phones will provide amazing computing power, world-class phone capabilities, and exceptionally long battery life.”

ARM and Nvidia jointly designed the new CPU, basing it on the ARM Cortex-9 processor. Tom Cronk, executive vice president at ARM, said the project focused on driving performance, efficiency, and improvements in streaming and responsiveness.

The Tegra 4i has lesser graphics capabilities than the 72-graphics-core Tegra 4 introduced in January for tablet computers and Nvidia’s Project Shield mobile gaming device. But it’s still a powerhouse, with more than five times the number of graphics cores as last year’s Tegra 3 processor.

Nvidia says the graphics processing can deliver “high-quality, console-quality gaming experiences and full 1080p high-definition displays.”

The LTE modem is an optimized version of Nvidia’s i500 software-defined radio chip, with LTE and network-upgrade technology. The 4i mobile processor’s camera includes the Computational Photography Architecture first seen in the Tegra 4. The advanced features include high-dynamic range, where the camera can take a good picture even it contains bright and shadowy parts.

The camera also has tap-to-track functions and panoramic photos with high-dynamic range.

To spur adoption, Nvidia introduced its Phoenix reference smartphone platform — a design that phone makers can use as a model for their own smartphones. The platform’s purpose is to help customers get to the market quicker.

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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.

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Mobile payments is a sector on the cusp of exploding. The Nilson Report recently found that 73 percent of smartphone owners have used their device while shopping, yet only 2 percent claim to have used a mobile wallet or made an in-app purchase. At last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I saw a swathe of companies hoping to claim a piece of the pie.

BoxPAY is looking to challenge mobile wallets with its SMS-based payments platform. Once you have signed up, you simply text your phone number and a PIN code to make a purchase, which is then automatically added to your phone bill. This system seems like it will be great for low-value transactions such as in app purchases or buying premium news content. The company has offices in Ireland, the US, Australia, and South Africa.

UK firm Cogenta demoed its latest product Sccope in Barcelona. Sccope is a price-comparison app that can be linked to the upcoming wallet from UK mobile operator O2. I was able to search for a particular model of television on the app and then pay for it online with a card registered with O2. To complete a transaction, you have to enter the security code on the back of your card for authentication, making Sccope great for high-value transactions but less effective for micropayments.

One company exhibiting at MWC that seemed to be bucking the trend for NFC-enabled payments was DigiMo. The DigiMo app features a QR-code reader that can scan product barcodes and allows users to pay for those products at the point-of-sale, whether that point of sale is NFC-equipped or not. If this form of payment were to take off, merchants could take mobile payments without the expense of upgrading their infrastructure to NFC. Only time will tell if DigiMo’s business strategy will pay off. The company is based in Israel.

The final mobile payments company that really caught my eye at MWC was Blippar. It has used augmented reality technology to create an app with image recognition capabilities, pictured at top. As a demo, the company took a smartphone and hovered it in front of a film poster for Jurassic Park with a dinosaur on it. On the phone screen, the dinosaur jumped out of the phone, roared, and you could then purchase tickets for the film. When augmented reality is this good, who needs reality? Blippar is based in the UK and has plan to expand globally this year. Check out the video demo of Blippar below:

Alex McCracken is Relationship Director at Silicon Valley Bank.

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
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Windows 8 is certain to make a huge splash with consumers — not just because it’s the next version of Windows, but because Microsoft has finally managed to crack the code for putting Windows on tablets.

But I think Windows 8 also teaches us something important about the fledgling tablet category: effective tablets need to be laser-focused on offering an experience that’s more than just a blown up mobile OS. (And making sure developers are eager to build for your platform doesn’t hurt either.)

Google has learned this the hard way in its struggles with Android tablets. First-generation Android slates, like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, offered the typical Android smartphone experience on a bigger screen, without any tablet app support. Google added a shiny new interface and support for true tablet apps with Android 3.0, but developers (and consumers) didn’t really bite.

It also certainly didn’t help that Android tablets were typically more expensive than the iPad, while offering a less-useful experience.

