SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

Last week we visited Mobile World Congress. I was specially interested to find out if Mobile TV was finally about to take off. As time went by, I realized that this was not a key topic in this year’s congress. Just minor references, no massive adoption by key firms.

Just one week after, 1Seg announces they have reached 20 million users in Japan. 1Seg is a digital mobile service offered not only to mobile phones, but also to handheld consoles, GPS systems, and son on. The service was launched two years ago, on April 1 2006. Among the fantastic features offered by 1Seg is the ability to record video on mobile phones, as long as the broadcasted signal comes without DRM. GREAT!!!!

Another example of the strong differences between oriental and occidental markets…… What a pity.

Via MobileCrunch

400 developers from 42 countries compete for $40,000 in prizes over five categories

The International Mobile Gaming Awards, the largest competition for mobile games in the world,announced on Monday night this year’s winners at a crowded awards ceremony at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.. A jury of specialists from Japan, US and Europe selected the winners out of the 25 nominees from the US, China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, India, UK, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Spain, Poland, Sweden and Australia. 

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Recently, a worm has been detected in a lot of S60 devices around the world. Its functionality is as easy as potentially harmful (specially to your phone bill):

• An MMS message is received, containing either of the following subjects: “Sex.mp3″, “Beauty.jpg” or “Loce.rm”
• If opened, the worm reads all the entries in your phone book and send them a reply of the original message.
• In addition, the worm also generates random phone numbers and send them more messages.

A rule of thumb that usually helps to avoid infection, is not to open this sort of files. It seems obvious, but if you look at the infection figures, not for many people.

Via Fring Blog

Pieter Knook and Robbie Bach did last week a conference call in MWC Microsoft’s Stand. They announced the acquisition of Brand by Microsoft and Windows Mobile grow predictions for next year. Two days after, Vodafone announced the signing of Pieter Knook for the new Internet Services division of the British company.

I’m not surprised that an executive leaves a company to join another. It happens all the time. It’s even a healthy practice in modern companies. What’s significant for me is the change in Vodafone strategy in terms of executive signing. Most Vodafone managers come from the old only-voice based company. Currently, the market has change drastically, and carriers demand people coming from internet companies and software companies. Summarizing, people with a strong service orientation.

Mobile Internet is the next battlefield, and carriers should be ready for it. Otherwise, they will be left behind. And that means death.

Via Canal PDA

The so called Android SDK m5-rc14, is available since past week. This good news was announced on Android developers blog.

In this new prerelease, both Android APIs and the developer tools have been updated. Some highlights are GUI related stuff, new media codecs and the updated Eclicpse plug-in.

It seems that Google has considered feedback from third party developers. Some blogs congratule about this fact.

As far as I’m concerned, I have not put my hands on Android SDK yet. I hope to do it in the coming weeks, as it looks great!

But what I wonder is if last MWC08 demos on Android might have cool down the expectations of most enthusiatic people, since they showed that Android are pretty far from be running on a real world device, ready to hit the market. It’s really been a bit disappointing.

Link Android

Apple is well-known for its commercial strategy. Its biggest example is what they did prior the release of the iPhone: Create a lot of interest by releasing random rumours, unclear or fictional technicals specifications and release dates…

Obsiously It was a major success. People don’t usually queue in the street days after a product release unless they are really mad about it.

However, in my opinion, they are going too far with this strategy. Actually I’m quite fed up with it. The last rumour / gossip spread is about whether is going to be an event on february the 26th and what is going to be presented in it. Inmediately all the Apple junkies started to write about it, wondering if the iPhone SDK was to be released, or even a 3G iPhone, or even a new MacPro…..

Personally, I don’t really see the point of all this, unless as an effort by Apple to stay on top of everything, everyday.

However, all we can do is wait until we can see whether all this expectations are fulfilled…

Last Monday, during MWC, LiMo Foundation published a number of press notes announcing new members, new devices and reference models and what’s more interesting for us, a SDK strategy!! Don’t forget SevenClick is a company specialized in Mobile Software Development.

The only information I’ve been able to obtain from the long press note is this:

• Native, Java and WebKit SDKs.
• Eclipse based
• Available in H2 2008

By the way, native means Linux. The specifications and APIs have already been disclosed, so we already figure out how the applications will look like. I specially like the Eclipse approach, since this free IDE is available in different Operating Systems, so you can choose your preferred environment to develop.  The Java and WedKit approaches are still a mistery. We don’t know it the Java flavor will be based on JME, but I don’t expect an Android-like approach. It’s just an opinion. Regarding WebKit, we expect a JavaScript engine with an extended DOM containing telephony functionalities. Maybe we are asking too much, but we are only guessing.

Link LiMo Press Note

As we announced last Monday, we have visited Mobile World Congress 2008, and the feelings have been very satisfactory!!! Our expectations for the event have been completely fulfilled.

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Open Mobile Platform is a platform that aims to help developers to create mobile applications acroos major mobile device operating systems (Brew, Java, Linux, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile). To do so, the platform uses:

• XML-based scripting language
• A device client
• An application server.

Obviously, it is easy to compare this initiative to the previous done by Google with the release of Android. However this is not an operating system but a “tool” to help developers to deploy thier application acroos the various mobile OS and platform options.

AOL profit will came from the spread of their services and APIs across so many devices as well as from advertising.

However, we will have to wait until it is released the incoming summer.

Go to Open Mobile Platform website.
Read the press release here at AOL Developer Network.

Three days ago, Sony Ericsson announced their last device: The new XPERIA X1.

This high-end phone has a arc-slider design, which allows it to have both a big (3″, 800 x 480) touchscreen and a big keyboard. In addition it has almost all of the desired hardware goodies:

• A-GPS
• Wi-Fi
• 3.2 Megapixels camera
• 3G & HSDPA

On the other hand, this device has some great built-in software. First it runs Windows Mobile 6 with the .NET compact framework. Second, it has the J2ME platform along with some interesting JSRs:

• CLDC 1.1 (JSR 139) & Java MIDP 2.0 (JSR 118)
• PDA Optional Packages (JSR 75)
• Wireless Messaging API (JSR 120)
• Mobile Media API (JSR 135)

I’m quite sure that this device, if it has a reasonable price, will be a major succes, when it reaches the markets in the second half of this year.

Read the Sony Ericsson offical press release here.