Two “firsts” may have been recorded for the iPhone on Tuesday as it is in the vanguard of enterprise purchases of the handset and a music-licensing company said it may be the first to license a song on the iPhone.
Mike Karfakis, president and CEO of Vitamin, a boutique design and marketing firm, surprised his employees by giving them iPhones. Noting that Vitamin’s five employees spend at least 80% of their working hours online, Karfakis said the devices are invaluable for online research, blog reading, podcast listening, e-mail sending, and video watching.
“My favorite feature would have to be complete access to Web sites as they appear on your home computer,” Karfakis said in an e-mail. “Apple has completely flipped the script on how the Internet is now integrated with palm devices. In the past PDA-accessible sites needed to be created for palm devices. With the iPhone, Apple has created a device that makes the existing Internet accessible.”
It’s still too soon to tell how the iPhone will sell in enterprise situations; before the launch of the mobile phone, some IT consultants and specialists cautioned companies to be wary of the iPhone in enterprise situations.
Vitamin, which counsels its customers on marketing and branding, believes the iPhones will help it stay in the forefront of branding aesthetics, in part because of the iPhone’s image as a leading-edge product, the company said.
Also on Tuesday, Rumblefish, a sonic branding and music-licensing agency, said it licensed a song by a group called the Procussions in an action that took less than three minutes. Rumblefish said it believes the licensing was the first song to be so licensed on the iPhone.
“Rumblefish has revolutionized music licensing, taking a confusing process and making it so easy that you can license a song from your phone,” Rumblefish CEO Paul Anthony said in a statement.
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Motorola has agreed to acquire privately held Leapstone Systems.
However, terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Somerset, New Jersey-based Leapstone is a communications software developer that provides a unified platform for creating, managing and delivering converged video, voice and data service bundles across multiple networks and devices.
The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of Leapstone Systems stockholders, and is currently expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2007.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola makes wireless handsets and other tech products, and had sales of $42.9 billion in 2006.
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Alcatel-Lucent said that it is part of a group of companies that won a $20 billion contract with the US government to develop a communications network for federal offices.
The Networx program, announced in March, will stretch over the next 10 years.
The consortium is being led by Qwest Communications International.
As part of the US government contract, Qwest and the rest of the consortium will offer voice, data and video services to federal agencies.
Alcatel-Lucent shares slipped 0.9% to 10.25 euros ($13.99) in Paris.
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ROK TV is offering live and on-demand mobile TV streamed over existing 2.5G and 3G networks as a subscription service on Nokia Eseries phones. Mobile technology and applications development company ROK Entertainment Group has been appointed by Nokia to provide the service. ROK TV is available via the Downloads! service on the Nokia E61i and Nokia E65, initially, which the owner needs to activate to begin watching the services. Two channel packages will be offered, a five-channel Strictly Business package, to be charged in the UK at GBP 5 a month, with a heavy emphasis on business news and information channels, and a ten-channel ROK All TV package, to be charged at GBP 10 a month containing live business news channels as well as additional sports news, music videos and comedy channels. As a trial, both TV packages will be free to view for the first two weeks. ROK TV is available in the UK now and will subsequently deploy into mainland Europe from August onwards.
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Marvell’s TopDog WLAN solutions are Wi-Fi CERTIFIED by the Wi-Fi Alliance for IEEE 802.11n draft 2.0. Wi-Fi 802.11n certification helps ensure product interoperability across vendors, adherence to Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2) security protocols, and backward compatibility with more than 3,500 CERTIFIED Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g products. The certification program also includes Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) quality of service, which helps deliver the best user experience with applications such as video, voice, and gaming.
“Wi-Fi certification helps assure end users that TopDog-based products provide complete 802.11 interoperability, including security, stability, and compatibility,” said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, Marvell’s Vice President and General Manager of the Embedded and Emerging Business Unit, Communications and Consumer Business Group. “This achievement demonstrates Marvell’s continual innovation of wireless technologies that deliver a high quality of service and cutting-edge features to high-volume consumer markets.”
Marvell’s TopDog products are part of the Wi-Fi 802.11n certification test bed, and are among the first products to achieve IEEE 802.11n draft 2.0 certification. TopDog station cards and access points provide exceptional bandwidth for video, voice, data, and multimedia streaming applications, as well as unprecedented levels of wireless connectivity with higher throughput and increased range compared to previous Wi-Fi 802.11-based solutions. A recognized leader in the 802.11 WLAN market, Marvell has been integral to the development and definition of the IEEE 802.11 standard and to the Wi-Fi certification process.
