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Half of all internet connections come from mobile phones!

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:40:40 +0000

The TechCrunchIT post by Vic Gundotra who is the Vice President of Engineering for Google’s mobile and developer products, presents a lot of interesting data:

4 billion global mobile subscribers (ITU, 2009)
In 2009 half of all connections to the internet worldwide will come from a mobile phone. (eMarketer, 2008 and 2009)

This is a bit hard to believe even for me, as I would imagine that most cellphone customers don’t have a data plan.

MetroPCS is a prepaid cellphone company which offers fully unlimited plans starting at just $40/month. They have 5 million subscribers and just entered the New York market. I was aware of their offerings but not the data promotion for new voice customers: free internet for the first month and if they choose to upgrade, unlimited data for a flat rate. As a result nearly half of their users optin for this down the line. The big point here is simplicity as all consumers demand an unlimited data access just like with our home ISP.

The original article has a lot of interesting mobile stats from Google indicating current trends:

In a few years the mobile phone will become a mobile computer with the ability to make voice calls being just one of the features.
Following that, there will be a move to the web-enabled applications that live in the browser just as we have seen on the PCs. But for now the hype is still around installable native applications.

Jailbreak your iPhone and go to jail?

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:17:08 +0000

After keeping quiet on its stance of Jailbreaking, Apple has formally come out saying that this is an illegal practice. Before today, they simply said that this modification would simply void the warranty. More info on the legal context at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

As we all know, Apple’s iPhone comes with restrictions that prevent owners from running applications obtained from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes App Store. Prior to iPhone 2.0 and AppStore, which came out in July 2008, jailbreaking was the only way to run 3rd party applications. This voided the warranty, yet hundreds of thousands of users went ahead with this. Since these applications were typically free, when AppStore was officially opened, many developers moved their apps there and now had an ability to make money from their efforts. There are many applications that are rejected from the AppStore due to Apple’s or AT&T policies of offering competing services (using the iPhone camera for video, laptop tethering) or doing things in “unsupported” way. Also some applications can be banned for being “useless or offensive” (example: Obama Trampoline iPhone App)

Mozilla and Skype has come out saying that they are on the same page as Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which has opposed the Apple’s new rule by filing an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This exemption would take away Apple’s ability to charge groups with DMCA violations for circumventing the iPhone’s security by modifying Apple’s internal software.

Apple claims that by jailbreaking the software one is violating their copyright on the cellphone’s software. They justify the policy by saying that opening the iPhone to independently created applications will compromise safety, security and reliability. But shouldn’t I be able to run “buggy” software if I choose to?

An iPhone is a platform just like a PC and should be open to developers.

At Mobilestead, we use WebApps as much as possible as this avoids the Apple approval process and enhances portability between multiple platforms.

Universal Phone Charger Finally – But only in 2012?

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:13:57 +0000

GSM Association just announced a standardized charger for all mobile phones. Consumers have been demanding this for a while now. But before we all get excited, the target date for this is Jan. 1, 2012 – 3 years away!

This makes perfect sense and I would imagine that this would have been introduced a lot sooner as there are obvious advantages to both consumers and manufacturers. This new charger should also be a bit more energy efficient. There are 17 companies involved in this, including AT&T Inc., Motorola Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics. T-Mobile.

I instantly noticed that two of the major players are not involved in this initiative: Apple and RIM.
Apple iPhone doesn’t surprise me as their adapter comes from the iPod ecosystem. RIM devices already use a standard MiniUSB adapter. Manufacturers of mobile phones, and most of them will be “smart phones” should embrace the miniUSB form factor.

MiniUSB is already widely used for small devices such as PDAs, digital cameras and mobile phones. Since most of my friends have a Blackberry, even though each one is a different flavor or carrier there never a shortage of charging stations, even when you visit a home of someone who doesn’t have one. A computer or even a Playstation 3 guarantees that there is a source of energy anywhere you go (assuming they have a miniUSB cable which most do). Additionally the miniUSB acts as a universal syncing cable. If other manufacturers followed this lead, the wait would not have to be 3 years.

In UK you get your first cell phone at age 8

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:00:13 +0000

According to the Telegraph, the average age for a kid to get his or her first cell phone is eight. Eight! I was lucky enough to get my first cell-phone at the age of 16. At that time this was a shared resource where one in five had one. A brick sized phone was a status symbol. This was still the age of the beepers and pagers.