Meanwhile, Apple figured out early on that the iPad had to offer something beyond the iPhone’s experience to entice consumers. Even though the iPad is running iOS, the same mobile operating system as the iPhone, Apple has pushed developers to create tablet-specific apps, and the iPad sports gestures and features that the iPhone still lacks.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is taking its approach to tablets a step beyond Apple, something that the company made abundantly clear during its unveiling for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview in Barcelona. (Check out our hands-on preview with a Windows 8 tablet.) Unlike Android or iOS, Windows 8 is a full-fledged desktop operating system, not just a souped-up mobile OS on a bigger screen. Microsoft is positioning Windows 8 as its OS approach for all computers in the next decade, not just tablets.

Since it’s banking so heavily on Windows 8, Microsoft has decided to boldly go beyond our preconceived notions of Windows. The Metro interface, borrowed from Windows Phone 7, is a fundamental reshaping of how we approach Windows. Now the OS is equally suited to touchscreen tablets, the keyboard and mouse, and even hybrid devices that combine all of those input mechanisms.

Despite the wide variety of device support, there’s a clear focus on design with Windows 8 that Android has lacked on tablets for some time. Android 3.0 was an improvement over Google’s initial stab, and Android 4.0 steps it up even further, but even that doesn’t sport the same cohesive design vision that Windows 8 does.

Microsoft has also been courting developers heavily to create Metro-style Windows 8 apps for the Windows Store. Google, on the other hand, has done very little to encourage Android developers to create tablet apps. The app ecosystem is vital to the success of any platform, and without it, Google doesn’t have a shot at succeeding with tablets.

Google’s Android head, Andy Rubin, said the company will “double down” on tablets this year, although he said developers shouldn’t have to build their apps multiple times for different form factors.

Windows 8 fulfills a decades-long quest for Microsoft, which started pursuing pen-based tablets in 2001 with the Microsoft Tablet PC specification. Prior to that, the company spent the ’90s on the ill-fated Windows for Pen Computing software.

Microsoft may have been wrong about the use of a stylus pen, but the company has clearly seen the potential of tablets for some time.

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
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Samsung didn’t do a good job of hiding the fact that it was going to show off a larger Galaxy Note here at Mobile World Congress (there were giant posters everywhere before the show started), but that doesn’t mean the device is any less impressive.

As the video below shows, the Galaxy Note 10.1 looks a lot like the company’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet. What’s different is that the Note 10.1 includes support for the company’s S Pen stylus, which is powered by Wacom technology. I found the S Pen to be a nice addition to the original Galaxy Note, but that device was too small to work well for handwriting, and too large to work well as a phone.

The Galaxy Note 10.1, however, seems perfectly suited to handwriting and drawing with the S Pen.

I only had a few minutes to play with the device, but from the get-go I found it easier to write on the Galaxy 10.1 than I could with the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note. And given that Samsung’s Android tablets so far haven’t exactly sold like hotcakes, the company could use a significant feature to differentiate its tablets from the iPad.

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The 41-megapixel camera on Nokia’s 808 PureView not only wowed the audience at the Mobile World Congress this week, it also landed Nokia the “Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet at Mobile World Congress 2012” award.

A panel of judges selected the PureView as their top device of the show — likely not because it’s a smartphone everyone will want (it’s still running a dated OS), but because it was the only device to truly surprise us at Mobile World Congress. HTC’s One series phone was close in the running, and other devices, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and Asus PadFone, were also on the short-list for the award.

“It’s a fantastic award because it signifies that consumer experience counts,” Nokia EVP of smart devices Jo Harlow said to the Nokia Conversations blog. “It’s about tech, but it’s about how tech is used to make a consumer have a fantastic experience. … These are first signals that we are executing against our strategy,” she added. “That we’re back. That we’re bringing great products to our consumers — and that this is just the beginning. There’s lot more to come.”

The PureView camera technology on the Nokia 808 is more than just hype. A Nokia engineer explained to us how the camera gets such killer shots, and the company has also put some excellent sample shots online at Flickr.

Thankfully, Nokia has said it intends to bring the PureView technology to future phones, so you can expect to see killer cameras in some Windows Phone devices from Nokia within the next few years.