“We commend Marvell for achieving Wi-Fi certification for TopDog,” said Wi-Fi Alliance Managing Director Frank Hanzlik. “Having met the rigorous requirements for Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 802.11n draft 2.0 is quite an accomplishment, and reflects Marvell’s commitment to interoperable, protected next-generation Wi-Fi technology.”
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You have to admire Apple’s chutzpah as much as its creativity. Any other newcomer to the mobile-phone market would have allowed, indeed encouraged, potential customers—the Verizons, T-Mobiles, AT&Ts of the world—to have at least some say in what went into its fledgling device. Even Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the business, has always listened carefully to its clients.
Not Apple. Since its conception early last year, the company’s heavily hyped iPhone (which has finally gone on sale in America) has remained remarkably untainted by industry group-think. In exchange for exclusive rights to offer the phone in America for at least the next couple of years, AT&T has had to refrain from any form of meddling. And it shows—both for good and for bad.
The iPhone is all you would expect of Apple—thin and sleek, with the biggest screen ever seen on a mobile phone. It combines all the functions of a smart phone, internet appliance and multimedia player seamlessly in one handsome device.
Using a subset of Apple’s rock-solid OS X operating system means the iPhone’s 16 built-in applications—including phone, address book, calendar, alarm clock, organiser, camera, web browser, e-mail client, Wi-Fi terminal, video and audio iPod—work together in a clear, simple, intuitive way that has become Apple’s hallmark.
As with an iPod or iMac, it’s the user interface that impresses most. With the iPhone, Apple has taken its sense of minimalism a crucial step further. The phone has no clunky keyboard or rows of fiddly function keys, and no pop-up menus to plow through. Instead, everything is done by tapping, pinching or swiping a finger on the phone’s touch-sensitive screen. Get lost among its many different displays, and the gadget’s one solitary button takes you straight back to the home-page showing icons for the phone’s various functions.
A virtual QWERTY keyboard pops up on the screen when you need to write a text message or an e-mail. Tricky, yes, but the software is smart enough to guess what you meant to type and will correct most mis-keyed letters.
Another bit of out-of-the-box thinking is the iPhone’s web browser. Unlike the tiny cut-down, text-based Mobile Web offered by Verizon and the rest, Apple has implemented a rich set of browser features that lets the iPhone display pretty well the same web pages you get on a computer. You can scroll down by dragging a finger over the screen, and enlarge anything you can’t read by simply double tapping on it. Spread two fingers across the screen and the whole image gets magnified.
But just because Apple is clever enough to do all these things, and more, does not mean they will necessarily be appreciated beyond the Macaholics, fashionistas and other early adopters. Much has been made about the way Apple has bravely bucked the trend by building a “convergence” device—an appliance that melds many functions into one-instead of pouring its prodigious energies into a “divergence” product that does one thing brilliantly, as it did so successfully with the iPod. All the blockbusters of consumer electronics—video recorders, digital cameras, plasma TVs, Nintendo game consoles, MP3 players, as well as the vast majority of mobile phones—have been divergence devices. By contrast, convergence products, such as smart phones and media-centre PCs, have either flopped or finished up occupying niches.
The danger in developing a gadget that tries to be a phone, internet appliance and iPod all in one is that it can fail to accomplish each as well as it might. Unfortunately, the iPhone comes up short in a number of areas. For instance, it does not include voice dialing—essential now that hands-free is fast becoming the only way that mobile phones can be used legally in cars. Also, simply making a phone call is more cumbersome than it should be, requiring up to half a dozen different steps. And because the phone can’t take advantage of high-speed 3G cellular networks, surfing the web is more like wading through molasses.
As an iPod, the iPhone is also less than adequate-especially when trying to store videos and photographs as well as songs. The $500 model has only four gigabytes of storage, while the $600 version has eight gigabytes. These days, iPods come with 80-gigabyte hard-drives.
If the iPhone’s potential is to be fully realised, Apple will need to do two things in a hurry. As with the iPod Nano, it will need an entry-level model that’s much cheaper and more focused. And as with the iPod itself, it will need to make the mainstream model a good deal more polished. That means adding more storage, a modern broadband radio, a slot for an external memory card, a GPS receiver for real-time navigation and software which, among other things, allows the phone to capture video as well as send photos to others.
