Suntrica Chargers Now Apple Approved
While much of the attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is on new handsets and software, Suntrica from Finland silently announced that they got their Solar Strap approved by Apple. Their new Solar Strap, which comes now in four nice colours and got even lighter, is working with the iPhone 3G and 3 GS, as well as the iPod Touch, Classic and Nano. This is a great opportunity for all the Apple fans to charge their iPhones and iPods while away from an outlet, be it in the city or hiking.
For those who don't have an iPhone or iPod but are looking for an environmentally friendly way to load their phones and gadgets, Suntrica still has the normal SolarStrap which is compatible with a range of phones, and also can be loaded up via USB for those rainy days and carried as a backup. Finally, the company is also helping out the people in Haiti, as relief workers are powering their mobile phones with Suntrica chargers - a great sign that they are not only interested in profits, but also in the well being of other people.
Mobile Premier Awards At Barcelona's Mobile World Congress
ArcticStartup is an official media partner of this year's Mobile Premier Awards (MPA), the biggest open and global startup competition in the mobile industry. (The event went by the name Mobile Peer Awards last year.) The event is organized in collaboration with the industry's largest networks such as MobileMonday, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), MEX, MobileActive.org, and Women 2.0.
Adobe and Nokia Fund New Cross-Platform Flash Concepts
At GSMA Mobile World Congress last week, Adobe and Nokia announced Open Screen Project fund aimed for helping developers create new applications and services for mobile, desktop and consumer electronics devices using Adobe's Flash Platform. The initial size of the fund is $10 million.
All developers can now submit concepts for new applications. The focus areas are not that limited; you can enter with apps on entertainment, business, social networking, productivity, gaming, travel, multimedia, health, finance, weather, sports, news, education, etc... The requirements are that the applications are based on the Adobe Flash Platform, will run on Nokia devices, and will work on multiple screens, including mobile, desktop and consumer electronics devices. The review criteria focuses on the innovativeness of the concept, appeal of the UI, robustness the application or planned implementation, and how well the application exploits the capabilities and features of Nokia devices, Adobe Flash (including Flash Lite) and Adobe AIR. It is stated in the fund's FAQ that of special interest are connected applications leveraging core Nokia device capabilities such as camera, location/GPS, and user contacts. The concepts will be reviewed by "mobile and desktop application and services experts" at Adobe and Nokia. Accepted concepts will receive 25% of the agreed financing upfront and 75% upon project completion.
Open Screen Project is an industry initiative led by Adobe, aiming to provide consumers richer, more interactive, and more consistent user experience for web content and standalone applications on televisions, set-top boxes, mobile devices and other consumer devices. Adobe has gathered over 20 members aboard so far, including the top 5 mobile phone manufacturers, Intel, Qualcomm, and Verizon. The vision of Open Screen Project is to "Enable consumers to engage with rich Internet experiences seamlessly across any device, anywhere." The key is to establish a consistent runtime environment across different platforms and environments, by reducing the fragmentation of devices, operating systems, and browsers.
So far Flash has a wide reach, considering numerous operating systems and devices, and and existing community of over million developers. Adobe is no doubt trying very hard to make Flash the de facto standard of mobile and the new converging web devices as well. Sun Microsystems is challenging Adobe in the runtime race by the introduction of JavaFX framework, which is boasted to provide simplicity and ease of design similar to Flash, but with much more extensive scripting features. Sun is also targeting e.g. IPTV and set top box manufacturers among others with JavaFX. In terms of installed base Flash has gotten a lot of head, though, with stated close to 40 percent of all new mobile devices shipped with Flash Lite in 2008. Adobe also just released Flash Lite Distributable player for over-the-air distribution of Flash Lite applications.
Nokia Launches Ovi (App) Store
Nokia has just announced at Mobile World Congress that the company will launch its own app store called Ovi Store, as was rumored. It was expected that Nokia places this service under its global Internet services brand Ovi.
But it will not be just an "app" store - Ovi Store will serve ringtones, wallpapers, videos, podcasts, applications and games in various languages like Java, Flash lite, widgets. The Ovi Store will thus replace Nokia's previous services like Download!, Mosh, and Nokia Software Market, thus greatly unifying and simplifying the consumer content offering of Nokia. Interestingly, Ovi Store features social discovery, meaning that users will be recommended and promoted content which is used by their social network. Also location aware featuring will be supported by Nokia. The social features will be supported apparently by at least Facebook and MySpace, who both give a statement in Nokia's press release.