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Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s Mobile World Congress keynotes have always been interesting, but his keynote yesterday just about floored me as he put on his futurist hat with complete sincerity.

It’s not only a good watch, it’s required viewing.

Now you can check it out for yourself, as Google has just uploaded the entire keynote to YouTube. Skip past the opening Android on Chrome demonstration (though it’s still cool), and you’ll see Schmidt discuss the digital divide, how technology will fundamentally shape society in the future, and how tiny robots will let us experience remote events in holographic 3D.

It’s also worth watching for choice quotes like this: “Computer science is more than writing code and coding is more than writing programs… Developers are the engineers of human freedom.”

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.

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Mobile advertising and marketing companies have turned out in droves this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Their large presence is telling of just how much mobile content is ad-supported. eMarketer predicts that ad-supported content will account for almost a third of mobile revenues by 2015 to over $1 billion. It’s a hot topic in the telecoms world right now, buoyed by Facebook’s intention to feature mobile ads in the very near future.

There’s a tremendous buzz about innovative, mobile-specific advertising at the Barcelona show. The most prominent example of this trend is Google Mobile Ads, yet I’ve been more impressed by some of the less prominent companies’ offerings. As a coffee addict, I was drawn in by Starbucks’ rich media ad on the Adfonic platform. The ad lets you draw your own cup designs, which are then submitted to Starbucks. The coffee giant will pick out a winning design in a contest each month.

My inner teenager likewise loved Millennial Media’s ads for Porsche and Modern Warfare III. The Porsche ads focus on “everyday magic” moments – namely Porsche owners rhapsodizing about their cars and how great they are to use. Behind-the-scenes analytics make it possible to target consumers who have previously engaged with Porsche ads. It has also been great to see the male-skewed Modern Warfare III ads at Barcelona. Users can watch a video to rouse interest in the game, order a copy through their phone, or visit the game’s Facebook page through an expandable banner.

“Real-time” advertising is another area that is clearly blossoming in 2012. Mobile marketing firm Celltick showed off technology that can target consumers based on location information from SIM cards. Celltick is demoing how consumers can get six different daily deals on their mobiles depending on their location, giving advertisers a much higher click-through rate than location-neutral marketing.

Mobile advertising is one area of telecoms that’s clearly flourishing right now and clearly a space to keep an eye on.

Alex McCracken is Relationship Director at Silicon Valley Bank.

Microsoft today kicked off the launch of its Windows 8 Consumer Preview with a media event in a swanky Barcelona hotel.

Windows head Steven Sinofsky kicked off the event by describing the vast amount of devices and users the company is targeting with the Windows 8 operating system. The company’s goal with the OS spans across tablets of all sorts: business desktops, consumer tablets, and more. He revealed that Microsoft has made over 100,000 major code changes to Windows 8 since the Developer Preview was released in September.

(You can get your hands on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview now. Also check out our extensive preview of the Consumer Preview.)

Sinofsky then handed the show off to Julie Larson-Green, Windows VP of program management. She showed off the basics of the OS, as well as how fluid the Metro interface is. Things seem a lot smoother than the Developer Preview. She said that the new Start screen is built to support hundreds of apps, while the Windows 7 Start menu could only show a handful.

Antoine Leblond, vice president of Windows Web Services, showed off how the OS ran on a typical computer with a mouse and desktop. Simple tasks like copying and pasting have been drastically improved in Windows 8. Now, you can easily manage copying multiple files at once. He also showed how easy it is to move between the Windows 8 Explorer view back to the Start screen. Basically, it looks like you won’t miss the traditional Start button too much.

While showing off the Windows 8 Store, he stressed that Microsoft designed it to make apps incredibly easy to discover. Leblond said that Microsoft has been working more than ever with developers to bring their programs to the Windows 8 Store.

Sinofsky announced the eight winners of Microsoft’s “First App” contest: Cookbook, SigFig, Elements Weather, FlipSaw, Pew Pew, and Physamajig. As winners, the apps will be included with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Sinofsky stressed that all of the apps currently available for Windows 8, including third-party apps, are still technically in beta, so we shouldn’t make final judgements on them just yet.

