PavingWays

Recently, Opera released its interesting and insightful “State of the Mobile Web” report. In this report, Opera analyzed the traffic of more than 44 million cumulative Opera Mini users worldwide.

Opera Mini: the world’s most popular mobile browser

Since its worldwide launch in 2006, Opera Mini has become the world’s most popular mobile web browser with millions of users and billions of page views:

Social Networking Services drive mobile web usage worldwide

Interestingly, almost 40% of all visited web pages with Opera Mini were social networking services. In the US, South Africa and Indonesia even more than 60% of the user were visiting these services with their mobile devices. That shows social networking services are very popular worldwide.

Top 10 Sites in the US, India, South Africa, UK and Germany

You can find more information and the whole report here: http://www.opera.com/mobile_report

While working on a couple of things we realized strange behavior in IE Mobile on a Windows 5.0 phone. It’s not really a big issue but it could lead to tiny hiccups for developers, so I felt like posting it here.

The issue occurs then POSTing a form (multipart/form-data) to the server (running PHP 5.x) which contains an input field of type “file” and you leave this file empty.

What you on the server side normally do is to read the form values submitted by the user through the $_POST and the $_FILES array (in PHP) and then do whatever you like with it. These arrays are populated by PHP with the values of the various input fields on your form, and inputs of type=”file” don’t appear in $_POST, but in the $_FILES array, any other input type’s value goes to $_POST.

Now as long as you fill in all field on your form everything is fine, and IE Mobile works as described.

BUT: While any other browser seems to not send empty inputs of type=”file” to the server at all, IE Mobile does just that AND it goes to $_POST causing you to have a key with the name of your input=”file” field with en empty value in the $_POST array after sending the form. This doesn’t hurt at all, but it is weird, especially because this ONLY happens if you leave the input=”file” form element empty.

While this is a bit strange, it’s not really a problem, maybe not even a bug, maybe not even against the standard (I didn’t look it up). After all, uploading files through a form on a mobile browser does not seem to be what many people do (although it works pretty well…mostly).

As I was reading an older issue (#7 in 2008 from 17.03.2008, current one is 9) of Germany’s premier computer magazine c’t I spotted a mentioning of Frost, our open source Ajax library for mobile browsers.

The issue’s title topic was “The web in your hand” and the article starting on page 112 was about “Webdesign for Mobile Devices”. On page 114 Frost is mentioned in one sentence. Yay!

“Event the first JavaScript library for mobile browsers, that are getting increasingly mightier, has been released; Frost is supposed to make simple Ajax manipulations possible.” the article reads (translated from German).

Just a small clarification here: we’re still trying to get the first real release out of the door, shame especially on myself for not bringing up enough time to get this thing done. Anyways good to know we’re on the radar, stuff like this certainly encourages further developments, but time always is an enemy.

If you wanna know more, check out Frost here.

Last week we attended the Mobile Internet Conference in Berlin. As already mentioned in an earlier post, Rocco was chairing the pre-conference day (31th March). A few startups were presenting at this day, amongst them Trutap and itsmy.com. Other presentations (YouTube Mobile, Cyworld, Yahoo! Spain) also gave interesting insights.

YouTube Mobile for example is most accessed in Japan followed by USA and UK. Its first launch version (alpha version) featured only a few thousands of videos and the distribution was mainly through carriers and mobile phone distributors. While its launch of the second version offers almost all the YouTube videos and experiences a 15 times increase in views per day. Right now YouTube Mobile does not include advertisement, but since it belongs to Google we can expect some kind of advertising soon.

On the next 2 conference days the presentations were mainly held by carriers (3 AUSTRIA, Magyar Telekom, O2 Germany, Swisscom Mobile, etc.). It was interesting to hear that carriers still (try to) open up. A very good example was 3 AUSTRIA. The presentation was very insightful and Alexander Franz showed how they are dealing with the changing environment and the shifting from voice to data. He introduced some interesting business models and explained the “Skype Phone” for 99 EUR.

All in all it was a very interesting event with many interesting and diverse companies. And of course another great networking opportunity.

