HP's Phil McKinney describes the mobile devices we will carry (video)

Phil McKinney is one of the visionaries in Hewlett-Packard‘s personal systems group, where he is a vice president and chief technology officer. He spoke about his vision for mobile devices at our MobileBeat 2010 conference this week in San Francisco. His talk goes a long way toward explaining why HP bought Palm and gives a high level view of how HP plans to participate in the future of mobile devices. He also pulled out a … Continue Reading

Here's what happened at MobileBeat 2010

We just wrapped up MobileBeat 2010, our annual mobile tech conference. Over the course of two days, we brought speakers including HP’s Phil McKinney, AT&T’s John Donovan, and Facebook’s Erick Tseng on-stage to talk about their vision of the mobile industry’s future, and 20 companies demonstrated new products to compete for our Tesla Awards for best startup.

The big theme was “The Year of the Superphone.” If you didn’t make it to the conference, you … Continue Reading

GetJar names Gettie Award 2010 mobile application winners

GetJar, an online mobile application store, last night announced the winners of The Gettie Awards, an annual mobile app competition, at VentureBeat’s annual MobileBeat conference in San Francisco.

Second to the Apple App Store, GetJar is the second largest application store. Though the company offers an open market for apps across all major operating systems, including Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Symbian.

The Gettie Awards 2010 had hundreds of developers submit their applications for … Continue Reading

MobileBeat: Will Android beat iPhone in mobile gaming?

While Android’s user base is expected to surpass the iPhone’s, many passionate gamers would tell you that the gaming experience on the iPhone is far better than on Android – primarily because of the buttonless form factor of iPhone, but also because of the superior iPhone graphics. But a panel on mobile gaming at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference today said that’s not the case.

The panel participants all vehemently supported Android over iPhone, although largely … Continue Reading

MobileBeat: Location-based checkins could soon be automatic

Keith Lee, CEO of location-based game service Booyah (pictured) said that manual check-ins to location-based services could be on their way out, to be replaced by automated check-ins. His comments came on a panel at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference today.

While checkins may provide an interesting way to announce a user’s location, location-based applications and services could be more useful if checkins are performed automatically and users are offered interesting services such as discount coupons based … Continue Reading

MobileBeat panel: Location-based services need brands more than brands need them

As large, national and international brands begin to show interest in advertising on location-based services, the check-in games are finding they’re on the winning end of the deal. This is a point that came up in one of the MobileBeat 2010 breakout sessions on location and advertising today.

Dinesh Moorjani (pictured), senior vice president at internet conglomerate IAC Mobile referred to a scavenger-hunt-style promotion shoe designer Jimmy Choo organized with the popular check-in service Foursquare, … Continue Reading

Catching up at MobileBeat 2010 (photo gallery)

Aside from the panels and breakout sessions going on at MobileBeat 2010, one of the major attraction of conferences is the chance to catch up with colleagues and new companies. The hallway is the place where networking happens, and MobileBeat 2010 is no exception.

The second floor of the Palace hotel is a favorite hangout between sessions.

Plenty of mini-sized basketballs around this conference.

“The ball represents our ideas,” said Tyler Bell (pictured left) from … Continue Reading

MobileBeat panel: Most profitable markets for location services still unclear

Who’s going to be making money from location data? That’s the question that got a lot of attention today at a breakout session in VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference.

None of the panelists — from small location-based players like Placecast and LikeList as well as giants like Nokia and Google — had a definitive answer. LikeList, a company that refers businesses to consumers based on peer recommendations, said the value of location-based services resides in the … Continue Reading

Twitter’s director of mobile: AT&T has guts

One of the themes this afternoon at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference was “Who owns the user?” — the assumption being that mobile carriers have given up the control over the user’s experience and data they once had.

It would have been a great opportunity to pile-on criticism of mobile carriers, but a couple of speakers, including Twitter mobile head Kevin Thau (pictured center), had favorable things to say. Asked by moderator Brad Stone of The … Continue Reading

Listen to MobileBeat 2010 on Stitcher

MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s two-day conference in San Francisco, is now underway. If you couldn’t make it to the event itself, you can follow along courtesy of Stitcher, a mobile startup that’s recording and sharing the audio from the general sessions.