Michael Angiulo, corporate VP of Windows planning and ecosystem, next came on stage to show off some Windows on ARM (WOA) devices. He stressed that Windows on ARM “is the same Windows” — though as we’ve already covered, that’s not necessarily true. Notably, WOA devices won’t be able to run non-Metro Windows applications — so long legacy software.

Sinofsky said that Microsoft developed a new class driver for Windows 8, which allows all sorts of hardware to work seamlessly with the OS without needed a separate driver. He said that 80 to 90 percent of printers will work automatically. “It just works,” he said.

They proceeded to show off different types of Windows 8 hardware, including ultrabooks, more powerful laptops, and desktops. One ultra book sported a motorized mechanism to reveal full-sized ports, something that the MacBook Air and other ultra-portables give up on. (Honestly, that mechanism looked whack.) The Lenovo Yoga, an ultrabook that can convert into a tablet, looked far more useful.

One of the more intriguing devices was a big-screen monitor that could be rotated flat, allowing you to use it like a Microsoft Surface display. They also showed off a ridiculously large 80-inch touchscreen running Windows 8, with a specially bonded Gorilla Glass display that allows for group collaboration. (A very rich group, I’m sure.)

Sinofsky said that Microsoft will follow its past release schedules with Windows 8: next up is the Release Candidate version, then the Release to Manufacturer (RTM) version. After that, Windows 8 will finally be available to the public.

And trust me, this is not one Windows release to be ignored. From the looks of it, Windows 8 is a sign of Microsoft’s approach to operating systems for the next decade.

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.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt channeled famed futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Michio Kaku in his keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today. What started as an overview of new features in Chrome for Android turned into a powerful discourse on the power of technology and what it means for the future of society.

(You can also view the entire keynote online.)

As if to out-race critics of an overly technological society, Schmidt first brought up the current digital divide. “When we talk about the power of technology we need to be realists,” he said. “For most people the power of technology has not really arrived.”

But he added that people will still be able to change the world if you connect them with information. He also said that hard drives and processors will are expected to cost below $1 in the next decade, something that futurists have been predicting for some time. That alone will make technology more accessible to everyone.

He then presented a new digital divide, one that isn’t necessarily class-based, but is instead based around how people use and interact with technology. For the wealthy, he said, the limits of technology will be limited by “what we deem ethical.” (Shades of Philip K. Dick, anyone?)

“While we overestimate short-term change, we massively underestimate the long-term technological change,” Schmidt said.

He presented a scenario where a wealthy person could remotely attend two events, say a rock concert and business meeting, that are continents apart via “tiny robots.” The robots would  give you a 3D holographic view of the proceedings that Schmidt believes would be almost as good as the real thing. When one audience member asked if we’d be losing anything by remotely experiencing events, Schmidt seemed amusingly perplexed by the notion.

Indeed, the idea of remote 3D viewing doesn’t seem that far off at this point. Schmidt reminded the audience that driverless cars are “closer than we think.” Google’s driverless vehicles have already clocked over 200,000 miles, and the company also recently helped convince the state of Nevada to approve the use of driverless cars.

“So there’s an emerging global group of citizens inspired by people like Steve Jobs who believe that technology can change the world, but the ultimate vision is that technology actually disappears… it becomes part of everyday life,” Schmidt said.

Like electricity, he says that the web will be “everything and nothing” — vitally important to modern civilization, yet at the same time mostly invisible and easily taken for granted.

He then brought up another class of users, the “connected contributors,” a label which will describe many technology geeks. Schmidt described the group as middle class people who can use technology to change their lives. Developers, as part of the connected contributor group, will create apps and services that change society. We’ve been seeing this for the past few decades, but it will certainly become even more pronounced in the near future.

“Computer science is more than writing code and coding is more than writing programs,” Schmidt said. “Developers are the engineers of human freedom.” At that point, you could almost feel the electricity running through the rapt Mobile World Congress crowd.