There was another MMM (Mobile Monday in Munich) today. We missed all the presentations, they were almost exclusively about mobile gaming, so no biggie for us. We met the “usual suspects” and I’m getting the feeling to get into a MoMo community somehow. Lots of software vendors and game programmers were around.

I talked to the guys from DeviceAnywhere and had to learn they were actually also the guys from “Mobile Complete”! While talking to them I somehow thought these would be separate companies, but they are not. I scored a 3hrs free trial for the DeviceAnywhere service - will try later this week with our current Groupile alpha. I already know the service and it’s great. They just launched the Japanese devices and if you have an account with them you get the Japanese ones for free for a while. So now we’re really thinking about getting an account. Need to check pricing again.

Also I met someone from the MoMo team who told me about the Demo Night they will have on May 19th. We’ll see if we submit Groupile for that. Might be nice, 5 min presentations w/o PowerPoint slides - only live demos. By then we should be in public beta.

We’ll be going to Berlin on Sunday to attend the Mobile Internet Conference. The event is organized by IIR Telecoms and they asked me to chair the sessions on Monday 03/31/2008.

The topic for my introduction for that day is ‘Mobile Web 2.0′. I’ll start learning all the buzz words of the past 3 years by heart over the weekend to be prepared ;)

Maybe I can slip in a little announcement concerning the long awaited launch of the Groupile Beta that’s due in April. We have about 140 people waiting, they signed up without really knowing what to expect, some of them are waiting since last year. April will clear things up.

The conference is gonna be a big opportunity to network and get in touch with many great people in the mobile and mobile web area. The speaker roster looks great even though CTIA/IEEE WCNC 2008 in Las Vegas is at the same time. On Monday the following companies will be presenting and hold a roundtable discussion at the end of the day:

• Google YouTube
• Bluenove/Orange
• trutap
• Cyworld
• itsmy.com
• Yahoo!
• emap
• Zed
• Telecom Italia
• Eyeka
• blinkBox

The W3C, Jamba and many international carriers will also be there and present throughout the conference.

We’re looking forward to meet you there, too!

We were invited to speak at this year’s FMC Summit on rather short notice about three weeks ago. The event was organized by IIR Telecoms & Technology and took place in Munich from 03/11/08 to 03/14/08. We had a chance to present PavingWays and Groupile in the first of two “Innovation Showcase” sessions on Wednesday. It was a nice opportunity to present what we are working on to a critical and at least in part mobile-web-oriented audience.

To be honest we didn’t really know what FMC was before the conference, but since it apparently was a topic incorporating “mobile” and “convergence” we felt like it was a good fit for us. FMC, belonging to the wide field of IMS, actually encompasses a wide range of services and technologies, mostly related to network infrastructure and the bundling and the convergence of various products, such as mobile and fixed line tariffs or DSL, phone and TV bundles also known as Triple play.

We met many interesting people from an incredible amount of different countries, such as Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, Turkey, the UK. Most of them were representatives of major mobile carriers/network operators. We also had interesting discussions with representatives of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Device Management Forum.

Some interesting points and thoughts from the presentations at the conference:

- Question: Will cool and ubiquitous devices (GSM, WiFI, Homezone) be network operator independent? That means the user could then choose the cheapest or quickest connection on demand across providers.
Answer (T-Mobile): Users would love it, because polls show they see their mobile handset as a friend, but the provider as the cleaning lady. Users also want a cheap handset, but T-Mobile don’t think that this will be happening. On the contrary T-Mobile Germany has an exclusive partnerhsip with Apple and they think this will be the way to go in the future.

- T-Mobile is relaxed about VoIP coming to the iPhone, because you can already make phone calls with it as opposed to a laptop where VoIP fills a gap.

- telephone numbers will become less relevant, sometime in the future it could be replaced by something like your Facebook or MySpace account

Thanks go out to Alex from IIR Telecoms for the nicely organized and well managed event.