According to the survey based on“1,435 people including 546 children aged seven to 15, 676 parents and 759 grandparents between January 16 and 26,” 35 percent of children own a cell phone by age eight. That only confirms that the E*TRADE Blackberry baby (Mobile Baby) is still ahead of the curve.

In the UK mobile technologies are more mainstream than in USA. There are obvious advantages to getting your kid a cell-phone, as you can always reach them. Carriers are offering services that are able to report the location of the device and plant it on the map. For example, Sprint Family Locator charges $5/month for this service and allows parents to set alerts based on time and location. So now you can make sure your kid goes straight home right after school or stays within one mile from the house.

Navigate New York City with Google Maps for mobile

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:27:08 +0000

New York City partnered with Google to create NYCgo.com and a brand new Official NYC Information Center, located at 810 7th Avenue . Tourists can now navigate the city easier by integrating Google Maps for mobile into their experience. www.NYCgo.com is similar to other sites as it lists hotels, restaurants, and things to do in New York. This is also in a way a competitor to CitySearch. Most pages embed Google Maps, and feature “send to phone” feature, which sends locations to your phone via text message. The site makes it easy to plan a trip at home and then use your phone to navigate the city.
See the video below:

If you are not yet using Google Maps for mobile to search for places and get directions download it by visiting google.com/gmm on your cell phone’s browser.

We hear lots of tourists complain about having to carry a paper subway map.
At Times Square and any subway station near tourist attraction everyone has a paper subway map in their hand and there is a crowd at the central posted one. iPhone version 2.2 now gives transit and walking directions which is great for tourists.

There is this great application – City Transit for the iPhone which provides Maps (MTA Subway, Manhattan Bus, LIRR and Metro North), Individual Subway Lines and Advisories all on your iPhone.

Mobilestead will provide City Tour Maps with all relevant attractions as well as audio and video multimedia to make the tourists stay more enjoyable.

Share your location with friends using Google Latitude – what about Facebook, Loopt and other startups?

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:24:36 +0000

Today is a major day for Location-based Social Networking. Google has just launched Latitude, which probably should have been called Location for simplicity. Now your friends can see exactly where you are. More info on TechCrunch. Google Mobile Blog has the official announcement.

This means trouble for startups in this space, as none really got significant traction.
In our opinion, mobile social networking space will eventually be won by the likes of Facebook which already know all your friends and can easily turn location features on at any time they want.

Loopt had some traction but not too significant as their applications could not update the status in the background (on iPhone). This is a problem for all LBSs. Latitude faces the same challenge, but people use Google Maps a lot more frequently than launching the Loopt app.

Highlighted TechCrunch comment by Original Sin I agree with:

I just installed it on my BB. It’s not apparent from the article, but this is actually just a feature of Google Maps 3.0. A pretty sweet feature, because I use Google maps all the time, but only a feature non-the-less. I believe this was one of the big gripes about Loopt et al, they were trying to make a service out what is merely a service of a greater location product. In this case, that product is GMaps.

I didn’t have a chance to play with Google Latitude as their app is not yet available for the iPhone. Something tells me they rushed to launch and there may be more news coming from other major players?

The fact that many developers use Google Maps within their site is also an interesting variable. I wonder how Google will make this data available outside their systems (with user privacy settings of course) via oAuth (similar to Yahoo’s FireEagle) It is only a matter of time before this location information is made available to other developers for free via something like Google Friend Connect.

There is a huge demand for companies to provide LBS infrastructure & frameworks – from players like DeCarta (powers Loopt) & Navteq / TeleAtlas (used by Google Maps)

Google is known to open up its services to developers (App Engine, Friend Connect, Maps). Google Maps API is the most used API on the web, which makes me think it’s only a matter of time when Google does similar with Latitude. Think of Twitter with Google Latitude!

Google has the power to create and transform existing industries. I think the area of LBS social networking had very few potential candidates to begin with – similar to the Data Portability segment. Facebook and Google are the names that come to mind. Both already have millions or users making use social graphs.

Relevant example: MapQuest vs. Google Maps – MapQuest is still successful – but Google def came out as the big winner.

There are many areas were Google did fail, and then acquired competitors or simply exited the space. But in this arena mindshare and user community are key!
To use the Google Latitude you will simply use: Maps 3.0 (that will come with your new smartphone) and your Google Account. For Loopt it’s a challenge:
- Market the brand
- User Downloads App
- Creates Account
- Launches app to update status

One thing this announcement will certainly do is speed up innovation from Facebook, Loopt etc which is a good thing.