Schmidt said that technology will make us more aware of major events and conflicts happening around the world. Again, he turned to 3D holographic projection as a way to experience things like foreign revolutions, or a total eclipse that you can only see in one country.

Not everyone can be a developer though. Other members of the connected contributors group will be those who support the work of developers, Schmidt said:

There are those who create and those who buy. Those who buy will purchase the creations of others. But they’ll be educated consumers, supporting the creations of the 10 percent. They’ll defend the commons of the web from attacks.

“The web is more than a network of machines, it’s a network of minds that’s evolved into a global consciousness,” Schmidt added. “It is the web that unites us in sentiment and action.”

Schmidt then focused on the 5 billion people at the bottom of the technology divide, which he called the “aspiring majority.” He admitted that the web is still a scarce resource for this group, but said that infrastructure technology will also get cheaper and more efficient, enabling more people than ever to get connected. And in places where fixed-line Internet access isn’t possible, people can still connect with their communities using mesh networks, which connect devices locally and don’t require an Internet connection.

“Technology will change the relationship that people have with the world,” Schmidt said. Just like with the Arab Spring, technology will allow people in poor countries to communicate the injustices they face every day. “In this new world there will be far fewer places for dictators to hide,” he added.

While elites will still exist, Schmidt said that “technology is a leveler — the weak will be strong, and those with nothing will have something.” But he also noted that we need to be careful to protect the web from government regulation, “We need to act now to avoid the rise of the new digital caste system. We’re not all born into families with robots and laptops.”

“Technology is power by its very nature, and by ensuring access we can create a global community of equals,” Schmidt said with a hopeful tone.

He ended his keynote on a sentimental note, “I’m very very proud of my tribe,” he said, referring to the technology community. “Let us resolve as developers and entrepreneurs to build a world where everyone has the opportunity to be connected.”

Some quotes via The Verge’s liveblog;Image via Jolie O’Dell

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
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It’s easy to think of mobile wallet solutions from companies Google, PayPal, and Isis as locked in a heated battle for the future of payments. But according to Michael Abbott, CEO of the mobile payments company Isis, that’s far from the case.

“There is no mobile wallet war out there,” Abbott told VentureBeat in an interview at the Mobile World Congress yesterday. Instead, he sees all the companies exploring mobile payments now as something that will benefit everyone, including consumers, retailers, carriers, and everyone else involved in the mobile payments chain.

For lack of a proper meeting space, we sat outdoors on a couch in the middle of the Mobile World Congress madness. Directly behind Abbott was the National Art Museum of Catalonia, an imposing and grand building that looks down on the conference housed at the Fira de Barcelona convention center.

The spirit of Barcelona gives almost everything at MWC an extra layer of magic, so my judgement may have been clouded. But as I discussed the future of mobile payments and Isis’ slow-and-steady launch with Abbott, I couldn’t help but think he had a point. We’re facing a sea change with the rise of mobile payments, and now anything that helps to communicate the benefits of paying with your phone versus a dumb credit card will help consumers understand, and ultimately adopt, mobile payments.

Isis, which is jointly owned by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, is developing a mobile payments network based on near-field communication (NFC) technology. The idea is that you’ll be able to swipe your phone to make purchases instantly and securely. NFC-based swipe and pay is something Google is also exploring with Google Wallet, as well as PayPal with its upcoming wallet (PayPal already offers a way to easily transfer money with NFC).

Isis yesterday announced its first bank partners, Chase, Capital One, and Barclaycard, a big step for the company. The banks have agreed to let their credit, debit, and prepaid cards work with Isis’s mobile wallet. Isis test users in Salt Lake City, Utah and Austin, Texas will be able to add their cards from the companies to Isis in mid-2012.

The bank support comes on top of the payment network partnerships Isis made last year with Visa, MasterCard, Discovery, and American Express.

It may seem like things are moving slowly for Isis, which was first announced back in November 2010. But Abbott says he wouldn’t have it any other way. The company is putting the pieces together for a payment network that will last for more than a decade, Abbott said, so he sees no need to rush out with a half-baked solution.