I totally forgot blogging about that and more or less for completeness reasons I want to mention that I have been attending the Google Android developer day in Munich (actually in Aschheim/Dornach) on January 29, 2008. I met Jason Chen, one of the presenters at the event, the day before at the Mobile Monday in Munich.

The people attending, at least most people I have been talking to, were mobile developers sent by their companies, pretty big ones. There were some start-up people there too, but not many. Comments and questions in general were pretty critical, detailed and practical. Interesting was the big interest of taking part in the Google Android development competition from the audience. Apparently mentioning 10 mio USD in price-money creates some interest ;)

I was of course mostly interested in the WebKit-based web browser in Android and I have to say it worked pretty well in the SDK emulator, it even has the same “bug” that I had experienced while testing the Frost library on the iPhone when it came out. So no surprises there too and one more browser to look at when developing mobile web apps, even though it’s almost the same browser as on the iPhone or Nokia’s S60 3rd edition phones (also exhibiting the “bug” mentioned above - so it’s apparently a WebKit issue after all).

Bottom line is: no surprises after all, Google leaves no event without mentioning that they’re looking for developers and if you’re interested in Android development, get the SDK and read the docs.

T-Mobile criticized Nokia’s strategy
T-Mobile ain’t very happy with Nokia’s strategy offering more and more own services. Last summer Nokia announced Ovi, a paid internet portal for music downloads and navigation. So Nokia breaks into a part of the value-added chain, which T-Mobile occupied until yet. T-Mobile boss Hamid Akhavan emphasized that Nokia’s solo attempt will lead to conflicts.
Source: http://www.heise.de

Vodafone deepens partnership with RIM
Vodafone announced to deepen the partnership with Research in Motion (RIM). Within this partnership Vodafone wants to develop own consumer services for the Blackberry platform. Until now they mostly eyed business customers. Unlike in Europe, Blackberry enjoys great popularity by average consumers in the US.
Source: http://www.heise.de

Nokia navigates pedestrians
Last week Nokia introduced Walk, a pedestrian navigation software. Downloads are now available from Nokia Beta Labs, but the software is still in Beta.
Source: http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps

Ericsson will be FIFA partner
In 2009 and 2010 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association)
will use Ericsson’s technical infrastructure for the distribution of mobile multimedia services. The center of the agreement is the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Ericsson will provide content management and service delivery platforms for transferring FIFA products (such as informations services, TV and video) to mobile devices.
Source: http://www.heise.de

T-Mobile cuts prices for mobile internet abroad
Last week T-Mobile announced 2 - still volume based - new tariffs which apply for all 27 EU-States:

• 1 MB data traffic for 2 EUR
• 50 MB day package for 15 EUR

It will be irrelevant, in which foreign network a T-Mobile customer has signed in. Well, mobile surfing gets cheaper in Europe, but it is still very expensive. The new T-Mobile Roaming tariffs will become available in mid-2008.
Source: http://www.heise.de

MSN Direct
Last week at the Mobile World Congress Microsoft introduced a new mobile client called MSN Direct. It is a free application and runs on Windows Mobile 6 powered smart phones. With MSN Direct you can assemble your own news service, such as top news stories, weather, stock reports, sports or entertainment news. The content from the MSN portal updates automatically and is displayed on the phone’s idle screen.
Source: http://phone.msndirect.com

T-Mobile integrates Yahoo’s Onesearch and IM
Starting at the end of March all web enabled T-Mobile devices will exclusively support Yahoo’s mobile search service Onesearch. Users will have access to news, weather, flickr as well as related pages for mobile clients.
This year T-Mobile also wants to introduce mobile Instant Messaging and will therefore support Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). Up to now T-Mobile prohibits the usage of Instant Messaging services with its Web’n'Walk tariffs.
Source: http://www.zdnet.de