Insiders reckon that Apple could halve the current price of the iPhone and still make a profit. That leaves the company plenty of wiggle room to prove the naysayers wrong. Expect to see cheaper and better iPhones perhaps as early as January.
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A Kiwi company making big inroads in the mobile games content industry has been given a boost by a top European developer.
Games company Tracebit will make its impressive Java games portfolio available through open market website voeveo.com.
With titles like Scott Dixon Racing, Williams F1, The Village and Aquastrike distributed to over 50 countries, the Kiwi company will surely reap the benefits.
Consumer access to mobile games content has been boosted by European games specialist Tracebit making its products available on the New Zealand-based open market website, voeveo.com.
Simon Adahl, voeveo’s marketing officer says selling GSM-supported handset games on the no-barriers site, along with direct downloading for mobile phone users will lead to significant sales opportunities.
“The voeveo community-driven trading model has exciting potential, given its buyers have unrestricted access to all types of content, plus they actively control their own transactions,” he says.
“We want to reach global wireless consumers more efficiently and at the same time receive useful feedback on our game products.”
Customers can download music, video and gaming content regardless of location, phone type or service contract.
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DESPITE BEING described as more like a home entertainment device than a serious business tool, proud owners of Apple Iphone have discovered it ships without any games.
Brit mobile content specialist, Player X, claims it is rushing to fill this gap.Games for the Iphone will almost certainly be converted over to Java.
“Cingular (now AT&T) only has a content/games delivery system for Java. They don’t use [Qualcomm’s] Brew. So I’d guess they’ll be looking to OTA (over-the-air) delivery of games using Java.
Player X has just struck a deal with AT&T’s arch rival, Verizon Wireless. It will be delivering its family orientated entertainment channel, Zapper TV, as streamed mobile.
The service will only be available to those who own handsets capable of supporting Verizon’s V CAST video-on-demand service. Which basically means EV-DO capable handsets.
The content on Zapper TV is a mixture of Brit stiff like Wallace & Gromit and US shows like Miami Vice.
Tony Pearce, Player X’s CEO, claimed that Zapper TV has been especially created for the North American market. He said, “We firmly believe content dedicated to the mobile media is what the consumer is looking for in mobile video.”
One source claimed the reason why AT&T hasn’t moved on Iphone games yet is that it is, “currently in a state of turmoil.” He also claimed that the big games houses will be going the Java route “because everyone expects Vodafone to offer the Iphone in Europe.”
Once again, Vodafone isn’t an operator than favours Brew. The only Brew friendly European operator the INQ knows of is TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile).
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Jamba is ready to unleash the biggest direct-to-consumer (D2C) content campaign the US has ever seen.
The next few days will see the launch of the Yellow Plan, with content from TV show The Simpsons becoming available on mobile for the first time to tie in with the release of the eponymous movie on July 27th.
Crucially, none of the content – with the exception of EA Mobile’s Minutes to Meltdown game – will be available from operator decks. Instead, News Corp subsidiary Jamba will be running storefronts at Jamster.com and TheSimpsonsMobile.com (not currently live, so you’ll have to wait).
For $9.99 a month, the Yellow Plan will offer fans credit for six downloads from a selection of The Simpsons content, such as made-for-mobile voicetones, wallpapers and polytones. Video is in the pipeline and the plan will also include EA’s game.
Speaking exclusively to ME, Jamba COO Lee Fenton said: “The way we’re going to bring The Simpsons content to market in the US is an industry first, but one that we’re quite confident about. The Yellow Plan is a huge moment for the US D2C content market and it’s also a rare example of a standalone content offering based around a single entertainment brand.”
Jamba will be riding the coat tails of The Simpsons Movie’s multi-million dollar global marketing campaign, with the Yellow Plan set to feature in ads on Fox TV, web banners, inserts in DVDs and call outs on movie posters. This should deliver massive awareness for little direct cost.
“In terms of subscriber acquisition we don’t expect to have a huge on-air advertising push. We expect to generate most of our traffic from other Simpsons and News Corp online destinations and from the compelling nature of brand itself,” said Fenton.
Simpsons content will be made available globally a short time after the US launch, with subs models equivalent to Jamster plans in other markets.
In Europe the game will be available on-deck, but again no operator deals are in place for the wider content suite.
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Apple’s iPhone Gets Early Business Buyers, Users