“We’re solving for a four-sided market,” he said, pointing to the fact that Isis needs to make sure consumers, merchants, payment companies, and its parent carriers are happy with its product.

When I asked if Isis has any contingency plans in mind if NFC doesn’t take off, Abbott said that the company is “looking at everything that works.” He stressed that any mobile payments technology must be secure, cost-effective, and most importantly, fast. After all, if it’s faster and easier to keep using your credit card for purchases, mobile payments will never take off. PayPal, and its parent company eBay, currently have their fingers in other mobile payments solutions, like carrier billing and scanning with QR codes.

So what’s next for Isis? Abbott says that the company will now focus on the consumer side of things, as well as with device makers in the fall. Isis has no release schedule in mind for its mobile wallet, instead, the company is taking a “when it’s ready attitude.”

Given that Isis basically has one shot to get mobile payments right, I don’t blame the company for taking its time to launch.

PlayHaven, a real-time mobile marketing startup that has enabled a four-fold increase in in-app purchases for its game developer customers, is adding new monetization features that will help developers make even more money.

PlayHaven’s new monetization features use analytics and user segmentation to help developers target their best customers with offers that can generate more revenues over the life of the audience members. The company’s pitching the features unofficially as “Zynga in a box,” since, like Zynga does on Facebook, they make actionable analytics available to developers as a convenience. The offers can be changed on the fly, in real-time, to get the best results.

The new features are being added to PlayHaven’s existing in-game marketing platform, which works by adding an HTML5 layer on top of games, which can run in a native format on the iPhone. The layer, dubbed a “dynamic overlay,” is something that developers can easily tweak themselves. That’s important since they don’t have to wait for Apple to approve a submitted update. If the developers want to change a feature for a user, for example, they can do so instantly. Such real-time offers are much more effective, resulting in higher user response.

“You can dynamically change what you show the user at any given time without interrupting the game,” said chief executive Andy Yang. “Publishers can now take control of this completely.”

With the monetization features, PlayHaven can help game companies maximize profits by segmenting and managing customers. The tools can generate real-time metrics and insight that are actionable. Yang said that these features can help sort customers into batches of “minnows,” who can be monetized with ads but never have to pay for anything; “dolphins,” who are regular customers who come back often; and “whales,” who make huge in-app purchases. PlayHaven says it can help convert users to pay via up-sell and cross-sell tactics.

Developers can use the tools to segment their customers by purchase behavior, country or region, device, game version, and level of engagement. PlayHaven will offer virtual-good promotions and the ability to capture emails. Two customers are testing the system now.

“We are not just giving you data,” Yang said. “We let you do something about it in real time.”

San Francisco-based PlayHaven is announcing the new features at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.

Since our last story in September, PlayHaven has had some good traction. It has tripled the number of monthly sessions by people who play its customers’ games. It has been integrated into 1,200 titles, up 300. And it has doubled the number of employees to 25. New customers include Disney Mobile, Digital Chocolate, Pocket Gems, Halfbrick, Natural Motion, and Breaktime Studios.

Yang says that customers using PlayHaven have seen their daily active users grow two-fold. Their in-app purchases have grown as much as four times, thanks mainly to a feature called “announcements.” And their ad revenues generate the best eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions) in the market.

This kind of non-incentivized promotion is working extremely well right now because of a change in the market. Apple has banned incentivized installs, such as those offered by game maker Tapjoy in the past. Apple didn’t like the fact that companies could effectively buy their way into top-seller lists by bribing users to accept apps they really didn’t want in exchange for rewards in games they really liked. Now that incentivized installs are banned, the non-incentivized promotions are taking off, Yang said.

PlayHaven also has a feature called More Games, which allows a publisher to show more titles to a user without interrupting the game experience, like monetizing with a banner ad without the need for an actual banner. And PlayHaven can run interstitial ads within a game, showing a video ad when a player reaches a certain point.

Yang said that the company is doing well even as developers deal with market changes such as Apple’s recent crackdown on copycat titles and third-party marketing services that use bot farms to push titles higher in the App Store rankings.