Ericsson develops mobile multimedia platform
Ericsson has unveiled a new hardware platform for mobile devices in order to help manufacturers develop multimedia devices with multitasking capabilities.
“The U500 is a powerful multimedia platform with performance, graphics and usability, more resembling a mobile computer than today’s mobile phones,” said Robert Puskaric, head of Ericsson’s mobile platforms business. “With the U500 platform Ericsson will keep its world leading position within the multimedia mass market for years to come”.
The U500 platform integrates three ARM11 CPUs (high performance microprocessors) as well as hardware accelerators. The Ericsson U500 will launch early 2009 and can offer highly advanced features like support for WVGA displays (800×480 pixels), high-quality camcorder, 12-megapixel camera, high-resolution video for mobile TV and superior audio performance.
Sources: http://news.softpedia.com, http://www.mobilewhack.com, http://www.zdnet.de

Nokia starts mobile advertising network
Nokia starts with Nokia Media Network its own advertising network for mobile websites. The company not only markets its own mobile services, but also from other (70) provider, such as AccuWeather, Discovery, Hearst, Reuters and Sprint.
Nokia promises its clients click rates at an average of 10% in some areas.
The company relies on the Enpocket technology, which the company bought in October 2007. Enpocket’s analysis helps optimizing campaigns in order to increase click and conversion rates.
Source: http://www.golem.de

AOL announces Open Mobile Platform
Last week AOL announced the “Open Mobile Platform“, which can be used to develop applications for a wide variety of mobile phone and smart phone platforms. The platform will support platform systems like Brew, Blackberry, Linux, Symbian, Windows Mobile as well as mobile phones with Java. The integration of AOL services will be possible, too.
Developers can create application using a XML-based markup language, a client to be installed on the device and an application server. The platform is to be released as Open Source Software in summer 2008.
Source: http://www.golem.de

- YouTube revised their mobile website m.youtube.com. Now, there is a wider range of videos available (millions of videos). You can also access your YouTube account, your Favorites, your own uploaded videos, your favorite Channels via your mobile phone, and you can share, rate or comment other user´s clips. Uploaded videos (from your mobile phone via email/mms) will appear on m.youtube.com as well as on www.youtube.com.
Last but not least, YouTube for Mobile went international. It is also now available for the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand, Germany, and Russia.
For more info (including a video) check out: YouTube Blog

- The German student social network StudiVZ prepares itself against the market entry of his US competitor Facebook. StudiVZ plans to provide APIs for developers. They are also thinking about joining Google’s initiative OpenSocial.

- Mig33 announced closing a Series B funding of $13.5 million led by DCM with participation from existing Series A investors Accel, Redpoint and TVP. Mig33 is a downloadable mobile social networking application. They currently have over 9 million users across more than 200 countries. Mig33 will use the money to continue expansion of the company in the U.S. and internationally.

- The mobile social network MocoSpace has raised $4 million in its second round of funding, drawing from existing investors General Catalyst, Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group and former eBay exec Michael Dearing reports TechCrunch. The Boston-based company already raised $3 million in the first round in January 2007. MocoSpace has 2 million members and 1 billion pageviews/month from mobile phones.

- Motorola considers an elimination of his weak mobile devices department. The goal would be to regain lost market shares. But the consideration is not final. Greg Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer: “We are exploring ways in which our Mobile Devices Business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise.”

- Opera announced the commercial release of the latest mobile Web browser Opera Mobile 9.5 at the Mobile World Congress (MWC, once 3GSM) in Barcelona. “the Opera Mobile 9.5 desktop-like browsing experience has been enhanced with innovations such as zooming and panning that make it easier to navigate, load pages quicker and get users closer to the Web content and entertainment they want. With Opera Mobile 9.5, users can experience the real Web and interact with content exactly as they do on their PC.” (Source: http://www.opera.com/pressreleases).
Watch the Opera Mobile 9.5 Guided Tour (video) here.

- At the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona Microsoft will unveil version 6.1 of its Windows Mobile OS. Amongst a new application (”One Note Mobile”) there are an improved Internet Explorer as well as a Chat view for text messages. One Note Mobile includes voice messages, notepad and drawings. Find more info here: golem.de and msmobiles.com

Sources:
StudiVZ: golem.de
Mig33: themobiblog.com, personalbee.com
MocoSpace: techcrunch.com
Motorola: motorola.com, heise.de

Nokia acquires the Norwegian company Trolltech for $153 Million (€104 Million). Trolltech’s Qt Technology is a cross-platform GUI framework that’s used in applications such as KDE and Skype.