Developers are offered 70 % of the revenue share, similarly Apple App Store. However, the net revenue will hugely depend whether the consumers use credit card or operator billing - they will have the option to choose the method. According to Nokia's experience on N-Gage billing, vast majority of the consumers select operator billing when given the choice. It is unsure whether it would be possible to offer slightly lower price for credit card purchases to encourage this option - it is unlikely, though, given Nokia needs the approval the operators to include the store in the operator phone variants.
I have not been able to try out the actual user experience yet, but if Nokia has taken note from their cumulated learnings with previous services and Apple, this could be a major boost to the company's content business and the S40 and S60 software ecosystem. After all, S60 has been, and still is, the platform of choice for many application developers due to the sheer handset volumes in the market. In the gaming market Nokia has a tough task in competing with iPhone, though.
In the beginning, only selected content providers and publishers are allowed to publish in the store, but Nokia will gradually open up the support to all developers. Developers can register for the Ovi Store at publish.ovi.com.
Apply for MobileMonday Global Peer Awards 2009
As the new year soon starts, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain will only be a few weeks away. Similarly to last year, MobileMonday in Barcelona will be organized the same week of the congress, on February 16, 2009. Also as last year, the event will focus on MobileMonday Peer Awards finals, the largest mobile startup innovation competition on the planet as the tagline says.
It's now time to register your startup to the competition to your local MobileMonday Chapter (the one in your city, or the nearest one). Hurry up, the registration closes December 31st, midnight your chapter's local time!
Each MoMo chapter will select their nominee for the finals using their preferred method of choice (email voting, local event voting, founder's voting, jury, etc.; check your local chapter for more details). An international jury will then select the Peer Awards winner from 20 finalists in Barcelona based on 3-minute pitches.
Each chapter will announce their nominee by January 16, 2009 midnight local time. Notice that if you want to be eligible for the finalist nomination, you must be willing to travel to the Peer Awards in Barcelona at your own expense.
As there are altogether 67 chapters (!) participating this year, there will be an international virtual jury pre-screening the nominees, and selecting the 20 finalists. MoMo is trying to make the selection as transparent and open to the industry as possible. They are thus accepting applications to the finalist-selecting jury from individuals, to select the finalists among all the chapter nominees by online vote during mid-January. The virtual jury members will not need to travel to Barcelona. If you're interested to become part of the online jury email jury AT mobilepeerawards DOT com with a short bio, your LinkedIn profile, and personal blog and twitter name if you have one.
Nokia's Change Of Heart
Just recently Nokia, the Finnish born mobile phone manufacturer, put up a competition to find the most innovative mobile apps. We believe this might be part of a bigger initiative to reach out to startups in the wake of what App Store has done for Apple.
The word on the street is that Nokia is really(!) trying to reinvent themselves. This does not only mean shifting the focus partly from hardware to software such as Ovi service which just launched recently, but also possibly finding new partners in the platform area in order to create an ecosystem similar to what Apple is doing with App Store.
Not only has Nokia been sniffing around in Android developer conferences, but when I recently spoke to a Nokia employee working high up in the organization he was carefully asking around how a platform change away from Symbian would affect the startup scene over here in Finland. This might just be speculation or part of a careful scenario planning exercise from Nokia's part, but then again it might be much more that.
Now, Nokia has put up a mobile app competition (here) which is clearly part of their answer to Apple's App Store. The contest is open for everyone: independent developers, startups, and so on. There are three different categories for submission:
- Eco challenge (looking for apps that help make sustainable choices)
- Emerging market challenge (apps to empower people in developing countries)
- Technology showcase challenge (looking for killer apps which feature cutting edge mobile technologies)
Winners of each contest will receive $25K cash prize, will be able to distribute their apps through Nokia channels, with possibility to meet VCs, showcase their apps in Mobile World Congress 09 in Barcelona.
The big question is that do these pieces add up to something much more than what we're currently seeing. Will Nokia take up Android to challenge Apple's App Store? What do you think?