Not bad for a company that has had three pivots. PlayHaven started as MyGameMug, a social network for gamers, in 2008. The founders, Raymond Lau, Erik Yao, and Kurtiss Hare, then switched to creating communities for mobile games in 2009. That generated a lot of users but was hard to monetize. During the last change, the founders departed and Yang took over. He is counseled by chairman Mark Jung and advisors Bill Lee, Kevin Dent, and Ken Keller. They encouraged the company to attack the distribution problem by taking a previously developed cross-promotion widget and turning it into the company’s main business. That turned into the non-incentivized install business.

To date, Playhaven has raised $3 million. Rivals in the business include companies such as Tapjoy and Flurry.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
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When streaming video service Vimeo launched brand-new Android and Windows Phone applications in early January, the company teased that it was also working on a major update for iOS so it could support the iPad. Now that wait is finally up, with Vimeo launching its much improved iOS app today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Vimeo told me back in January that total traffic coming from mobile was at 7 percent in Jan. 2010 and that now sits at 15 percent. So clearly the company has realized how important it is to cater its service to the throngs of mobile users trotting iPhones, iPads, Android phones, and Windows Phones.

“We’ve seen mobile traffic triple since we launched our original iPhone app in early 2011,” said Joseph Schmitt, lead mobile developer at Vimeo, in a statement. “Now, we’ve taken what we learned while creating our previous apps and applied it to the updated iOS to improve overall design and usability. We’re especially pleased with the awesome iPad user interface, which the Vimeo community has eagerly awaited.”

Before this update, the company only offered an iOS app to support the iPhone and iPod touch. But now it will work with the iPad, which is especially important because that device is tailor-made for media consumption.

Besides iPad support, the iOS app adds the ability to browse videos while you watch one, making the discovery process better. There’s also a video editor, which is a nice touch especially since the app is free. Additionally, when you edit videos, you can buy and incorporate licensed music from the Vimeo Music Store.

Vimeo has been owned by IAC, which also owns OKCupid, Match.com, Urbanspoon, and The Daily Beast, since August 2006. Vimeo doesn’t reveal paid subscriber numbers, but it does have more than 8 million registered users at present.

The iOS app is free can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. The app is compatible with iOS devices running iOS 4.3 and above.

You can see a few more screenshots of the new Vimeo iPad app below:

July 9-10, 2013
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You read that right. Nokia just announced the 808 PureView here at the Mobile World Congress, and it sports an astoundingly large 41 megapixel camera.

Nokia is well aware that such large resolution pictures will be difficult to share, so the phone will oversample pictures to a size roughly around a 5 megapixel picture. That means better picture quality without scary file sizes. And if you do dare to take a picture at the full resolution (which is actually 38 MP), you’ll be able to zoom into the picture after the fact without losing much detail.

The 808 PureView runs Nokia’s Belle OS, which could be a disappointment to those expecting yet another new Windows Phone from the company. Jo Harlow, Nokia’s head of smartphones, said that the company will eventually bring its PureView technology to future phones. We can consider the 808 PureView a practice run for the tech, and a new lustworthy device for Nokia fanatics.

The phone features a 4-inch display and a 1.3 gigahertz processor. We expect to hear more about how this phone’s magical camera works in the future. In comparison, the iPhone 4S, and most other high-end smartphones, feature 8-megapixel cameras. The 808 is interesting, but I’m far more curious what PureView will look like once it hits future phones.

The Nokia 808 PureView is expected to ship in May for €450. No word on a U.S. release yet.

Top Photo/Devindra Hardawar

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.

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Nokia has impressively repositioned itself as a high-end Windows Phone maker, but the company hasn’t forgotten about the lower-end of the market either.

Nokia officially announced its cheapest Windows Device yet, the Lumia 610, as well as three new Asha S40 devices today at the Mobile World Congress, the Asha 202, 203, and 302. Additionally, the company has announced a major update to its Nokia Life service, which gives consumers in emerging markets access to useful mobile tools.