“The acquisition of Trolltech will enable Nokia to accelerate the cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to develop its Internet services business. Nokia plans to continue to develop Trolltech’s products and continue to drive sales to new and existing customers” (press release of Trolltech).

With the open source technology Qt, Nokia plans to support developers creating applications that run on smartphones as well as PC’s. The acquisition of Trolltech could be Nokia’s answer to Google’s Android.

Sources:
http://trolltech.com
http://mashable.com
http://www.golem.de

O2 and Vodafone are launching a new billing service in Germany this spring. The service will be accessible to every mobile phone user.

The new payment system combines the direct debiting system (German: Lastschriftverfahren) with SMS payment confirmation through mobile phones. That means:

1. you order a product on a mobile portal or web shop
2. then you type in your mobile phone number and password
3. following you will receive a text message (SMS), which you have to confirm in order to debit the amount from your bank account via direct debiting system.

Prepaid customers and customers with cell phones provided by their company as well as customers of other carriers need to register once and for free for this online payment system.

Due to the handling of payments via two independent communication media, the payment security will be clearly increased according to Vodafone and O2. A prior registration giving bank account details and credit card numbers does not apply.

The whole payment service sounds very easy and promising. I am very curious about testing it.

Sources:
zdnet.de
golem.de

Last week, NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier with nearly 53 million subscribers, and Google announced their partnership that includes providing search services and search-related advertisement. The service is scheduled to be launching in spring 2008.
Besides, other Google services will be made available for i-mode users, such as a pre-installed application of Google Maps on i-mode handsets.

In the near future GMail, YouTube and Picasa will be also accessible through i-mode. In addition, in all upcoming NTT DoCoMo handsets with a capable HTML browser, Google will be set as starting page.

NTT DoCoMo may also introduce handsets that will use Google’s “Android” mobile software package in Japan - probably in the second half of this year. Not very surprising since NTT DoCoMo is a part of Android’s Open Handset Alliance.

This partnership will give Google a better access not only to the mobile market, but also to the search engine market in Japan, where Google lags behind Yahoo.

Mobile service subscriptions exceeded 100 million in Japan as of the end of 2007, with almost 70 million users accessing the Internet through their mobile phones.

Sources:
businessweek.com
efluxmedia.com
internetcommunications.tmcnet.com

According to paidcontent.org Nokia is in talks with Facebook about a potential partnership and investment.

Nokia and Facebook are in negotiations about porting Facebook on the home screen of several Nokia handsets. This deal could be huge, since Nokia is the world’s largest maker of mobile phones. Nokia already tartgeted some mobile services for their devices:

• Ovi (mobile web service)
• Mosh (mobile social network)
• Navteq (location based services)
• Universal (music)
• Avvenu (file sharing)
• Twango (media sharing)
• Enpocket (mobile advertising)

This deal could help Facebook expand in the European market. Nokia is also looking into purchasing a stake of Facebook.

Talks are still very early. A senior Nokia executive declined to go into details: “There is talk of a partnership in the works… it’s safe to say we’re testing the waters and things still have to be worked out.”

So no specific details have been released yet, but maybe mobilemag.com is right with “The giant just got bigger”.

Sources:
mobilemag.com
paidcontent.org

Yesterday we went to the Bloggertreffen in Munich which was loosely related to the DLD. Thanks to the sponsors Hubert Burda Media (the organizer of the DLD event), and Telegate (11880), every guest received an 18 EUR voucher. So, beer and food were free.

It was a nice event and a good opportunity to meet some people (not only) from the German blogosphere. We had some interesting talks with people from the CCC, Focus, Townkings, BlogWerk and Xing. Almost the whole CScout team was there too.

Many thanks to Klaus Eck for organizing this event!

