Nokia's Google And iPhone Strategy

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told investors that company would like to act "more like an internet company" than a "traditional manufacturer". Translation - we have a Google Strategy and an iPhone Strategy.

The company has been on a buying bing very much like AOL has been. However instead of buying into new markets like AOL, the company has been making acquisitions that extend its core products in new markets.

Google Strategy
Nokia has bid to acquire car navigation devices and mapping services company Navteq for $8.1 billion to gain digital maps of 69 countries. Google has been making inroad with device manufacturers and carriers to provide Google Maps as the default mapping service on their handsets. Google has an initiative with BMW to provide in car mapping services. Sales of navigation products is expected to triple to $12.8 billion by 2010, according to iSuppli Corp.

Recently Nokia launched a mobile ad network for placing advertisements through text messages and e-mail. The mobile advertising market is dominated by Google and Yahoo. Global sales are estimated to rise to $11.4 billion by 2011 from $2.17 billion currently, according to Informa Telecoms & Media Group. Nokia acquired the technology via the purchase of Enpocket.

iPhone Strategy
In March of this year Nokia debuted its online music retailer in Germany. The company acquired Loudeye to create a mobile music service to counter the iTunes and diversify its offerings. The services enables user to download music directly to their handset. Devices with mobile music players and cameras fueled a 74% increase in profit in the first half of 2007 for the company.

HTC Dream Phone - Like an iPhone, but with keys!

Infoworld reports that HTC is developing their Android based phone. Initial reports make the Dream look like a very solid competitor to the Apple iPhone. The dream will have both a full touchscreen and a qwerty keyboard. Apple iPhone critics often complain about the lack of a real keyboard, so this may be a key Dream advantage.

Infoworld also reports that Samsung is probably developing a similar phone based on the Android platform.

Mashup Wrapup

Mashup Camp is wrapping up in Mountain View and the votes are getting counted for the best mashup. I was not very impressed yesterday, but today previewed several projects that were both elegant and seemed to have some practical - perhaps even commercial - benefits.

It is not really fair to judge these based on the 5 minute ¨mini-pitches¨ in front of small laptops, but thatś how we do it here at Mashup Camp.

My favorite was Mapdango, which used about 5+ APIs from services like Flickr, Wikipedia, and Google to search city focused information and deliver an excellent collection of data from many sources. The Mapdango interface was intuitive - something that is lacking in many mashups, let along many large commercial websites. The website provided a widget as well, and generally was as nicely fleshed out application.

I was also impressed with several iPhone and mobile applications, especially the one that allowed you to track your location and your friends locations using pings or wifi triangulation and Facebook integration. Another excellent mashup combined a salesforce contact database with LinkedIn data and mapping to create an effective contact management tool.

One team had tracked Flickr images over time after tiring of so many mapping mashups. This concept would soon be applied to RSS feeds as well and could offer some very interesting trend insights.

One of the most popular was an iPhone Netflix mashup that allowed you to shop for movies at movie kiosks via your iPhone. The iPhone CNET application was also excellent, allowing extensive info browsing via the iPhone.

My apologies to some of the good mashups I have left off here.

... and the winner is ... Mapdango!

For a complete list (eventually) visit the Mashup Camp website.

Win an iPhone!

There are only 4 days remaining until the WebGuild Web 2.0 Conference & Expo on Tuesday, January 29, 2008.

Visit the Bay Area Internet Solutions (BAIS, Inc.) booth, proud sponsor of the Web 2.0 Conference & Expo, to check out their Web 2.0 specific promotions and to enter for a chance to win an iPhone! The winner will be announced at the event.

Google's $10M Android Competition Opens

Want to develop applications for Google's new Android mobile phone platform and make a cool $275K?! Google has put $10M into a competition to do just that. The idea is to develop a lot of original cool apps that are highly functional as well as usable. The apps need to access core Android functionality like location-based services, accelerometer and always-on networking.