The Lumia 610 looks like a smaller version of the Lumia 710, and Nokia describes it as the perfect introduction for Windows Phone for younger audiences. The Asha 202 and 203 are touch-screen enabled, with the 202 offering the ever-popular (in Europe and Asia, at least) dual-SIM configuration. The Asha 202 and 203 are touch-screen enabled, with the 202 offering the ever-popular (in Europe and Asia, at least) dual-SIM configuration, while the 302 sports a QWERTY hardware keyboard.

With Nokia Life, which is now available in India, China, Indonesia, and Nigeria, users will be able to do things like easily learn English, or get information on basic health services from doctors. Nokia says it plans to extend Nokia Life beyond four markets soon.

Nokia says the Asha 202 and 203 will retail for 60 euros, while the 302, which is already available, will sell for 95 euros. A Nokia rep tells me the Lumia 610 will retail for around 190 euros without contract when it launches in a few months. At this point a U.S. release is uncertain, but I’m sure some prepaid carrier would love to pick it up.

Photos/Devindra Hardawar

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.

The move is critical to Intel’s larger ecosystem for its new mobile chips, which have been designed into smartphones from Orange, Lenovo and Motorola. That’s because games are the most popular apps on just about any mobile platform. It’s another sign of momentum behind Intel’s mobile chip efforts.

Gameloft will make titles that run on Android-based smartphones and tablets with Intel Atom microprocessors.The move isn’t a surprise for Gameloft, which tends to support many different kinds of mobile devices.

Among the games to be published on the Intel phones are Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus (pictured), and Uno. Each title was ported using Google’s Android Native Development Kit and the games make use of Intel’s graphics media accelerator to deliver high-definition graphics. The titles will be available in the Android Market.

“We are pleased to team up with Intel to demonstrate our high performance HD games on new Intel Atom processor-based devices,” said Ludovic Blondel, a vice president at Gameloft. The companies made the announcement at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
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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
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Just how much does your smartphone’s camera matter to you? With its latest flagship Android line, dubbed HTC One, the Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC is hoping that a killer camera is just enough to sway you over to its phones.

Those killer features include the ability to take video and photos without switching modes (something that wastes precious seconds), as well as near-instant camera app launching and autofocus. HTC is calling its combined new photo technology ImageSense, which CEO Peter Chou describes as “the power of a true digital camera on your phone.”

Chou unveiled the One series of devices, which includes the HTC One X, One S, and One V, at the Mobile World Congress today to a packed room. He said that taking photos was the second-most common thing consumers did with their phones, so the company saw a huge market reason to focus on helping people take better photos.

Thanks to ImageSense — which is an all-encompassing term to describe tweaks HTC has made to the camera lens, sensor, user interface and software — Chou says that HTC One phones can launch their camera app in 0.7 seconds, and they can autofocus in just 0.2 seconds. Other tweaks are sure to appeal to camera fanatics. For example, the phones can take a burst of photos simply by holding down the shutter button, and they can automatically adjust the flash level to keep subjects from looking washed out.

Perhaps best of all, the HTC One phones will let you easily take a picture while recording a video.

The new camera capabilities will be included in HTC Sense 4, the latest version of the company’s custom Android software. In addition to photos, the new phones will offer Beats integration with music from any source, be it on your device or streamed from the web. The One series will also include 25 gigabytes of free Dropbox storage for two years, and thanks to Sense 4, they will be able to automatically sync music wirelessly from your computer.

The HTC One X is the flagship device in the new series, with a 4.7-inch screen, 720p HD resolution, and quad-core Tegra 3 processor. HTC will also offer an LTE variant of the One X that will run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 platform. The One X features a unibody polycarbonate design — a necessary upgrade for HTC, as its past phones weren’t the most durable devices.

Not surprisingly, the One S and One V are meant to serve mid-range and low-range customers. The One S is smaller than the X and features an anodized aluminum case. HTC didn’t hype up the One V much at its press conference, but we expect it to eschew the fancy case designs and large screens in exchange for a more affordable price.

HTC is also taking a different strategy this time around when it comes to bringing these phones to the public. Instead of slowly rolling them out across different regions, the One series of phones will launch globally in April. Chou said that 144 carriers around the world have already signed on to offer the phones.

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.