There are some interesting events coming up:

• Bloggertreffen: Jan. 20, 2008 starting at 7:30 pm, Munich, Germany
• Mobile Monday Norway Peer Awards 2008: Jan. 21, 2008, Latter, Aker Brygge, Norway
• Mobile Web USA: 22-23 January 2008, San Francisco, USA
• Mobile Monday “Open Portals, Open Platforms, Open Communities”: Jan. 28, 2008, Munich, Germany
• Mobile Monday “Mobile Ticketing”: Feb. 11, 2008, Frankfurt, Germany
• Mobile Jam Session: February 12, 2008, Barcelona, Spain
• Mobile Monday: Feb. 18, 2008, Berlin, Germany
• Mobile Monday “Mobile Advertising”: Feb. 25, 2008, Frankfurt, Germany

Are there some other events coming up in the next couple of weeks? Please let us know!

I recently wrote an article for dev.opera.com about Mobile Ajax and how the Frost Library can deal with that. There is a lot of introductory stuff in there and it might will be the longest and most comprehensive article I have been writing on the topic, there’s even code snippets in there. So it might be a good read for anybody interested in the topic of Mobile Ajax.Thanks to David and Chris from Opera for making that happen and giving me the opportunity.You can read the article at dev.opera.com.

- Mobile TV via DVB-H will start in Germany on June 1, 2008 - just in time for the European Championship in Soccer. There is still a lack of content which has to be adapted for the small screen sizes. It will be interesting to see if this version of mobile TV will be successful.

- China Mobile, China’s largest mobile operator, called off iPhone launch negotiations with Apple. Supposedly the negotiations were cancelled due to disputes about Apple’s share in downloads and other content sales.

- Nokia is to close its German plant. The closure of the Bochum facilities is planned for the middle of this year. The production will be shifted to more competitive locations (such as Romania and Hungary).

- Google has got the approval by the FCC (Federal Communications Commision) and is now one of the 214 qualified bidders for the 700Mhz frequency spectrum auction starting on Jan. 24, 2008.

Sources:
http://www.golem.de/0801/57045.html (Mobile TV),
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/101733 (iPhone),
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/china-mobile-an.html (iPhone),
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/101797 (Nokia),
http://www.golem.de/0801/57012.html (Nokia),
http://www.engadgetmobile.com (Nokia),
http://www.ft.com (Nokia),
http://www.informationweek.com (Google/FCC),
http://www.golem.de/0801/57029.html (Google, FCC)

In the first post this year we wish all of you a happy and successful year 2008!

We have not blogged in a while. The good thing about this is that we were busy working on our first product, Groupile.  Groupile will be a productive networking tool for groups. It is going to be ubiquitous, mobile-focused and web based. There will be a beta test soon, so make sure you sign up for that at groupile.com!

Another thing that we’ve been working on was our Mobile Ajax Library, Frost. We booked a domain for the project and installed a very basic homepage. http://frostlib.org will from now on be the official home of the Frost library providing all the available information about the project. A pre-release version of the library is available for download there too.

Wizzl, a Dutch company, is preparing to launch its all-in-one virtual phone. Users (”Wizzlers”) can talk, chat, have direct access to live TV, Internet radio and web games. Or as written on their website:

“Wizzl has developed free communication software which will allow its users (’Wizzlers’) to make free voice and video calls over the internet, and calls to local and international phones and mobiles from only 1.5 Eurocents per minute. And it doesn’t stop there; with Wizzl’s all-in-one virtual phone, Wizzlers will have direct access to live TV, internet radio stations and the most popular web games around. Personal photographs, music and videos will also be at users’ fingertips.”

The official (worldwide) launch will be at GamePlay, the largest game event of the Benelux, between 23 and 25 Nov. 2007.

You can test their (Windows) software on your desktop PC here: http://www.wizzl.com/intl/en/download. First-time downloaders get up to 10 minutes of free calling time to landlines and mobile phones across the world. Wizzler-to-Wizzler voice and video calls are completely free of charge. “The current beta version works on desktops and laptops only. In the very near future, Wizzl will also be available for mobile phones.”

Sources:
http://www.wizzl.com
http://www.gameplay.nl