There were a few tech problems earlier today, so you won’t be able to listen to the morning sessions, but the audio from Samsung Chief Strategy Officer Omar Khan’s keynote on “The Year of the … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010 kicks off with a bang (photo gallery)

MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference focusing on “The Year of the Superphone” is in full swing. Kicking off early Monday morning, the conference has so far featured keynotes from HP’s Phil McKinney, AT&T’s CEO John Donovan and Samsung’s CSO Omar Khan, and we’ve seen two rounds of the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition, sponsored by Pam and hosted by Robert Scoble from Rackspace and VentureBeat’s executive editor Owen Thomas.

MobileBeat co-chair Matthäus Krzykowski (pictured left) welcomed the … Continue Reading

AT&T CTO: ‘We will move heaven and Earth’ to improve our network

AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan described his vision for a future where more and more data is flowing through mobile networks. He made the comments at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference today in San Francisco.

The issue can be a sensitive one for AT&T, whose network quality, especially in iPhone-heavy urban areas, has been heavily criticized. So when VentureBeat Editor in Chief Matt Marshall got a chance to ask Donovan a few questions on-stage, he … Continue Reading

MobileBeat Startup Competition: More consumer apps vying for your downloads and dollars

The MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition, sponsored by Palm, continued this morning with the introduction of five more consumer applications hoping to change the way you use your phone. Two winners at the end of the day — selected from a field of 20 consumer apps and infrastructure services — will receive prestigious Tesla Awards.

The panel of judges for today’s contest includes Rob Coneybeer, co-founder and managing director of Shasta Ventures; Eric Duprat, general manager … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010: DeHood rolls out Facebook connectivity, new versions

[Disclosure: DeHood is a sponsor of our MobileBeat 2010 conference.]

DeHood, the location-based service building hyper-local communities — for neighborhoods, for example, has been busy since launching its service for the iPhone seven weeks ago. The company is rolling out a revamped website, an iPad app and Facebook integration, taking the neighborhood concept and combining it with what seems to have become the standard in social networks.

The Facebook functionality is what you’d expect – … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010: Taking a close look at mobile advertising

With slick new devices and applications hitting the market, and as Google and Apple enter the field, the next few months should be an insanely eventful time in mobile advertising. And naturally, mobile ads will be a big topic at MobileBeat 2010, our conference on July 12 and 13 in San Francisco.

We’re not relegating it to a single panel, either — there will be several sessions taking a close look at specific issues and … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010: Adobe looks at the future of Flash and HTML

One of the biggest debates in the mobile industry has been over platforms and standards — particularly the contest between Adobe’s Flash technology, the new version of the basic Web standard HTML5, and the lure of native applications like those sold in Apple’s App Store.

We’ll be debating these issues during a panel called “The Future of Flash and HTML” at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2010 conference, which runs from July 12 to 13 in San Francisco.… Continue Reading

Nothing in moderation? The hidden stars of MobileBeat 2010

“Moderation is a fatal thing,” Oscar Wilde once quipped. I’m not sure if the Irish witticist was talking about conference panels in particular, but I do know this: The moderators we’ve recruited for MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the mobile ecosystem, are killer.

It’s the year of the superphone, and who will profit is far from clear. So we’ve gotten journalists, analysts, and experienced industry hands to poke and prod our speakers and panelists. They’ll … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010 puts DeHood to the test

[Disclosure: DeHood is a sponsor of VentureBeat's upcoming MobileBeat conference.]

I cover location-based services for VentureBeat, so I’m excited about our upcoming MobileBeat conference next week — especially since it gives me an opportunity to see how well the promise of location-based services holds up in a real-world test.

We’ll be testing out one service, DeHood, especially thoroughly. DeHood is all about bringing social networking and location-based services to hyper-local communities. And since the company’s … Continue Reading

MobileBeat 2010: Will non-gamers juice the mobile gaming market?

The Nintendo Wii ignited the interest of non-gamers in video games. The same phenomenon is starting to happen in the mobile gaming arena, where non-gamers likely outnumber the gamers in terms who is playing games.  At MobileBeat 2010, we’ll explore what will contribute to the growth of mobile gaming, particularly among non-gamers.

Our “Mobile Gaming: Big ideas for the small screen” breakout session will feature veterans of the mobile gaming business who can discuss whether … Continue Reading