PavingWays

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.