SevenClick! Mobile Technology Evangelists

This news has gone unnoticed but in really specialized blogs. Openwave’s mobile clients business has been acquired by Purple Labs. This includes Openwave’s browser and client messaging products including all code, patents, customer contracts and the engineering team.

Openwave was the leading mobile browser vendor few years ago. But his business has vanished as WAP has been fading away and mobile versions of desktop browsers (Webkit, Opera) has appeared on the scene. This explains the low price of the acquisition: just $30 million.

Purple Labs is a French company backed by European venture capital firms and is the only independent software vendor with a complete Linux solution for mass-market 3G phones. The deal will provide them not only the technical assets but an entry point to very important customers.

A very insightful analysis on this topic, as usual, on VisionMobile.

Via Moconews
Link VisionMobile

The earthquake caused by Nokia on Symbian’s world a couple of days ago, has hidden another interesting movement of the Finnish company: the acquisition of Plazes.

Plazes is a Berlin-based company that offers a social network based on location. As they state in their blog, Plazes team will join the LBS team of Nokia based in Berlin, created from the acquisition of gate5 in 2006.

With this new deal, Nokia pushes its strategy on location based services and social networks. This is one of the hot topics today!

Via error500
Link blog.plazes.com

Nokia has released today this big news:

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS(TM), S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of this unified software platform.

The Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation’s first day of operations.

The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.

“Establishing the Foundation is one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia.

The Foundation’s platform will build on the leading open mobile software platform, with more than 200 million phones, across 235 models.

This is one of the biggest announcements in mobile phones field in years, mobile leades to unify a software, mainly to beat the iphone´s career. I think. iPhone keeps your chin up. :D

Link Nokia Press Release

When some months ago Google released ‘My Location’ feature for Google Maps for Mobile a lot of buzz hit the blogosphere. Every tech-blogger wondered about how had Google managed to know the location of cellphones.

But now - just a couple of weeks ago - Google itself has put some light on the business with a post on the Official Google Mobile Blog. And not many people has talked about it. But it’s really good news.

Not only Google has unveiled how they really get to know location, but has announced they are going to give third party developers access to this information.

This will enable development of location-aware applications to every developer.

Now, ‘My Location’ is available in more than 200 countries and across many different platforms, including BlackBerry, Nokia Series 60, Apple iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile, and many Java phones. Gears for Windows Mobile and Android already contain location APIs.

The major drawback is accuracy, that is clearly insufficient for serious applications. And this issue won’t be solved - if possible - until Google has collected a huge amount of data from cellphones all over the world, which will be possible just when GPS chips were commonplace in every mid-range cellphone.

So, I’m not sure if this new service will have a real impact in deployment of production applications. But, definitely, it will help LBS applications to be mainstream and to boost innovation related to this technology.

Via OfficalGoogleMobileBlog

iPhone 3G is here!, well not exacly, it will be launch next July 11th. The starter price is 199$ USA, probably 199€ in europe, :( and you could choose betwen black or white back cover (only in the 16GB iPhone 3G version).

There are too many new features in this object of desire to analize, the review starts after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Telefonica Movistar has uploaded its iPhone website, where you can join to receive further information about the new iPhone and its lunch, but in the web there is a suspicious slogan: “Movistar brings you the magic of the Iphone, Do you want to know when?”. Umm “When?” sounds not this June, maybe Movistar “will” bring you the magic of the iPhone but who knows when.

Rumors talk about new 3G iPhone will be delayed maybe some weeks, and Telefónica announced that its Iphone presentation will be next June 18th, it sounds not good, because if Telefonica presents the iphone next June 18th and in its web they tell you to register for further information, people like me that want this gadget now probably we have to wait for a “long” time. : (

Link Movistar iPhone

Until now, Adobe has not been able to massively deploy Flash on mobile phones. Flash Lite was nothing but a wannabe, with little impact in the target platforms. Have you ever played a Flash Lite game on your S60 device? neither me. Oh, and the platform is not bad, at least under a programmer perspective. But it is not Flash.

Now, Adobe has come up with a new initiative to relaunch its strategy. It’s called Open Screen and it means to create a unique platform that would allow the old write-once run-everywhere created by Java about ten years ago.

To do so, Adobe has opened up its Flash APIs along with other technologies to create an open platform, promising seamless deployment in every single platform available (who said fear?), from mobile phones to TVs. At least, Adobe has surrounded themselves with some of the most remarkable players in IT World. Take a look at the upper picture to find the names.

Link Adobe OpenScreen Project

We had already talked about QuickOffice, the suite that brings Office document support to Palm, S60 and UIQ users.

Now, in a recent meeting with PC Magazine they showed a new version for Android running. Moreover, they declared to be working on an upcoming release for iPhone.

More accurately, Quickoffice for Android lets users edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, access online Google Docs, and access documents stored on home PCs through the Internet.

The last functionality comes from a partnership with SoonR, a company which has a remote-access technology for PC files.

Via EngadgetMobile
Link PCMagazine

Thanks to Mobile Phone Development blog, a really interesting blog for mobile developers, we’ve get noticed of this new useful feature published by Opera friends.

They have called it ‘Opera Mini Connection Help’, and it’s a kind of wizard for configuring the Internet connection of your cellphone. The site includes APN information of many carriers around the world and links to some manufacturers wizards. Only Nokia and SonyEricsson, by now.

If they manage to keep the information updated it will be a really useful helper for a task that is sometimes cumbersome, specially for final users.

Via MobilePhoneDevelopment
Link OperaMiniConnectionHelp

A couple of months ago, Acer announced the unanimously approved acquisition of Taiwan-based E-Ten, the manufacturer of Glofiish line of smartphone and Pocket PC.

Now, Acer’s president, Gianfranco Lanci, states that they’re aiming to launch their first smartphone “near the end of this year of early next year”. In addition, we know it’ll “be Microsoft-based”.

By now, they are in conversations with some carriers in order to sell the handsets. Acer expects smartphone’s sales could reach 10% of the firm’s income.

Welcome to a new actor on mobile scene!

Via EngadgetMobile