According to ComScore’s latest study, thirteen percent of US based mobile gamers have started to trade in their featurephones for smartphones to boost their gaming experience.

ComScore reported 58.6 million featurephone based mobile gamers in February 2009 versus 50.9 million of them in February 2010. In the same period, the number of smartphone gamers grew 60%. Smartphone owners are also more likely to play mobile games on their phones. 47.1% of the smartphone owners play mobile games versus 15.7% on featurephones.

“Although the number of mobile gamers has declined in the past year, there is reason for significant optimism about the future of this market,” said Mark Donovan, ComScore senior analyst and SVP of mobile. “As the market transitions from feature phones to smartphones, the dynamics of gameplay are also shifting towards a higher quality experience. As a result, we can expect to see a profound increase in adoption of this activity, both in terms of audience size and overall engagement.”

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn recently indicated that the company plans to open “a number somewhere between here and 1,000″ new retail outlets that will focus only on mobile phones and mobile services. Best Buy already offers a store-within-a-store mobile shopping experience at its big box retail facilities and claims they have been successful to-date. Best Buy also has a limited number of stand-alone mobile stores. Best Buy was recently named as a potential candidate to acquire RadioShack, which would offer it a quick way to expand its mobile retail presence across the U.S. in shopping plazas and malls where mobile phones are often sold.

India has emerged as the second-biggest consumer of mobile Internet after the US, according to data from 15,000 mobile websites monitored by Google. However, it accounted for only 5.9% of the 14 billion web pages seen on mobile phones in February. More than half the web pages were seen on mobile phones in the US, Google said in a report on Monday.

The numbers represent statistics of only those countries where Google has a strong mobile advertising network, and may not have captured the full extent of the Chinese market, where Google continues to be weak.
In a separate briefing, Google’s India product head, Vinay Goel, said the number of mobile internet users has grown nearly five times in the last five years. “In fact the number of new data connections added globally this year will be higher on the mobile than on the PC,” he added.

According to him, around 25 million of the 500 million or so mobile users in India have paid data accounts and another 55-65 million use operator-provided data services. Goel said the number of Internet users on PCs in India is growing at around 50% a year and will reach 100 million by the end of 2010.

The numbers also revealed that the iPhone was losing Internet share to the Android in a big way in its home market, the US. The share of iPhone’s internet traffic dropped from 55% in November to 44% in February. During the period, the share of Android phones rose from 27% to 42%.

The last four months have seen the increasing popularity of Android phones such as Motorola’s Droid, which followed the iPhone on the popularity charts in the US.

Unnamed sources cited in The New York Times, Facebook plans to introduce a new location-sharing feature to is social networking service.

The feature will apparently let users share their own location as well as see the location of their friends in their news feed. The source says that Facebook has been working on this feature for a year, and has waited until it is fully ready before releasing it.

Facebook will also make APIs openly available to third-parties who wish to enable location features within their own Facebook apps. Facebook has not said if or how mobile phones will play a role, but many of the site’s users access it from devices such as BlackBerries, Windows Mobile, the iPhone and Android handsets — all of which offer GPS location tools.

Skyfire, makers of Webby award-winning, PC-like web-browser for mobile devices, has launched the next generation of its Skyfire browser, version 1.5, for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition smartphones. See below their video explaining what is new about it :

Skyfire who is up against browsers like Opera mini or the newly released Firefox mobile is a mobile only browser. This has the advantage that they do only this and so are super focused on a smooth mobile experience. Of course there is the advantages of players like Firefox as they can sync between you PC and your mobile.

Whatever the case it is great to have players like Skyfire focussing directly on making the mobile internet a “turn-on” experience rather than the often “turn-off” browsing on your mobile device often is.

A Korean news report claims that a new 4G iPhone will be coming out as soon as this spring.

KT, a company partnered with Apple to sell iPhones in South Korea, revealed its plans to begin selling the 4G iPhone as early as April. We can obviously expect the phone to include new radio hardware for connecting to 4G networks, and KT’s reports indicate the phone will feature a new dual-core CPU for a speed boost. The screen is to be switched from a standard LCD to an OLED model, which could mean a brighter picture and reduced power consumption. There could also be a front-mounted camera for video chat and a battery that’s finally removable by the end-user.

According to Goldman Sachs’ Robert Chen, it won’t lack new features. “Apple’s going to put a lot of innovation, not just on the hardware, but also on the software of the new iPhone,” he said.

There is also rumors that the back of the iPhone will be touch sensitive much like the touch panel used for the Magic Mouse or like the Motorola Backflip, an Android smartphone that can be controlled via a touchpad on the back of the screen.

Apple, of course, doesn’t comment on “rumors and speculation.” But according to Chen, the new iPhone will go into production in April and should be available to consumers in June or July — just enough time for the rumor train to go into full speed.