The smartphone market is heating up and Google is looking to the development community to create the killer app that's going to make people switch to Android. Apple also recently announced that it will be releasing an iPhone/iPod Touch SDK in late Feb.

Google Apps Experience Improved On iPhone

Google has made a number of improvements to their Google Apps on the iPhone. Just a month after the launch of its initial version, the Google Apps for iPhone diehards have gotten even slicker. The web applications including Search, Gmail, Calendar, and Reader are now sporting an even more streamlined interface intended to make the applications faster, easier to activate, and improve their overall usability via the iPhone touch-screen interface.

The new features include the ability to customize default tabs for easier navigation, speedier Gmail where new emails automatically appear eliminating the need to do a manual refresh, at-a-glance monthly view of Calendar appointments, and access to and synchronization of iGoogle gadgets on the iPhone. The redesign is intended to provide iPhone users with a desktop-like web application experience optimized for the iPhone.

Google plans to expand this experience to international versions of the iPhone and to other platforms that offer similar usability and browser capabilities. To get the new Google experience on the iPhone, navigate to www.google.com on the iPhone Safari browser.

Web 2.0 Versus Desktop Office Suites

In a survey of U.S. PC users who were asked if they had heard about online, browser-based office productivity applications, it turns out that 73% had never heard of them. The remainder had heard of online office tools such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, gOffice which allows you to create Word docs on your iPhone, Zoho, etc. and tried them.

Picasa Redefined For the iPhone

On Wednesday, Google has released a new iPhone interface for Picasa Web as an upgrade to the previous version of the tool which according to the Engineer behind it "was using some very cool AJAXy features, but these were designed with a desktop web-browsing experience in mind".

Users can log in to Picasa from their iPhone at http://picasaweb.google.com and view their albums with a full view of their pics along with comments from friends. Photos can also be viewed in slideshow mode. Users can search for photos within their own albums or publicly available albums and can save their friends' albums as part of their favorites. This is currently only available in English.

In-Flight Email Now Available

Fasten your seatbelts. Passengers aboard JetBlue can now expect to get in-flight email service. Starting next week, JetBlue will be the first US airline to provide in-flight internet access. It will begin offering free email access on one of its airplanes - the BetaBlue, which is equipped with wireless Internet antennae in the ceiling and a computer server that relays signals to mobile telephone towers on the ground. Passengers will be able to connect to Yahoo Mail and instant messaging services via wireless internet connections on laptops or with wi-fi enabled BlackBerry handheld devices. Fees are currently undisclosed.

Rival airlines American, Virgin America, and Alaska Air are said to be working on giving passengers online connectivity beginning next year. American and Virgin are reportedly working on allowing passengers to access e-mail, the internet, or office networks using laptops, iPhones, BlackBerrys and other portable gadgets with Wi-Fi connectivity.

Google Interface Improved On The iPhone

Google has rolled out a new mobile interface for the iPhone. iPhone users who visit Google.com from their iPhone will now have access to many of their fave Google's services such as the Search, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, as well as other features like Docs, SMS, GOOG-411 and Notebook all accessible from the menu bar at the top of the page. Google has integrated AJAX to create a "fast and fluid" experience leveraging the iPhone's large touch screen, Wi-Fi, and Safari browser. To test drive it for yourself, visit www.google.com from your iPhone.

The GPhone Is Here Already

There has been so much talk about the Google GPhone (NASDAQ: GOOG), that I feel like I have one. Google has also assembled many of the requirements for a next generation internet mobile company such as mobile search, mobile maps, web based voice mail, voice enable directory service, mobile advertising and many other offerings that I am probably not aware of. So a device is not that much of a stretch. Google could give a struggling device manufacturer a significant boost in distribution. Google could offer free calls anywhere in the world subsidized by ads of course, and running off its massive internet backbone. I already use GrandCentral and it is an amazing tool. For more on GrandCentral please Google it. Also, does Apple know something we don't? Is the gphone launch imminent or are the cutting the price of the 8G iPhone simply because it is not moving? In the meantime I am Gruuving with my iPhone and GServices.