At a press gathering on Tuesday, Google unveiled the Nexus One, a Google-branded smartphone that will run on the search giant’s Android operating system. Some analysts say Google’s new device, which is being built by HTC of Taiwan based on Google’s specifications, will deal a stiff blow to Apple’s hegemony in the smartphone arena.

At first glance, it’s so sleek, stylish and sexy, we were almost wondering: Where’s the Apple logo?

Call it the Google challenge: After a few hours with the new Nexus One, a long time Apple fan will be willing to trade this iPhone. It’s very, very tempting.

Specifications of Google NEXUS ONE

Where could Google succeed, where other competitors have failed?

The Nexus One boasts speed improvements and enhanced camera capabilities, and the device will be sold unlocked.
The unlocked version of the Nexus One, which will be sold directly to consumers via a new web store hosted by Google, will cost $529. A locked version of the phone, which will be sold initially by T-Mobile, will cost $179 with a two-year contract that will cost roughly $80 a month.Apple’s iPhone 3GS now costs $199 with a two-year contract with AT&T.

Still, some new details emerged, so here’s a quick scan:
* In addition to T-Mobile the Nexus One will be supported by Verizon and Vodafone come spring.
* Some of those Android 2.1 goodies — expanded voice controls, including speech-to-text capability for tweets, texts and e-mail; a revamped photo gallery; more homescreen panels; interactive wallpapers; and a Google Earth app.
* In using the Nexus One to launch an online storefront intended eventually to allow consumers to choose from a raft of unlocked handsets and then pick a carrier and a calling plan, Google is revolutionizing the mobile phone marketplace. Or maybe not.

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman

courtesy of Fab Poller

Many interesting developments during 2009 in this mini sector (literally and symbolically) of the movie industry.

The Sundance Institute operators of the Festival of the same name, have announced launching not it’s own mobile film festival but rather a well thought out iPhone App that allows art film fans from around the world to participate in the festival.

The app can be used both at the festival at Park City with program guide trailers, event schedules, GPS venue locator and the like. For those fans who can’t attend but wish nevertheless to participate they can follow via Facebook, Twitter and Flickr as well as get exclusive interviews and trailers.

This is just one example of course of how the movie industry is learning to harness the power of the mobile media channel.

Added to this are the games that often accompany movies. Of course this has been there before but 2009 has confirmed this trend. Example the blockbuster Avatar which looks set to bust all records of viewers and earnings launched it’s own game across all platforms as well as on mobiles such as the iPhone/iTouch platform.

The game play is surprisingly good and engaging as it is built on the Assassins Creed 2 platform.

It is interesting to see of course how the mobile heavy weights such as LG or Nokia continue to use movies as a platform to promote their hi-tech devices.

It is obvious that mobile devices especially the touch ones are great gadgets to watch movies or TV shows while on the move. Following are the words of someone from the industry who sums it up well :

Frank Chindamo, president and chief creative officer, Fun Little Movies: “In 2010, everyone with a mobile phone will realize they’re also holding a really cool video player, and start watching what they want to watch, when and where they want to watch it — instead of having crappy over-hyped TV shows shoved in their faces.”

Link : http://www.funlittlemovies.com/

We look forward to seeing how this will develop in 2010.

by Fab Poller

Apple is set to announce that it has acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 million, several sources confirmed.

With their 100 000 apps and the rising importance of mobile business revenue this makes obvious sense. It follows closely Google’s recent acquisition of AdMob the prize of the fledgling mobile advertising industry a Quattro competitor, which Apple had also made a bid to acquire.

Both ad networks were aimed at the fast-growing market to advertise on smartphones, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices and the plethora of other and new platforms (read Bada).

Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford, Disney and the National Football League.

Competitor mobile networks in the space are still numerous, despite these big acquisitions, such as Millennial Media and Jumptap, both of which are now clearly in play for acquisition.

by Mark Jaffe   www.mobilemandala.com

There was a lot of passionate response to the post a few weeks ago “Will Mobile Phones Replace In-Store Retail Salespeople”. Even more reason that these three announcements this week caught my eye:

■  The Aberdeen Group published a report that stated in 2008, the total of digital signage market revenue stood at $766 million and is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2014, growing at a healthy CAGR of 20%.
■  The London Daily Mirror reported according to unnamed sources that Nokia is planning to begin rolling out embedded NFC (near field communications) kits into its entire line of Symbian phones beginning Q3, 2010. The Finnish giant already has NFC in selected handsets, such as the 6216 Classic.
■  Malaysian manufacturer Fonelabs will produce two million low cost (under $100) NFC enabled phones in 2010
What do these three items have to do with retail? First, just as a refresher, Near Field Communication (NFC) is “a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance.” In other words, if you have an NFC enabled phone and opt-in, your mobile phone will be able to communicate with another proximate electronic device automatically.